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And all things considered. If Mass 3 is the worst Bioware has to offer, then their worst is still miles ahead of some other developers.
The big ending was pretty silly, absolutely, but I don't find something like ME1's story significantly more impressive than that, because frankly it's relatively trivial to exploit the threat of omnipotent invaders when you don't have to explain anything about them because you're just a first-act cliffhanger. ME2's main plot was basically complete nonsense from start to finish, but I felt it had some really great moments in sidequests to partially redeem that. ME3 was overall just kind of flat in terms of storytelling, but the improved combat and character development (and a bunch of little things like making the absurd paragon/renegade system less important) more than made up for that for me.
So yeah, Mass Effect 3 had it's problems. Despite this, I though it struck a believable tone better than any other ME game to date; ME1 was too surreal and ME2 was too comic book.
The friendship moments between characters in 3 were superb and, while the writing was worse than ME2 and the storytelling was miles behind, it managed to have real impact when it really wanted to.
However I'm never going to buy another Bioware game. Why? Because trust is important to me, and Bioware violated the quite deep trust I had in them by handling the controversy the way they did. Silence while the media demolished the fanbase globally and then agreeing with said media a month later.
So they came out with an EC; they didn't have a choice. They fanbase was a frothing mass of (civil) protest. We had a map of all the countries worldwide that had members participating in the demonstrations. We had twitter accounts that reached thousands upon thousands and we were as mobilized as Occupy Wallstreet but with better organization.
We had a mission statement and were literally (well, metaphorically) at war. Bioware had no choice but to release the EC; once the dissatisfaction didn't die down they had to do something.
What they did was side with the media. Instead of actually trying to fix what was objectively broken (as outlined countless times on various outlets, the best of which was MrBTongue's Tasteful Understated Nerd Rage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs
They simply addressed the items on our list of complaints that they wanted to while adding a jab at the fanbase with the bullet activated refuse ending without addressing the biggest flaws present.
I trusted Bioware about as much as is possible and defended them quite a lot[social.bioware.com] after ME2 released, but now I refuse to buy one of their games and will go out of my way to dissuade others from giving them a dime.
Such is the value consumer loyalty.
But that's a pretty common outcome of traditional conservative notions of trust and loyalty, really, so no surprises. Personally I prefer to honour the virtue of forgiveness (which you are now apparently at direct odds with) and as such will continue to buy and celebrate games I like regardless of whether the developer has made mistakes in the past. After all, if all artists had to stop doing what they do when they did something wrong, we'd still be in the stone age.
I love your judgemental tone, it's very revealing.
If you can't understand the emotions involved then you must not have followed the situation from release to April. Loyalty must be earned; and disloyalty must be punished. As a consumer, my only recourse is to exercise my ability to dissuade potential customers.
Given the quality of products on display over the last few years, that both satisfies my personal desires as well as generously helps others avoid a faulty product.
So yeah, there's some spite there. Considering what else has gone through my mind regarding Bioware, spite's angelic. I want to support companies that understand that consumers are their revenue stream and that reflect that. I want put out of business companies that refuse to acknowledge that.
I don't want to live in a world where companies get to ♥♥♥♥ on their customers and stay in business.
If you can't recognize that that's what they did, then you either didn't buy the game on launch day, didn't spend the next month anywhere near the internet, or have a very highly developed case of Stockholm's Syndrome.
Notice I didn't call you any names or passively aggressively insinuate that you're inferior.
You might want to look into that.
I can understand the emotions involved. In the same way I understand someone getting mad and punching someone else in the face. That doesn't mean I agree with punching people in the face. Not everywhere your emotions leads you is a good place to stay.
Bioware didn't ♥♥♥♥ on anyone. They made a product people didn't like (part of). That happens all the time. What, do you think game developers seriously go out of their way to piss people off? Here's an unfortunate truth: they like their games! They think they're good and worth playing and worth releasing! Unfortunately, the perils of subjectivity are such that they're not always right on the behalf of all other people. Criticising their work is fine of course, we all learn from such discourse. But I will maintain that condemning people for doing badly one time is vindictive, arrogant, and ultimately unhealthy for the whole creative industry.
Ken Robinson's 2006 TED talk:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY is still one of my favourite things on the internet, in part for his understanding that people will never come up with anything of value "if they're not prepared to be wrong". A vital part of that is for the people around them, in this case us the audience, to also be prepared for developers, directors, actors, writers etc, to "be wrong". Show them where they've gone wrong if that's helpful, absolutely, and by all means be more careful with your money around them in future if that's a concern, but don't force them to stop afterward. I don't want Bioware out of commission, I want them to get better.
You've proven my point. The ending is not the problem. Bioware's behavior following the ending is the problem. I said exactly that in my initial post, which you apparently didn't read. If you had read my post on the BSN you'd know clear as day that I forgive and have forgiven most of their in-game mistakes.
I also applauded them on their willingness to fix them and pointed out, again in that very same post, the multiple times they did just that.
I don't give a rats @ss if a person makes a mistake. People and companies do it all the time, it's perfectly natural. What bothers the heck out of me is when a company or person refuses to acknowledge that a mistake has been made. What pisses me off is when a person or company lies about their mistake to try and make it go away.
That's why I want them to go out of business; because they made a mistake, refused to acknowledge it for a month while their fans were demolished, then lied and tried to make the problem go away by rubbing new paint on the problem in hopes of disguising it.
You don't want to see it from our side and from your post I have decided you most likely weren't around when the media was taking every opportunity to lambast the fans and weren't around when Bioware sat silently, refusing all our requests for an answer or some word about what to expect.
That or you're simply not a fan of the franchise and you just want to take this opportunity to lambast the fans.
