Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread

Grubber788 wrote:

I haven't bought Leviathan. I just read spoilers for it and I'm caught between my happiness for people who played the game with that DLC (because it won't damage the series for them) and utter confusion as to why Bioware thought it would be a good idea to release that DLC later. I don't begrudge people their happiness with the "complete" experience, but I'm with Brad. The more I learn about the extended cut and the DLC, the more I stand aghast at the whole situation.

Edit: I know this is EA's fault. I just can't see the artistic justification--assuming there is one.

All of that said I replayed the ending with the Leviathan DLC and the new ending and while it's much better it's not leaps and bounds. Your "choice" at the end is still very limited and based partly on the whole silly "readiness" meter.

Well, I personally didn't really care about the concept of choice at the end. Going into ME3, I kind of figured that the end game was going to offer a limited set of end conditions. It wasn't handled elegantly by any stretch, but again, I have no philosophical or gameplay qualms with choice being limited at the end. It would have been cool if it had done the Fallout 3/NV or DA:O ending where it showed where everyone ended up, but I know a lot of people think that's a lazy way to end things too. A story without complete closure, like Blood Meridian, can be done well, but I don't think Bioware's narrative was strong enough to warrant he ambiguity.

My main issues weren't with the choice, but with the manner by which the choice was introduced. I still think Star Child is silly, even with the Leviathan and Extended Cuts.

I'm not mad at Mass Effect. It's a great universe. I'm annoyed with Bioware for where the story went and frustrated with EA for some of that too. I like the universe too much to condemn it wholesale though. I am really curious to see where the Mass Effect universe goes next. I would rather see a post-Reaper universe and let Bioware just canonize one the endings--synthesis, I guess. A prequel game would be rather complicated I think, unless the team makes it really small scale. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Anderson involved in the First Contact War? If so, that means the prequel would have to take place within a 60 or so year time period if Bioware wants humanity involved, but keeps the game far enough away from Shepherd's timeline.

Grubber788 wrote:

I haven't bought Leviathan. I just read spoilers for it and I'm caught between my happiness for people who played the game with that DLC (because it won't damage the series for them) and utter confusion as to why Bioware thought it would be a good idea to release that DLC later. I don't begrudge people their happiness with the "complete" experience, but I'm with Brad. The more I learn about the extended cut and the DLC, the more I stand aghast at the whole situation.

Edit: I know this is EA's fault. I just can't see the artistic justification--assuming there is one.

I can see two possible scenarios that explain vital parts of the story being DLC. One is that, with multiplayer elements in the mix, there just wasn't room on a single disc. That might also explain the truncated ending. The other is that those elements were planned to go into the game but there wasn't time in the schedule to get everything done so someone, who didn't realise their narrative importance, made the executive decision to drop them from the game and sell them as DLC later.

Spoiler:

The fact that you got to meet the Rachni queen whether you killed her or not tells me that story integrity was being seen as secondary by someone making those types of decisions.

That said I'm going to eventually do a third play through with the extended ending and all the other DLC (well all the good dlc.)

It's reasons like this I wish people would stop automatically demonising the publisher, in this case EA, and white-knighting the developer, less-so in this example but Bioware Edmonton here. It seems like there's plenty of blame to go around that resulted in the mess of an ending.

I just finished it (finally), and I have no complaints with the end of the game.

Sure, the choices were a bit limited, but I came into the final bit with full intention to sacrifice Shepard for the good of everyone. There was a line that Javik says, that Shepard and himself have been shaped by war, and that really struck a cord for me.

Playing the Leviathan DLC before I finished really helped flesh out the reasoning for the cycles and made the catalyst/boy make more sense. I don't think I want to play the Extended Cut as the ending worked for me.

I really really really like that game and series. I still think ME1 has the best story by a long way and ME2 has the best NPC's, but the gameplay in ME3 was top notch.

I can't see myself playing any more ME games though... They would have to be SO different.

Yep, I'm white-knighting the developer here. Got me.

I didnt even realise that there was a synthesis ending... Although my EMS was not high as I couldn't be bothered doing all the side missions.

The Hulk Film Critic article (relinked: http://badassdigest.com/2012/08/06/f...) is almost exactly how I felt about it.

To me, I feel sorry for BioWare feeling like they were forced to put in more content to satisfy the minority. I wish they had stuck to their guns and told everyone complaining to piss off.

AP Erebus wrote:

To me, I feel sorry for BioWare feeling like they were forced to put in more content to satisfy the minority. I wish they had stuck to their guns and told everyone complaining to piss off.

The thing is at that point you EA/Bioware don't really care about the thing they've just released so much as they do about the next thing. Telling potential customers to take a hike doesn't seem like great relations.

