I'm absolutly Heartbroken at the ending... (**SPOILERS**)

>>> The decisions you make in the first two games actually do impact which ending you get... that depends on the level of your Effective Military Strength.

And when you consider how EMS actually works, what you are REALLY saying is this:

"None of the choices you've made in any of the three games really matters all that much, because the only difference between someone who has made the 'right' choice in all three games and someone who has only played ME3 and made mediocre choices in most cases is how much time they're willing to spend in multiplayer boosting Galactic Readiness. Or if they have an iPhone."

So yes, shock and amazement, plenty of people DO feel like their choices didn't matter. Because that is absolutely the case.

If anything, it's WORSE than that, because someone who has only played ME3 but boosts Readiness to 100% actually has more potential value to their endings than someone who has played all three games perfectly yet doesn't play multiplayer for whatever reason (be it they don't like it, don't have an Internet connection, have Live Gold, etc). EA is essentially saying that "gaming synergy" is far more important than narrative.

Which is probably true in a business sense, but is garbage when you're talking about a series that has always prided itself on the narrative aspect and hyped up the degree of player interaction.

And when a series that has always prided itself on the narrative aspect and hyped up the degree of player interaction takes a steaming dump on those things in the last 20 minutes or so of the final game of the series, the shocking surprise ISN'T that a significant portion of the playerbase would be incredibly upset about it. The surprise is that apparently no one at BioWare or EA realized in advance what sort of s*** storm they were effectively signing up for.



>>> Have some imagination - and for crying out loud, have some fun. It's a game.

To be fair, I'd be willing to bet I have more imagination than a significant majority of the people who played ME1 and ME2 (HOW many people created more fleshed out backstories and mocked up personality profiles for each version of Shepard they make, then use those to determine dialogue choices instead of just going with what THEY would say in that situation or deliberately aiming for maxed out Paragon or Renegade runs?), yet the endings (and everything that goes with them) still annoy me.

Being able to "imagine" the various consequences and extrapolations of the minimalist endings does not in any way mitigate the poor writing that went into them. And make no mistake - knee-jerk cries of "artistic integrity!" aside, they really were piss-poor writing on a pure narrative level. There are fanfic writers who have produced better work than the last 20 minutes or so of the game.

As for having fun... well, fun is far too subjective. There are things some people find fun that other people find horrible. There are people who play video games for the gameplay and ignore almost anything story-related, there are people who play games almost exclusively for plot and merely "put up with" the various gameplay mechanics, and tons of people who fall somewhere in-between. There are people who would sooner cut off a limb than play online multiplayer in ANY game, and others who barely play anything BUT.

The fact there are people who are strongly enough invested in the story for the crapiness of the ending to ruin the game for them while you aren't doesn't make them somehow wrong or spoiled or childish, any more than the difference of opinion makes YOU wrong (and a horrible person) for NOT being bothered by it.

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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

>>> My only argument is with these people claiming they'll never play through it again "just because" of the ending. I don't buy it.

The fact that it doesn't bother you doesn't mean it doesn't (or shouldn't) bother anyone else.

Nor is it even indicative of whether or not the writing itself is somehow acceptable - hell, plenty of books/TV shows/movies with utterly abysmal writing are quite popular. Quality (or lack thereof) doesn't always correlate with success.

Plenty of people enjoy (or even love) poorly written things. Plenty of people dislike brilliantly written things. The fact that someone subjectively loves hack writing doesn't somehow make it immune to criticism, or make people who dare to point out the flaws bad people.

But make no mistake - even if it doesn't bother you, the ending IS substandard, just from a professional/critical/narrative sense. It's objectively bad writing, even if your perception of it as being good/mediocre/tolerable/bad is subjective.



>>> Couldn't disagree more. At the end of the journey you will inevitably die anyway, which is worse than amnesia. Therefore, the important thing to do is to enjoy the journey while you have time left to do so.

The flaw that ruins this analogy is that there's a significant difference between an enjoyable journey that has to come to an inevitable end (whether it be oblivion, afterlife, reincarnation, or something in-between), and one that ends with a vivid, jarring, brutal, psychologically-scarring end.

The end of the series (or journey, if you will) was always inevitable. But HOW it ended wasn't. And it's the HOW that is pissing people off.

And yes, trite aphorisms about life being a journey aside, it's a fundamental principle of narrative in general that the ending ABSOLUTELY CAN ruin everything leading up to it, if the overall narrative hinges on the ending to be effective. Which the story in ME absolutely does.



>>> Your comment reminds me of the movie Million Dollar Baby... and that movie went on to win multiple Oscars. Just goes to show that the destination doesn't ruin the journey.

And now you are confusing levels of immersion. In order for your attempted analogy to work, the movie would have to have ended with the audience being struck in the head and euthanized.

There is a MASSIVE difference between watching someone else's tragedy and living through your own. There is nothing inherently wrong with a STORY that ends unhappily, as long as it ends EFFECTIVELY. The problem is, ME3 doesn't end effectively. And that lack of effective ending absolutely can affect how the audience views the rest of the work up to that point.

In fact, this is one of the points that irritate the HELL out of people who are critical of the ending. The complaint isn't that the ending is UNHAPPY. Most people who complain about the ending are more than willing to concede that unhappy endings can be satisfying. What they are complaining about is the fact that it is a awkward and poorly written ending.

Realistically speaking, does hating the ending of ME3 somehow retroactively "ruin" your enjoyment of ME1 and ME2? No, you still enjoyed them, and ME3 isn't rippling backwards through the space-time continuum and changing how you felt about them then.

But the ending of ME3 can absolutely (and understandably) prevent someone from enjoying ME1 and ME2 again now. And like it or not, it's a key facet of human psychology that our current emotions and world-view absolutely alter how we view the past, meaning a strong enough dislike for ME3 will color someone's perceptions of ME1 and ME2.

And people aren't WRONG for feeling that way. They're human.

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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

>>> Spoilers, you are going to die at the end of your real life. Does that make living not worth it?

Possibly, if you somehow know in advance you're going to spend the last 10 years of it being repeatedly gang-raped and beaten, and that nothing you do can ever change that.

Like it or not, yes, how something ends can certainly lead to a reevaluation of the leading up to that ending. Creating connections like that is more or less a basic aspect of how the human brain works.

I doubt any child ever lured into a van by a molester, years later, thought to themselves "Well, at least the candy was delicious!"

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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family