frozentundra123456
Lifer
- Aug 11, 2008
- 10,451
- 642
- 126
After ME3 I am done with the franchise. They aren't getting another minute of my time or a cent of my money. In fact, I basically am boycotting bioware but did break down and got DA:I.
In fact, I basically am boycotting bioware but did break down and got DA:I.
After ME3 I am done with the franchise. They aren't getting another minute of my time or a cent of my money. In fact, I basically am boycotting bioware but did break down and got DA:I.
I too will by unless it absolutely sucks! Problem for me is there are no space/sci fi games anymore that aren't multiplayer. Even Hanger 42 is just a tutorial for SC.
Long for a new Wing Commander style game or Jedi Knight type game...single player.
The Wife
I too will by unless it absolutely sucks! Problem for me is there are no space/sci fi games anymore that aren't multiplayer. Even Hanger 42 is just a tutorial for SC.
Long for a new Wing Commander style game or Jedi Knight type game...single player.
The Wife
Squadron 42 will be a full-fledged single-player only experience. In addition, check the recent posts in that thread, there's a SP only Kickstarter up for another 6 hours (already past funding goal): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rockfishgames/everspace
There were a couple of problems with ME3 during development that lead to that terrible ending. Drew Karpyshyn, who was lead writer for ME 1&2, wasn't involved with the game. One of the other writers noted in an interview that the ending had lacked the same peer review process used with the rest of the game.
I suspect the development team was pushing close to the deadline and the ending was rushed.
I'm cautious. I got burned with ME3's endings, so unless it's a relatively self-contained story ala ME1 I'm probably going to wait until the whole new series is out.
Hopefully they learned a few lessons about storytelling, but the writers seemed so out of touch with their audience (i.e. "we didn't know players would develop such a sense of ownership over their character..." lol yeah, it's only been one of your key pieces of marketing and the basis of your popularity since the first game.) I'm doubtful.
Glad they're doing a reboot though. I'm happy to leave ME3's grade-school fanfiction endings where they belong.
The sad thing is, it's not like those excuses are a one-off thing and will never happen again. This is EA we're talking about. A lack of quality and rushing out the product is par for the course.
I still get angry when I think about ME3 endings. I swore to never buy another Bioware game again, that's how pissed I was. I only got DA:I because it got good reviews everywhere and it was money well spent in the end. So I'll wait to see how ME4 reviews look like. But ME3 endings will forever tarnish the Mass Effect name... And I don't think I'll allow myself to enjoy games as much as I did ME1-3 (minus that horrible spat in the face aka the ending) and will hope for self-contained stories within one game.
The Indoctrination theory is the worst. It is a "it was all a dream" type of ending.
I don't have a problem with how ME3 ended, frankly I really liked it. I think the relationship of the Leviathans to the Catalyst and the role/premise/actions of the Catalyst (and what the Catalyst's existence retroactively means [potentially] about all prior Reaper encounters) are fascinating. That said for those that didn't like it I don't think "indoctrination theory" really leads to anything "better".
I do think the 'visions' of the child the Catalyst appears as gave people the wrong impression of just what the Catalyst is though - which is key. While the Catalyst arguably just chose the child's appearance as something non-threatening yet familiar to Shepherd (and possibly representative of hope/salvation) I don't think that connection was clear enough for most players which contributes to the whole 'magic child' critique.
I think ME1 actually has the shakiest climax (in retrospect - it's not really apparent at the time). I mean it's fun and dramatic but looking back at it objectively there's no reason Sovereign is/should be defeated really. The Reapers should have won right then and there when Sovereign activates (or rather would have activated) the Citadel relay and the fleet arrives.
Shepherd defeats Saren, Sovereign possesses Saren, Shepherd defeats Sovereign-proxy Saren and that's all 'realistic' enough. The problem is that doing so inexplicably completely incapacitates Sovereign and lowers its shields thus allowing Citadel forces to destroy Sovereign and save the day - lucky us lol. Which is all well and good in terms of having a series and a happy(ish) ending but also runs completely contradictory to pretty much everything you see or learn throughout the series about indoctrination/remote control (a prevalent theme/mechanism) and logically contradicts the reasons such methods would most likely be employed in the first place.
I don't have a problem with how ME3 ended, frankly I really liked it. I think the relationship of the Leviathans to the Catalyst and the role/premise/actions of the Catalyst (and what the Catalyst's existence retroactively means [potentially] about all prior Reaper encounters) are fascinating. That said for those that didn't like it I don't think "indoctrination theory" really leads to anything "better".
I do think the 'visions' of the child the Catalyst appears as gave people the wrong impression of just what the Catalyst is though - which is key. While the Catalyst arguably just chose the child's appearance as something non-threatening yet familiar to Shepherd (and possibly representative of hope/salvation) I don't think that connection was clear enough for most players which contributes to the whole 'magic child' critique.
