(no subject)
I wanted to record my views on the ME3 ending. The furore has more or less died down now, but I'm left with some quite strong views on what went wrong - it did go wrong - that I want to get down in writing.
So, what was it? In short, the ME series ending wasn't a bad SF ending; but it was a bad ending for that particular set of games. I would suggest that it created so much outrage mainly because it betrayed both its theme and its gameplay at the eleventh hour, and I have to guess that it did so at least in part because the creators ran out of time.
The theme of the ME series is, overwhelmingly, one of hope. No matter how bad things get, there's Commander Shepard to ride in and save the day - maybe not the way you want it saved, not without losses along the way, but saved nonetheless. Linked to that, the main character is an ass-kicking, hard talking SAS marine type who never gives up no matter how tough the odds get. Another significant theme is one of choice: Cdr Shepard is going to save the day, sure, but how is he or she going to do it? What choices will be made along the way, what will be sacrificed and what is held sacred? The gameplay supports this with an admirable record of the choices you made, even (Dragon Age wishes it had it so good) across games. For what is essentially a set of linear paths, the studio did a very good job of making the games *feel* like a sandbox, and most especially making you feel that your choices could have consequences many hours of play down the line. I was somewhat disappointed in the last game that my earlier choice to save the Rachni queen didn't lead to swarms of Rachni warriors turning up to save humanity!
For me, there's a very specific point where this all started to collapse in ME3. It's also the point where characters began to act oddly, where the mood changed dramatically for no obvious reason, and (possibly not coincidentally) the point at which the cute little datapad messages started to dry up: Thessia.
Whiny Liara - this is the first clue that things are not quite what they should be. Everything from this point on feels rather hasty, there are some obvious missed points and the impression is that we skipped a few dozen missions that the team didn't have time to write. Note that I had Garrus and Liara on my team for this mission. To illustrate the problem I had: say aliens invade the earth. Things are desperate, they've trashed London and Berlin and you're frantically looking for the McGuffin as they invade Paris. Suddenly the French girl you're sleeping with, who over the last few years has transformed herself from naive scientist to ruthless secret agent of manipulation and awesomeness, starts going on about how APPALLING IT IS that Paris is being invaded and ISN'T IT THE WORST THING EVER? NOBODY ELSE COULD EVER UNDERSTAND HER PAIN. Aside from it being out of character, you and your German mate might be forgiven for thinking that she hasn't been paying attention for the last few months while everyone else's hometowns got ripped up... or she's actually so shallow that she doesn't realise it's a tad insensitive to start whining about this stuff now.
On you trot, overcome a few minor obstacles and then:
Exit villain, stage right, twirling moustaches - this gave me my greatest disappointment from any part of any of the ME games. Note that it's not the ending! I don't know about anyone else, but I was kicking the assassin's ass, with the added difficulty of his air support, without really breaking into a sweat. Suddenly - cut scene, no additional elements to explain it, but the villain reveals he has you and runs off into the sunset with the goodies while you stand there helplessly. This is such a bad idea I don't even know where to start... As any decent tabletop games master will ask - what was the point of that fight? What did we learn or achieve? All it creates is a jarring sense of frustration as it's revealed that neither Commander Shepard nor the player is able to fight the power of a Scripted Outcome. Plot needs him to get away, so he does. There are similar scenes across the series, but not with that level of casual disregard for Shepard's ability to affect matters. This is the first time, for me, that the game betrayed its own theme of hope and choice, and again there's a sneaking sense that if it had been playtested more it would have been changed.
So what happens after that? You pick yourself up and chase after him, right, the same way you have done in similar situations throughout the series? Wrong.
Whiny Shepard - Despite the fact that the war hasn't been going that badly to date, all things considered, it's revealed in another cutscene that this was your last hope - and you've just blown it, leaving the civilised galaxy to a fate worse than death. We can see the lack of a dozen or so missions building us up to this point, and again the theme of hope is betrayed, particularly as Shepard - who's been keeping quite handily under control given the pressure they're under - cracks under the strain and starts being a dick. The basic premise doesn't seem to have been strongly tested: the game doesn't explain why it is that with the information resources of literally an entire galactic civilisation to draw on, all as supremely motivated as it's possible to get, Shepard can't reasonably assume that someone will find the bad guys pretty damn sharpish. You'd think he would at least ask. Indeed, you have to start wondering what drugs Shepard has been abusing when it turns out that his PA has done a bit of digging and figured out where to look next...
