"I'd say it must be irritating to get such a lackluster preview of the anime movie, but I imagine most Mass Effect fans are pretty used to disappointment by now."
Burn.
It's a video, sure, but it's mostly a collection of character designs, sketches, and backgrounds for the straight-to-DVD-n'-Blu-ray anime movie called Paragon Lost, which comes out this summer. I'd say it must be irritating to get such a lackluster preview of the anime movie, but I imagine most Mass Effect fans are pretty used to disappointment by now. (Via Comics Alliance)
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46 comments
This looks like shit. What's with the stupid "Forever Normandy" badges too? The Normandy was either being retrofitted by engineers when Shepard is on house arrest, or doing whatever you do in ME3. Sounds like this is gonna do something ultra-contrived to explain that away so Vega can be made up like he's got a connection to the normandy.
Still can't believe they're using James Vega as the main focus, to me he was arguably one of the worst characters in the series...
"but I imagine most Mass Effect fans are pretty used to disappointment by now."
Yes, because the ending completely undid all the fun and engaging experiences I had during all 3 games. Oh wait, no it didn't.
It wasn't so much that the ending was bad, it's just that all 3 main endings were pretty much the same, would of been nice for a bit more variety and closure for me. Like the 3 ideas about :SPOILER:Killing, merging or controlling,:SPOILER: it's just that no matter what you chose everything seemed to end the same.
The point is that people are letting the last fifteen minutes ruin the 100+ hours of the rest of the games.
ARGH WHY WOULD YOU REMIND ME OF THE ENDING!?
Still, the art looks decent, though it seems a little too colorful for Mass Effect.
Man, when someone does a Red Letter Media styled funny mechanics review of an ending, you know you've done something so very wrong for something very awesome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
That was interesting - thanks for sharingIt illustrates what I've said - the ending is an example of lazy poorly thought out writing
Lemme guess. The ending's going to be in shades of either red, blue, or green, isn't it?
It comes with special red, blue and green celophane sheets you can put over your tv for different endings!
In a series of deep and beloved characters they focus on the blandest, least liked one. How about and anthology? A short film about Garuss's time as archangle, a short film about Mordin when he was in the STG, a short film about Miranda and Jacob as Cerberus agents, Thane as a hit man, Samara doing Justicar stuff, there are so much better options then just meat head Vega.
Well, maybe they thought Vega was the character who could most benefit from some fleshing out through a movie? But yeah, he was certainly the least interesting to me based on the games, and an Animatrix-esque anthology sounds more interesting.
Good point. Maybe Vega was the only character Bioware said they could do anything they wanted with?
The Mass Effect series is one of the best game series of this console generation, and has provided players with dozens of hours of compelling, low-cost entertainment. The last 5 percent of the final game isn't what people expected, and everybody loses their shit and whines like a bunch of self-entitleed bitches all over the internet.
The ending was not that bad, and even if it was, who cares? Grow the hell up.
It just occurred to me today that maybe the people complaining about the end are pegging the start of the "end" too late. If you consider the "end" to be your final choice about the reapers and the following cut scene, then your choices don't really matter much in your ending. If you consider your ending to be at the start of the assault on the Cerberus base, or maybe even earlier, then your choices matter a lot more, and you'd see a lot more variation between different play throughs.
Agreed to a point, but the issue I had with the ending 5 minutes was that all other choices I made in the past three games were pointless as everyone ends up screwed in the end.
Also I found the ending to be really poorly written, not just the three choices which mean really the same thing, but they fact that the ending video was disjointed, did not connect to what came before and went for the old "You decide what happens now" style ending. It tried to give a tragic ending to a saga, which is fine if you stick to guns with that, however alot of the tragegy of the ending seems to come from the writer ignoring plot points already set. I honestly belive the writer didn't think what the effect of your choices would have on the game world at large. I also have a horrible feeling that the Normandy fleeing was added on because they thought it was a bit of a downer ending and that would be the cheery spot for the piece, it stinks of marketing interference in the worst way.
Okay, I agree with that, and thats also what I feel bioware has done, left it open for more stories to be told. Having Shepard die was something which I felt was going to happen going into ME3, and I think its fitting.
But its not valid choice to leave an unclear ending for what is supposed to be the end of the saga, good story telling needs a resoloution, defeating the reapers is part of it, the sucess or failure of your actions taken during your journey is the second.