This thread will soon have gone through more cycles than the ME universe, who's gonna save us?

kyrieee wrote:

This thread will soon have gone through more cycles than the ME universe, who's gonna save us?

The Starchild.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
kyrieee wrote:

This thread will soon have gone through more cycles than the ME universe, who's gonna save us?

The Starchild.

Buzz Aldrin.

AP Erebus wrote:

To me, I feel sorry for BioWare feeling like they were forced to put in more content to satisfy the minority. I wish they had stuck to their guns and told everyone complaining to piss off.

Yeah. If they wanted to make an artistic statement by making a sh*tty ending, then they should have stuck with their sh*tty ending.

Demosthenes wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:
kyrieee wrote:

This thread will soon have gone through more cycles than the ME universe, who's gonna save us?

The Starchild.

Buzz Aldrin.

Amen. And with that, I will break out of the cycle and opt for the "destroy" ending.

SommerMatt wrote:
AP Erebus wrote:

To me, I feel sorry for BioWare feeling like they were forced to put in more content to satisfy the minority. I wish they had stuck to their guns and told everyone complaining to piss off.

Yeah. If they wanted to make an artistic statement by making a sh*tty ending, then they should have stuck with their sh*tty ending.

Yep, this is exactly my point. They made the ending they wanted. They should have stuck with it and if you didn't like it, then so be it.

AP Erebus wrote:
SommerMatt wrote:
AP Erebus wrote:

To me, I feel sorry for BioWare feeling like they were forced to put in more content to satisfy the minority. I wish they had stuck to their guns and told everyone complaining to piss off.

Yeah. If they wanted to make an artistic statement by making a sh*tty ending, then they should have stuck with their sh*tty ending.

Yep, this is exactly my point. They made the ending they wanted. They should have stuck with it and if you didn't like it, then so be it.

I don't know--I think they made the ending they were capable of making. Being an artist doesn't necessarily mean you're a good artist. Sometimes artists have an idea of what they want, and that idea outstrips their technical capabilities. Or even in talented artists, their current inspiration falls short. I feel like someone somewhere already compared this to the Mass Effect 3 ending, but sometimes art turns out like this:

IMAGE(http://i1094.photobucket.com/albums/i453/czpv/IsItArt.jpg)

not saying the ME3 ending was that bad, just that I think it's the perfect example for illustrating the logic that just because an artist produced it in trying to make a work of art, that doesn't necessarily mean the end product achieves the 'artistic statement' they were trying for.

CheezePavilion wrote:

not saying the ME3 ending was that bad, just that I think it's the perfect example for illustrating the logic that just because an artist produced it in trying to make a work of art, that doesn't necessarily mean the end product achieves the 'artistic statement' they were trying for.

This is exactly my point, said in a much more coherent fashion.

It's a weird medium though. Video games have histories of being patched. Is it appropriate to allow some parts of its content to be patched, while other parts are to remain sacred?

Grubber788 wrote:

It's a weird medium though. Video games have histories of being patched. Is it appropriate to allow some parts of its content to be patched, while other parts are to remain sacred?

An interesting thought occured to me... if we take games as art as a given.... where does that leave Portal after they changed the ending to tie-in to the sequel?

Which is better... modifying art to further monetize it or to appease fans who had helped shape that art already?

Ok, I'm starting to understand that I might have had a completely different experience because I had the Leviathan DLC installed...

The latest Giant Bombcast has apparently about 1hr of spoilathz, and it's early on where they discussed how profoundly the leviathan DLC impacts the end.

http://media.giantbomb.com/podcast/g...

So I'm probably going to roll back on my comments re. the ending because I didn't experience the vanilla ending.

I'll have to listen to that. Because I didn't really see, playing it through a second time, what exactly Leviathan truly changed in the end. There was still space magic. What am I missing?

I'm with the Hulk on this one. I thought comparing the whole ending debacle to the story of Misery was pretty apt actually.

DSGamer wrote:

I'll have to listen to that. Because I didn't really see, playing it through a second time, what exactly Leviathan truly changed in the end. There was still space magic. What am I missing?

It gave the reapers a beginning and original purpose and removed parts of the "deus ex machina" of the end. The StarChild is still a bit silly, but the "leviathans" are clearly more powerful and incomprehensible than Shepard can comprehend (hence why they use familiar people in his mind during their discussion), so it allows the child to be passed off as a necessary visualisation for Shepards benefit.

It's still space magic is some respect, but it's more a apex race, rather than the reapers just "exist". I also really like how it gives the reapers a definite purpose, rather than a fully destructive force.

AP Erebus wrote:

Ok, I'm starting to understand that I might have had a completely different experience because I had the Leviathan DLC installed...

