![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaI played Mass Effect 3. Most of the world seems to hate the ending. On the wrong side of a technocalypse featuring Tricia Helfer as a robot yet again, I adored it.
This post will detail some of why, although I don't intend to get into a detailed rebuttal of the criticisms of the ending and its apparent tonal and logical diversions from what came before - I may do so at some point, when I want to actually discuss what I thought the game and the ending was about, but this is actually more of a post about artistic intention, the purpose of authorship in a shared world, and how the meaning of an ending can vary depending on the experience of the story. A lot of these thoughts relate to my experience of hating the end of Battlestar Galactica so much I created an alternate fan-edit of the last half-season titled Battlestar Redactica. Obviously that makes for a fairly large and ironic counterpoint to my current position. ;)
Broad spoilers follow.
It makes me wonder how I would have reacted if there'd been a large fan movement to change the BSG ending. I...don't think I would have wanted that, I don't know. I don't think that it's unprecedented to change the end of a story (in recent times I'd point to Neon Genesis Evangelion as an example), perhaps even partially based on critical response (though I would prefer that response to be more measured than an announcement mere weeks after the fact). But I also have deep reservations about this sort of thing for both reasons of artistic integrity and also because I don't want an era of gaming where you get free "basic" endings and then have to pay for the better ones as DLC.
I guess I also find it enlightening how quickly fans will praise the prospect of video games as art when it's in their interests or provides those games with critical acclaim, and then revert to demanding they be treated as purely products when they don't get what they want. I see a lot of people dismissing the notion that it's "art" by saying it's "bad art" and that shouldn't render it immune to criticism, which is true. Whether or not it's art, it stands in the public domain and is open to any and all criticisms, and whether or not it's art, the producer is under no obligation to change it; despite certain insistences it was not sold under false advertising. The art issue really only relates to the reasons Bioware might elect not to change some or all of the ending. "It would be too expensive," or "our research indicates the majority do not want it changed," would be product-based reasons for sticking with the endings. "This was always the story we wanted to tell," would be an artistic one.
But to get back on track, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the end of BSG and how its ending is...sort of similar to ONE of the possible endings in ME3, while the ending I chose was closer to what I would have WANTED for BSG and...well, combined with lots of reviewers saying things like the journey is more important than the destination, I've been thinking about that. I don't actually agree that the journey is more important, but I think that the journey contextualises the destination. What the destination - what the end of the story means - will change depending on one's experience of the journey.
Battlestar Redactica was always meant to be an exercise in practical criticism, probably even above and beyond the way it was an attempt to give myself some narrative piece of mind as a visual form of "fix-it" fan fiction. It was intended to bring out the aspects of the show I was watching all along to see if they were still there, to show how my subjective show would have looked - of course also intending to show that that version of the show made more sense for I am nothing if not passionate about my opinions... ;)
But I think it's interesting to look at Redactica as perhaps a way of restoring, or rather, introducing, the fluidity of the journey experience - a way of demonstrating how the experience of the journey can cause the destination to signify different things, and why, from my perspective, the end of BSG was so radically lacking.
On the one hand, thinking this way makes me more sympathetic to those who felt their ME3 destination signified nothing in the context of their journey.
However, I also think the reason why I was so satisfied with the ending, and so surprised so many hated it, was because rather than "only three choices!" I saw a spectrum of responses, literally coded to thesis, antithesis and synthesis, that allowed any Shepard I could think of to pick an ending in line with her moral code and conscience. It wasn't an easy choice, no, but...it was a choice nonetheless. And I'm fairly sure that choosing even the same option means very different things depending on how you get there. I feel these options offered a fairly robust way of avoiding that destination/journey discord. Because it cannot literally be completely open-ended, choices have to be programmed, at a certain point, the breadth of choice will be an illusion. Perhaps that's why it's the journey that's powerful: the largest beats of the story will always be set, to some degree, and it's the way we get to them that allows us to claim variable meanings in those same moments?
