Mass Effect Thread

[GaryCXJk]

Originally Posted by der_ketzer

This sounds great. How do you come up with things like this?
And then in ME4 the Normandy is stranded in space without food or water and Shepard is sitting in it alone writing his diary.

Sounds like some sequel that could only be written if the original writers wouldn't be involved in it.

[der_ketzer]

Originally Posted by GaryCXJk

Sounds like some sequel that could only be written if the original writers wouldn't be involved in it.

Well since a bunch of rabid chimps wrote the ending to ME3 there is no harm in changing the writers.

[GaryCXJk]

Yeah, but there will always be an outrcy of fans for the original ending. Twenty years from now, the original writers would still close their mouth as Telltale makes Chronicles of Mass Effect.

[Darth Marsden]

Well, the thing with DLC is that you don't have to get it. If you're happy with the original endings, then hey, more power to you. You can have them. Not a problem. But if you're not, then the option is there, y'know?

[Alcoremortis]

Has anyone tried playing the game with the absolute minimum number of surviving characters from ME2? I only say this because I don't want to believe that there is NO way to completely doom advanced organic life and have Reapers eat everyone for tea. That should be allowed to happen.

[der_ketzer]

Shepard can die in ME2. What happens if you import that savegame into ME3. Or is that even possible?

[RetroVortex]

I haven't played Mass Effect 3, but from what I've read, (I'm probably never going to play ME3 anyway...), I think I have to go with the fans on this one.

Essentially this ending is exactly like Fallout 3's ending.

Its unsatisfying, its poorly written, and it plain doesn't make any sense!
(Not in the funny way. Just in that terrible kind of flat "what?" way)

I think Bioware should take a page out of Bethesda's book and make a sort of small expansion, (free if they want extra Kudos) that removes the ending, and provides a new extension to the story that provides a more final confrontation.

I've seen the indoctrination theory, and I say Bioware should just go with that, (or something similar).
Make Sherpard fight some tough enemies, and have a FINAL FINAL battle with the heart of the enemy empire itself.

If you planned incorrectly and die - Everything fails and the cycle begins anew.
If you planned correctly but still die - Some things fail and the fight goes underground.
If you plan incorrectly but survive - Shepard abandon's the plan and escapes, but is severly wounded and irrepairably crippled by the fight, and becomes "the commander", the man organising and training the survivors in preperation for when the enemy eventually recovers. Finds a promising young recruit in training and smiles.
If you plan correctly and win - The saga concludes, but Shepard, exhausted from all his battles and yet satisfied with his ultimate victory, allows his crew to escape as he fights to the very end against the rest of the reaper forces. Your one-on-many battle gets timed, and how long you survive determines who escapes. Then an epilogue plays out that provides extra context.

EDIT: By planning, I mean the culmination of all the decisions you made in Mass Effect 1,2, and 3.
Even minor decisions can add up to a larger impact. You might make most of the right important decisions, but some minor decisions could change the detail in the final plans and make it fail.
There would be some deviance for failure in place, but the amount of success you would need would be around 70-80%

EDIT 2: Besides, I've seen artists change an ending before. I've seen people change entire parts of a story before.

I mean, Alien 3 had a lot cut out and then put back in. Most people argue that Director's Cut is better.

Blade Runner had loads of edits. The final version being the best in my opinion.

Blue Oyster Cult has a few different versions of some of their songs. The live versions especially are different. But Astronomy has two album versions.

Artistic Integrity is just an excuse, especially when people have a lot of validity in questioning it.

[Alcoremortis]

Originally Posted by der_ketzer

Shepard can die in ME2. What happens if you import that savegame into ME3. Or is that even possible?

I've heard that isn't possible. Which is sad because it would be fun to try and play through as Joker and turn it into a survival horror game.

[KuroShiro]

Originally Posted by Alcoremortis

I've heard that isn't possible. Which is sad because it would be fun to try and play through as Joker and turn it into a survival horror game.

That 5 minute sequence in ME2 was more than enough, thanks.

[Shadowknight1]

Originally Posted by Alcoremortis

Has anyone tried playing the game with the absolute minimum number of surviving characters from ME2? I only say this because I don't want to believe that there is NO way to completely doom advanced organic life and have Reapers eat everyone for tea. That should be allowed to happen.

