Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread [Spoiler tag free, beware]

[Tannhauser]

I can only speak for myself, but I bitched at the ending then I bitched yet again when the 'closure' DLC was announced.  Do you consider this one long whine that I should 'get over'?  What if in two weeks they announce a $10 charge for the DLC?  Are we allowed to bitch again or should we just 'get over' that as well?

To me, this is the games industry equivalent of the Titanic sinking.  If you think I'm not going to sit in my lifeboat and watch it go down you are mistaken.

I think I see you there, bravely re-arranging the deck furniture.  

[Velorath]

I can only speak for myself, but I bitched at the ending then I bitched yet again when the 'closure' DLC was announced.  Do you consider this one long whine that I should 'get over'?

No.

[Merusk]

It's certainly not $65 worth of amazing

I'm sorry, there's just no way to make that call without actually seeing it for yourself. And sure, there's absolutely a risk that you won't think it was worth it once you're done.

That's a complete and utter bullshit statement, Ingmar and you should be ashamed for making it.  We get you have a blind spot for things you love sometime, but really?  Another person's opinion of value you're going to make a stand on?

Value is different for everyone.  You can't judge what is or isn't worth $65 to me any more than I can judge it for you.    Some guy feels that $500 is a bargain price to have another man dress in a fox suit and hump his leg or ass.  I disagree and don't need to experience it just to say, "Yeah, totally not worth the price."

[koro]

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/22732319#Comment_22732319

Informal interview with Patrick Weekes, apparently from a SA Goon, reposted on the PA forums. He is, apparently, the writer for the new ending DLC.

[Sir T]

I can only speak for myself, but I bitched at the ending then I bitched yet again when the 'closure' DLC was announced.  Do you consider this one long whine that I should 'get over'?  What if in two weeks they announce a $10 charge for the DLC?  Are we allowed to bitch again or should we just 'get over' that as well?

To me, this is the games industry equivalent of the Titanic sinking.  If you think I'm not going to sit in my lifeboat and watch it go down you are mistaken.

I think I see you there, bravely re-arranging the deck furniture.  

Actually reminds me more of Kate Winslet jumping back onto the sinking Titanic from a lifeboat becasue she LOOOOOVES him...

[Kageru]

People would forgive them if this wasn't a series of events that precipitated their hesitation. Dragon Age 2 started the ball rolling. SWTOR helped it pick up steam. ME3 put the nail in the coffin.

This may be the case for you personally, but SWTOR has not generated neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeearly as much internet whining as DA2 and ME3's ending has. SWTOR is more a "eh, it's alright, kinda rough around the edges, but I think it's half the whole MMO thing" sort of shrugging of the shoulders by most detractors from what I've seen, rather than the full voiced wailing the haters of DA2 and ME3 generate.

Yep... though that's a pretty bad outcome for a massively expensive MMO that needs to keep people playing monthly subs.

[Margalis]

To clarify I'm not saying you guys need to rush out and buy ME3, or pre-order their next game the second it's announced.  If Merusk wants to want for the game to hit $12, that's great.  I do that with a shit-ton of games, even good ones (just mentioned in another topic getting great deals on the last AC game and Crusader Kings 2).  What started off this branch of discussion was me responding to Margailis by saying that it doesn't matter what Bioware's PR says at this point.  People who played the game have moved on, and the people who are still actively expressing their rage at this point are either the unhealthily hardcore fans and the Anti-Bioware/EA folks.  If you want to add "guys who played the past 2 games but skipped this one because they heard the ending sucked" so be it, but again, if you didn't experience the game, I'm not sure what you'd have Bioware tell you at this point.  I can't really think of another medium where people expect this much feedback from the creators either.  I'm not asking Ridley Scott to explain on Twitter why I should drop money on Prometheus after his last movie Robin Hood.

This is still a non-sequitur and you are actively ignoring what every single person is saying to you. You have about 5 or 6 people telling you the same thing and you absolutely refuse to comprehend.

Plenty of companies acknowledge product mistakes. The head of Universal recently said that their films suck. S-E flat out admitted that FFXIV is terrible. It's simply not true that no company will say a product of theirs is bad.

This has nothing to do with people who are still raging. That is still completely beside the point, and the only reason you keep bringing it up is to deflect, because you've figured out that the best way to defend Bioware is paint all detractors as crazed morons. I'm not raging, I'm laughing an continued fuckups. Most people who were mad about the ending are now just glum about the future of Bioware products. You have multiple people telling you that right here in this thread, yet all you can do is repeat "lol ragers" like a broken record.