Do you choose the Control ending because it's the only way to save everyone without forcing an unchosen evolutionary path on them? Or do you choose it because you think that in the future you may have to, however unfortunately, use the Reapers to maintain order when a synthetic-organic conflict arises? Do you do it purely because you cannot bring yourself to kill your synthetic friends? Do you choose synthesis because you want to save everyone and fundamentally break the cycle, or because you want to elevate organics over their enemies? Do you choose to destroy the Reapers because the Geth are a fair price for achieving your goal, do you do it because the goal is all important regardless of context, or is it because you think all synthetic life needs to be destroyed because the Reapers and the Citadel AI are themselves examples of the dangers of synthetic life and their "solution" no less barbaric than the conflict they purport to be preventing? Why did you come to these conclusions? How? Did the story you played through in ME1, 2 and 3 influence your choice and opinion, either by confirming or complexifying what you would have done all along, or by changing your mind?
I suppose one of the things that I'm most intrigued and a little saddened by is the insistence that there was a lack of choice and/or that it had nothing to do with your previous decisions, when this is actually in keeping with previous games and if anything offers more choice and a more significant one. At the end of ME1, you fight Saren. You get no choice. You can choose to save or abandon the Council, but this ultimately has minimal in-game effect and your choice is NOT dictated by any of your previous actions (renegades can save the Council, and paragons can abandon them). At the end of ME2, you destroy the proto-Reaper, you have no choice. You can choose whether to save or destroy the Collector base, but again, this has minimal in-game effect later and is not tied to your renegade/paragon status or previous game choices. This is where it gets interesting though, because you see a lot of the consequences of your previous in-game choices during the ending when you see who lives or dies, partially based on how you treated them throughout the game. This makes it feel like your choices are all coming home to roost dramatically in the end sequence. By that standard, I can see why the ending to ME3 would feel less momentous, but the entirety of ME3 is about the consequences of your previous choices. It's like one gigantic suicide mission. Every set piece and sequence, nearly, has people or entire races who will live or die based on what you did in previous games. You cannot save both Mordin and Wrex. It is very hard to save both the Quarians and the Geth - and completely impossible if you made a huge number of specific choices in ME2. Most of the ME2 characters you meet along the way have the option to be killed based on things you did or didn't do either in this game or the last. I got Kelly Chambers killed in ME3 because I chose to be kind and not remind her of the harsh realities of running from Cerberus. I saved Conrad Verner because I took the time to do a completely (at the time) unrelated sidequest in a different game. I didn't meet her in person, but by reading news updates, I discovered that a minor Asari character I gave a second-chance in ME1 & 2 actually went on to do some terrible stuff and maybe it would have been better for the galaxy if I'd killed her when I had the chance. Saving every last damn colonist from the Thorian in ME1 and then getting medical help for them in ME2 meant that they showed up on my War Asset list and I got to hear a radio bulletin about them, even if I didn't meet them personally, because their subtle telepathy rendered them a more cohesive combat unit. In enormous set pieces with huge cut scenes, in shorter in-game encounters, and in detailed text-only and background material, my choices were reflected back at me.
So then, at the end, once again, you are presented with a choice (trinary rather than binary this time) that is available in its entirety to all characters regardless of previous play choices - the same as games 1 and 2 - and this time with a genuine, undeniable impact on the universe. And we go back to my earlier points about the experience of the journey making the endings mean something different to each character. This is...in narrative terms, more an epilogue than a climax: this is the opportunity to contextualise the journey of your Shepard in retrospect?
If I were being uncharitable, I'd say that some gamers don't appreciate having to use their experience of playing the whole of ME3, of everyone they've seen live or die due to their decisions, as something that informs their choice at this point. Because Shepard doesn't make a speech about her perspective, and because the game doesn't actively lock you out of options, because the roleplaying is down to you it's seen as lesser?
