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"the door of APATHY and CONTEMPT swings BOTH ways"
There are plenty of other games we can spend on money on.
And when million$ are spent developing a game, the investors
will demand an ROI.
With countless THOUSANDs of ME players outraged at the
ridiculous ME3 endings, we pledged to give BioWare both fingers
in regard to Andromina. No, don't hold your breath expecting
BioWare to do anything.
LE is their feeble attempt to recover with cutie graphics.
We former Mass Effect veterans know that LE most certainly
is NOT, NOT, NOT the same as the originals
(that I'm playing now - after playing LE).
You cared enough to comment. It's a discussion. Calm down Francis. It's OK if people have a different opinion, and express it. Have some tolerance for people who don't always agree with you. Tolerance isn't required for those who always agree with you.
Oh do please get over yourself. If you don't like the conversation, move along...like an adult, and leave the actual adults to their discussion.
Like it or not, people need their bubble popped so they look at reality, and the reality is this...woke doesn't sell. People are tired of it. Companies that refuse to learn that lesson, will suffer the same fate as Ubisoft...and Ubisoft is on the verge of not existing anymore. I would rather that not happen to BioWare, and Mass Effect.
Well I for one agree with you. All this woke crap is ruining gaming, especially all this pronoun garbage. Honestly, seeing how f'ed up this world is getting is just tragic. At least I won't be around for many more years to see it get even worse.
Game devs should be able to make the games THEY want and not have to bow to all this gender ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and people whining about not being represented.
Watching that video was surprising. I knew Ubisoft was all "inclusive", but I had no idea it was that bad. As much as I have liked their games, they deserve to go under...
Fixed it for you!
More seriously though, why not just accept the simpler explanation?
Games fail when they're bad, and succeed when they're good. Woke or not is largely irrelevant. I won't deny that there is correlation, but it's not causation.
I put my 2 cents that the correlation is there because talent-less artists are hired.
Why? Because they're cheaper, and the studio is looking how to save money.
For such hires, their only ability to express themselves is to scream (or closest equivalent) about the things they're not happy with, and that's where their art ends.
By saving on money, not just cheaper artists are hired, but also cheaper gameplay designers, cheaper engineers, and etc... In the end you're more likely to end up with subpar game overall that is more likely to fail.
Reading through this thread, and trying to find some sense in it. If there is one advice I could give to Bioware is to not be cheap with the talent they hire and assign to projects. Pay top dollar to top talent and you'll get top game.
There's definitely correlation, but also some causation. Woke becomes the focal point. Being "inclusive" becomes the point. It's no longer about what makes the best story. A message has to be included, and that becomes the focus. Like, you can't just have some gay guy on the squad. No, we also must explore his life and sexuality. Cortez was a perfect example, and yes that cost us dearly in the story.
It couldn't just be "here's your pilot, Cortez, and oh by the way, he's gay." No, we had to explore his humanity as a gay man. We were forced to deal with his relationship and end of that relationship.
What did that cost us? Well, as confirmed by one of the Devs, the Hilary that the Asari Commando killed, was Joker's sister. If you go behind the reception desk, there's two Asari talking. A therapist, and a commando. The Commando talks about killing a human girl because she was making too much noise as they hid from the Reapers. Her name was Hilary. The planet was the same planet Joker's sister and father were on. People asked if it was Joker's sister, and a Dev confirmed it was.
So why wasn't that included as a main part of the story, but as a small Easter Egg instead? Because WOKE demanded that it not overshadow Cortez's suffering. Joker was a beloved character by that point. He was with Shepard even in Cerberus. He stood by Shepard. He's funny and so people felt affection for him. So Shepard dealing with his pain would have been far more emotional for the players, and that would have completely overshadowed comforting Cortez over the loss of his husband.
So the agenda won, and we lost. Yes, there is causation also. Woke ruins everything it touches, because the message...the agenda...comes first. Plus, it's mostly unwanted. Most of us believe in "Live and let live," but we also don't want that shoved in our face, 24/7. It's like meat eaters and Vegans. You can agree to disagree, and live in peace, but we don't want the other person's dietary choices forced on us constantly.
All the emotional interactions with Cortez are voluntary and fully optional, you can skip all his sobbing and the only thing that changes is that he dies in the end if you didn't talk to him at all. Sure, first time you see him you don't know what to expect, but the moment he says "husband" you can tell him bye and never talk to him again.
Outside of those optional interactions, his character is always professional.
Furthermore, would the game be better if Cortez was straight and sobbing over his dead wife? I think it would be the same, and we still wouldn't get the extra story about Joker.
Personally, I think that Cortez was a good addition to the story. He wasn't just a token character. A dedicated shuttle pilot makes sense. However, if you'd mentioned Traynor, I'd agree. She is redundant considering Shepard has the Shadow Broker and an AI on the ship. In the two moments she "shines" it feels like it was just taken either from Liara or EDI. And unlike Cortez, you can't avoid her. If there was a character I'd axe in ME3 it's her (sure, starboy would come first, but she's a close second). Plus, her romance with femshep gives similar vibes as Jacob with his PRIZE.
But I digress. All in all, ME3 was a good game and was very successful, despite its shortcomings. Yes, the ending should've been done differently. Starboy shouldn't exist, green ending is just a giant plot hole space magic nonsense, Cerberus was overused (but not TIM, he was just right), and reaper motives should have remained a mystery. I think they ran out of money, were looking how to tie it all together and blundered quite a bit while doing it. Cutting both, Cortez and Traynor probably wouldn't have helped, I suspect they had deeper issues towards the end of the project.
