28 replies to this topic

[fireside]

What are your thoughts on this?:
http://www.themarysu...ee-as-possible/

I haven't played the ME games though I know one person that does. I guess in one way, it's a compliment that people would get that riled up over a game ending, but it also seems a little weird. I think developers have created a monster with giving the player story choices in games. They seem to be taking ownership where there isn't really any. My guess is that they had all these diverging paths and a decent ending became impossible, so they tried to make the player fill in the blanks and it outraged them.

This kind of compliments my thoughts that modern games are leading people into a weird form of narcissism, where they feel everything should bend to their will. We decide what the character looks like, what happens to them, and on and on. In the old days, it was simply an obstacle course that you had to traverse. Maybe someone can write a Kinect game where they get to lay down and kick their feet and pound their fists when it doesn't go the way they want.

[Stainless]

I hate the ending of ME3

It's a "end of franchise" ending.

I hope this isn't going to ruin the game for anyone, but... you have a choice of "main character dies and a sequel could be possible", and "main character dies and no sequels are possible"

That's just bad .... well everything.

Having said that, I don't see any reason Bioware should even think about changing the ending. They spent all those months deciding on what should happen, it's their game. If they want to kill it off, it's their choice.

No point crying about it.

[TheNut]

I haven't played ME3 so I don't know what all the commotion is about. The racket however did find its way into my local news outlet, which I thought was amusing that someone would file a complaint with the FCC and BBB over the ending. You crazy Americans you

ME1 was epic IMO and the story for me ended right there and then. ME2 to me was like what the movie Matrix 2 is to Matrix 1. It had entertainment value, but it can't hold a candle to the original. Pretty much all sequels are like that though. Judging from what I read about the reactions to ME3, I still don't know why people don't just move on. Just look at the ending for ME2. The last boss? I honestly thought Arnold Schwarzenegger would have made a cameo appearance there. It was a good laugh, but a clear indication that the story grew wings and flew out the window.

[fireside]

So basically, they recognized that the only way to keep moving on a story with so many threads was to kill the main character and either start over with a new one or quit all together. It's amazing that they kept it going for 2 sequels after the first, however.

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You crazy Americans you

No kidding. I think a fairly large portion of our society has lost touch with reality. That's why I live out in the wilderness.

[Stainless]

Sorry, I just have the image of a guy with no teeth, a banjo, and a state of the art laptop sat on a porch playing deliverance.

In UK we have a different problem, the people aren't too bad, but the government has completely lost it. Oh well.

I think Mass Effect was a port of the Star Wars games, Knights of the old republic et al with a new rendering engine.

I wonder what the code will morph into next.

[TheNut]

I just watched this video and I think I understand now, and got a good laugh out of it too.

Stainless, I believe SW KOTOR used the Aurora engine, like Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age. ME series used the Unreal Engine.

[fireside]

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Sorry, I just have the image of a guy with no teeth, a banjo, and a state of the art laptop sat on a porch playing deliverance.

I think Deliverance scared a lot of people. I know it did me. Really ruined backpacking. I have my teeth, but I play the guitar and no state of the art laptop, an old desktop that has some trouble with the latest games. I don't have a porch but my house looks a little tacky, I must say. I built it myself. Going to try to do some more work on it this year. I lived in the mountains of Tennessee for a while and those hill billies are some of the nicest people you could meet. I'm currently living in Northern Wisconsin. Been here for about 30 years so I'll probably stay.

Edit: I saw the video: I think that guy is crazy and should find some sort of life beyond games. OK, my hobby is making games, but I don't want to end up like that.

[Stainless]

That's another think about the UK.

Do you know how many rules and regulations you would have to adhere to if you wanted to build your own house?

Hell you'd be a hundred before you had finished filling in the forms!

In fact you would probably have to do a Shepard and die then get some mysterious organisation regrow your body (with all your memories intact) to live long enough to dig the foundations.

.....

I'm just wondering if this is a designed controversy. Either a cynical attempt to boost sales and get free advertising, or a case of the development team has fallen out with the publisher and it's a feck you ending.

[fireside]

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Do you know how many rules and regulations you would have to adhere to if you wanted to build your own house?

It's kind of getting like that here now, too. The unions put people in that make laws to keep us from doing anything, for our own protection, of course. Wouldn't want us to hurt ourselves. Better that we spend our lives in debt. When I built mine they didn't have anything like that, luckily, because I'm not the best carpenter, or electrician. I know how to make it work, but it's not very pretty. They don't bother people much if you live far enough in the country though. I know someone that's living in a 10X10 shack. It's not approved living, but no one says anything. I wouldn't get along in the city with people out measuring my grass length and whatnot.

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I'm just wondering if this is a designed controversy.

I think the lead story guy at Bioware quit recently. I wonder if it was over that? You do get in situations where the publisher wants something out way too early and they don't care if it's crap.

[slashandz]

My thoughts.

But I guess we'll see when the 'extended ending' DLC comes out in summer!

[Stainless]

Hmmmm you are writing as if there will be a ME4.

I don't think that's possible, unless it's set prior to the events of ME3.

ME3 feels to me as a "so long and thanks for all the fish" release.

[Nautilus]

Do you know what I find most interesting in all this?
It's gone planetary. The whole world is annoyed (to use a gentle word) at BW/EA for this. It has become huge. And even people who have never played a ME game have come to hear of it in enough detail to make their own (and negative) opinion about it.