Hmmm...that would require letting the entire non-squad crew of the Normandy to be liquified by the Collectors, and finishing ME2 with only Jack, Samara/Morinth, Miranda, Legion, Mordin, and Tali alive. Then you would need to ignore the ME3 mission to save Grissom Academy, which would doom Jack to becoming a Phantom that you must kill at the Cerberus HQ. Samara is easy to get rid of, just let her kill herself. And if you had Morinth instead, then she becomes a banshee you have to kill. Miranda will die if you don't warn her about the assassin, didn't complete her loyalty mission, or don't talk her dad down/kill him. Mordin dies no matter what you do, unless you say to **** with the Krogans. And if you choose to upload the Reaper Code, but cannot broker peace between the Quarians and the Geth, Legion dies propagating the code among the Geth, and Tali commits suicide. This would leave you with Jake, Liara, EDI, and Kaiden/Ashley. And Javik if you have the From Ashes DLC and want a mopey Prothean on your ship.

[Alcoremortis]

Originally Posted by Shadowknight1

Hmmm...that would require letting the entire non-squad crew of the Normandy to be liquified by the Collectors, and finishing ME2 with only Jack, Samara/Morinth, Miranda, Legion, Mordin, and Tali alive. Then you would need to ignore the ME3 mission to save Grissom Academy, which would doom Jack to becoming a Phantom that you must kill at the Cerberus HQ. Samara is easy to get rid of, just let her kill herself. And if you had Morinth instead, then she becomes a banshee you have to kill. Miranda will die if you don't warn her about the assassin, didn't complete her loyalty mission, or don't talk her dad down/kill him. Mordin dies no matter what you do, unless you say to **** with the Krogans. And if you choose to upload the Reaper Code, but cannot broker peace between the Quarians and the Geth, Legion dies propagating the code among the Geth, and Tali commits suicide. This would leave you with Jake, Liara, EDI, and Kaiden/Ashley. And Javik if you have the From Ashes DLC and want a mopey Prothean on your ship.

Honestly, if the choice is between Mordin and the entire Krogan race... fuck the Krogans, I'm keeping Mordin. When I play ME3, I plan to have him and Garrus flanking my alien-loving Femshep as she fights her way to the universe's demise.

[der_ketzer]

Originally Posted by KuroShiro

That 5 minute sequence in ME2 was more than enough, thanks.

I have to agree on that.

[Shadowknight1]

Originally Posted by Alcoremortis

Honestly, if the choice is between Mordin and the entire Krogan race... fuck the Krogans, I'm keeping Mordin. When I play ME3, I plan to have him and Garrus flanking my alien-loving Femshep as she fights her way to the universe's demise.

Sadly, Mordin still won't come with Shep, if I remember correctly. And what ends up happening is that you convince Mordin to not cure the genophage yet, and if Wrex is still alive, he finds out, gets pissed, and you'll have no choice but to kill him.

[johnnyt471]

I haven't played ME3 yet. I have played ME2, loved it, but never finished it. If the complaint is that the ending sucks, well....endings to video games suck more often than not. I still have nightmares of spending all week beating the NES game 1942 only to have it just give me a black screen with "CONGRATULATION" written in tiny font on the center, and then back to title screen. Or the horrendously bad "ending" in the otherwise decent budget title Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened. And Final Fantasy VII had a great story, but the ending to that was pretty controversial also.

However, it seems like the developers were actively promoting the game as having many wildly different endings that are depending on the many decisions your character has made during the course of the trilogy and DLC. It really was kind of a big selling point for the series. (see this thread for details). Apparently there are only three different endings, with minimal differences? And the only important decisions that affect it are near the very end of the game? Regardless of the quality of the actual ending, that doesn't seem right.

This all kind of reminds me of Neon Genesis Evangelion, actually. The studio was rushed and short of money and the director was having a nervous breakdown, so the final two episodes ended up being an incoherent mess that had little relation to the episodes that preceded it, which left viewers going "Huh? That was it? WTF just happened?" Of course, the demand for the series was so high and the complaints were so vitriolic that he eventually made the movie The End of Evangelion as an alternate ending. The movie was also bizarre, but it felt like a more appropriate conclusion that fit in with the rest of the series.

[RetroVortex]

EA probably rushed Bioware to finish the game I'd wager.

Because the more I think about it, the more the ending doesn't seem to fit.

Maybe they planned it all along. Rush that game out; see how people react to the ending, then if its too negative, convince EA to let them change it as DLC.
(The writers must surely of had several different endings in the pipeline, just in case)

Scheduling is everything these days. Artistic intergrity doesn't mean diddly squat if the game has to be finished by X date. Cuts are made. Placeholders can become final. Things are cancelled outright.

