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TRIPLE THREAT! MASS EFFECT 3 PART III
Today, 3 of our staffers have taken the time to present you with the best and most thorough examination of the recent gamer explosion known as Mass Effect 3 and the critical response the ending is getting. Continuing our first ever TRIPLE THREAT!, segment I am proud to present you with the final feature cross view of Mass Effect 3.
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Why the ME3 Ending Controversy is a Historic Moment in Gaming History
By: Lunchbox
Humanity has a long history of revolution. When the environment in question stagnates or becomes corrupt, its citizens seek to rebel. The emotions leading up to a revolution are always the same: unrest, unease, anxiety, fear, anger, doubt. We are angry for what is happening to us, and we are afraid that nothing will make it better. Emotion is a powerful catalyst, and it is because of emotion that the Mass Effect Series has caused an uprising in its fanbase the likes of which have never been seen before.
In the event you haven’t played or finished Mass Effect 3, let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: SPOILERS INCOMING. Upon completion of Mass Effect 3 you are given 3 choices on how to “end” the game. You are bombarded with a new character, new information, and then forced to make a choice that will end everything you’ve done in the series. A series that has been defined and acclaimed for giving the player almost full control over how the story flows and evolves. It was groundbreaking, innovative, and it was the most rewarding experience I have ever had in a video game. It is because of all these things that it completely broke my heart that it ends on such a disappointing note.
This has produced a backlash amongst the fans. As of writing this article it has only been 2 weeks since the game came out, yet we have seen thousands upon thousands of fans rise up to combat what is seen as a completely lazy attempt by Bioware to end the series. This has produced a very passionate and nearly unified coalition of fans, who demand Bioware to address and do something about the ending(s). As with most topics of heavy debate, it has also split the fan base into those who find no fault in the ending(s) and usually attribute those who do wish to change it as “entitled” or “whiners”. You can imagine that no matter how civil things started out, it has become more and more violent.
The good will and sheer passion generated by the fans has been the loudest voice heard in the industry thus far. What started out as a group of Mass Effect fans on the Bioware Social Network Forums who were just trying to make sense of it all, has turned into an incredibly huge global network of fans united in the goal of taking Mass Effect back. A militia turned into an army, which then turned into a global armada. The hashtag #RetakeMassEffect is the group’s banner, and the flag they proudly wave. Social Media which not only demonstrated its power in the real life revolutions of the Arab Spring, have been just as effective with this revolution: Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Etc. have all been used as tools of spreading the message. To this day the Bioware forums have new posts updated on a nearly minute to minute basis, regardless of the time of day.
The greatest triumph of this has been the coverage it has received, and not just by typical gamer news outlets. Forbes, BBC, and other major news networks have tuned in to the revolution, further spreading the message and keeping the hope alive that the fans message will be heard. For the first week Bioware remained silent, making hardly any indication it was even aware of the growing uprising amongst its fans. Just when things were reaching a breaking point, Bioware broke the silence. They responded at first with the usual Public Relations crap of “We are listening to your feedback”. That was then replaced with some notes and blogs by members of the Mass Effect team. It was today however, the revolution received its greatest victory: Ray Muzyka, Bioware co-founder, spoke out and declared that the team would be taking initiatives and based on player feedback he indicated some sort of closure would be provided, most likely in the form of DLC.
The revolution continues on however, while Bioware has not only recognized the problem but indicated they are going to “fix it”, the fanbase will not be quelled until they see for themselves the fruits of Bioware’s labors. One bittered fan put it best: “Hold the line! We can’t give up until we know Bioware isn’t going to just cop out another piece of shit and sell it to us as cake.” With a Child’s Play charity in recognition of the good intentions by the fans (which is already over $70k), it is clear that the fans are not giving up easily. Why then are the fans, regardless of which side you support, so filled with passion for this? Emotion. The Mass Effect Series does one thing better than any other gaming series to date: it makes you care. You care about “your” Shepherd, “your” squad, and “your” relationships with the characters of the narrative.
Mass Effect 3 left many players with incredibly strong emotions: shock, disbelief, depression, anger, and ultimately bitterness. When we develop such strong relationships with characters, regardless if they are real or not, our brain cannot tell the difference when we lose them. The playerbase after many years of devoting itself to the Mass Effect series is now grieving. They are grieving for their losses, they are shocked for the way it ended, and now they are very angry. It is ironic that the strongest characteristics of Bioware, good story-telling and genuine emotional responses, are now being used to fight them back. The fans are demanding a better story, a better ending for “their” Shepherd. You can argue the intricacies of who ultimately owns the story: the fans or the writer, but you can’t argue the overwhelming passionate response the fans have generated. They got one of the biggest gaming companies in the world to not only listen, but possibly to act. They have also in an unprecedented event changed the way a story ends. Have they taken Mass Effect back? Only time will tell.
~LB
Check out the first two reviews right here!
TRIPLE THREAT! MASS EFFECT 3 PART II
Today, 3 of our staffers have taken the time to present you with the best and most thorough examination of the recent gamer explosion known as Mass Effect 3 and the critical response the ending is getting. Continuing our first ever TRIPLE THREAT!, segment I am proud to present you with the next feature cross view of Mass Effect 3.