The game doesn't recover from that point, sadly. In contrast to the great scenes covering the genophage earlier on, the final missions have a rather generic, flat feel. Before the final mission everyone lines up to pat you on the back and tell you what a great chum you've been: mildly satisfying from the player's point of view, but hardly innovative and really stretching suspension of disbelief at a critical moment. Then on to -
The final mission - which is of course where it all comes to a head, and unfortunately not in a particularly good way. For a series that has given us some pretty epic battles, the final showdown of good and inhuman is... not epic. You're told you need to fight your way into the Citadel, where you don't know what you'll face. It turns out this means: fight off a few waves of enemies (admittedly hard, but more for cheap "here's hundreds of enemies" reasons - compared to the awesome slogs through the collector territory in ME2 it's nothing to write home about in endurance stakes); suffer a cutscene where you get blown up; run through a mini-game where your blown up carcass shoots a few enemies in slow motion... and you're in. And no more fighting. Oh. Now choose your ending.
And that, of course, is the ultimate betrayal. You're given three different, world-changing endings to choose from - wait, did you say world-changing? That's right, all that angst about whether you were going to cure the genophage or not earlier on? Largely pointless, as you're about to plunge the galaxy into a new dark age no matter what you choose. Irrespective of whether one of the design team did or did not say they wouldn't resort to a "push button A for ending 1" scenario, this goes completely against the themes of the Mass Effect universe and story. It almost couldn't have been better chosen as the antithesis of everything the games worked for until then, obliterating player choice and achievements: to the point that they give you the same cutscene no matter what you decide in any case, and don't bother referring to how previous decisions might change things after the apocalypse. You have to wonder if they didn't tell the lead writer that he wasn't getting a bonus or something - for people that good to miss that spectacularly feels deliberate.
In the end I forgive the Mass Effect ending for the same reasons I forgave the (new) Battlestar Galactica ending: I had so much fun up to then that I can think back on it all and be thankful that they brought things to a coherent close. (Although the build up to the BG ending at least felt epic.) I don't think that the creators have to change their story, or even should: done is done, for better or worse. It's just a shame that a series with so much promise couldn't have a climax worthy of its other accomplishments.
So, what was it? In short, the ME series ending wasn't a bad SF ending; but it was a bad ending for that particular set of games. I would suggest that it created so much outrage mainly because it betrayed both its theme and its gameplay at the eleventh hour, and I have to guess that it did so at least in part because the creators ran out of time.
The theme of the ME series is, overwhelmingly, one of hope. No matter how bad things get, there's Commander Shepard to ride in and save the day - maybe not the way you want it saved, not without losses along the way, but saved nonetheless. Linked to that, the main character is an ass-kicking, hard talking SAS marine type who never gives up no matter how tough the odds get. Another significant theme is one of choice: Cdr Shepard is going to save the day, sure, but how is he or she going to do it? What choices will be made along the way, what will be sacrificed and what is held sacred? The gameplay supports this with an admirable record of the choices you made, even (Dragon Age wishes it had it so good) across games. For what is essentially a set of linear paths, the studio did a very good job of making the games *feel* like a sandbox, and most especially making you feel that your choices could have consequences many hours of play down the line. I was somewhat disappointed in the last game that my earlier choice to save the Rachni queen didn't lead to swarms of Rachni warriors turning up to save humanity!
For me, there's a very specific point where this all started to collapse in ME3. It's also the point where characters began to act oddly, where the mood changed dramatically for no obvious reason, and (possibly not coincidentally) the point at which the cute little datapad messages started to dry up: Thessia.
Whiny Liara - this is the first clue that things are not quite what they should be. Everything from this point on feels rather hasty, there are some obvious missed points and the impression is that we skipped a few dozen missions that the team didn't have time to write. Note that I had Garrus and Liara on my team for this mission. To illustrate the problem I had: say aliens invade the earth. Things are desperate, they've trashed London and Berlin and you're frantically looking for the McGuffin as they invade Paris. Suddenly the French girl you're sleeping with, who over the last few years has transformed herself from naive scientist to ruthless secret agent of manipulation and awesomeness, starts going on about how APPALLING IT IS that Paris is being invaded and ISN'T IT THE WORST THING EVER? NOBODY ELSE COULD EVER UNDERSTAND HER PAIN. Aside from it being out of character, you and your German mate might be forgiven for thinking that she hasn't been paying attention for the last few months while everyone else's hometowns got ripped up... or she's actually so shallow that she doesn't realise it's a tad insensitive to start whining about this stuff now.
