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Loving Life Partner posted:The most baffling thing to me is why people thought there'd be meaningfully different conclusions to the third game after this just plain didn't happen in the first two games (I understand the developers said there would be but why did you believe them?). Yes, it's our fault for believing the project lead when a week before release he announced that the ending wouldn't be choosing one of 3 buttons. Of course massively divergent endings really meant the same cut sequence with one of three filters overlaid (or a dozen slides). You're right in that the first two games didn't have decisions that changed much. That's part of the issue with ME3. The changes are too big and poorly constructed, rather than small and well crafted. Destroy all 'reaper technology' somehow, or infuse every living thing in the galaxy with glowing green circuitry? What is this, science fiction?
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Nov 30, 2013 09:41
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sassassin posted:Yes, it's our fault for believing the project lead when a week before release he announced that the ending wouldn't be choosing one of 3 buttons.
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Nov 30, 2013 17:14
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2house2fly posted:Well... yeah? Pre-release hype is the absolute last place to look for factual information about the game. They don't want to he honest about their budget and time limitations, they want you to buy a copy of the game. They can say what they want about the ending especially, because most players will never see it. Pre-release hype is usually something less than the company straight-up lying to you.
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Nov 30, 2013 17:44
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Pattonesque posted:Pre-release hype is usually something less than the company straight-up lying to you. Tell that to Infinity Ward. "Quickscoping is going to be removed!" It's actually easier than the last game.  But I dunno, I didn't play ME3 until more than a year after launch and the ending didn't disappoint me that much. I mean, I acknowledge that it's bad and such, but it didn't offend me or make me mad like I expected it to. It was bad, but it was ok enough to suffice. I don't know how else to explain it.
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Nov 30, 2013 18:30
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Lightning Knight posted:But I dunno, I didn't play ME3 until more than a year after launch and the ending didn't disappoint me that much. I mean, I acknowledge that it's bad and such, but it didn't offend me or make me mad like I expected it to. It was bad, but it was ok enough to suffice. I don't know how else to explain it. Hey man that's cool. I'd probably hate it less if I hadn't completed it a few days post-release.
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Nov 30, 2013 18:43
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I bought ME3 on release and never bothered to finish it when I heard of how bad the endings were. Now, I don't give a poo poo about the endings and just enjoy the games for what they are: A space opera in which you are a space marine who shoots things in face and sometimes blows then up or sucks them into a black hole and runs around talking to people and aliens for much longer than needed to.
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Nov 30, 2013 19:13
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Pattonesque posted:Pre-release hype is usually something less than the company straight-up lying to you. And yeah, the outrage over ME3's ending was pretty much entirely a product of its time. Nowadays people go in expecting a crappy ending so it's probably better than they expected.
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Nov 30, 2013 19:36
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2house2fly posted:Hah, tell that to Peter Molyneux. Haha, fair enough. At least Molyneux makes his ridiculous broken promises early on -- ME3's devs insisted right up through the release that they had implemented big differences in each ending.
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Nov 30, 2013 20:46
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Starhawk64 posted:I bought ME3 on release and never bothered to finish it when I heard of how bad the endings were. Now, I don't give a poo poo about the endings and just enjoy the games for what they are: A space opera in which you are a space marine who shoots things in face and sometimes blows then up or sucks them into a black hole and runs around talking to people and aliens for much longer than needed to. It's a shame that it's worse at that than the previous games. My main disappointment with the ending is that it did nothing to redeem the shitheap that preceded it.
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Nov 30, 2013 21:00
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I think Peter Molyneux is more an excited little puppy than a liar.
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Nov 30, 2013 21:52
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2house2fly posted:Hah, tell that to Peter Molyneux. Ah yes, the innocent days of 2012, before games ever had bad endings. I feel so much nostalgia for last year.
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Nov 30, 2013 22:02
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It's sad that Bioware doesn't seem to take the risks that they used to. I just played Jade Empire as the equivalent of Renegade, and it's a very different endgame: you enslave a minion of your enemy which causes many of your squad to rebel; in turn you effectively enslave them as well so they can't leave you. Then when you assault the castle of your enemy, you can disable the source of his power by sacrificing those squadmates. In the meantime, if you've sufficiently "hardened" your love interest throughout the game, they will be completely OK with this. The final shot is then, instead of citizens congratulating you for liberating them, having the evil mooks who have been fighting you the whole game bow down before you. The closest ME3 comes to this is the Control ending, which has vastly different narration depending on whether you have been Paragon or Renegade.