If I'm being charitable, I'll agree it's a shame that the end animations weren't more diverse (though I do think people confuse the fact the animation of the Crucible firing being very similar with the idea that all the choices are themselves similar). I think the most likely thing Bioware will do, now that they've announced their intention to do something, will be to add epilogues, and I would be largely okay with that. If I'm being arty and pretentious, I do think that there's something appropriate about not allowing gamers to ever verify that they made the right choice - because Shepard would never know. Forcing you to make a gamble on the future of the universe never knowing if it was the right call so you can go back and replay it again and get the "good" ending? But I also think that argument could legitimately be called pretentious bollocks and I'd believe it if someone told me they ran out of cash and time and that's why the animations are similar.
I do think, though, that if the ending had simply been to destroy the Reapers, we'd get a lot less discussion about choices mattering, because we would be focusing on where we knew all those characters we interacted with would end up, based on seeing them again throughout ME3, rather than on the uncertainty of their position in a universe our Shepard just fundamentally altered. Despite being okay with more detailed epilogues in principle, I do hope they don't destroy the mystery - the sense of scope and newness, the impossible uncertainty about the meaning of what Shepard just did, because I think there's something powerful in that.
And anyway...there's what I think about that.
This post brought to you with many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nightxade for letting me bounce most of these ideas off her in email form. ♥
This post will detail some of why, although I don't intend to get into a detailed rebuttal of the criticisms of the ending and its apparent tonal and logical diversions from what came before - I may do so at some point, when I want to actually discuss what I thought the game and the ending was about, but this is actually more of a post about artistic intention, the purpose of authorship in a shared world, and how the meaning of an ending can vary depending on the experience of the story. A lot of these thoughts relate to my experience of hating the end of Battlestar Galactica so much I created an alternate fan-edit of the last half-season titled Battlestar Redactica. Obviously that makes for a fairly large and ironic counterpoint to my current position. ;)
Broad spoilers follow.
It makes me wonder how I would have reacted if there'd been a large fan movement to change the BSG ending. I...don't think I would have wanted that, I don't know. I don't think that it's unprecedented to change the end of a story (in recent times I'd point to Neon Genesis Evangelion as an example), perhaps even partially based on critical response (though I would prefer that response to be more measured than an announcement mere weeks after the fact). But I also have deep reservations about this sort of thing for both reasons of artistic integrity and also because I don't want an era of gaming where you get free "basic" endings and then have to pay for the better ones as DLC.
I guess I also find it enlightening how quickly fans will praise the prospect of video games as art when it's in their interests or provides those games with critical acclaim, and then revert to demanding they be treated as purely products when they don't get what they want. I see a lot of people dismissing the notion that it's "art" by saying it's "bad art" and that shouldn't render it immune to criticism, which is true. Whether or not it's art, it stands in the public domain and is open to any and all criticisms, and whether or not it's art, the producer is under no obligation to change it; despite certain insistences it was not sold under false advertising. The art issue really only relates to the reasons Bioware might elect not to change some or all of the ending. "It would be too expensive," or "our research indicates the majority do not want it changed," would be product-based reasons for sticking with the endings. "This was always the story we wanted to tell," would be an artistic one.
But to get back on track, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the end of BSG and how its ending is...sort of similar to ONE of the possible endings in ME3, while the ending I chose was closer to what I would have WANTED for BSG and...well, combined with lots of reviewers saying things like the journey is more important than the destination, I've been thinking about that. I don't actually agree that the journey is more important, but I think that the journey contextualises the destination. What the destination - what the end of the story means - will change depending on one's experience of the journey.
Battlestar Redactica was always meant to be an exercise in practical criticism, probably even above and beyond the way it was an attempt to give myself some narrative piece of mind as a visual form of "fix-it" fan fiction. It was intended to bring out the aspects of the show I was watching all along to see if they were still there, to show how my subjective show would have looked - of course also intending to show that that version of the show made more sense for I am nothing if not passionate about my opinions... ;)
But I think it's interesting to look at Redactica as perhaps a way of restoring, or rather, introducing, the fluidity of the journey experience - a way of demonstrating how the experience of the journey can cause the destination to signify different things, and why, from my perspective, the end of BSG was so radically lacking.