What they want to hear is some basic acknowledgement that something went wrong, to give them a little assurance that Bioware gets it, recognizes and will rectify the obvious process and creative problems that lead to the shitty ending. Not "our ending was artistic and awesome and our game got great scores!" Many people who played the game and moved on will be hesitant to move on to the next Bioware game.

That's an extremely simple point that every person in this thread gets - except you, despite multiple attempts by patient people to make you break out of your knee-jerk Bioware defense fortress for all of 2 seconds and listen to what they are saying.

[Margalis]

I'm sorry, there's just no way to make that call without actually seeing it for yourself.

Paying $100 to stick your dick into a meat grinder is also totally worth it.

Prove me wrong!

[Paelos]

I'm not sure what they need to say to convince guys like you who didn't actually play ME3 to buy their next game, because the truth is, even the best writers can fuck up an ending.  Again, do you want them to say "sorry we fucked up the ending on this, won't happen again."?  Realistically going forward nothing they say is going to change peoples' perspectives, it just comes down to the quality of their next titles.  

If you honestly believe that nothing they say can change perspectives, why do companies spend millions on advertising and public relations? I'd say the exact opposite is true about what companies choose to communicate to their playerbase. It's in fact VERY important to changing perspectives, maintaining a positive image, and promoting the quality aspects of their products.

You know what they can say to people who they want to buy their next game? Tell your customers what you learned. When you make a mistake as a company, sometimes you actually have to be honest with your customers about your direction. Right now, the most important thing Bioware could communicate is that they want to make a new commitment to quality in terms of story and development. And then, actually follow through with it.

You are correct taht the quality of their next title is going to be what gets people turned around, but their PR campaign is an important first step to changing the mood surrounding Bioware.

[Margalis]

Doing PR and marketing to get people to buy games is crazy, which is why nobody does it.

Here is almost word-for-word what Bioware could say:

Mass Effect is the creation of a large number of talented writers working together to create the great stories and characters you've come to know and love. As a company we work best when ideas are freely exchanged and critiqued and the best ideas rise to the top through peer evaluation.

Unfortunately when it came time to write the ending for ME3 a few high level executives took it upon themselves to alter this process and exclude the writing team that had made everything done previously so successful. Instead of working with our talented writers to produce the best possible ending they instead worked by themselves to produce the ending they personally liked the best and to co-opt ownership of the game. In short they put themselves ahead of the team and the product.

In retrospect that was a huge mistake that should never have been allowed to happen. We abandoned our core commitments for the egos of a few, and cheated our fans and ourselves out of the great ending we are confident our proven writing team would have produced.

To rectify that we've altered our policies to clarify the division between writing and producing. We've made peer review an official part of our writing process that applies to all in game text and events. And we've exiled Mac Walters and Casey Hudson to live with our basement dwelling shut-in number 1 fan Velorath, where the three of them can endlessly re-enact Velorath's Jabba the Hut - Leia - Yoda three way from his his series of fan fiction novels.

[Ingmar]

It's certainly not $65 worth of amazing

I'm sorry, there's just no way to make that call without actually seeing it for yourself. And sure, there's absolutely a risk that you won't think it was worth it once you're done.

That's a complete and utter bullshit statement, Ingmar and you should be ashamed for making it.  We get you have a blind spot for things you love sometime, but really?  Another person's opinion of value you're going to make a stand on?

Value is different for everyone.  You can't judge what is or isn't worth $65 to me any more than I can judge it for you.    Some guy feels that $500 is a bargain price to have another man dress in a fox suit and hump his leg or ass.  I disagree and don't need to experience it just to say, "Yeah, totally not worth the price."

Sure OK, if you use some crazy example well outside of what we're talking about - but new games like this pretty much all cost about the same amount.

How many hours of how much fun for how many dollars is a pretty easy set of calculations to make I think, and if you didn't like ME2 I don't think you should buy this one new even if the ending was robot Jesus, they're just not that different. Or maybe you're at the point where buying any game for full price doesn't make sense for you, or you can only afford to buy a few games new and thus they need to only be the ones that are 'perfect' or whatever, that's all totally in the no judgement zone for me.

Point being, you can listen to reviews from people who played the game and felt experiencing the ending ruined everything for them, or loved it besides the ending, or whatever, and nobody is going to give you shit for it. But when you appear to be listening to the failure porn drama brigade here? Letting those people sway you about anything, especially when they haven't actually even played it themselves? Ugh.

[Paelos]

The point would be a stronger one for "judge it on it's own merit" if it wasn't the third iteration of the same underlying game.

[Fabricated]

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/22732319#Comment_22732319

Informal interview with Patrick Weekes, apparently from a SA Goon, reposted on the PA forums. He is, apparently, the writer for the new ending DLC.