Ina story where the protagonist dies you want to see that their death matters and affects the characters around them. We save our crew from the reapers, but do we leave them for a fate worse than death, war with each other for scraps of food and supplies, being vaporised by the exploding mass relays, or do they work together because you were such a good leader, do they untiy and create new mass relays?
You can't end a saga with what ifs as large as that, it gives no closure to the emtional investment the reader (player) has put in.
Well until the spin offs start arriving and we pay out the arse for answers... but they wouldn't do that would they? :p
I actually like that there are lots of unanswered questions, and I think it's a totally valid choice for Bioware to have made. What happened to the fleets around Earth with no ME Relays? That's a really interesting opportunity for another story that could have nothing to do with Shepard, whose story was about stopping the Reaper threat. Having Shepard die, or try to sacrifice himself, to save the galaxy is a totally good ending. It's enough that the races of the galaxy are safe from the Reapers. Does killing the reapers mean we're bound to repeat our mistakes? Who knows? That's the future. Shepard made his choice, and at least temporarily saved all organic life. How things proceed depends on the choices of billions of other people.
Yeah I was referencing the mass relays, its mentioned in the previous games (1 I think) that travel between systems would take decades, the travel we see is through clusters (systems connected together in a nebula ) The distance between Krogan space and Sol space for example is hundreds of light years, even with the advanced ftl drives it would take decades.
I agree that the choices in part 1 and 2 matter in part 3, and that part three is an ending as a whole, but with the mass relays gone, as was mentioned by ThiefofHearts, then the quaren fleet I worked so hard to save is left around earth (I don't buy the mass relays destroying the systems, I'm a controlled explosion beliver) unable to go the planet I helped liberate. Wrex never gets to see his kids. Earth is going to be populated by the thousands and thousands of different races in the remains of the fleet.
And I could live with that as an ending. Because that would be an ending. What we got felt like a too be continued.
If bio-ware had made it in any way clear that was the ending we got. But as you can see on this thread, the lazy writing of "speculate what happened" leaves everyone grasping for straws as to what happened. There is evidence for every theory given but no recent to choose one over the other. Did the mass relays actually destroy the galaxy? Is the fleet surrounding Earth given time to us ethe mass relays to escape back home? Does killing or synthetic life kill EDI? Does choosing to destroy the reapers really mean we will repeat our mistakes? In terms of linaer story telling its poor. It would be like Lord of the Rings ending with Frodo throwing the ring into Mount Doom and then a description of middle earth falling into the earth and destroyed through massive earth quakes, then a quick epilogue of Sam and Gandulf finding themselves on an island in the middle of no where. Or Star Wars ending with Luke facing down Darth Vader and then the Death Star explodes with him on it, but also destroys the rebel fleet and Endor. It didn't give a conclusion, it a weak limp wristed things end badly but one day their okay. Did I expect a happy ending, hell no, did I expect an ending, yes.
Also as I stated, the ending was bad for linaer story telling, but this is an interactive story, you can't give people chocies to make throughout over 100 hours of gameplay and then tell them, "well you get three ways to end your story, all them might or might mean everything you've done is for nothing, but we are going to leave it vague". There was no option to really fail, you should of had the chance to tell space kid that you didn't want any choice, that you would rather the fleet fought it out to end with the reapers so that at least we go on our feet.
In conclusion, do I want a new ending.... well it feels too late for that, I want an expanded ending which shows what the consquence of your actions will be, whether for good or ill, just so I know it has ended.
Rant over
Well, we're dealing with wonky science here, but as I understand it, ships in ME have faster than light travel, which permits them to travel between solar systems. In the game, when you arrive in a system via ME Relay and then leave the system, you're using your FTL drive to fly between star systems. The ME Relays just make it possible to travel to much more distant parts of the galaxy.
As for the Relays blowing up, 1) not every system, including Sol, has a relay inside the system itself, and 2) I think it's pretty easy to write off some of the endings as not really being "explosions" in the way they were explained earlier. Maybe whatever you do in the middle ending to synthesize organics and synthetics breaks the relays, but it's not the same as if you tried to blow them up using traditional methods. Or who knows, maybe the information we heard about blowing up the Relays was wrong, since the characters don't really understand them all that well anyway. Either way, I think that while there's room for other interpretations we're just supposed to assume that billions of people aren't killed by the relays.
I don't really understand your last paragraph. Are you referring to the Illusive Man or the spirit of the Citadel, or whatever the holo kid is? I didn't think holo kid was a "bad guy" at all, so if that's what you're referring to, I'm pretty much lost.