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Nov 30, 2013 22:22
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Really? I mean, ME3's ending sure as hell wasn't good, but I don't think you can conceivably say that it didn't take risks. In fact, ME2/ME3 marked a period where I thought Bioware was doing an admirably good job of trying to do something other than their cookie-cutter KOTOR/Jade Empire/DA/ME1 formula.
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Nov 30, 2013 22:59
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sassassin posted:It's a shame that it's worse at that than the previous games. DrNutt posted:Ah yes, the innocent days of 2012, before games ever had bad endings. I feel so much nostalgia for last year. I meant the huge hype campaign, two previous successful games, and thousands of people playing the game immediately from start to finish in an excited rush, barely pausing to eat and sleep, ie me. People weren't just moaning about the game having a bad ending, they were moaning about it happening after months, years in some cases, of buildup. Even a couple of months after ME3's release it was simply impossible to replicate those circumstances; everyone by now has heard that Mass Effect 3 has a crappy ending, it's one of the most famous things about the game, and nobody is getting all fired up to play because Emily Wong is crashing into a Reaper on Twitter. Anyone finishing Mass Effect 3 now is going to finish under different circumstances than, say, I did, so their reaction isn't going to be the same. Fag Boy Jim posted:Really? I mean, ME3's ending sure as hell wasn't good, but I don't think you can conceivably say that it didn't take risks. In fact, ME2/ME3 marked a period where I thought Bioware was doing an admirably good job of trying to do something other than their cookie-cutter KOTOR/Jade Empire/DA/ME1 formula.
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Nov 30, 2013 23:19
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Fag Boy Jim posted:Really? I mean, ME3's ending sure as hell wasn't good, but I don't think you can conceivably say that it didn't take risks. In fact, ME2/ME3 marked a period where I thought Bioware was doing an admirably good job of trying to do something other than their cookie-cutter KOTOR/Jade Empire/DA/ME1 formula. I'm not saying that the entire formula should be copied - KOTOR had many of the same elements - just the idea of the endgame being very different depending on the decisions you've made. Examples: if you sabotaged the cure, the only real difference is (if Wrex is alive) that he shows up and you shoot him in the middle of the game. Saving the Rachni Queen causes the loss of a Krogan squad you won't see again. Oh and war points. Sure, there are different slides if you save the Krogan and/or Rachni, but that's only in the extended cut and boils down to an IF statement in the code and some artist time. Having something where Shepard agrees with TIM at the end that the Reapers should be controlled, but then turns on TIM because s/he realizes that he's indoctrinated and won't be able to accomplish the mission would have been a neat way to make the ending a little different.
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Nov 30, 2013 23:30
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Has the Citadel ever been on sale?
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Nov 30, 2013 23:56
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sassassin posted:You're right in that the first two games didn't have decisions that changed much. That's part of the issue with ME3. The changes are too big and poorly constructed, rather than small and well crafted. Exactly. There's science fiction and then there's magic. People can accept a lot so long as it stays within the "rules" of the story. Synthesis doesn't. Turning the Reapers into giant ice cream cones would make more sense than Synthesis. Let's not even get into the fact that we're suddenly lead to believe that this is the completely nonsensical solution to a "problem" that hasn't been at the forefront of the story because our newly revealed greatest enemy tells us to. Geostomp fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Nov 30, 2013 |
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Nov 30, 2013 23:57
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Geostomp posted:There's science fiction and then there's magic. Turning the Reapers into giant ice cream cones would make more sense than Synthesis. The worst part is that it's kind of similar to the ending of a great science fiction film except it completely fails in every aspect whereas that movie is awesome. I mean is synthesis even brought up as an option at any point before the three buttons? It comes a lot more out of no-where to me, than either destroy or control.