I kinda wish I knew if this was true or not because it makes me feel a bit better.

Honestly, they should have the writers come out and say this kind of stuff. We need a fucking Mea Culpa here if they're not going to give us a do-over on the ending.

"Yeah, the game development cycle and some really bad assumptions on our part added up to a really shitty ending. Our bad. Here's why some stuff wasn't in, why some stuff didn't make sense, and let us point out some stuff we personally really disliked but decided to go with instead of endlessly circle-jerking in writers meetings about it."

That'd make me happy. Say you were fucking WRONG. Why can't you say you were wrong? Don't feed us this PR shit about "listening to the fans" with backhanded stuff about how we should appreciate the artistic integrity and notice the 9/10 and 10/10 interviews that you literally paid/pressured the utterly worthless gaming press into.

[koro]

Weekes has been a semi-regular poster on the PA forums since before ME1 hit, and he's said several things similar to that paraphrased Q&A before so I have little reason to doubt its veracity.

One of the more telling things he's said (though with how terrible the new PA forum search software is, good luck finding it easily) was that as the ending fallout began to pick up steam, EA executives shifted from "concerned" to "furious" over the span of about a work week.

[Margalis]

Point being, you can listen to reviews from people who played the game and felt experiencing the ending ruined everything for them, or loved it besides the ending, or whatever, and nobody is going to give you shit for it. But when you appear to be listening to the failure porn drama brigade here? Letting those people sway you about anything, especially when they haven't actually even played it themselves? Ugh.

I suspect they are listening to the huge number of people who bought ME3 and were disappointed by it. I guess I should be honored that you think this Bioware backlash is all my doing but it probably isn't.

The game as a 2.5 star rating on Amazon (the same rating as FFXIV) and a 4.9 user rating on metacritic. Sure, "you can't judge something you haven't experienced" is true in some sense but it's also a pointless observation unless you are willing to grant that Dora the Explora for DS is way better than Mass Effect 3 and easily worth trading your testicles for. People judge things based on the information available and the available information points to ME3 not being so hot.

It's not like this huge Bioware backlash is the result of me and Simond posting here, unless you think we are some sort of all powerful anti-Bioware illuminati.

[tmp]

Paying $100 to stick your dick into a meat grinder is also totally worth it.

Prove me wrong!

Well, i would pay that much to see someone do it. So in a sense yes, it's totally worth it

[Surlyboi]

It's not like this huge Bioware backlash is the result of me and Simond posting here, unless you think we are some sort of all powerful anti-Bioware illuminati.

Fnord.

That said, don't be so fast to lump yourself in with a noted anti-bioware troll. You've made some solid points.

[Ratman_tf]

And, as an aside, Stephen King has readily admitted he's pretty crap at writing endings.

On the topic of endings. It kinda burns my buns that some stories seem to intentionally imply that The Ending Is Going To Rock. They tease mysteries and plans: Lost and it's smoke monster, nuBSG and it's opera house. And then the end is various flavors of garbage with the usual reply from the creators "It's the journey, not the destination!" or even worse, "It's about the characters, not the plot!" This happens so much lately, I'm beginning to think that storytellers have developed some kind of synchronic brain damage. "Here's an excellent idea for a story. Drama! Pathos! Excitement! Stuff! ... Ah, time for the ending  DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! iT's TEH jurny nut da desteynashun! I maed a fingur paintin!"

[Paelos]

You are correct. It's a writer crutch of the current generation to fuck up an ending and then tell people it's about the journey.

[caladein]

I think you don't answer anything until the very end when you feel you have to (you don't!) and do so badly because you don't want to be the next Twin Peaks.

But hey, "X are dumber now/then" is more fun.

[Jeff Kelly]

Well yeah, but if you follow the discussion about the ending you get the impression that there are a lot of people (most of them professional writers themselves) that don't particularly care about a great ending.

The biggest divide between fans and reviewers was how the end was received. Most of the people that came to Bioware's defense were authors who either said the end is fine or changing it is treason to the artist's integrity.

So it must be some sort of collective thing.

The most ridiculous argument I read was some author claiming that stories usually don't have great endings so it is kinda expected that Mass Effect doesn't have one either.

[Ratman_tf]

I think you don't answer anything until the very end when you feel you have to (you don't!) and do so badly because you don't want to be the next Twin Peaks.

But hey, "X are dumber now/then" is more fun.

Fuck and fiddlesticks. I've read and seen stories that delivered their end that followed from the start. LOTR, Dune, Star Wars. It's not brain surgery. A few mysteries and loose threads are fine, but not the major ones that are part of the premise.