On the one hand, thinking this way makes me more sympathetic to those who felt their ME3 destination signified nothing in the context of their journey.
However, I also think the reason why I was so satisfied with the ending, and so surprised so many hated it, was because rather than "only three choices!" I saw a spectrum of responses, literally coded to thesis, antithesis and synthesis, that allowed any Shepard I could think of to pick an ending in line with her moral code and conscience. It wasn't an easy choice, no, but...it was a choice nonetheless. And I'm fairly sure that choosing even the same option means very different things depending on how you get there. I feel these options offered a fairly robust way of avoiding that destination/journey discord. Because it cannot literally be completely open-ended, choices have to be programmed, at a certain point, the breadth of choice will be an illusion. Perhaps that's why it's the journey that's powerful: the largest beats of the story will always be set, to some degree, and it's the way we get to them that allows us to claim variable meanings in those same moments?
Do you choose the Control ending because it's the only way to save everyone without forcing an unchosen evolutionary path on them? Or do you choose it because you think that in the future you may have to, however unfortunately, use the Reapers to maintain order when a synthetic-organic conflict arises? Do you do it purely because you cannot bring yourself to kill your synthetic friends? Do you choose synthesis because you want to save everyone and fundamentally break the cycle, or because you want to elevate organics over their enemies? Do you choose to destroy the Reapers because the Geth are a fair price for achieving your goal, do you do it because the goal is all important regardless of context, or is it because you think all synthetic life needs to be destroyed because the Reapers and the Citadel AI are themselves examples of the dangers of synthetic life and their "solution" no less barbaric than the conflict they purport to be preventing? Why did you come to these conclusions? How? Did the story you played through in ME1, 2 and 3 influence your choice and opinion, either by confirming or complexifying what you would have done all along, or by changing your mind?
I suppose one of the things that I'm most intrigued and a little saddened by is the insistence that there was a lack of choice and/or that it had nothing to do with your previous decisions, when this is actually in keeping with previous games and if anything offers more choice and a more significant one. At the end of ME1, you fight Saren. You get no choice. You can choose to save or abandon the Council, but this ultimately has minimal in-game effect and your choice is NOT dictated by any of your previous actions (renegades can save the Council, and paragons can abandon them). At the end of ME2, you destroy the proto-Reaper, you have no choice. You can choose whether to save or destroy the Collector base, but again, this has minimal in-game effect later and is not tied to your renegade/paragon status or previous game choices. This is where it gets interesting though, because you see a lot of the consequences of your previous in-game choices during the ending when you see who lives or dies, partially based on how you treated them throughout the game. This makes it feel like your choices are all coming home to roost dramatically in the end sequence. By that standard, I can see why the ending to ME3 would feel less momentous, but the entirety of ME3 is about the consequences of your previous choices. It's like one gigantic suicide mission. Every set piece and sequence, nearly, has people or entire races who will live or die based on what you did in previous games. You cannot save both Mordin and Wrex. It is very hard to save both the Quarians and the Geth - and completely impossible if you made a huge number of specific choices in ME2. Most of the ME2 characters you meet along the way have the option to be killed based on things you did or didn't do either in this game or the last. I got Kelly Chambers killed in ME3 because I chose to be kind and not remind her of the harsh realities of running from Cerberus. I saved Conrad Verner because I took the time to do a completely (at the time) unrelated sidequest in a different game. I didn't meet her in person, but by reading news updates, I discovered that a minor Asari character I gave a second-chance in ME1 & 2 actually went on to do some terrible stuff and maybe it would have been better for the galaxy if I'd killed her when I had the chance. Saving every last damn colonist from the Thorian in ME1 and then getting medical help for them in ME2 meant that they showed up on my War Asset list and I got to hear a radio bulletin about them, even if I didn't meet them personally, because their subtle telepathy rendered them a more cohesive combat unit. In enormous set pieces with huge cut scenes, in shorter in-game encounters, and in detailed text-only and background material, my choices were reflected back at me.
