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

[Raydeus]

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

EAware would've saved themselves a lot of trouble if they had named the game "Mass Effect: Shepard's Awakening"

Then people would be singing praises about how awesome the game was and how it set the stage for ME3!!!!1

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

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

Did Hideo Kojima change the story of MGS2 to replace Raiden with Snake? That's what fans wanted.

Kojima stuck to his guns. Now when most people look back, they totally see that Kojima was trolling them to an extent and just sticking to his theme of information warfare. The man sticks with his themes and does not back down from them.

Did Ion Storm rewrite DX2 to make JC Denton a super-good heroic guy that would NEVER abuse power? Fans hated that part.

Ion Storm stuck to their guns, it wouldn't be DX if well-intentioned people didn't go crooked. JC Denton? Develop a god complex? Gee, look at his initials

Did Nintendo rewrite the entire graphics engine to Wind Waker or make Metroid Prime 2D because fans hated the idea of those cel-shaded Link and first person Metroid?

No, they stuck with it and they were the right choices. People eventually accepted them, now everyone looks back and sees it as the right choice.

There is no reason for Bioware to back down from their ending. It is solid for the most part the only flaw in it is not the ending CG, but the lack of closure in what follows the true ending - "Destroy." Shepard beat Harbinger's indoctrination, so they just need to pick up from there. That's ALL they need to do.

Also, in other news:

Final Fantasy XIII-2 - you know the series Bioware took a dump on - is cross promoting ME3 for Japan with N7 armor in its upcoming series of DLCs, which may as well be a series of ending DLCs, too. SE and Bioware are like peas in a pod now.

[Raydeus]

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

Two things:

1) Come on, you know perfectly well EAware did it to extend their "Trilogy" into 4+ games plus DLC, but it backfired. Had they been honest about making an extra game or two to milk the franchise people would've been way more forgiving. But Corporations can't compute the straight forward approach of saying the truth, it's just against their nature not to try to backstab people, specially if they are paying costumers.

2) Wind Waker was still kiddish. You can sing all the praises you want about the story, the graphics still suck even if they can become an acquired taste.

[cidbahamut]

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

Obviously the best solution would have been to get the ending right in the first place, and if they felt strongly about the artistic merit what they shipped, the boss thing to do would be to stand by it in spite of the criticism, but neither of those things being true, don't you think they should fix it since they clearly have the power to do so?

No. I think that's reminiscent of the George Lucas problem.

[Taskmage]

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

Yeah, but he had something that was generally agreed upon to be good in the first place before he started messing with it. Even putting the most extreme complainers aside, I think the ME3 endings are generally agreed upon to be sub-par or at least not in keeping with the quality of the rest of the story. At least that's the impression that I get. I haven't seen many defenses stronger than "Hey, the endings aren't that bad" from the fanbase.

Also remember that this is a major business problem for them. You can be as cynical as you want about monetization ("you" meaning mostly BBQ and Ray), but if they go under they'll never even get a chance to learn from their mistakes. The FTC and BBB complaints are pointless, but I have a friend who works on TOR who's worried about her job being cut from people rage-cancelling their subscriptions in protest of ME3.

[cidbahamut]

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

Yeah, but he had something that was generally agreed upon to be good in the first place before he started messing with it.

Does that really change the principle of it though? It's still altering what was ostensibly a finished product.

[Taskmage]

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

The same could be said of extended editions of movies, but those are generally appreciated.

[cidbahamut]

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

I'll take your word for it.

[Taskmage]

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

I'm not a cinemaphile, so I'm taking other people's word for it on that. I'm told that the extended LotR movies are greatly superior to the theatrical release. Maybe SquareEnix isn't the best example to hold up, but Advent Children Complete was definitely far superior to the original release. In both cases additional material was added to products that were ostensibly finished, which were then repackaged and resold, but I don't tend to hear people complain about this unless someone like George Lucas is egregiously exploitive of the process.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

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

Also remember that this is a major business problem for them. You can be as cynical as you want about monetization ("you" meaning mostly BBQ and Ray), but if they go under they'll never even get a chance to learn from their mistakes. The FTC and BBB complaints are pointless, but I have a friend who works on TOR who's worried about her job being cut from people rage-cancelling their subscriptions in protest of ME3.

People lose job all the time from businesses that will fire you or lay you off for any reason they make up, EA certainly is one of them. People get fired after the release of every Bioware game. They expanded to five studios and absorbed Mythic. You think it all hinges on one programmer.