They (BW/EA) will do something about it, or it'll have repercussions on what next big/epic/multi_installments title they plan to release. Not that I'd enjoy the downfall of anybody, but it's about time that something like this happened. It's a step forward (however small) to begin the reversal of the bad trend that so many developers and publishers have embraced.

The next time a developer will caress the idea of "screwing up" (<-- can't find a better term, sorry) on their fan base, they'll pause and think seriously about it, knowing what they risk. Lots of dissatisfied people are holding back and not expressing their dissatisfaction with ME3's endings, because they think that -once again- no amount of complains shall bring a change (and honestly: did it ever?)
But this time is different. It's out of scale, out of control, already. It is setting an example.
The next time something like this happens, a lot more people than now will make their voice heard, and it shall be reputation/financial loss for whoever's enblazoned name is the target of it.

I'm sure that BW will get out of this displeasing accident in one piece. This time. I'm also sure there won't be a next, or there won't be another BW-made game after it.
Specifically about the ME franchise, now, people have payd real money for the game. And they dedicated their time to it. And they've grown fond of it, its story, its characters. They had expectations (solidly based on what they were given in the previous 2 titles)... It is an investment they made.
It's all a videogame, yes, pure virtual entertainment. But the money/time/emotions/expectations investment part of it is as real as it gets. You can't stomp over that, pretend you don't care, stating that it's only *your* call to decide. Facts at hand that's not how it works, or we wouldn't be having this (planetary) fuss now.

[fireside]

I personally find the whole thing humorous and one more sign that the world is going insane. Then again, I didn't play it. I always laugh when people get upset about these kind of things. I think what they are doing borders on the impossible as far as letting people believe they are creating their own story. It finally caught up with them. How many diverging paths can they write? It's ridiculous really, and the more they actually deliver, the more people will demand. There are tens of thousands of voice acted lines in these games. It's like a hundred movies and it's not enough and people are pissed off. It's Bioware's fault for creating too good an illusion and making people believe it. Now it's spun out of control. It's like a pyramid scheme. There just aren't enough lines, and eventually there won't be enough actors to read them.

[alphadog]

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I always laugh when people get upset about these kind of things.

I see. Let's all be apathetic and let the world f**k us over in big AND small ways.

I say to those complaining that they have a valid complaint, and they should be heard. If Bioware wants to live by the detail sword, they open themselves up to die by it too, don't they?

If you want a free market, how will things correct themselves in laissez-fairy land if you aren't allowed to raise your voice in complaint?

[fireside]

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If you want a free market, how will things correct themselves in laissez-fairy land if you aren't allowed to raise your voice in complaint?

We obviously don't have to worry about that. What we have to worry about is the insatiable monster they created, or rather, what they have to worry about. Hats off to them for what they did, but I think they just found out that too many sequels = impossible to control branching.

[Stainless]

The issue of the number of required lines for the voice actors is a purely technical one. At the moment voice acting has to be done in a studio with a microphone. It's not going to be long before voice synth's get good enough for this not to be an issue any more. Hell I came close ten years ago. I got Janet Jackson to record a bunch of test phrases, parsed it into a voice print, then generated a load of spoken sentences.

Almost worked, they sounded a lot like Michael Jackson.

If I was doing that ten years ago, with no hardware acceleration, won't be too long before someone realises there is a market for this as middle ware and gets stuck in.

So maybe you could say "Bioware were too ambitious for the current state of the technology".

I don't think that though, I think they realised that they couldn't afford to support the development of the game that ME3 should have been. I think they reached the limit of what their current design could handle, and decided to kill it off.

Now I personally think that was a very bad idea, but it's their game. They can do what they want with it.

[fireside]

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It's not going to be long before voice synth's get good enough for this not to be an issue any more.

It will be a very long time before that happens, if ever. I think if you've made amateur games and gotten friends or whatever to do the lines, you know what bad acting really is. Not very many of us humans can even do it. For a computer to invoke emotions in speech is a long stretch.

[TheNut]

When it comes to voice acting, I think Skyrim takes the spotlight. It's quite often a debated issue amongst gamers, but they don't lambast the game over it. In fact one of the constantly repeated lines in the game has become an Internet meme and even made its way into a TV show (NCIS).

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I think if you've made amateur games and gotten friends or whatever to do the lines, you know what bad acting really is.

Nah, just a bunch of friends that horse around I don't think voice acting is that complicated though, it just takes a passion for doing it right without feeling embarrassed for acting it out (who wants to yell with neighbours listening?). I'm no pro, but I can mimic a lot of the voices from Warcraft II units and often do it to lighten the mood at work. I'm sure most could do a good job given the right atmosphere.

On topic, it looks like all the complaining paid off as there is work in progress for a DLC this summer to fix up the ending somehow. Wonder if this will set the mindset for future games. The beginnings of a gamers union.

[alphadog]

fireside, on 19 April 2012 - 08:17 PM, said:

We obviously don't have to worry about that. What we have to worry about is the insatiable monster they created, or rather, what they have to worry about. Hats off to them for what they did, but I think they just found out that too many sequels = impossible to control branching.

I think that's hyperbole in the opposite direction. ME1 and ME2 had a decent system to create a good amount of relevant alternate endings. Explain to me why they couldn't redo what they already did twice before? IOW, if it truly is a "monster" of a job, they already killed it twice. I don't think people wanted an order of magnitude more endings. They just wanted variety that made sense like the previous ones... especially when being actively sold on that bill of goods.

[fireside]

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Explain to me why they couldn't redo what they already did twice before?

Because you are loading in a character which has accumulated experiences from the previous game, that makes each game more divergent from the one prior.