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ME3: It Ends?
By Eric H and guest writers: Ross Funderburke and Dan Yates
It’s difficult to define what Mass Effect 3 gives its players where the game leaves off; it’s hardly an end at all, leaving the player with a “to be continued…” rather than a defined conclusion. In this regard, it’s a bit funny to debate whether or not the game’s ending is worthy of any real praise as it isn’t even an ending at all. That being said, many feel cheated and robbed of a satisfactory conclusion to what has been an incredibly popular RPG franchise. They have plenty of reasons to be disenchanted, but the purpose of this piece is to explore if some of the criticisms really hold water and if the potentially temporary ending of ME3 has any real value at all as far as good storytelling is concerned.
On one hand, there are those who feel that every ending presented in ME3 is exactly the same. While this is certainly true, it seems a strange criticism to level at ME3 when ME2 and ME didn’t really provide any actual choices either. A great example of this is whether or not you save the Council at the end of the first game. Assuming you let them die, the most you ever get are a few fresh faces on the council, curt and inhospitable dialogue, and a general feeling from a few higher ups that you’re Earth’s main man. At most, your choice has cost you a little courtesy, but the story is exactly the same. The choices are cosmetic and give you, the player, an opportunity to customize your gaming experience. So if Bioware has really made no promises that choice will be significant and hasn’t done it in the previous games, then what makes ME3’s story much worse for not having those life altering choices? Truth is, it doesn’t seem to at all. But the universe is still rich, with cool characters and companions, and you still get to see the robot bug things blow stuff up (‘cause, you know, that’s cool).
(Photo Credit: TechnologyTell)
The real question is whether or not what Bioware left for gamers is actually worth something. The game ends with what seems to be a dream sequence—that, or Shepherd dies and has an out-of-this world experience that would leave Johnathan Edwards with eyebrows raised. In either case, the surreal ending scene allows for several theories, one of which is that it is an attempt at indoctrination by Harbinger himself, the Reaper that blasts Shepherd’s body sky high. In the conversations present in the dream world, moralities are reversed and twisted and bent on guiding Shepherd’s thoughts to a specific conclusion. Killing the Illusive Man, a pretty obvious bad guy, is a renegade choice with no apparent Paragon choice to balance the equation. Continuing further on in the dream sequence, morality is further skewed with the option to kill the Reapers. Sure, it’s what you’ve been working toward all along, but it’s now suddenly a Renegade choice to stand up for humanity and Raid-spray those Reaper bugs. Of course, the opposite choice, controlling the Reapers, is suddenly a great idea labeled as a Paragon choice. You know, because controlling the Reapers is morally better than exterminating them. Then again, maybe these choices are presented the way they are because it’s an ideal presentation for Harbinger to make a pawn believe he is a king. In this ending scene, Harbinger presents the ultimate choice, and he does so in a way that makes him the ultimate challenge. After all, choice seems to have always been Shepherd’s greatest quality. He was given autonomy as a Spectre, went rogue as a Cerberus agent, and chose to leave Earth to hopefully save the galaxy. What better weapon is there than a man’s own choice?
This is why the ending of ME3, if it can even be called an ending, is satisfactory: it is the apex in the war between choice and fate. Sure, the game doesn’t make this realization easy for you and it leaves you with a pretty severe case of blue balls, but just like that one girl in high school—totally worth the wait. Then again, maybe she ditched you right before prom and never called you again. In that case, ignore that comparison and think of it this way: the gravity of the Mass Effect universe was always immersed in a shroud of choice , even if it was a thinly veiled one, and what better way to define choice than to have it confronted by an enemy that is the antithesis of choice. Harbinger is the king of all tyrants. As far as the Reapers are concerned, the destruction of mankind is not a product of choice, subjugation is not an escapable future, and the extinction of all biological life is an evolutionary necessity.
Bioware may have given the illusion of control with your customizable armor and trinket filled Captain’s Cabin, but you can rest assured the Reapers are here to take even that illusion away and leave you a husk of a human–leaving the upset fans with only a faint echo, “You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign.”
Check out the other two reviews right here!
TRIPLE THREAT! MASS EFFECT 3 PART I
Today, 3 of our staffers have taken the time to present you with the best and most thorough examination of the recent gamer explosion known as Mass Effect 3 and the critical response the ending is getting. In this, our first ever TRIPLE THREAT!, segment I am proud to present you with the first feature cross view of Mass Effect 3.
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How Both Advocators and Opponents of Having a New Ending For Mass Effect 3 Are Wrong
By: Javy Gwaltney
My mouth has probably never spewed as many profanities as it did when I watched the ending for Mass Effect 3 for the first time. And yes, I say “the ending” because I, like a good number of fans out there, feel as though every single ending has pretty much the same result. But we’ll get to that.