Imagine the Collector base from ME2, everyone enters, and it's a big white room with this dude in it-



No, we played out the Collector base, and dealt with the dangers and made a choice about keeping it or destroying it. It answered the question brought up at the beginning of the game, Why are the Reapers stealing people? It resolved the buildup of the Suicide Mission, and why we went to all that trouble to earn our crew's loyalty. Maybe the Reaper baby was dumb (I didn't mind) but it resolved the premise.

And then we get crapsack like ME3, where little is answered, the rest doesn't follow from the premise (Syntheticslol) and we're left feeling like someone just teabagged us.

[Ratman_tf]

The most ridiculous argument I read was some author claiming that stories usually don't have great endings so it is kinda expected that Mass Effect doesn't have one either.

At least that would make it interesting. A comment on bad endings by intentionally making a bad ending. 

[Paelos]

I think you don't answer anything until the very end when you feel you have to (you don't!) and do so badly because you don't want to be the next Twin Peaks.

But hey, "X are dumber now/then" is more fun.

It's not THAT difficult to bring a story to a close. You can have it be depressing without it being a giant middle finger to the reader/watcher/player.

The worst sort of "ending" is one where the last bits completely invalidate the entire point of your story.

[Margalis]

It's a lot easier to come up with a cool premise and a bunch of interesting questions than it is to answer them and make the premise work out in the end.

Stephen King for example typically follows the pattern of setting up some huge evil that seem unstoppable, leading the reader to think "how in the world are the heroes going to prevail?" It's a great hook. Unfortunately he has no clue himself and the heroes end up winning with the power of love or some shit. Compare the ending of Misery to the ending of Needful Things or It - the latter two are completely idiotic because the last few pages of both turn into a Care Bears episode.

I don't think this is a modern thing. Compare John Dickson Carr to Agatha Christie. Carr wrote cool mysteries that seemed impossible to solve but made perfect sense. Christie books typically end with the guy who was mentioned in one sentence on page 17 being the baddie.

[Ratman_tf]

It's a lot easier to come up with a cool premise and a bunch of interesting questions than it is to answer them and make the premise work out in the end.

Stephen King for example typically follows the pattern of setting up some huge evil that seem unstoppable, leading the reader to think "how in the world are the heroes going to prevail?" It's a great hook. Unfortunately he has no clue himself and the heroes end up winning with the power of love or some shit. Compare the ending of Misery to the ending of Needful Things or It - the latter two are completely idiotic because the last few pages of both turn into a Care Bears episode.

I don't think this is a modern thing. Compare John Dickson Carr to Agatha Christie. Carr wrote cool mysteries that seemed impossible to solve but made perfect sense. Christie books typically end with the guy who was mentioned in one sentence on page 17 being the baddie.

I really like Dead Zone, and I hear it's one of the few novels King plotted out the ending, instead of "discovering" it.

And yeah, I'm sure crap endings that don't deliver aren't anything new. There just seems to be a lot of it, and a lot of bullshit deflection flying about.

[amiable]

I really like Dead Zone, and I hear it's one of the few novels King plotted out the ending, instead of "discovering" it.

And yeah, I'm sure crap endings that don't deliver aren't anything new. There just seems to be a lot of it, and a lot of bullshit deflection flying about.

King is a MUCH better short story writer than a novel writer.  His short stories are really amazing on a lot of levels, because he has to think about the ending.

The ending of "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" still gives me goosebumps.

[Ratman_tf]

"Everybody loses"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT_x64921ls&feature=player_embedded

[Paelos]

And yeah, I'm sure crap endings that don't deliver aren't anything new. There just seems to be a lot of it, and a lot of bullshit deflection flying about.

It's not new, but history has a way of discarding people who can't write an ending. It's not some sort of artistic badge of honor that people want to hide behind today.

[Ratman_tf]

A thought this morning. What if Casey Hudson was intentionally trying to scuttle Mass Effect as an IP to take a stab at EA?

[pxib]

It's not new, but history has a way of discarding people who can't write an ending.

Hasn't hurt Neal Stephenson.

[Lakov_Sanite]

It's not new, but history has a way of discarding people who can't write an ending.

Hasn't hurt Neal Stephenson.

Who? Honestly, I don't know who that is *goes to google* oh lol, I loved snow crash too, had no idea what his name was.

[Sjofn]

God, his endings really do blow.

[Paelos]

He's a nobody who will be tossed into the trashbin of history once he's dead. Just like all the other novelists who can't formulate a story from beginning to end.

[Ingmar]

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland's "It was all just a dream!" ending will be knocking it out of the collective consciousness any day now, then.

EDIT: Also, everything Monty Python ever did except Life of Brian.