Quote:It's your call, Logan. But I have to ask... don't you ever get tired of getting so fired up all the time and jumping head-first into your conclusions?Well, two things: One - I don't actually do that all the time. I have as many "stop and think" moments as the average person. I think you're getting the passionate side of me because I haven't been posting as much recently, and when I do, it's about something that I'm passionate about. Two - when I DO jump head-first into a conclusion, you have to admit, it makes life more interesting! Got you to post, didn't it? Not that I'm intentionally trolling, but hey.
Quote:I bought ME3. I've played it through. And y'know what? Yeah. I don't like the endings presented to you. But let's break this down. For my $50, I have received:
* about 30 hours of solid entertainment -- movie-quality entertainment, with multiple points where I was brought low, almost to tears, and then sent screaming back into joy. You mentioned not wanting spoilers before, so I won't spoil them. But let's just say that every loyalty mission you ever ran before is paid off in spades. And I can re-run this with different characters. I want to know what happens if I romance Traynor instead of Liara, for example. Let's just say that turning Traynor down -- and the class with which she handled it -- was easily the most awesome bit of romantic character development I've seen in any franchise, ever.
* endless hours of solid entertainment, in nice neat 20-30 minute chunks that I can do over and over again. The multiplayer alone justifies the monetary outlay. There are bugs, but on the whole I am having tons of fun.
* conclusive and fitting ends to story arcs reaching back to Mass Effect 1. The entire game of ME3 is a wrap-up.
All of which I am certain is true. I don't even have to take your word for it. But see below.
Quote:The downsides:Well, I can take the MP or I can leave it. I am slightly irked that it appears to be -necessary- in order to build one of the important scores in the game. And I've heard that if you don't play it for awhile, that score will go down. The hell? What if I play this game years from now after the game is no longer supported? What then? But I have a feeling that there would be some kind of patch to the game late in its life that would correct that. Or failing that, one could always go edit the gamefiles. So it's not that big of a deal.
* Multiplayer bugs that are, slowly, getting worked out -- but you don't *need* multiplayer anyway, if you don't want it, and I play more often than I get disconnected
Quote:* The last 10 minutes.
Of those downsides, the only one I can't fix is the multiplayer problem. Because you're right, those last 10 minutes suck ass. But all I have to do is say "No, that's not how it happened". Maybe Bioware will fix it, but even if they don't, other people already have, in fiction.
Then why do I need to play the game, then? I'll just read the fanfic.
Quote:I'm not terribly surprised that you're frothing at the mouth about it -- that seems to be your default state when you encounter something you don't like -- but I *am* surprised that you didn't give it a fair shake first.
Because, seriously? 10 minutes of Suck compared to endless hours of Awesome... well, that's pretty plain to me that the Suck is outweighed.
I'm sorry, but I can't do that. I can't just consider the rest of the game apart from the ending. No matter how much fun it might be and how well the rest of it is written, the ending ruins it. Ruins the ENTIRE story.
If Bioware fixes the ending, I'll be there in a heartbeat. But I cannot in good conscience support their decision to do this horrible ending by giving them money.
Something someone else posted in a different forum struck me as a good analogy.
"I keep seeing people who are either in favor of the ending or dislike it but don't care much say that asking for more and criticizing it is either a disservice to the rest of the game or akin to complaining to Shakespeare that Romeo and Juliet died. It's interesting that every time they bring up a Work of Literary Art in their comparison, it's a bona fide classic. In these works, whether you like 'em or not, the endings are all fitting and a seamless part of the whole.
That's because a bad ending can legitimately kill a good novel, and we don't remember those. We sell them back to the used bookstore and don't recommend them to our friends."
What's a bad ending? Something that throws out all the canon that has built up in the rest of the series and has the main character act completely contrary to their nature. That's what this is.
I've heard that one of the endings even apparently ends with Shepard alive (barely). But what does it matter? Both she and her love are stranded thousands of light years from each other. The Earth is ruined. The mass relays are gone. There's tens of thousands of ships in orbit around this burning cinder of a planet that have nowhere to go to. (and how the hell did the explosion of the relay at Charon not vaporize the Sol system anyway like it did to that star system at the end of Arrival? Yet ANOTHER plot hole!) The Quarians and Turians here are screwed, because they can't eat the food anyway.
(And I hope you'll forgive me, but I'm about to get dramatic again)
Again - the rest of the game can be awesome, and I'm sure it is. And I DON'T CARE. Without a proper ending, NONE OF IT MATTERS. Did you read the part where I can't even play ME1 and ME2? I CAN'T. Because none of my choices matter. NONE OF IT DOES.
RED.
BLUE.
GREEN.
Kill the Rachni Queen? Save her? DOESN'T MATTER.
RED.
BLUE.
GREEN.
Save Wrex or not? DOESN'T MATTER.
RED.
BLUE.
GREEN.
Kaiden or Ashley? DOESN'T MATTER.
RED.
BLUE.
GREEN.
Wake Grunt up or not? DOESN'T MATTER.
RED.
BLUE.
GREEN.
Save the Normandy crew from being dissolved into goo on the Collector Base? DOESN'T MATTER.
RED.
BLUE.
GREEN.
Resolve the war between the Geth and the Quarians? DOESN'T MATTER.
RED.
BLUE.
GREEN.
That's what they've done. They've made the entire series - every decision that you AGONIZED over. Everything that you emotionally invested in - EVERYTHING - mean NOTHING.
RED.
BLUE.
GREEN.