So then, at the end, once again, you are presented with a choice (trinary rather than binary this time) that is available in its entirety to all characters regardless of previous play choices - the same as games 1 and 2 - and this time with a genuine, undeniable impact on the universe. And we go back to my earlier points about the experience of the journey making the endings mean something different to each character. This is...in narrative terms, more an epilogue than a climax: this is the opportunity to contextualise the journey of your Shepard in retrospect?
If I were being uncharitable, I'd say that some gamers don't appreciate having to use their experience of playing the whole of ME3, of everyone they've seen live or die due to their decisions, as something that informs their choice at this point. Because Shepard doesn't make a speech about her perspective, and because the game doesn't actively lock you out of options, because the roleplaying is down to you it's seen as lesser?
If I'm being charitable, I'll agree it's a shame that the end animations weren't more diverse (though I do think people confuse the fact the animation of the Crucible firing being very similar with the idea that all the choices are themselves similar). I think the most likely thing Bioware will do, now that they've announced their intention to do something, will be to add epilogues, and I would be largely okay with that. If I'm being arty and pretentious, I do think that there's something appropriate about not allowing gamers to ever verify that they made the right choice - because Shepard would never know. Forcing you to make a gamble on the future of the universe never knowing if it was the right call so you can go back and replay it again and get the "good" ending? But I also think that argument could legitimately be called pretentious bollocks and I'd believe it if someone told me they ran out of cash and time and that's why the animations are similar.
I do think, though, that if the ending had simply been to destroy the Reapers, we'd get a lot less discussion about choices mattering, because we would be focusing on where we knew all those characters we interacted with would end up, based on seeing them again throughout ME3, rather than on the uncertainty of their position in a universe our Shepard just fundamentally altered. Despite being okay with more detailed epilogues in principle, I do hope they don't destroy the mystery - the sense of scope and newness, the impossible uncertainty about the meaning of what Shepard just did, because I think there's something powerful in that.
And anyway...there's what I think about that.
This post brought to you with many thanks to
nightxade for letting me bounce most of these ideas off her in email form. ♥
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 11:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 10:27 pm (UTC)And I never abandon. I still lurk here and am still trying to pull you over to the dark fun side. :P
no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 11:11 pm (UTC)Uhm. I mean. HI WEMDU!
no subject
Date: 2012-03-24 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 07:08 pm (UTC)Apparently the ending has been soooooo contentious for so many people that Bioware have now agreed to produce some more Dlc specifically to adress that, and give people more closure I guess.
What I can say is I'm absolutely loving ME3 so far, and I think the multiplayer is great fun too!
no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 08:21 pm (UTC)The Bioware thing is frustratingly ambiguous because I read it as saying they were going to explain more around the endings? But then it's being reported all over the place as them releasing actual new alternate endings even though as far as I can see they never suggested that? Gah. I hope it's just extra information not new endings anyway. :/
I didn't play any multiplayer! I'm scared of multiplayer...
no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-24 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-03 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-24 04:30 am (UTC)THE IMPORTANT THING IS YOUR ENDING DIDN'T HURT TRICIA, RIGHT?
no subject
Date: 2012-03-24 07:50 pm (UTC)Seriously, the poor woman is typecast, but I cannot bring myself to complain... (They clearly modeled the robot's face on hers, especially in profile it's hella obvious).
That's awesome that you found the entry interesting even though you've never played ME though. It's...just so interesting and confusing and frankly challenging to think about given my divergent positions on things in the past. I'm glad it makes sense. I feel...pretty strongly about it I guess and it's nice to be able to know what I wrote on it is cohesive.
The more I think about it, the more I feel that I understand how subjective experience of a narrative can really screw with how you react to the singular resolution of a narrative, but as you say, in this case, you have three pretty wildly different choices, so I'm surprised as many people found that hard to cope with.