Right now, I want to talk about the internet’s response to the ending, which has been overwhelmingly negative. The Mass Effect 3 story section of Bioware’s forum has a new topic decrying the ending every couple of seconds. Users have also taken to sites like Metacritic and Amazon in order to bomb Mass Effect 3’s page with low scores. There’s even a Facebok group called Demand a Better Ending to Mass Effect with over 32,000 fans. This situation has created several different factions, all of whom have ultimately been shoved into two groups: those who support a new ending for the game provided as DLC to gamers and those who oppose it.
Unfortunately the most annoying aspect beyond this group assignation is that neither side seems to fully comprehend the reasoning of the other. The opponents of the ending have accused the supporters of being whiney, entitled gamers who want only happy endings and are sour pusses because the conclusion to the trilogy was a downer. Of course, supporters of the game have hardly been more civil when they’ve been presented with a point of view that doesn’t match their own. Basically, it’s all the same flamebaiting and trolling you’ve ever seen, except on a huge scale, one that’s ultimately drawn the likes of Kotaku, IGN, and even Forbes into the debate.
So, the big one, the motherload, the question to end all questions (for the moment, anyway): do displeased fans deserve a better ending and should Bioware give it to them?
After I got done cursing, I decided to play through the series again with a different character just to see if I had the same reaction a second time through. And I did. There was less profanity involved, but I still couldn’t help but feel crushed—and I don’t mean in a good way—by the conclusion of the third game. Personally I think we deserve a new ending. It doesn’t even have to be a happy ending, really. The opponents of a new ending seem to think that what we want is the archetypal happily ever after movie, which really isn’t the case at all for most advocators. We want two things: (1) an ending where our choices actually count (ala Fallout 3), and (2) an ending that isn’t riddled with so many plot holes it looks like one of the paper targets at the shooting range. In fact, let me be clear: I love depressing endings. But this ending is just poorly written and rushed it. I don’t want to make any assumptions about what the case was within Bioware’s development house, because I’m an outsider, but just watching the third gets my writer sense tingling and makes me feel as though after Drew Karpyshyn (the head writer for Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2) left, his replacement, Marc Walters, didn’t have the slightest clue how to end the story. And, in one of those stomach-turning epiphany moments, I realized that maybe, just maybe, Bioware is aware of how bad the ending is and is hoping that their defenders’ cries of “It’s depressing JUST LIKE REAL LIFE OMG IT’S ART” will protect them.
Sadly, that’s probably right since, again, many of the opposers’ main fallacy appears to be thinking that we want a happy ending, which not all of us do. I don’t think the ending is particularly artful. Instead, it feels like the writers just took the Architect scene from The Matrix Revolutions, the star baby scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion and just threw it all on the script for the hell of it. Again, I’m not saying that’s the case—but damn if it doesn’t feel like it. And that, friends, is why I want a new ending. And it’s the reason plenty of other people want a new ending, too.
Pretty much.
But the problem is that we’re not going about getting that ending the right way. Joining the Demand a Better Ending to Mass Effect 3 page isn’t going to help make that happen. Facebook groups like that aren’t really the same as voicing your concern; it’s more like joining a support group where other people are trying to comfort each other and air out frustrations (and that’s not an insult directed at anyone on that group since I’m a member as well). So what does constitute making your voice heard, you ask? Well, technically, I think this does, though I have mixed feelings about setting up a charity in the name of the ending of a video game.
Let’s talk about the positive aspects of doing so since those are clearly the most self-apparent and can be briefly discussed. One, that’s over 30,000 dollars being donated to children in need. Two, it’s a smart move because sites all over the internet, including sites that aren’t necessarily gaming focused, are giving the movement for a new ending. That’s the good. The bad? Well, donating to a charity does not and should not figure in into this argument in any way, plain and simple. I think, beyond using it as a device to get attention, it’s also kind of a sleazy ethos building tactic. This move is not also done to catch the attention of the media but also to combat the claims that the supporters are not self-entitled and whiney children, but if viewed from the right perspective, there’s something almost childish about bringing a charity into an argument as support.
If you really really really want Bioware and EA to hear your complaints, don’t simply write your frustrations on a Facebook page wall or in a thread on a forum. Don’t bomb the sites where they’re selling the game, and don’t send an email that will get trapped in a spam filter or deleted with the rest. Go old fashioned. Let them know you’re serious by taking the time to sit down and write a letter.
Here’s the mailing address for Bioware:
BioWare Edmonton
200-4445 Calgary Trail NW
Edmonton AB
Canada T6H 5R7
Of course, if ending DLC is something that Bioware has planned all along, the whole point may be moot, but it’s still not a good thing. In fact, I don’t think the company is going to come out of this with their reputation unscathed. If, on one hand, they don’t release ending DLC, they’ll be responsible for bungling the ending of one of gaming’s most beloved franchises. However, releasing post ending DLC will basically set a precedent justifying the release of unfinished video games by companies like EA. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. With this situation building momentum and Kickstarter suddenly becoming a way for gamers to support whatever projects strike their fancy, there could very well be a radically different gaming industry on the horizon—for better or for worse.
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Check out the next two reviews right here!
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