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Dec 1, 2013 00:01
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monster on a stick posted:Having something where Shepard agrees with TIM at the end that the Reapers should be controlled, but then turns on TIM because s/he realizes that he's indoctrinated and won't be able to accomplish the mission would have been a neat way to make the ending a little different. I really think that, more than anything, the biggest missed opportunity in the ending isn't Starkid- it's TIM. The entire setup of TIM through the second and third games was for him to be sort of an ideological opponent to Shepherd, and I think they were completely right when they said that having him be a traditional "Shoot TIM's weak spot to kill him" boss fight wouldn't have worked. The problem is that all the debate becomes completely pointless once it turns out that TIM's indoctrinated. I mean, it makes sense that he's indoctrinated, in the sense that pretty much anyone in the ME universe that does poo poo with Reaper tech becomes indoctrinated, but it kills so many possibilities that you could have had with TIM as a sort of "philosophical boss fight", which I think is what they really wanted to go for.
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Dec 1, 2013 00:07
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Fag Boy Jim posted:I really think that, more than anything, the biggest missed opportunity in the ending isn't Starkid- it's TIM. The entire setup of TIM through the second and third games was for him to be sort of an ideological opponent to Shepherd, and I think they were completely right when they said that having him be a traditional "Shoot TIM's weak spot to kill him" boss fight wouldn't have worked. The problem is that all the debate becomes completely pointless once it turns out that TIM's indoctrinated. I mean, it makes sense that he's indoctrinated, in the sense that pretty much anyone in the ME universe that does poo poo with Reaper tech becomes indoctrinated, but it kills so many possibilities that you could have had with TIM as a sort of "philosophical boss fight", which I think is what they really wanted to go for. Not only is it a waste of TIM, it is a waste of Martin Sheen. The guy stole the show in ME2 and apparently loved the part, and they wasted him in ME3.
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Dec 1, 2013 00:34
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Fag Boy Jim posted:I really think that, more than anything, the biggest missed opportunity in the ending isn't Starkid- it's TIM. The entire setup of TIM through the second and third games was for him to be sort of an ideological opponent to Shepherd, and I think they were completely right when they said that having him be a traditional "Shoot TIM's weak spot to kill him" boss fight wouldn't have worked. The problem is that all the debate becomes completely pointless once it turns out that TIM's indoctrinated. I mean, it makes sense that he's indoctrinated, in the sense that pretty much anyone in the ME universe that does poo poo with Reaper tech becomes indoctrinated, but it kills so many possibilities that you could have had with TIM as a sort of "philosophical boss fight", which I think is what they really wanted to go for.
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Dec 1, 2013 01:03
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Geostomp posted:Exactly. There's science fiction and then there's magic. People can accept a lot so long as it stays within the "rules" of the story. Synthesis doesn't. Turning the Reapers into giant ice cream cones would make more sense than Synthesis. And the Synthesis ending was just soooooooooooo lazzzyyyyyyyyy done. I kind of get the glowing green to represents bio-circuits (which should have looked like the main robot character on Almost Human blue glowing) but they just slapped it on the models and called it a day. The joke at the time was that Jokers hat had the green circuity flowing through it along with Joker, did it suddenly become self aware as well?
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Dec 1, 2013 01:14
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BexGu posted:And the Synthesis ending was just soooooooooooo lazzzyyyyyyyyy done. I kind of get the glowing green to represents bio-circuits (which should have looked like the main robot character on Almost Human blue glowing) but they just slapped it on the models and called it a day. The joke at the time was that Jokers hat had the green circuity flowing through it along with Joker, did it suddenly become self aware as well? The Extended Cut makes it worse. Are husks sentient now? What about Praetorians -- are they thirty sentient minds? Is the human gun-arm on a cannibal sentient? On top of that, Synthesis is the Reapers letting you live because you changed everyone's clothes like a galaxy-wide Sandy-at-the-end-of-Grease-makeover, and everyone is apparently fine with the evil starships who attempted galactic genocide like, sticking around to help rebuild and poo poo.
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Dec 1, 2013 02:15
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The only reason the various races were at war with each other is because they couldn't understand each other, now because of Synth they are able to better communicate their needs and wants and cohabit peacefully. Because when dealing with entire species spanning solar systems, obviously treating the issue as if they're a married couple is the correct course of action. Hell they beat you over the head with that with Legion's constant "I'm different, we're different, we can't understand you, you can't understand us." stuff throughout ME3, and I guess it was there too in ME2 but it served a different purpose because at the time it was Quarians just being warmongering dicks. ME3 it's because both sides just can't understand each other and need Synth to achieve ~true peace~.