I think, ultimately, the problem might be that the difference in the narrative largely pertains to the overarching, cerebral themes of the story rather than the immediate situation that befalls the protagonist and her companions; in that instance, you're pretty much locked into making some kind of heroic sacrifice, even if in some endings it's implied it's not total death.
Sure there are plothole arguments around that but I think a lot of them would have been discounted or forgiven if that personal aspect had been...kinder. I don't know. I don't want to paint everyone who disliked it with the same brush; I know there are complex shades of opinion represented there, but I can't help but feel that more than would like to admit it really do take issue with the contemplative, sacrificial tone and the fact there's no option for something more out-and-out uplifting, even if that still involved Shepard's death.
Anyway, thanks for the comment - at this point I will totally jump on people who haven't played it taking my side and telling me it sounded complex and awesome because I really think it was. ♥
no subject
Date: 2012-04-03 02:44 pm (UTC)It really is an experience and... you just have to see for yourself. There are logistical issues with the end (and all the way through), but I blame that on time constraints and poor business and marketing. But when you keep an open mind and ... oh hell just play it! <3
no subject
Date: 2012-03-26 02:12 am (UTC)BUT! I thought you would want to know that I had decided not to play the games seeing everyone posting about the fail of the ending, but this sort of put it back on my list of things I need to play. ESPECIALLY given the BSG comparision you made, because I am 80% sure that minus the race/gender/ableist fail (which is a huge issue, yes, but things that exist in probably everything I have ever liked, sigh), I would have been okay with the BSG ending IF the narrative had presented it to me as a TRAGIC ending rather than a happy one. Because the ending itself is about erasing everything I loved about the show, and if the show sees that as a TRAGEDY, it can still work for me on some level? But to present that atrocity as the perfect solution to everything? Just...no.
Another thing that I had forgotten and this reminded me of is that as season 4 progressed, I increasingly found myself wishing for an...open-ended ending for the series. Something that left things vague and open to various interpretations, instead of feeling the NEED to kill any speculation by attempting to tie everything up neatly in a package that's ultimately empty of ANY meaning previously presented by or read into the text.
Which is all to say that it's very likely that all the things fandom is complaining about when it comes to the Mass Effect ending might very well end up being the things that make me like it. Plus, like you said, there's an element of CHOICE there, which, really, is all I wanted out of BSG's ending, that it would leave the story in a place where all the wonderfully complex discussions about Cylons, humans, existentialism, etc would still be things I could engage in with fans, where I could read my own meaning into it. Throughout BSG, I often found myself at odds with the general fandom interpretation of things, but I never felt like any of those views were invalid? But the ending just sort of killed any desire I had to explore any of those themes by giving everything that had come before a single meaning/reading, and apparently, the only thing I *am* interested in talking about BSG now is how much it FAILED me. ;) /bitter.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-26 05:55 pm (UTC)Like you, I find there is very little I can say about BSG now that doesn't swiftly pull me towards anger and bitterness, and like you I agree, I would not necessarily have been happy with it, but I would have been SO MUCH more capable of continuing to engage with it if they just hadn't inflicted what I felt was such a tonal backlash on my brain.
I'd hesitate to say that the ME3 ending is designed to make you think the ending is tragic, because I think that's not necessarily true in all cases, but then the various endings have different implications, some of which are darker than others. My personal experience, for instance, is that the ending where you bascially destroy all synthetic life, comes across as much more tragic by design - much more about the brutal, pointless cost of victory than the fact you actually won, whereas the ending where you unleash the power of the relays to rewrite the DNA of the galaxy to include synthetic attributes, feels much more full of the possibilities (the joyful and the terrifying) of what might happen next than reflection on the price you just paid.
And I guess ultimately that's probably where I (and maybe you?) differ from the majority. I see an officially released producer's notepad with brainstorming on the ending, and see "lots of speculation for everyone!" underlined and think, "how wonderful!" Seems most other people see that and think, "What? You don't even know what's true?!"
