Mass Effect Series Catch-All

kyrieee wrote:

So Larry, do you think the ending is all right then? Pre director's cut?

Not Larry, and I think the extended ending fixes some things and breaks others, but...having gone back and seen it again, I appreciate it. I don't like it, it bums me out in a major way, but I appreciate it.

When I first played it, I had a pretty big beef with the ending to ME3. I've been playing the ME series again, though, and...honestly? I get why it shook out the way it did, and I don't hate it. It felt like a betrayal of the core principles of the series when I thought like Malor, that there was always a third option. But, like LarryC says, there's a strong thread of fatalism throughout the series. The prior cycles aren't there for show and neither are the deaths of your team. The game is about death and re-birth, about loss and rebuilding, about getting closer and closer with every failure--but it's also about sacrifice in victory, you know? It's rare to see an unblemished victory in any of the games, even when you do everything "right". You roll on Saren and thousands of people still die. You drop on the Collectors and even when you do everything right, you still helped the Illusive Man level-up Cerberus to ruin everybody's day in ME3. And even when you bust your ass to do everything perfect so the geth and the quarians both live, Legion dies. And that's the point. You're being given the chance to pick your loss, but you're still going to lose something. And that's okay.

The ending is not perfect. I could throw some shade about its execution. But there's beauty to the telling nevertheless. I feel bad for being even upset, even in the slightest, at it in the first place. I think I had to grow up a little bit to get past my internal expectation of wish-fulfillment, of the idea that I could do everything and make everything okay. Because, of course, you couldn't make everything okay. You never could.

(edit: The admirable part of the Extended Cut, though, is in the Refusal ending. I view the play of games as to be in some ways a dialectic, whether or not you're given any real choices within the framework of the game, because the ultimate statement is always yours: you can turn it off. You can refuse to participate. Codifying this within the world of the game is...cool. I appreciate it. And maybe, as hinted, that sacrifice means that next cycle doesn't have to sacrifice quite so much.)

(edit 2: Friend of mine just reminded me of this from FILM CRIT HULK about the game. He gets salty, and retracts much of that saltiness in a follow-up column, but with a couple more years of life and of studying storytelling under my belt I really get why he got smashy about it. Ambition should be praised. Even when the results aren't perfect.)

To clarify shortly: I did not like the endings prior to the Extended Cut DLC. I had my reasons. I did not think that the Extended Cuts were a retcon. I was already leaning in those directions prior to the Extended DLC. This can be verified in the extended discussions in the Spoiler thread. The Extended Cuts were, essentially, what I thought should have come with the game; and I like them just fine.

Maybe I should play this game some day ... soon(tm)

edit: eh, maybe all that's a little rude even for a quick take. Like LarryC brought up, there's a lot that's been said in the other threads, so maybe after reading the Hulk retraction piece and as a way of not going over the same ground, the way I feel can be boiled down to this:

I've heard of looking for the soft emotion that's behind the hard emotion. For example, that when someone is angry, that's often about vulnerability. It's your choice which one you address. And maybe addressing the soft emotion is not always the best choice, but sometimes it is.

I feel like that happened with the Mass Effect ending. People who were happy (and again, it's really oversimplifying it to talk about it such all-or-nothing terms) with the ending tried to tell the people who weren't that they were wrong in the worst ways possible. They chose to address the hard emotion over the soft. In some ways, I think they created the hard emotion by framing the discussion in a certain way.

I'm sure that happened the other way 'round, too. Although I feel in an ironic twist, the rush to defend the Mass Effect endings as 'art' instead cut the legs out from under that discussion. It sought out the least interesting explantions for why people were in disagreement. People who want to elevate games to the level of 'art' shouldn't go looking for those. They should go looking for the the most interesting reasons people are disagreeing with them, instead.

I can't believe we're arguing about the ending again.

It's almost like people can have different opinions about fiction!

BadKen wrote:

I can't believe we're arguing about the ending again.

I'm not, but I'm glad it's in this thread.

BadKen wrote:

It's almost like people can have different opinions about fiction!

This is a downright dirty lie. It is a proven FACT that Princess Ardala > Wilma Deering.

Also, the ending sucked, but I think I've spoken about it in-depth already and would rather talk about Princess Ardala.

BadKen wrote:

I can't believe we're arguing about the ending again.

It's almost like people can have different opinions about fiction!

