ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

[Raydeus]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

I agree with all the points, but almost all of them are indeed explained by the indoctrination scenario. However that in itself is what I'm talking about when I say EAware failed at managing this release because they were too focused on using DLCs to milk as much money out of gullible gamers as possible. 'Cause real game sequels actually worth 60 bucks are much less profitable.

They put themselves in a tiny cage when they said they were going for a Trilogy onry kinda thing for the sake of hype. So instead of just releasing not numbered games in the series they went for hyping the Trilogy and sneak forced DLCs onto their "captive" audience.

Indoctrination or not, it's just wrong in so many ways it makes me feel even better about boycotting EAware.

/hurray spoilers

[Taskmage]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

Okay, I bounced from that one to the indoctrination video, which covers pretty much all the plot holes presented in the above video and makes me understand why you think the current endings have artistic merit. Some of the arguments about lack of variety in outcomes and lack of closure still stand, though. If the indoctrination theory is correct, then ME3 got an endling like Evangelion, which I also found deeply unsatisfying, and I won't be surprised or dismayed if like Evangelion it has a new ending tacked on that meets the conventional expectations of the audience. No wonder so many people are pissed if they were essentially sold a Micheal Bay film with an M. Night Shamalamalan ending.

Now that I have a more complete understanding of the issue, I no longer have an opinion. Like the fight over dinner that has gone on too long, just whatever I don't care.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

See, I don't take story that seriously in games, but I'm always mindful of the lore and mechanics I'm presented with.

For a Christopher Nolan movie to work, and even his Batman movies apply here, you have to dedicate yourself to theme.

Batman Begins, The Dark Knight - they're very much like Metal Gear Solid. They're an epic and who Batman is is shaped by all the lives he has come in contact with. They define him, its pretty much exactly why Christian Bale can be the most hysterically bad Batman I've seen and still come out of it looking awesome. If the whole movie was Batman defining himself, then they'd be the worst Batman movies ever. But its Ra's, Joker, Harvey Dent, Lucius Fox, Rachel, Alfred and Commissioner Gordon that define Batman. In Metal Gear that's Otacon, Meryl, Campbell, Liquid, Ocelot, Psycho Mantis and Sniper Wolf. Snake and Batman might have some lines and opinions, but they do not define themselves at all. In an epic, other people define a protagonist.

With movies like Inception or Memento, its the lead character that defines the experience. Cobb and Shelby set the rules and if you don't accept their rules, then you're not going to enjoy the movie as intended. Cobb explains how you enter dreams and steal memories, Shelby describes his extreme lack of short term memory in grand detail and so the fact that the movie is presented from the ending to the beginning is to show the problems of a man with such a disability in his quest to avenge his murdered wife which is about the only thing he can remember.

People that get interested in things aside from what Cobb and Shelby have laid out are going to get lost, just as anyone who thinks Batman is a mondo badass that defines himself is going to have problems with Nolan's Batman movies. Bruce Wayne and Batman aren't total shells, Bale is given just as much space as anyone, but those Batman movies wouldn't be great if they were just on his terms. So we can expect Bane and Selena Kyle to further shape Batman

And we can count on whoever takes the reigns for Batman after Nolan to totally not understand why these movies are so good.

Mass Effect was dedicated to its lore, but fans as well as EA, created a lot of things that sidetracked them from the emphasis of the lore - such as the novelized spin-offs and comics. ME3 has a Darth Maul, but you don't see them calling Bioware on that bullshit. Kei Lang is a totally tacked-on antagonist in this game only placed there in hopes of justifying the books he appeared in, but to people who just played the games, he Jango Fett or Darth Maul, the incidental antagonist.

I find that sort of thing to be more problematic than the ending.

[Taskmage]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

Related to an earlier part of the story: Jerry/Tycho made a post on PA yesterday about Child's Play's involvement in this.

You have almost certainly heard of “Retake Mass Effect” by now. One of many grassroots efforts to get a new ending to Mass Effect 3, it’s part community, part online petition, and part (here is where things get complicated) Child’s Play Donation Drive. They have stopped taking donations now partly because they basically won and partly because we don’t know how to feel about this use of the charity.

As the main point of contact for Child’s Play, Jamie has been buried under mail about this situation. Apparently some of the people giving to the cause seemed to think that they were paying for a new ending to Mass Effect. She’s been asked what the goal is, and how much they need to raise in order to get the ending produced. We’ve also been contacted by PayPal due to a high number of people asking for their donations back. This is in addition to readers who simply couldn’t understand how this was connected to Child’s Play’s mission. We were dealing with a lot of very confused people, more every day, and that told us we had a problem.

We have policies in place to deal with direct abuse: we don’t allow companies to use Child’s Play in order to sell more stuff. To that end we do not allow deals like “1 cent of every dollar goes to Child’s Play!” or whatever. But this isn’t anywhere on that continuum! This is a passionate community that formed around one thing, and some of that passion was expressed in charitable giving. I actually support this cause, but I am a pessimist, and I’m thinking about the next time something like this happens - when someone attaches Child’s Play to something we can’t get behind, or leverages your history of generosity and fellow feeling for their own weird bullshit. So, we need to have something like a policy on this. This is the best way I can think to say it:

Child’s Play cannot be a tool to draw attention to a cause. Child’s Play must be the Cause.

Nothing like this has ever happened in the almost ten years the charity has been running, so it kind of threw me for a loop. Thanks for listening.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

YOu know, when that whole Child's Play angle came in, it was almost like I felt everyone in the world that understood what charity meant cringe. I think even atheists can appreciate that little biblical parable about giving with sincerity despite your situation. The point to charity is indeed the charity, if you hope to get something out of being charitable, you've instantly failed at being sincere about it.

