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Re: ME3 ending-haters take their rage to the FTC... seriously?
I'm not objecting that, it's great from a buisness standpoint and an artistic standpoint to leave things open for future content. That is a not a bad thing. I was just expressing why I personally dislike it and think it's a bad idea.
That and I was also venting my frustration that bittersweet endings seem to be the current trend not not all writing teams seem to know how to pull one off. Persona 3 and Persona 4 both are great examples of how to do one well. P4 especially. Souji if going home after a year in Inaba. Everyone he met there he may well never see again as they're all going to be in thier final year of high school and then going to go off to do thier own thing. But what a year it was, he had an awesome time with some great friends and who says he can't keep in contact with them via social networking? And it's never said how far away he lives and it may well be possible for them to still enter the TV world to meet up with each other. Not only that but you have to EARN that ending and you get closure if you stay on the true ending path.
Now that is an example of a bittersweet ending pulled off well. Now if we look at the ME3 ending (Which actually has nothing on the FFXIII-2 ending and Neverwinter Nights 2 ending, both fantastic games with endings so soul crushing it's hard to replay them), you can see exacty what the writing team was inspired by. There's the obviouls Deus Ex parralel, heck the options are identical to the Deus Ex ending options, though I also see elements of Persona 3 and End of Evangelion in there in how the ending plays out. Now one of the problems with the ending is that the majority of the playerbase won't really have been paying attention to some of the things it's calling back to. The MacGuffin on Mars is the best example. The opening text to Mass Effect 1 tells you about the Prothean site on Mars though it's not really touched upon until ME3 and Javik explains why the Protheans were there. Not just that but all three games have a full on Codex entry about the Prothean stuff on Mars, basically if you played ME1 and ME2 and payed attention to what was going on, an importand MacGuffin being on Mars makes perfect sense since it's the only major Prothean site not checked out by the party.
Now with a three game series, the more hardcore Mass Effect fans would likely have recently played through ME1 and ME2 before 3. Those people wouldn't have been that surprised to see the Reaper's controlling AI pop up, especially since it does support the Indoctrination theory. Now people going into Mass Effect 3 having forgotten about the above... That is a tricky position. You can't really knock someone for playing through the game without checking the codex since it's pretty much the same bloody thing in all three games. It's one of those things where you want to tell people to RTFM but when the manual is the same in each game with no incentive to read it again, you can't really blame the players for that. It's great when a game or film doesn't treat the audience like an idiot but there IS such thing as expecting too much of the audience. Unfortunately Bioware should really have known better here.
Back on topic. The Mass Effect 3 ending...I wouldn't call it bad but I wouldn't call it good. It ended the series. The DLC message after the credits was a smack in the face but hey at least they're being honest about wanting to push DLC on you. The next two DLC packs, a multiplayer map and chaarcter pack plus the ending stuff are both free. They're entirely optional and are probably there as a goodwill gesture. That's fine, it's free DLC and DLC is always optional anyway.
The problem with the ME3 ending is the lack of closure and that is why it's bad. You can't try to write a bittersweet ending without also giving the audiance a ray of hope. As it stands Galactic civilisation as we know it is doomed. The entire allied fleet is stuck on Earth, the entire Quarian RACE is there, a race that can't even EAT human food. The Turians are in the same boat. FTL travel is gone so any colonies that relied on imports for survive is doomed. If you destroyed all synthetics then the Geth are also gone which means that the Quarians on Rannoch have nobody to help them to rebuild if you managed to get the Quarians and Geth to stop fighting. It leaves a massive question mark over everyone's fate and the implications of the Mass Relays being gone is soul crushing and horrifying. Closure is all it needs to go from being a horrible ending to being pretty acceptable. Bioware made an ending without an actual resolution or conclusion taking place and as a result the game just seems to end. They left a massive number of plot points dangling, the major one being "What the hell happens to everyone else?". All we get is Buzz Aldrin talking to some kid about "The Shepard" which is supposed to be our light at the end of the tunnel but it just seems to be forced and raises more questions than it answers.