It's in its own thread, and mostly only the people who like talking about it are talking. There are always the dedicated ME threads to take up specific concerns and ideas, and the not-ME4 thread for everything else. I just like to chew the fat about ME. In fact, I'm doing Armax Arena runs right now. MP was a bust. Local connection as awful as always. Not suitable. Sigh.

LarryC wrote:

I just like to chew the fat about ME.

Mass Effect is one of the few games that I find worthwhile to actually talk about beyond the bare mechanics of it, so I'm kind of on the same wavelength there. It tries to be a lot. I like that.

I guess my problem with people saying that ME was fatalistic is that I don't believe them. I, myself, suffer from periods of fatalism and depression (luckily not more than a couple of days usually) and I know what it is to be fatalistic. I agree that the backdrop of the cycles was a fatalistic pretext but almost literally nothing else in the series is presented as such:

You have impossible to reconcile situations that can be reconciled. You have impossible to survive missions that are survivable. You have an underlying current of "this is doable" throughout the whole series. The genre of the series is "space opera"... which is not a fatalistic conceit, even if it has fatalistic moments or acts. I've read a lot of fatalistic sci fi and it's nothing like the story/stories and characters presented in Mass Effect.

This series is the complete opposite of the term fatalism: There is no submission to events as inevitable - at least not from the main cast. Otherwise there would be no resistance, no fighting to re-take Earth or construct the crucible.

I know Larry disagrees with me as we've talked about this at length in the ME3 spoiler thread and I don't really want to go over it all again but there's just no evidence to support the fatalism argument.

[edit]

I should note that, for me, the fatalism or not discussion has no bearing on the endings of ME3. There are many other issues that make it a very poor ending for me.

We need a thread just for the ending. There's like another 200 hours or more of the series I'd love to see discussed. (Not even counting auxiliary media, which might belong in this thread.)

beeporama wrote:

We need a thread just for the ending. There's like another 200 hours or more of the series I'd love to see discussed. (Not even counting auxiliary media, which might belong in this thread.)

You mean... The party?

Man, the party was so awesome. The Citadel DLC might just my favorite added content of any game, tied closely to XCOM's enemy within. It offers just so much content, and like most of the previous series, just top notch quality in every sense. Even the ridiculously funny story bit works. "She messed with my hamster, guys!"

Citadel's humor and overall silliness was perfect for DLC add-on content, especially in a game as serious as ME3. It was, IMO, perfectly lobbed levity. I keep replaying it just to get the different dialogue. It's not like the plot wasn't obvious after the ridiculous reveal.

kexx wrote:

Man, the party was so awesome. The Citadel DLC might just my favorite added content of any game, tied closely to XCOM's enemy within. It offers just so much content, and like most of the previous series, just top notch quality in every sense. Even the ridiculously funny story bit works. "She messed with my hamster, guys!"

The part was, indeed, awesome. All of that DLC was great. I also enjoyed Leviathan.

I never did Citadel because I'd so moved on by the time it came out. Same with a lot of DLC. Really torn on replays versus waiting and hoping for a current-gen reissue. This series and Assassin's Creed really gave me a more nuanced opinion on story DLC; although none of it was "necessary," much of it made the game a lot richer, and I'm now inclined to hold off on playing games until I can get the "full experience" in one go.

A big problem for me is I played the first game SO MANY TIMES that I'm not sure I could go back to it again. Like, six completionist runs. I don't know why I never felt compelled to replay the second and third games; I certainly enjoyed them, and the more action-oriented mechanics probably make them more replayable.

You know, I also think that knowing the choices you make don't make THAT big a difference would make replays more enjoyable. I'd feel freer to try different things. I just could not bring myself to do a game with the Rachni Queen or Wrex or any of my ME2 party dead and have that stuck in my save file. My play-to-"win" instinct just kept overriding my play-for-a-story instinct. (Yes, Heavy Rain was really tough for me, but I digress...)

If what you want is more content, then choosing a different path through the game IS "winning" - you're winning more content that you've never seen. Narrative exposition is often placed as a reward for classic games like Ninja Gaiden and Mario. In Mass Effect, all you need to do to get that sweet content is to choose differently!