I hate to sound cold, but your friend is nothing but data on a spreadsheet to EA. She may be a vital team member to someone, but those higher up she's a bug they can freely squash without taking credit for a problem.

A job in the industry is a job like any other, thier jobs are as fragile as mine, yet I don't see this brainless outpouring of concern when anyone else could lose thier job in another industry. I would rather give long term business to a company that treats people and customers like people rather than data and statistics. I want good games, not what focus tests the best for everyone.

[Taskmage]

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

Okay, fair enough. Maybe the angle of my friend's job is tangential, but I did want to illustrate that business issues are about more than a fat guy in a suit raking cash across a boardroom table.

Anyway, you didn't address the point I really wanted to hear from you on, which was movie re-releases. Are you against extended edition or director's cut movie releases that include additional scenes and/or alternate endings? If not, then why and what is the distinction between those and DLC?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

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

I'm more against the alternate ending thing in movies. Mass Effect 3 had already had alternate endings. Changing them only hurts the product because I get what they were going for.

Mass Effect and Deus Ex and the anime Ghost in the Shell are really deeply influenced by a movie called Blade Runner by Ridley Scott - a movie whose endings became a splintered and confused mess through Hollywood, Director's cuts, leaked scripts and additional special editions.

Some people insist the happy ending where Decker and Rachel ride off the the countryside is real.
Some like the drive out to the country side where Rachel gets a bullet to the head from Decker once they get to the mountains.
Some people would have preferred the ending where Decker realizes he's a replicant.

The debate rages on and now its kind of become the point rather than something to fix. That was the point of the ME3 endings, its just there is a canonical ending thrown in that leaves questions unanswered (obviously for sequel potential). Backpedaling from that is indeed raping the dignity out of what they set out to do..

I don't go to the movies all the time, but I am a pop culture junkie. The reason Deus Ex and Mass Effect run with this multiple ending stuff is partly in tribute to Blade Runner and the debates it spawned because oh lookie - DX and ME spawned the same kinds of debates.

The ending was just as it was meant to be. All the clues to explain the endings are in the games for the players to find. The problem was Bioware getting the series diluted in all this spin-off novel and comic book crap and making an ending too cerebral for a mainstream fanbase.

Fans warped ME into a game about a badass, which was never the intent for being Shepard. MGS, Metroid and Deus all fell victim to fans with this idiotic kind of thinking that these were stories about super-good people overcoming all odds when they were about flawed people facing great danger. Ask your friends to describe JC Denton - they'll call him a badass, not a well-intentioned man who may do bad things to get the job done. Ask them about Solid Snake and they'll call him a badass, not a guy that's really an pawn in a larger war he knows nothing about, didn't start and eventually stops both sides so he can die in peace. Samus Aran? Apparently a badass, not a woman who gladly kills at the behest of a government until she sees a baby Metroid hatch, becomes it mom, its stolen away, turns on her and sacrifices itself to save her.

Nah, they just paid attention to the "Ah shoots teh Mother Brain with massive lazors" part. I'll admit it was a grand "Fuck you" moment and felt great, but you had your heart stomped on right before thet. Samus' one connection to innocence torn away from her.

I knew part of why that happened is another Ridley Scott movie - the Alien trilogy. Those did not have multiple endings and are probably even more influential on video game science fiction than Blade Runner is. Halo, Dead Space, SMT: Strange Journey, Resident Evil to an extent, Metroid.

Look at the games on your shelf and I'll be damned if there isn't something influenced by Ridley Scott, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Kurasawa, George Romero or Tolkien sitting there in it. The next time you hear of a movie's influence, check out the movie. Do this and you'll actually see MGS was essentially a samurai epic, a game about what it means to be a warrior and not a hero.

[Feba]

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

BBQ, that's the best thing you've ever written on these forums.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

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

I should note Ridley Scott also had recently been considering remakes and direct prequels to both Alien and Blade Runner.

He has since backpedaled, likely because he knows Alien has been sufficiently damaged by other directors and there's no saving it, so the movie that was assumed to be a prequel - Prometheus - is now more its own thing with a few goading references strewn about. He's now also looking at doing the same concept with Blade Runner, which is to say another prequel that's only kind of a prequel and more of its own thing.

So Scott got wise and realized that his creations had taken on a life of their own. When that happens, you either stick to your guns or leave well-enough alone.

[Taskmage]

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

Not posting this to advance a point, just posting it because I felt watching it made me better understand the situation. Most of what is said here seems pretty solid to me. Massive spoilers, obviously, and it's pretty long at 20 minutes.