The fact the donations just dropped off the second people got what they wanted should give everyone pause. I'm sure even some EA exec's soul would be bothered by this notion of charity "Retake Mass Effect" has, and EA execs don't have souls.

[Taskmage]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

Surely there's an empty cyst in their chests where a soul would be in a normal person, the membrane of which could still feel a twinge.

I still hold out hope for my positive sports riot, though.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

I think Bioware should do with ME3 DLC what Kojima has done with every MGS since MGS2 - take the thing people ranted about the most and find new ways to rub it in their faces.

In whatever DLC that comes, your choices are made with red, green and blue lights. They become the primary choice mechanic of ME4 and then the lights get their own RPG called RGB or RoyGBiv. You choose whether you are a red, green or blue light and then become a cyborg ninja that can toss around giant mechs and ride unicorns across rainbows on Tuchankka

[Raydeus]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

Let's post yet another video for the sake of fun! If I had played the game my main issue would've been @5:00 (bonus points for the part at 5:20)

Of course this should go without saying, but Mass Spoilers ahead.

[Malacite]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

tl;dr

Bioware apparently put out a statement that they are actually going to change the ending of ME3.

WTF?

[Hayde]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

Had this game preordered for months...played it on midnight release (go go digital downloads) and I'll admit--I thought the ending was pretty crappy, but not on the premise that the ending *itself* was bad...basically IMO the writers kind of written themselves in a hole with the entire plot of the third game. I expected some DLC's and such explaining the ending, but I didn't think they would have actually gone about changing it. I don't want to go on further than that as it would spoil the story but yeah...at this point, I think changing the ending would only make things worse.

It's a shame, I really enjoyed the first two games but I felt like they didn't really know how to end the trilogy...like they didn't plan the ending or how the story would pan out, ever until production day.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

I always hate these "ruined forever" types many of the "Retake" people seem to be. I don't see how ME3's ending retroactively destroys an entire trilogy unless you have a really immature mind anyway.

Does Metroid Other M ruin the rest of the Metroid series? Not really. The story wanted to be good, its just it had a bad writer, a rushed worldwide launch and was trying to widen its audience to people who didn't care about Metroid in the first place. Japan still doesn't care for Metroid. For them it was still not interesting and for me it was Metroid Lite with a terrible narrative grafted on to it. I tried to convince myself that I really liked it, but I only like it in the sense that the gameplay didn't sell out as hard as it had in Metroid Prime Hunters.

Metroid Other M went with light exploration.
Hunters was all like "What's exploration?"

Still, Other M isn't all that great, but does it destroy Super Metroid, Fusion, Metroid II, Zero Mission or the Prime trilogy?

Not really. how does something travel back in time to destroy how you felt ten or twenty years go? Did the Star Wars prequels destroy the original trilogy? Does the ending of Lost or Deep Space Nine kill all that happened before it?

No, so it doesn't diminish ME, ME2 or most of ME3.

[Raydeus]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

I can see where they are coming from* and I think EAware needs to make the proper endings DLC (Free of charge) to fix things, or else.

The benefits are twofold anyway, the pissed off people will be happy again. And those who liked the endings as they were can simply ignore the DLC and enjoy the vastly differently colored lights. Win-win.


Now, if EAware goes retarded (which I'm hoping for) and tries to charge for the DLC endings I'm sure things will get interesting.



*Specially after Muzyka's letter pretty much saying their team was doing fans the favor of considering a solution even though they didn't want to compromise the artistic integrity of the ending which he thought was the best-est ever. ( )

[Malacite]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

Eh, I wouldn't cite the Star Wars trilogy - for a lot of people, myself included, those 3 prequels did destroy Star Wars for me.

At the very least it proved that the original 3 were a fluke and that Lucas has no real talent.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

You also have to keep in mind Muzyka is someone that will shit on SE not because he's played anything by SE of late, but because he's so used to having his ass kissed and told his games are golden and that SE's games are shit that he doesn't see Bioware going the way of SE.

Yet its happening much faster than it ever did to SE. If you want something good from SE on the Japanese side these days you pretty much have to look to their niche titles, handheld and iOS outings. If there's anyone Bioware should be worried about, its Eidos Montreal and Betehsda.

DXHR is fairly close ME3 in terms of sales. Skyrim sold over twice what ME3 has in the same period. Those two studios aren't the only ones to be concerned with, either, they're just the most notable at this point.

[Hayde]

Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?

Eh, I wouldn't go as far as others to say that ME3 completely RUINED the existence of the other games for me. I enjoyed the game and played it aggressively all the way to the end; it's more like when you finish a movie and have this uncomfortable, unfinished feeling as you leave the theater. I believe some people are overreacting to say that the entire game was crap; the solution to the trilogy's problem sort of came out of a left field--approximately 40 minutes into the game. I knew at this point that this would have probably turned off a lot of people as there was never a single mention of this particular plot point prior to the game which generally a planned storyline would involve or at least hint towards--at least for something this important and big. It was evident at this point that Bioware did not know how ME3 was going to even end before they started the game.

Drew Karpyshyn, the original lead writer of the ME seires (who left at some point during or after ME2) pretty much admits that even he had no idea how this story was going to end:

March 15 | Drew Karpyshyn

Overall...my point is, disappointing ending? yes. Well worth $60 spent? Probably not, but then again...I rarely ever feel games worth a $65 (including tax) price tag. So my point is--I'm posting here to dismiss a rather, hmm..how shall I say misinterpretation of my previous post? It seems I chose my words wrong and there was some heat from others involving that.