The overall arc of the stories will be more or less similar to "canon" so long as you don't choose too radically different. This is in keeping with scifi principles of the fictional science of Psychohistory - events involving a lot of people have a lot of "inertia" and are very difficult for single people to influence, generally speaking. Shepard can make a lot of difference in the lives and stories of his crewmates; but barring exceptional circumstances, the fate of the krogan is shaped by the tides of history.

We only ever got two choices for any quest in the entire series. I kind of feel bad for the folks that thought they were going to get more.

Kind of.

You can choose to let Mordin implement the cure
You can choose to kill him in cold blood.
You can choose to persuade him to betray his conscience.
You can choose to let him die on the Collector ship and kill/spare Wiks instead.

We already were?

Pikey26 wrote:

ps. Can we just talk about stuff besides the ending?

Lead by example.

To give the series a more conventional set of endings more befitting and consistant with the VERY conventional style and QUALITY of storytelling that led up to it, probably would have been too expensive.

So, they instead opted for this cop-out of an ending that even middle schoolers would find difficult to be impressed by once getting over the 'wtf did that come from?' shock factor (and that doesn't take long, if it takes any time at all).

Admit it, even those of you who thought the ending was pretty interesting or unique, started to think 'well... not really.'

Except Larry. I know Larry. C. Sorry Larry, I am going to totally not engage in anything you say in response to this post... well that subject.

We've traded blows on this in the past and I did not feel nice. I am an emotional creature, I have to take care of myself.

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ps. Can we just talk about stuff besides the ending?

There was a THIRD PAGE?

IMAGE(http://www.coolgraphic.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/I-Am-So-Sorry.gif)

Pikey26 wrote:

Admit it, even those of you who thought the ending was pretty interesting or unique, started to think 'well... not really.'

I did. And then I grew a little. Learned some things. Went back and looked at it as a more mature individual and as a better storyteller.

You can stop assuming what I think anytime now, though.

LarryC wrote:

You can choose to let Mordin implement the cure
You can choose to kill him in cold blood.
You can choose to persuade him to betray his conscience.
You can choose to let him die on the Collector ship and kill/spare Wiks instead.

You can choose to cure the Krogan or not.
You can choose to let the council live or die.
You can choose to murder or reprogram the Geth heretics.
You can choose to release David or give him back to Cerberus.
You can choose Ashley or Kaidan.
You can choose to save the hostages on Bring Down The Sky or kill the Batarian terrorist.
You can choose to free or kill the Rachni queen.

None of the choices you listed affect the outcomes of those quests outside of the binary endings that Bioware came up with.

We should be so lucky they gave us 3 choices for the ending.

I beg to disagree. Having Mordin live is a major outcome point of difference in the Tuchanka questline. In the Rannoch questline, you can choose the Geth, the Quarians, or both.

Ed Ropple wrote:
Pikey26 wrote:

Admit it, even those of you who thought the ending was pretty interesting or unique, started to think 'well... not really.'

I did. And then I grew a little. Learned some things. Went back and looked at it as a more mature individual and as a better storyteller.

You can stop assuming what I think anytime now, though.

Maybe your change of heart was due to that, but you get why some people are still disappointed, and their disappointment was different from yours, and doesn't indicate a need to 'grow up' or anything because it had nothing to do with 'wish fulfillment'?

In other words, maybe a better way of putting what Pikey is saying is that even if you liked it, you get why some people didn't, and how it's not just a matter of subjective taste, it's a matter of the series creating expectations in people that you didn't have?

I think the expectation was in people despite the actual content in the game. Shepard not having that much agency is all over the thing from ME2 forwards. Heck, the entirety of ME1, he's basically a glorified detective. You don't command the fleets that ultimately defeat Sovereign, after all. And you couldn't have done squat if the Council hadn't given you resources and as much leeway as it chose to do.

In ME2, you're basically Illusive Man's dog.

That expectation was, I'd argue, built from the gaming zeitgeist around Mass Effect, not intrinsic to the material.

I get why people didn't like the ending, sure. I was plenty frothy the last time around because I was as convinced as folks still are that the game had blown its promises. But at this point, I find myself intensely skeptical of the claim that the series created those missed expectations. It strikes me as similar to the ending to BSG: it makes a great deal of sense given what you've been shown, not what you may have brought to the table that colored your view of them.

Separating my own projection from the actual media is hard. As I get older I find it more and more worth it when I am able to do so. A couple of years' distance from the hype around the series has done me a lot of good and I feel much better for it.