The latest Giant Bombcast has apparently about 1hr of spoilathz, and it's early on where they discussed how profoundly the leviathan DLC impacts the end.

http://media.giantbomb.com/podcast/g...

So I'm probably going to roll back on my comments re. the ending because I didn't experience the vanilla ending.

Played the vanilla ending, listening to that podcast/poking around to see what's in the Leviathan DLC, so maybe this is part of it:

Spoiler:

As I was playing ME3 I was thinking much the same thing as when I was watching the last season of Battlestar Galactica: there's not a lot of time left for them to explain this all. Then I get to the end, and it's not just that the ending didn't fit, it's that the universe the game is set in goes unexplained. The Reapers start out as the bad guys, you start getting clues that they're more than just that, you realize the names 'Reaper' and 'Shepard' aren't just accidents, and then...we're left hanging because Starchild doesn't really tell us anything. Looking at what's in that Leviathan DLC, yeah: the idea that the cycle starts with an organic race that is capable of mind control, man, that's cool: that's an origin story robust enough to hold up all the mythology through the series and is a payoff for wondering 'hey--so what ever happened to the ideas they introduced with the Thorian?'

So however it fails or succeeds in directly making the ending better, I can totally see how that gives us the payoff for paying attention to the story they were telling. Without that Leviathan DLC, there's a lot more pressure on the ending to deliver something big. That DLC lowers edit: the weight that's on the ending to deliver.

Holy crap, whatever happened to the Thorian?

Good points, Cheeze.

Grubber788 wrote:

It's a weird medium though. Video games have histories of being patched. Is it appropriate to allow some parts of its content to be patched, while other parts are to remain sacred?

Hmm. A patch is a fix for part of a game that's broken.

As far as DLC goes I dont mind new weapons, hats, even side missions I guess.

But the actualy story?

strangederby wrote:
Grubber788 wrote:

It's a weird medium though. Video games have histories of being patched. Is it appropriate to allow some parts of its content to be patched, while other parts are to remain sacred?

Hmm. A patch is a fix for part of a game that's broken.

As far as DLC goes I dont mind new weapons, hats, even side missions I guess.

But the actualy story?

Bethesda has also been guilty of this. Fallout 3 and Broken Steel anyone? A ridiculous end game scenario where there was even a very obvious solution to the radiation poisoning (follower Fawkes, who had specifically assisted you with another high radiation zone earlier in the game) that was cut off by an utterly idiotic line of dialog (something about it being YOUR destiny, or Sarah's, to enter that chamber, not his).

They also changed this, essentially changing the ending of Fallout 3 and removing this line of dialog and replacing it with something that referenced the old line, but allowed you to take that solution. People were just so excited to be able to continue your character after finishing the main storyline, that the idea of editting art was never that big a deal there either.

Demosthenes wrote:

They also changed this, essentially changing the ending of Fallout 3 and removing this line of dialog and replacing it with something that referenced the old line, but allowed you to take that solution. People were just so excited to be able to continue your character after finishing the main storyline, that the idea of editting art was never that big a deal there either.

Hey now, we're gamers, not art critics. We're going to complain only when we feel it necessary

Besides, I actually remember that ending in FO3. A little lame, overused, sure. But it was an ending.

I still stand behind that ghost child made no sense, and different colored beams was a ginormous letdown.

I've been reading though, it's interesting that ghost child was explained in DLC. Put me on board of the crowd that thinks it's awesome that it is paid DLC to explain the ending in a reasonable manner.

My point is simply that there are precedents for this occuring within our medium, and other mediums. Directors cuts and all that for movies?

Was this a ridiculously sized situation? Clearly. And personally, I'm of the opnion it's over and it's effects on the "industry" are only a matter of scale, not necessarily a unique situation that occured.

I haven't tried any of the DLC, but I may do that with my next runthrough now that I can play 1 on my PS3. Will have to see how that changes things.

I think maybe you guys are in agreement, you've just got your communications crossed?

I disagree!

Heh, all I know is I loved the game. The last 15 minutes were something of a let-down, but that's hardly a new phenomenon, and I'd say at least part of that was BEING done. I wanted to know how it ended, but I didn't want it to end. I think the Extended Cut was a benefit to the story in helping create more closure... especially when I had questions like... ummm... did those turians and quarians just get stuck on an already ruined earth? Wow, we are all screwed there unless there's plantable materials and enough space to do that on this single planet.

That said, the original ending to Fallout 3 will always be one of my "worst" for the simple fact that Fawkes just stood there like a prat and was like, no, I know I'm perfectly suited to this scenario and could help save both of you with minimal risk of even harm to myself... but it's totally your destiny dude.