But ultimately, all the stuff you're talking about is just wanting the plot to be different; not having the relays blow up, etc. Shepard's choices mattered in countless ways throughout the series, including at the very end (as your interactions vis a vis the Geth have a pretty big impact on how you view the renegade option). That they didn't include more dialog options during your last conversation seems like a pretty small issue to me, as compared with the overall story Bioware was telling, which was about the cycle of violence between organics and synthetics. Could they have fleshed it out more? Sure, but that's always true. As it is, the game ably tells the story that's run through the whole series, and gives Shepard a big send off, saving the galaxy in some way.
I think it comes down to the Relays blowing up. Every single one goes off. In previous parts of the story that get referenced later, destroying the relay means the destruction of the solar system it's in. We're not told that this will be any different.
Even if it's not and our hero isn't the biggest mass murderer in history, then the entire fleet is stuck on Earth, including races that really can't survive in our environment, much less destroyed.
Ignoring both those, our choices in the game could have mattered in the end. We could have used those choices in making cases against the bad guy. "Synthetics aren't bad by that reason alone." "Our greatest strengths is our diversity." "If I kill every synthetic and things with cyber parts, do I also kill the Quarians who have cyber implants connecting to their suits?"Instead Shep just runs along with it and the reason for the reapers changed from a mysterious, unfathomable threat to become an Xzibit meme.
It was like watching the original star wars trilogy but then the finale is swapped with a sweded version of 2001's ending cast by 6 yr olds.
Could you flesh that out a bit? Why does everyone end up screwed in the end? Shepard's not necessarily dead, at least some (and probably most) of your companions survived, etc. Sure, there's not an extended, "What's the world like now?" movie, but I don't think that's really necessary. Shepard ended the Reaper threat and became a legend. Yeah, your previous choices don't matter for that one, last choice, but that doesn't mean they don't matter at all, or even that they don't matter for the end. I mean, your choices controlled who lived and died, for crying out loud. Your choices determined whether there was a genocide between the Geth and the Quarians, and the fact that I had saved the now-sentient Geth impacted my choice a great deal.
I don't understand why you don't like the Normandy bit. It's the bit of the ending that lets you know that life went on. That you succeeded, whatever choice you decided to make.
Having just finished ME3 last weekend, I really don't understand the negative reactions people had. Or rather, I understand their basis for their reactions, but think they're blowing it way out of proportion.
Not quite. It's more a huge melting pot of stuff when if you just take each problem as its own thing, it looks really petty.
1. The tone, story and focus go right out the window for a vague choice of colored beams with no consequence or thought needed to put into it, unlike every other "big choice" in the game. Some even say that this choice destroys any other "big choice" you have made in a game series where choice matters. This might not be such a big deal at first, but when you bear in mind that many people payed 60-80 bucks per game, not counting extra DLC packs, with 240 bucks being the max and waited five years for the conclusion to this saga, it just feels inexcusable to many after the thing has been amazing through most of it.
2. Fans were promised a bunch of different endings and that your choices would matter for the ending in advertisements. Nope. Even the head guy of the project said "It's not going to be a choose ending A B or C". It was. Here's a list of what was promised if you care to read: http://social.bioware.com/foru... This lead to the FTC complaint for false advertising.
3. The ending and script was finalized in November of last year, only a month before they had to ship a release candidate. As a professional in the industry, I'll tell you with a month before submission, there's no time for any kind of Quality Control or people pointing out how off the ending can be, because it needs to hit its submission target.
4. This I feel is the most minor of the bunch - Not learning what happened to our friends and allies. It's the last run. We want some closure.
5. The Rabid Press backlash. I think this made things a whole lot worse. Instead of the gaming press taking the time to look at both sides fairly and honestly to see what went wrong, many critics and websites just got really vicious at fans, played the "art" card, making cheap strawman arguments for why the ending is good, ignoring that Bioware has for YEARS taken and listened to input from their customers or that players have invested hundreds of hours and dollars into the game series, and then misconstruing the FTC complaint as "whining to the government for a bad ending". It's really sad when the closest thing coming to a rational news story about this came from FORBES. Not any of the big gaming websites or publications. A business website. People complain about the game press being mostly bought. This doesn't help when they look like sycophantic attack dogs against the peasants.
If it was just one game with a crappy ending, I don't think people would have really cared. But people do care when they're told "you get to define and guide the story through multiple games", that story is amazing, and the contract is explicitly taken away in the last second.
Well, first and foremost, I think we should avoid talk about what was "promised". This is a product delivered by a company, not something my girlfriend promised to do for me. The game either delivers a fun experience, or it doesn't, but nobody at Bioware owes gamers anything.