Reaper motives are very fine imo, I dont think bioware could have come up with other explanations considering the available information from ME1 and ME2, and leaving things unexplained would just feel weird with the amount of details and hints given throughout the trilogy.
What could/should have been different is the execution. Better cutscenes, better characters (not a kid ghost, but a reaper queen / space horror AI overmind instead), better leviathans.
I didn't actually have a problem with Cortez, but his story was 100% part of the "visibility" agenda. The entire point was to make you deal with a man mourning his husband's death. And to keep that from being overshadowed, they couldn't allow Joker's sister's death to be a major part of the story. So it was inserted as a sort of Easter Egg for the dedicated fans to talk about.
That's the problem with this whole thing, and that's the problem with woke, and why it isn't just correlation, but also causation. SBI and the like do not enhance video games. They cause them to be worse. If western companies don't wake up, it's going to be eastern companies, like the makers of Black Myth Wukong, that will have to save gaming. An SBI-type of company tried to hold them up for $7 million dollars, but the company told them "thanks, but no thanks. We'll pass." And it's a good thing they did. The lesson is there for anyone who wants to pay attention. Hire SBI and your game will fail, or at best, drastically under perform. Ignore SBI's demands, and you will be able to make a game the gamers want, and you will be rewarded.
The real lesson here is that Cortez should have just been a shuttle pilot, and that's all. The big death, and borken heart we dealt with, should have been Joker's story. That wouldn't have been just a nice story line, as it was with Cortez, it would have had a huge emotional impact, and could have been very story rich.
Shepard, after hearing the conversation, could have reached out to EDI and Liara to find the latest picture of Joker's sister on the Galactic Internet. Once he had it, he could have confronted the Commando and asked her if she recognized the girl. The commando would have reacted very powerfully, screaming out Hilary's name. Shepard would have a Paragon/Renegade dialogue option where he presses her for an answer if this is the girl she killed. He would have gotten his answer, but the therapist would demand he leave her patient alone, and leave.
From there, we could have been given choices on how to break the news to Joker. If they wanted to, they could have had Joker ask to be able to check on his sister and Father, before the invasion of their world. After being denied, and then learning of Hilary's death, it could have caused a rift between Shepard and Joker. Now, Joker's salute at the end would have been much more impactful, and emotional. They could have even given us a chance at some dialogue there. A brief moment to bury the hatchet, and forgive.
But instead, it was more important to force us to "humanize" the man mourning his husband. As if we really need that. It's 2024, not 1924. While we have disagreements, we still have empathy.
https://www.windowscentral.com/mass-effect-ending-retrospective
This is why the story feels like they were "looking how to tie it all together and blundered quite a bit." It was a rush job to redo the story in a panic, because they were afraid the leak would harm the sales." Frankly, I don't think it would have. People were already emotionally invested after ME2.
As for Cerberus, there was nothing wrong with Cerberus being a major part of the story in ME2 and ME3. It could have been done better, however. I also don't think the Reaper Motivations had to be a secret. I and most fans liked learning their motivations, and where they came from. I also had no problem with the starchild, as it's just a manifestation by the Catalyst to allow it to communicate with Shepard. Having peeked inside his mind, they knew this child meant something to him. So of course it makes sense to use the child's image to communicate with Shepard.
But it could have all been done better. I think what they had planned would have been better than what we got. Also, instead of Kai Leng, they could have used the Virmire Victim as the Cerberus Agent. The identity would be secret until the confrontation on Thessia. No edgelord stuff...just the agent, having brief discussions with TIM, and then shadowing Shepard, interfering and causing problems...eventually "winning" on Thessia. Forcing him to make a life or death choice between Liara and the Virmire Survivor would have been personal to him/her, and could include special dialogue if it were Ashley, and Shepard had rejected her for Liara, or it was Femshep and she had romanced Kaidan...or BroShep and he had romanced Ashley.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the reason it would be the Virmire Victim is because Cerberus would have found the body, and used it to do the Lazarus project on first. Each step done first on the VV, and if successful, then done on Shepard. This could be a major motivating factor for the VV. They were the guinea pig...Shepard was more important, so now they want to prove themselves to TIM...that they were the more important investment. The opportunity to prove themselves presents itself when Shepard goes rogue against Cerberus.
What I meant about Cerberus being overused is that in ME3 they became an army out of shadow organization of 150 people. And it felt that the only reason it happened was that another “bad” faction was required besides the reapers. Cerberus army became it. The idea of Cerberus on the other hand is great, no objections to that. Just the army out of nowhere stuff irked me.
About reaper motivations, I understand that people want to know those kind of details, but I’m explaining it from point of view of writing an engaging story. You can uncover your big reveal only once, so better make sure it’s done properly. Reaper’s excuse for harvesting the galaxy was debunked mid-game, so what is left? AI went into a crazy loop? It’s just underwhelming. It would’ve been much safer to not do this and leave it a mystery.
Starboy is space magic. The first, second and most of the third games had only two space magic elements and they were subtle. Eezo and indoctrination. Everything else emerged from these two. They were subtle devices to build the story. Starboy on the other hand puts space magic in the front, and his green solution is even more magic. It’s not a device to build a story but to conclude a story. And that’s why I consider it bad. Again, this is more of a story telling perspective.