What did Bioware lie about? Honest question. I probably dismissed such accusations at the time on the grounds that in my experience, rabid fans complaining of lies usually mean something along the lines of "the company didn't tell my I'm completely and objectively right on this subjective matter". Personal prejudice ain't pretty, I know.
Otherwise, yes, I read your post on the Bioware board, and noting the positives in such an environment is admirable, but I'm not only talking about "in-game mistakes".
I mean, what else would I want them to say in their response to the outcry? "Sitting in silence" I can understand pretty well, because my initial (internal) reaction had shades of "get over yourselves", which is obviously not great PR. I'm not the kind of person who would ever expect a developer to rewrite the whole ending of a game because people didn't like it, so what response that doesn't include that would be "enough"? They all seem like they'd sound pretty pithy. Would "acknowledgement" really have sated the fans? I guess we'll never know now, but I wouldn't be too confident. Basically, I'm not convinced it's helpful to malign Bioware too much for presenting the wrong response to the fans, because I'm not sure they had a good move left at that point.
As I pointed out, they didn't fix the mistake the made in the game. There are varying degrees of what people decided was wrong with the game but the video I embedded has the clearest and most logical outline of the biggest mistake they made.
Their lie was implied; it was the unspoken statement that the game's ending, by ending I mean primarily starchild, worked as it was. They liked it and lied to themselves and the media and their fans by refusing to address the issues it created.
As I said, ME1's plot is still one huge plot hole because of the way they did the Starchild. I watched the EC's version of his discussion: this fact isn't addressed.
By saying the ending was fine and that it was the ending they wanted, they actively ignored all the posts to the contrary. They couldn't not know as the video I embedded existed before April and this subject was discussed incessently on their forums with everything from doctors to engineers to lit professors weighing in on it's validity. But instead of addressing it properly, they put a little window dressing on the scene and went about fixing some of the other, less logic based complaints (like squadmate involvement) hoping that the fanbase wouldn't care or that they could appease us enough that we'd forgive them.
There's a reason cutting out starchild works so well to fix the ending's problems; it's because his presence introduced so many. Now to be clear I'm not necessarily advocating that they should remove him, just that he needed a heck of a lot of attention to work properly.
Attention he didn't receive. Attention that, had he received it, I would be singing an entirely different tune today.
Because addressing Starchild would involve both admitting mistake and FIXING it, the two conditions I was so infuriated by when they didn't do them.
You see, I forgive, not because someone feigns sincerity in an apology but because they prove their sincerity by fixing their mistake. Break a plate, buy a new one. Steal something, pay for it.
In a creative medium, I understand that you can't always go about fixing things post release like CD Projekt Red does. It's costly and no one but VALVE, Microsoft, and CD Projekt Red are capable of doing it properly (they have alternate revenue streams).
However there was no honest apology; that would have happened much, much earlier than the April 6th blog post, a full month after release. There was no honest attempt to fix the mistake; the EC didn't hardly address the starchild, focusing instead on pre- and post- citadel cutscenes.
As a result there's no forgiveness from me.
I'm no Christian; I'm not going to turn the other cheek. I'm not going to forgive you in this life because I know you'll be judged after you die. I believe this life is it, and if you don't prove your sincerity to me then I refuse to have anything to do with you.
Life is too short to spend it around people and organizations that can't be trusted. And I'm too empathetic to let others fall into the same trap I did, so I'm going to tell them about it.
The first one, Jennifer Hale gave an outstanding speech when you first got the Normandy. The second, yes, after 421 hours played, I still get teary eyed at the end. The third? Eesh. I have to agree with the guy that stated about a flat story line. Flat and too militarized. Yes sir, no sir, I could put a bullet through you and walk away clean because of my spectre status, errrr, sir? Wait, what?
Regardless of what you might think of the Starchild, the other options would've looked something like this.
1. Shepard finds out in this game (again) that the Reapers have come from dark space every 50,000 years and wiped the galaxy clean a countless number of times. Shepard then begins to think of how many Reapers there are, puts 2 + 2 together, and figures out that there's a reason behind what they're doing. Then, you're still left with three options and without the Starchild to explain it all to you.
2. A "remember Shepard" rallying cry that went through the fleets, to every soldier on the battle field, after you had already died. Of course, this would've caused more backlash, because they would've had to cut it off right before the final solution was reached. Regardless of the voice overs. I can hear Jennifer Hale's voice now, "And that was my story... My part in this war is finished. I'm finished. etc etc etc...." The reason it would've caused even more backlash is because they didn't tell everybody's story, when all along it was Shepard's story. All the rest were just ancillary characters. Do I love the characters from Fahrenheit 451? Sure. Am I writing Ray Bradbury every single day to finish their story? Uhh, no.
3. Prolly your least favorite. They choose the ending for you. The last 20 minutes of the game is nothing but cutscenes.
I can live with the entire ST:TNG (and Data) thing about what it means to be actually human. Although, like I said, it's been done before. ME3 hit a wall waaaaay sooner than it should've. That wall was the Reapers advancing upon earth. Tell me, that if the Reapers had invaded 1/2 the way through, that you wouldn't have enjoyed seeing Harbinger on his ass? I know I would've. Instead, what do we get? A nameless Reaper sent to defend basically what is guard duty at Fort Knox (Rannoch). Awesome fight? Yeh, I guess.
Anyway, I had no real problem with the ending of ME3. Even the first one, without the EC. It was supposed to be a mystical moment. Shepard, bloody, wounded, finally meets something which she can't overtake and overwhelm. I just wanted this game to end on so much more of a philosophical note than it did. But you don't always get what you want, and in this type of game it wouldn't have worked anyway.
At any rate, that's my two cents.