On you trot, overcome a few minor obstacles and then:
Exit villain, stage right, twirling moustaches - this gave me my greatest disappointment from any part of any of the ME games. Note that it's not the ending! I don't know about anyone else, but I was kicking the assassin's ass, with the added difficulty of his air support, without really breaking into a sweat. Suddenly - cut scene, no additional elements to explain it, but the villain reveals he has you and runs off into the sunset with the goodies while you stand there helplessly. This is such a bad idea I don't even know where to start... As any decent tabletop games master will ask - what was the point of that fight? What did we learn or achieve? All it creates is a jarring sense of frustration as it's revealed that neither Commander Shepard nor the player is able to fight the power of a Scripted Outcome. Plot needs him to get away, so he does. There are similar scenes across the series, but not with that level of casual disregard for Shepard's ability to affect matters. This is the first time, for me, that the game betrayed its own theme of hope and choice, and again there's a sneaking sense that if it had been playtested more it would have been changed.
So what happens after that? You pick yourself up and chase after him, right, the same way you have done in similar situations throughout the series? Wrong.
Whiny Shepard - Despite the fact that the war hasn't been going that badly to date, all things considered, it's revealed in another cutscene that this was your last hope - and you've just blown it, leaving the civilised galaxy to a fate worse than death. We can see the lack of a dozen or so missions building us up to this point, and again the theme of hope is betrayed, particularly as Shepard - who's been keeping quite handily under control given the pressure they're under - cracks under the strain and starts being a dick. The basic premise doesn't seem to have been strongly tested: the game doesn't explain why it is that with the information resources of literally an entire galactic civilisation to draw on, all as supremely motivated as it's possible to get, Shepard can't reasonably assume that someone will find the bad guys pretty damn sharpish. You'd think he would at least ask. Indeed, you have to start wondering what drugs Shepard has been abusing when it turns out that his PA has done a bit of digging and figured out where to look next...
The game doesn't recover from that point, sadly. In contrast to the great scenes covering the genophage earlier on, the final missions have a rather generic, flat feel. Before the final mission everyone lines up to pat you on the back and tell you what a great chum you've been: mildly satisfying from the player's point of view, but hardly innovative and really stretching suspension of disbelief at a critical moment. Then on to -
The final mission - which is of course where it all comes to a head, and unfortunately not in a particularly good way. For a series that has given us some pretty epic battles, the final showdown of good and inhuman is... not epic. You're told you need to fight your way into the Citadel, where you don't know what you'll face. It turns out this means: fight off a few waves of enemies (admittedly hard, but more for cheap "here's hundreds of enemies" reasons - compared to the awesome slogs through the collector territory in ME2 it's nothing to write home about in endurance stakes); suffer a cutscene where you get blown up; run through a mini-game where your blown up carcass shoots a few enemies in slow motion... and you're in. And no more fighting. Oh. Now choose your ending.
And that, of course, is the ultimate betrayal. You're given three different, world-changing endings to choose from - wait, did you say world-changing? That's right, all that angst about whether you were going to cure the genophage or not earlier on? Largely pointless, as you're about to plunge the galaxy into a new dark age no matter what you choose. Irrespective of whether one of the design team did or did not say they wouldn't resort to a "push button A for ending 1" scenario, this goes completely against the themes of the Mass Effect universe and story. It almost couldn't have been better chosen as the antithesis of everything the games worked for until then, obliterating player choice and achievements: to the point that they give you the same cutscene no matter what you decide in any case, and don't bother referring to how previous decisions might change things after the apocalypse. You have to wonder if they didn't tell the lead writer that he wasn't getting a bonus or something - for people that good to miss that spectacularly feels deliberate.
In the end I forgive the Mass Effect ending for the same reasons I forgave the (new) Battlestar Galactica ending: I had so much fun up to then that I can think back on it all and be thankful that they brought things to a coherent close. (Although the build up to the BG ending at least felt epic.) I don't think that the creators have to change their story, or even should: done is done, for better or worse. It's just a shame that a series with so much promise couldn't have a climax worthy of its other accomplishments.