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Dec 1, 2013 02:52
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PootieTang posted:I mean is synthesis even brought up as an option at any point before the three buttons? At the end of ME1, Saren is convinced that the future is becoming an organic/synthetic hybrid. Shepard points out that the synthetic Reaper aspects have overridden Saren's organic parts and convinced him that he is doing this all of his own free will. Saren, convinced, realizes what an abomination he has become and commits suicide. Right near the end of ME3, TIM is convinced that his becoming an organic/synthetic hybrid has given him the best of both worlds but left him in control of his own faculties. Shepard points out that the synthetic Reaper aspects have overridden TIM's organic parts and convinced him that he is in charge when he's just a puppet. TIM, convinced, realizes what an abomination he has become and commits suicide. At the end of ME3, suddenly the "best" result is supposed to be Shepard being convinced that becoming an organic/synthetic hybrid is the best of both worlds and to the benefit of everyone. He/she is assured that this time the situation is completely different and he/she should trust what the Reaper is telling him. Shepard, convinced, commits suicide and forces Javik's pants to become alive. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Dec 1, 2013 |
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Dec 1, 2013 02:53
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Jerusalem posted:At the end of ME1, Saren is convinced that the future is becoming an organic/synthetic hybrid. Shepard points out that the synthetic Reaper aspects have overridden Saren's organic parts and convinced him that he is doing this all of his own free will. Saren, convinced, realizes what an abomination he has become and commits suicide. Master storytelling.
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Dec 1, 2013 03:00
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2house2fly posted:Ah c'mon, the story isn't great but the actual shooting bits are way better than the previous games. This is not an opinion I share. Spawning waves of enemies replacing actual encounter design, no layers of protection, recharge times on biotic/tech abilities super low and everything combining for explosions making every fight an identical spam-fest... The gun selection is better and you can roll. Hoo-loving-ray.
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Dec 1, 2013 10:46
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Jerusalem posted:At the end of ME1, Saren is convinced that the future is becoming an organic/synthetic hybrid. Shepard points out that the synthetic Reaper aspects have overridden Saren's organic parts and convinced him that he is doing this all of his own free will. Saren, convinced, realizes what an abomination he has become and commits suicide. Besides that we have fought the twisted mockeries of life that are the husks, seen the horrifying process that gives birth to a Reaper, and (maybe) witnessed what happened to poor David Archer. Utritum fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Jan 13, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2013 11:26
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sassassin posted:This is not an opinion I share. And I'm of the opposite opinion. While ME1's space magic was grossly overpowered and/or completely broken, ME2 dialed it back (much like many other mechanics) to create what I may also describe as an identical spam fest. Since barriers/shields/armor stopped all Space Magic effects you barely got to use any of it. In ME3 you could at least use things like Lift, Throw, and Singularity without plinking down enemy health to near-nothing. The gun selection being better is also huge since guns were, again, pretty boring in ME2 with one gun in each class being a significant upgrade over the others before it. Obviously some clear winners exist in ME3 for each type but unless one is playing to be the statistically best character for every situation you could even use the Avenger if you wanted and still be effective. Made using guns a lot more dynamic.
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Dec 1, 2013 11:32
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Geostomp posted:Let's not even get into the fact that we're suddenly lead to believe that this is the completely nonsensical solution to a "problem" that hasn't been at the forefront of the story because our newly revealed greatest enemy tells us to. Intergenerational conflict is a theme right back in ME1, where the geth are the main enemies and Saren hates the upstart humans.
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Dec 1, 2013 11:42
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Kibayasu posted:The gun selection being better is also huge since guns were, again, pretty boring in ME2 with one gun in each class being a significant upgrade over the others before it. That's not true, but the better selection in ME3 doesn't matter as you can easily beat it on insanity without firing a shot. Biotics in ME2 were still pretty useful. Shockwave is a great armour stripper. In ME1 grossly overpowered resulted in actual fun sending mooks into orbit.