Its worse on large-scale projects since the huge teams tend to hemmorage money for a company the longer they stall.

EDIT: I just kind of feel that its not like Bioware to just turn around and change the ending, unless they already knew how people would have reacted, and had put resources by in preperation to work on it.

[Alcoremortis]

Originally Posted by Shadowknight1

Sadly, Mordin still won't come with Shep, if I remember correctly. And what ends up happening is that you convince Mordin to not cure the genophage yet, and if Wrex is still alive, he finds out, gets pissed, and you'll have no choice but to kill him.

Aww.

This makes me sad. I always took Mordin everywhere with me just for the comments. Oh, and because he could one-hit kill Harbingers. That too.

[LuigiHann]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/03/23/ma...writers-think/

Some interesting points there.

Steve Gaynor's bit kind of bugs me:

“There’s great value in thinking about the story of a game as a collaboration between the player and the developers. In the collision of fiction and game mechanics, my experience of a game is never exactly the same as yours; the more systemic and divergent the results of the player’s contribution, the better. Much of the player’s experience of Deus Ex or Skyrim is the story of how the player played that game, and how they shaped the gameworld to express themselves; the experience of Minecraft is entirely that. It’s incredibly powerful.

But things like “cutscenes” and “endings” are completely authored by the developers, and the developers altering the authored content of a game after the fact has nothing to do with the systemic player-developer collaboration described above. It’s no different than a movie or book being released and, upon fan outrage, being edited and re-released to pander to the most vocal dissenters in the audience. It’s not unique to games; it is unique to a certain type of entertainment media that attracts fans who feel entitled to dictate exactly how the product should bend to their desires, instead of standing as a unique experience to be enjoyed, or not, on its own merits.”

Should there really be such a distinction, artistically, between the interactive and non-interactive segments of a game? Something about that feels wrong, though I'm having trouble coming up with a specific point against it.

Also I think Chuck Jordan missed the point of the backlash against direct control. :| Or at least, what he perceived as being the main argument against it doesn't gel with what my argument against it was. Oh well. Still stings to be included in a point which boils down to "guess fan feedback is worthless sometimes, haha"

[Rawr]

Originally Posted by RetroVortex

EA probably rushed Bioware to finish the game I'd wager.

Because the more I think about it, the more the ending doesn't seem to fit.

Maybe they planned it all along. Rush that game out; see how people react to the ending, then if its too negative, convince EA to let them change it as DLC.
(The writers must surely of had several different endings in the pipeline, just in case)

Scheduling is everything these days. Artistic intergrity doesn't mean diddly squat if the game has to be finished by X date. Cuts are made. Placeholders can become final. Things are cancelled outright.

Its worse on large-scale projects since the huge teams tend to hemmorage money for a company the longer they stall.

EDIT: I just kind of feel that its not like Bioware to just turn around and change the ending, unless they already knew how people would have reacted, and had put resources by in preperation to work on it.

Yeah, that was always my impression, it was rushed. I presume EA didn't want to delay it, so they rushed the ending so it would be ready in time to print. It explains the lack of choice inclusion(Let's face it, taking into account a good couple of choices from the trilogy would take quite a lot of time to implement) and also the palette swap endings.

[DAISHI]

Originally Posted by LuigiHann

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/03/23/ma...writers-think/

Some interesting points there.

Steve Gaynor's bit kind of bugs me:



Should there really be such a distinction, artistically, between the interactive and non-interactive segments of a game? Something about that feels wrong, though I'm having trouble coming up with a specific point against it.

Also I think Chuck Jordan missed the point of the backlash against direct control. :| Or at least, what he perceived as being the main argument against it doesn't gel with what my argument against it was. Oh well. Still stings to be included in a point which boils down to "guess fan feedback is worthless sometimes, haha"

That's not what it boils down to really. It's just, if the authors wanted all three endings to be negative, they're all going to be negative. They can revamp the choices and make it more robust, but changing the ending because people don't like it robs the authors of control.

[LuigiHann]

I guess it's just like, don't you agree to give up some control when you decide to make a video game instead of a film or a novel? If you allow your players to decide what sort of person they want their character to be, shouldn't that choice be reflected in some way even in the non-interactive portions of the game?

Also, the Chuck Jordan point I was making was more of an aside