I'm not objecting that, it's great from a buisness standpoint and an artistic standpoint to leave things open for future content. That is a not a bad thing. I was just expressing why I personally dislike it and think it's a bad idea.
That and I was also venting my frustration that bittersweet endings seem to be the current trend not not all writing teams seem to know how to pull one off. Persona 3 and Persona 4 both are great examples of how to do one well. P4 especially. Souji if going home after a year in Inaba. Everyone he met there he may well never see again as they're all going to be in thier final year of high school and then going to go off to do thier own thing. But what a year it was, he had an awesome time with some great friends and who says he can't keep in contact with them via social networking? And it's never said how far away he lives and it may well be possible for them to still enter the TV world to meet up with each other. Not only that but you have to EARN that ending and you get closure if you stay on the true ending path.
Now that is an example of a bittersweet ending pulled off well. Now if we look at the ME3 ending (Which actually has nothing on the FFXIII-2 ending and Neverwinter Nights 2 ending, both fantastic games with endings so soul crushing it's hard to replay them), you can see exacty what the writing team was inspired by. There's the obviouls Deus Ex parralel, heck the options are identical to the Deus Ex ending options, though I also see elements of Persona 3 and End of Evangelion in there in how the ending plays out. Now one of the problems with the ending is that the majority of the playerbase won't really have been paying attention to some of the things it's calling back to. The MacGuffin on Mars is the best example. The opening text to Mass Effect 1 tells you about the Prothean site on Mars though it's not really touched upon until ME3 and Javik explains why the Protheans were there. Not just that but all three games have a full on Codex entry about the Prothean stuff on Mars, basically if you played ME1 and ME2 and payed attention to what was going on, an importand MacGuffin being on Mars makes perfect sense since it's the only major Prothean site not checked out by the party.
Now with a three game series, the more hardcore Mass Effect fans would likely have recently played through ME1 and ME2 before 3. Those people wouldn't have been that surprised to see the Reaper's controlling AI pop up, especially since it does support the Indoctrination theory. Now people going into Mass Effect 3 having forgotten about the above... That is a tricky position. You can't really knock someone for playing through the game without checking the codex since it's pretty much the same bloody thing in all three games. It's one of those things where you want to tell people to RTFM but when the manual is the same in each game with no incentive to read it again, you can't really blame the players for that. It's great when a game or film doesn't treat the audience like an idiot but there IS such thing as expecting too much of the audience. Unfortunately Bioware should really have known better here.
Back on topic. The Mass Effect 3 ending...I wouldn't call it bad but I wouldn't call it good. It ended the series. The DLC message after the credits was a smack in the face but hey at least they're being honest about wanting to push DLC on you. The next two DLC packs, a multiplayer map and chaarcter pack plus the ending stuff are both free. They're entirely optional and are probably there as a goodwill gesture. That's fine, it's free DLC and DLC is always optional anyway.
The problem with the ME3 ending is the lack of closure and that is why it's bad. You can't try to write a bittersweet ending without also giving the audiance a ray of hope. As it stands Galactic civilisation as we know it is doomed. The entire allied fleet is stuck on Earth, the entire Quarian RACE is there, a race that can't even EAT human food. The Turians are in the same boat. FTL travel is gone so any colonies that relied on imports for survive is doomed. If you destroyed all synthetics then the Geth are also gone which means that the Quarians on Rannoch have nobody to help them to rebuild if you managed to get the Quarians and Geth to stop fighting. It leaves a massive question mark over everyone's fate and the implications of the Mass Relays being gone is soul crushing and horrifying. Closure is all it needs to go from being a horrible ending to being pretty acceptable. Bioware made an ending without an actual resolution or conclusion taking place and as a result the game just seems to end. They left a massive number of plot points dangling, the major one being "What the hell happens to everyone else?". All we get is Buzz Aldrin talking to some kid about "The Shepard" which is supposed to be our light at the end of the tunnel but it just seems to be forced and raises more questions than it answers.
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