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Dec 1, 2013 11:43
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sassassin posted:That's not true, but the better selection in ME3 doesn't matter as you can easily beat it on insanity without firing a shot. No, it's pretty true. Feel free to try using Avenger over the Vindicator for the entire game. Or the Viper over the Mantis. Or the Predator over the Carnifex. The damage upgrade alone of those over the previous is significant, unlike in ME3 where there's an attempt to use recoil, accuracy, rate of fire, etc, to introduce pros and cons. Biotics in ME2 were useful to stagger enemies slightly or drag a single target out of cover. Give me the ability to explode an enemy into a magic fireball over making them backpedal and shake their head a bit. As for ME1, that's what I mean. Some biotics may completely break gameplay (and possibly the game itself) but at least they and tech powers were fun to use and varied in their effects. Biotics and tech powers in ME2 did almost nothing but damage, with the occasional negligible side effect.
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Dec 1, 2013 12:15
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Lt. Danger posted:Intergenerational conflict is a theme right back in ME1, where the geth are the main enemies and Saren hates the upstart humans. And yet I didn't hear anyone in-game clamor for turning every organic into freakish hybrids before now. Almost as if enforced homogeny wasn't the instant solution to all problems before some writers screwed up, ran out of time and threw some fake artsy crap at the wall to cover for it.
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Dec 1, 2013 14:30
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Jerusalem posted:At the end of ME1, Saren is convinced that the future is becoming an organic/synthetic hybrid. Shepard points out that the synthetic Reaper aspects have overridden Saren's organic parts and convinced him that he is doing this all of his own free will. Saren, convinced, realizes what an abomination he has become and commits suicide. Great point about Synthesis being the "best" ending. When I first saw the extended cut, I was even more pissed off because that eliminated the Indoctrination theory. The whole idea was that Synthesis needed the highest war assets as an ending. BUT, you could unlock the "Shepard breathing" after Destroy with an even higher war readiness, so maybe THAT was what you should be shooting for and more would be revealed? No, turns out star kid was right and we should embrace our new friends the husks and other reaperized monstrosities in this new green utopia.
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Dec 1, 2013 17:47
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Geostomp posted:And yet I didn't hear anyone in-game clamor for turning every organic into freakish hybrids before now. Almost as if enforced homogeny wasn't the instant solution to all problems before some writers screwed up, ran out of time and threw some fake artsy crap at the wall to cover for it. Saren, Shepard and the Reapers are all crude versions of the Synthesis solution. I'm not certain what your criticism here actually is.
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Dec 1, 2013 19:19
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Reminder that the "indoctrination theory" rested on the premise that an option that actually, no-poo poo genocided a sentient ally race was the "real" Paragon choice.
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Dec 1, 2013 19:26
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Destroy is the only cannon ending. 
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Dec 1, 2013 19:34
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Fag Boy Jim posted:Reminder that the "indoctrination theory" rested on the premise that an option that actually, no-poo poo genocided a sentient ally race was the "real" Paragon choice. Didn't the destroy thing just destroy all reaper tech? The geth were freed from it right? And EDI was never infected with reaper tech was she? Now that i think about it, what's the point of shepherd breathing ending if the next ME game is set in a different time period?
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Dec 1, 2013 19:42
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PootieTang posted:Didn't the destroy thing just destroy all reaper tech? The geth were freed from it right?
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Dec 1, 2013 19:46
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PootieTang posted:Didn't the destroy thing just destroy all reaper tech? The geth were freed from it right? And EDI was never infected with reaper tech was she? Not sure if you're being serious here but in case you are: No, the Geth, if alive by the end of ME3, have intentionally "enhanced" themselves with Reaper code. EDI was also built with tech from Sovereign. PootieTang posted:Now that i think about it, what's the point of shepherd breathing ending if the next ME game is set in a different time period? I'm pretty sure I've seen some kind of Q&A / interview where one of the writers said that Shepard breathing scene was just added for the fans "just to have one ending where Shepard is alive", it was supposed to be utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things / for the future of the franchise at the time it was made. Also we have absolutely no official info whatsoever on when the next game will take place.
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Dec 1, 2013 19:51
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