I think the other huge difference is that I played these games with a very strong love of its scifi transhumanist thematics, which is really the heart of the final question you are presented with, and I think either went over the head of a lot of players, or took second seat to space adventures. Which is perfectly fair; if Bioware failed to convey their primary thematic interest to the players, it's fair to call them out on it. But...it does explain why I loved the ending a lot more than most. It was all about the bit of the series I liked.
In addition, I think I was expecting a Kaidan/Ashley scenario for the ending and a lot of other people were expecting the ME2 suicide mission where having someone die probably meant you screwed up something along the way.
And again, they may have been right to expect that, it might just be...luck of the draw my brain works differently. But I would definitely say that the ending feels open to me if we're talking about its thematics and its longreaching implications.
In any event, I really enjoyed reading this about the ending and I think it also does a good job of reflecting my feelings on it:
http://kotaku.com/5892074/why-mass-effect-3s-ending-doesnt-need-changing-spoilers
If you play it, let me know what you think!
no subject
Date: 2012-04-08 10:40 pm (UTC)It does make sense that YOU loved it, given your background in transformative fandom, while fanboys from affirmative fandom hated it.
I would have been okay with the BSG ending IF the narrative had presented it to me as a TRAGIC ending rather than a happy one.
Tangent: we did finally find a friend who can be excepted from the "we can only be friends with people who hated the BSG ending" rule. It's because he read is as tragic, complete with "all the goddesses must die" conventions drawn from Greek tragedy. Which I'm sure gives RDM waaaaaay too much credit, but is appealing as fanwank.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-09 01:07 am (UTC)So I think that when people complain about lack of choice, what they are really complaining about is lack of personalisation. Because ME3 basically spends the entire game showing you the results of your choices from the previous two games, but it sort of ties everything up, shows you all the consequences, THEN sends you off to decide the fate of the galaxy in a much less personalised showdown.
And I think this leads to the other issue people had when they complain that the endings are unacceptable. They don't feel connected to them and - and I feel horrible generalising, but it's hard to make a point without it so here I go - because people were expecting to be led by the hand and be told what their final choice meant rather than being asked to determine it for themselves. And so instead of seeing that their choice could have infinite meaning, they took away that their choice had no meaning. Instead of seeing it as giving ultimate control of the message and the game to you, the player, now as partial author, they saw it as laziness - as a meaningless ending passed off as art. They took the notion of "partial author" and assumed that meant they should be the dictators of events rather than the meaning of those events.
I finally found a few interviews and articles on games sites that didn't hate it and one of the most interesting things I read was about the reasons people chose the various endings, and it made it clear quite how personal, and in fact, how MUCH the player's previous choices affected what they chose, even if those words didn't come up on the screen as a dialogue choice.
One person felt they had to choose the synthesis ending because his favourite character died when he failed to make peace between robots and people and he felt if he chose any other ending, then that character would have died for nothing. Another felt he had to adopt a scorched earth policy and kill all synthetic life, including but not limited to the bad guys, because he'd sacrificed so much, so brutally, to get to this point, failing to commit fully now would be a disservice to the dead.
THAT I think is the ultimate take away. You CAN'T program an infinity of meanings and responses for each player, but narrative personalisation is the selling point of the game. ME3 tried to solve that by asking the player to read meaning into the game's events, and players responded with accusations of laziness.
Finally! Re: BSG! That...is a terribly appealing alternate reading. I genuinely wish that I could banish my ugly opinions of RDM's intentions enough to enjoy it on that alternate level. I just...don't think I can. I'm just too upset by what I think RDM was actually saying (through subconscious thoughtlessness) to entertain other ideas without feeling I'm excusing him somehow. Which is an attitude I really wish I could get past given that I'd like to believe in the theory of the author being dead, except it's kind of hard when the author is all over the internet. ;)