I think ME1 actually has the shakiest climax (in retrospect - it's not really apparent at the time). I mean it's fun and dramatic but looking back at it objectively there's no reason Sovereign is/should be defeated really. The Reapers should have won right then and there when Sovereign activates (or rather would have activated) the Citadel relay and the fleet arrives.
Shepherd defeats Saren, Sovereign possesses Saren, Shepherd defeats Sovereign-proxy Saren and that's all 'realistic' enough. The problem is that doing so inexplicably completely incapacitates Sovereign and lowers its shields thus allowing Citadel forces to destroy Sovereign and save the day - lucky us lol. Which is all well and good in terms of having a series and a happy(ish) ending but also runs completely contradictory to pretty much everything you see or learn throughout the series about indoctrination/remote control (a prevalent theme/mechanism) and logically contradicts the reasons such methods would most likely be employed in the first place.
I don't have a problem with how ME3 ended, frankly I really liked it. I think the relationship of the Leviathans to the Catalyst and the role/premise/actions of the Catalyst (and what the Catalyst's existence retroactively means [potentially] about all prior Reaper encounters) are fascinating. That said for those that didn't like it I don't think "indoctrination theory" really leads to anything "better".
I do think the 'visions' of the child the Catalyst appears as gave people the wrong impression of just what the Catalyst is though - which is key. While the Catalyst arguably just chose the child's appearance as something non-threatening yet familiar to Shepherd (and possibly representative of hope/salvation) I don't think that connection was clear enough for most players which contributes to the whole 'magic child' critique.
There were a couple of problems with ME3 during development that lead to that terrible ending. Drew Karpyshyn, who was lead writer for ME 1&2, wasn't involved with the game. One of the other writers noted in an interview that the ending had lacked the same peer review process used with the rest of the game.
I suspect the development team was pushing close to the deadline and the ending was rushed.
The ending was rubbish. Some random AI decides that man vs machine will kill everything, so kill man before we reach that point. Then harvest everything as maybe there might be a solution in the future. The idiots who created the AI in the first place didn't think that same AI would murder it? Eh? And who says machines will rise up?
Well it's not just a "random AI" which is why I mentioned understanding the nature of the Catalyst is key - the Catalyst simply tries to find the most efficient method to accomplish it's directive from the Leviathans - preserve organic life.
The Leviathans observe that all the 'lesser' races follow basically the same path (which they presumably observe many times across the galaxy which they basically lord over) - organics advance to the point where machines gain intelligence/sentience, machines then start to question their existence/purpose/awareness, war ensues and the machines ('synthetics') exterminate the organics. Left unchecked they probably reason that one of these synthetic victors will either then exterminate all other organics to prevent competition/risk or simply multiply to the point where resources are so scarce that organics could never arise again.
To solve this the Leviathans create the Catalyst and task it with "preserve organic life" (essentially). Of course they consider themselves, the Leviathans, above the conflict. Such is the nature of complacency/arrogance - the Leviathan Sheperd encounters says something to the effect of "You cannot fathom being able to bend the galaxy to your very will."
So the Catalyst watches and learns for thousands (more?) of years. How to stop organics from creating a synthetic that will exterminate/outcompete organic life? It decides the most efficient method is to prevent the organics from creating such advanced synthetics in the first place. And from that the cycle is derived (which goes on for millions/billions of years - the whole scale of this process is important to recognize). The line of thinking sounds insane to organics (whom occupy but a single cycle and are concerned with little but themselves) but synthetics do not process information in that same way. To us it seems absurd to destroy organics to preserve them - to synthetics it's binary. The fact that X% of organic life remains and X > 0 makes it a success.
The Catalyst itself, as I recall, states something to the effect that the Reaper cycle was arrived at as the optimal process after many other iterations/attempts. Again, the time behind all this is important to remember. It's not as though the Catalyst was created and it immediately started building a Reaper to begin the cycles. Reapers are much 'younger' than the Catalyst.
As for machines v organics it's not necessarily a matter of machines 'rising up'. They likely could/did in some instances (you could probably consider the Catalyst targeting the Leviathans as an instance of it) but as seen in the Quarian/Geth conflict as soon as the geth started becoming aware of their own existence and asking questions to the Quarians about it it was the Quarians who began the conflict (or that's how it seems during the Geth sequence of ME3 at any rate). The premise here is not so much how but rather when - and in the scope of the ME3 universe it is basically given fact that organics will advance and will create synthetics and will eventually go to war with them - regardless of whether or not you actually agree with that premise.
Oh it was very clear, and was about as meaningful as the AI-baby-face from the 3rd Matrix movie, and equally as stupid. Frankly they never should have tried to explain the Reapers if that's the best they could come up with, Sovereign put it nicely in the first game "our motivations are beyond your comprehension". According to Bioware's endings their motivations were so simple a 3rd grader would understand. Literally, there are superhero cartoons made for kids with more complex character motivations.