That said, I didn't have a problem with most of the quotes because I think a lot of people are limiting the "ending" to the point at which you make a decision about what to do with the Reapers and whatever follows. I think Bioware, fairly, considers the ending to be at least as far back as the assault on the Cerberus base. How you've played the game, who you bring with you, and who's died/alive matters in that extended ending. Does, for instance, the rachni issue get dealt with in that mission specifically? No, but it's certainly dealt with in the game and it matters to the outcome of the war.
Again, with the issue of "multiple endings", I think people are wrong to start the end at the last choice you make before the last cut scene. I took the quotes you linked to to be essentially saying that each person's game is slightly different based on the choices they've made, and that's true. I talked with Jack during my ending, which presumably wouldn't be possible if she was dead. Wrex was around before the end to chat, which likely wouldn't have happened if you'd made any of a large number of choices during the series.
I understand wanting to see what happens to everyone, but I agree that it's a pretty small quibble. I too saw Joker, EDI, and Liara get off the ship at the end and said, "Awww, what happened to the rest?" But at the same time, I don't think it's a big problem. I didn't play the three games so I could get some massive "Where are they now?" cut scene at the end, even if I'd like to know. It is, I think, the most legitimate criticism I've seen raised (other than losing the ability to save, which sucks), but it's not a big problem either.
I *guess* I understand people getting their feathers ruffled by the reaction of the press, but honestly I'm pretty much in the boat that a lot of people are whining, and I do think Bioware should stick to their guns and their vision.
Well, I haven't seen any promotional advertising or quotes from the creators that weren't there in the final product. People may have had different expectations for what the ending would be like, but the choices that I made greatly affected the end of the game. My ending was not like other people's ending, assuming, of course, that you don't place the start of the "ending" at the last choice you make and the cutscene that follows, which I think would be rather unfair. Moreover, my choices affected *me*. I managed to save both the Geth and the Quarians, so even though I had heard that the "Perfect" ending was gotten through the renegade option (I don't know if this is true), I went for the middle option because I didn't want to kill the Geth I just saved. Similarly, I didn't go with the paragon option because I didn't trust the Reapers. Thus, the choices I made mattered, even in that final choice, because they mattered to me.
As for the specific issue of the Rachni, all I saw before the game came out, and in the quote you linked to, was that the thread would be dealt with and that your choices regarding the Rachni would matter, and they did.
As for the Normandy, well, the people that I saw come out of the ship were not with me on the final mission, so I can't speak to that part specifically, but even so, it would have certainly been possible for the Normandy to evacuate my pals after I beamed up to the Citadel. As for "fleeing", I think at that point the battle's pretty much over and they're just running away from the ever expanding shock wave of the ME Relay, which seems somewhat prudent to me.
But as for people feeling they're being mistreated, I just think they're whining. I don't see any big problems with the game as it stands (taking away the save feature at the end notwithstanding), and the complaints that I've heard so far sound more like people wishing the game was the thing they had in their own personal fantasies, which I just don't consider to be reasonable. ME3 ended with a climactic battle against the Reapers, it wrapped up all the major storylines left over from the previous 2 games, and it showed how the choices that I made mattered a great deal both to the galaxy as a whole and to my friends in particular. There's a part of me that would like other things, but my wanting it doesn't make the game that was delivered incomplete or somehow a failure. Obviously people are free to argue that the game is flawed, but they need to show specifics about what's wrong with the game if they're going to convince anyone that they're not just asking for Bioware to pander to them by giving them the ending they want, rather than the ending Bioware thought was appropriate for the series.
I like that Bioware likes to communicate with their fans, but I think there's a difference between people wanting to be able to romance Garrus and wanting Bioware to essentially rewrite the ending of their game. If Bioware wants to do DLC that expands the ending, they should do it because they fans say they want more and Bioware thinks there's more good story to tell, not because some guy in Houston wants to know what happened to Aria T'lok.
And hell, if Bioware's whole goal was to freak people out with this ending and then release an "indoctrination ending" in a few months as free DLC, I'll be very impressed, but I still don't think there's a major problem with the game as it is.
These aren't just "promises", this is promotional advertisement. "If you buy this, you'll get this." They didn't deliver. Hell, a statement is on the box, same with the Amazon.com page for the game under "Key Features". A false advertising case can be reasonably made.
When in regard to the Rachni, having the head writer tell you "Hey, there's gonna be something cool with the Rachni in the final battle if you back them up", chances are you're thinking it's going to be a story segment, not 150 points for a bar that meant you got access to another color and the same cutscenes before then.
The shipcrash is another thing that bugs people - so my crew fled the battle, including my friends who were just with me, and they land on an alien world? The hell?
At the heart of it, I think everyone understands that yes, people can complain as customers and no, Bioware does not need to capitulate to these requests. However many of these people are the core audience and if they feel they're being mistreated, Bioware might not hold the same "buy on day one" clout it used to have.
Many people, including the executives at the company can say that Bioware's vision has always been to listen to their audience (not bend to every whim, but see what works and what doesn't like any good company- we've clearly seen changes in ME2 and ME3 on that feedback) and provide good solid interactive story writing. One can argue that the players are fighting for exactly that.
To clarify just a bit, I don't think the end was without problems, but it was mostly stuff like, "It's bullshit to take away my ability to save."
I'm not really sure what they're trying to do here since this anime is supposed to focus on Vega his story was bland as hell; "Hey sheppard, I did a renegade action and sacrificed some civilian lives to get some reaper data, but in the end we didn't get the data so the civilians died for nothing and I'm a giant douche." Not to mention it infuriated me that it was Freddie Prince Jr. calling me "loco" and making shitty attempts at sounding hispanic. I feel like Michael Bay dipped is douchey dick into my game somehow and Vega was the result.
are you sure this isn't it? are they planning something shittier? also i heard they were going to fix the ending of ME3, any confirmation?
I can see it now. They run the entire current ME3 ending, and then it fades to black, followed by...
Kaidan: Dr. Chakwas? Dr. Chakwas! I think [she/he]'s waking up.
Shepard: What? What happened? Where am I?
Kaidan: Aboard the Normandy, Commander. You forgot to put on your helmet as we were heading out to Eden Prime, tripped on a power conduit and smashed your head against the bulkhead. You've been out for three days. Are you ok?
Anderson (barging in with Nihlus): What the hell, Shepard?! That was the most unprofessional display I've ever seen. We're lucky that idiot Joker intercepted a movie production filming on Eden Prime instead of an actual attack. I don't know what we would've done if we had to actually depend on you saving the day.
Shepard: What? But...
Nihlus: Dissapointing, Shepard. As things stand, I'm pleased that Lt. Alenko was present to help me retrieve the Prothean Beacon. We'll be getting a great deal of valuable information out of it.
Anderson: We're going to be putting Kaidan's name forward as a candidate to be the first human Spectre. You? You're getting five weeks of remedial combat training.
Shepard: But... but...
fade to black. Bioware logo fades in, accompanied by the words "There! Another ending! U STILL MAD?" and a giant trollface picture.
It's not quite a "it was all a dream" ending that's being defended. It's a "Shepard is being indoctrinated" ending, which is different and makes sense considering how often Shepard has been around Reapers/Reaper tech.
Especially if you have to pay for it... sound familiar? Fallout 3? They gave an intentionally crap ending to coerce their customers into buying the already planned DLC where the real ending would be. So Mass Effect 3 with ending is now what? $90 or so? Rubes.
The funny thing is that the press mostly pulled the Art card, and only recently did Bioware mention that, but there was that statement of "Oh, yeah, we made it intentionally vague" in the beginning before they back pedaled.
But they are going back to it, and if this reveal in April means immediate release of a new updated ending, then honestly they were making this thing before release.
I hate the indoctrination theory. It just seems incredibly stupid but I guess any port in the storm...
I call it, "Pulling a Lindelof". Sure it's not as much time invested as the entire series of Lost, but it was still a long winding road to a dying-corpse fart of an ending. Something tells me they're going to weasel their way into the indoctrination ending based on fan response like they had that ace up their sleeve all along.
I'm enjoying a sadistic sort of glee in waiting for them to grasp that they've been defending an ending that in a nutshell said "Who cares? It's just a story. Grow up!"
"Shepard is being indoctrinated" ending is also being defended as a coping mechanism because a lot of people can't accept that arrogant "artistic vision" dicksneeze of an ending Bioware tried to force feed us.
It still bothers me that to this day they refuse to admit that they made a bad ending but rather "You guys just don't understand our artistic vision for the direction of the game..."
The designs for the Vorcha and Krogan actually look pretty good. I wonder how they hold up when animated, though.
Also, having not played the third yet, someone clue me in; who's the kid? First guess is the 'giant little girl' from the cinematic trailer, but not sure.
