Mass Effect 3 (Seriously, Use Spoilers People!)

[Gellert1984]

If the beacon offered immunity to indoctrination, there wouldn't be all those stories from the prothean extinction of prothean colonies falling to indoctrinated agents.

Ditto for prothean VIs being able to detect all stages of indoctrination. It's far more likely that prothean VIs only trigger on the "you actually have reaper tech inside you, I can see it with x-rays" level of indoctrination.

Unless they were built by survivors after the purge who would've had time to study indoctrination and come with way's to detect it, see the Asari goddess for a possible example of this.

If Shepherd were to fall to indoctrination it should have happened on the dead reaper, after being hit by object Rho or at the collecter base.

Arguably she did. The thing about indoctrination is that it doesn't magically convey the reapers' wishes to you. It just softens you up, makes you more open to suggestion, and also unhinges you a little bit (or a lot). The scientists on the derelict reaper (and the salarian research subjects on virmire) weren't working coherently on the reapers' agenda, because there was no one to communicate that agenda to them, no conscious mind to sculpt their newly pliable brains. Instead, they just went ratshit nuts, because the reaper's emanations made them extremely suggestible and unstable and then...failed to suggest anything coherent, because it didn't have a brain.

So it's fully possible that shepard is fully or partially through the "softening up" stage of indoctrination throughout most of the game, and waiting to be activated by a suitably strong-willed reaper, much like Rana Thanoptis, who the game offers as a conveniently-timed example of a character who appeared to be totally okay until she was triggered and it was revealed that she'd been indoctrinated for years, since you first met her.

I didnt realise who Rana was until 2 mins ago when I googled her, kinda makes the 'shepherd's undectectable indoctrination' theory a little awkward if you blew Rana away in ME though. Other than that, yeah I see your point, this makes me sad.

Also, the synthesis ending makes even less sense than all the other endings. "A new DNA"? What does that mean? And how does everyone get circuitry in them? How does that change anything? If organic/synthetic synthesis is the solution to everything forever, why aren't cyborgs and the Zha'til already perfect and acceptable? And where did the silicon to make all those arbitrary circuits come from? Did it come from handwavey space magic? It did? Graaaarr.

Don't care! Space Magic makes Joker and EDI together so Space Magic makes your arguent invalid! I am a 9 year old girl! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[Dauric]

Also, the synthesis ending makes even less sense than all the other endings. "A new DNA"? What does that mean? And how does everyone get circuitry in them? How does that change anything? If organic/synthetic synthesis is the solution to everything forever, why aren't cyborgs and the Zha'til already perfect and acceptable? And where did the silicon to make all those arbitrary circuits come from? Did it come from handwavey space magic? It did? Graaaarr.

Don't care! Space Magic makes Joker and EDI together so Space Magic makes your arguent invalid! I am a 9 year old girl! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The thing is that for 90% of ME it's a fairly 'crunchy'* Sci-Fi, and then right at the end takes a left turn at Albuquerque and ends up in Space Fantasy land. Joker and EDI were 'together' long before the story went Space Fantasy, and ME has enough existing canon that if Joker and EDI were to have some sort of bio-synthetic offspring they could use a synthetic variant of Asari reproduction ad the story could maintain it's crunchy Sci-Fi genre rather than suddenly switch genres at the end. Of course with a budget shortfall it means that there wasn't enough time to write out the details so it got abbreviated to "Magic DNA" like the rest of the finale.

* IE: "Hard", rule-based or "techy" where everything has a solid or mostly solid explanation behind it.

[An Enraged Platypus]

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/04/05/mass-effect-3-extended-cut-dlc-free-this-summer-offers-furth/

That's settled then, I'm waiting until the summer for my FemShep playthrough. I was planning on going with Destroy for her, hopefully the ending will be bearable by then.

[Belial]

Argh. Horseshit. I was really holding out for indoc theory, because that ending is fully irredeemable. To hell with this universe.

[Dauric]

Argh. Horseshit. I was really holding out for indoc theory, because that ending is fully irredeemable. To hell with this universe.

Yep, agreement here. They're going with "Clarification", meanwhile ignoring that introducing new characters and redirect the entire conflict of the story in the last five minutes while changing genres is patently bad storytelling.

Fuck.

I'll download it. I'll see what they have to say, but I think I'm ready to say Bioware has lost their credibility as good interactive storytellers.

[VectorZero]

I have now had two ultra-rares from Premium Spectre packs, and I now have a Saber II. What are the odds? (It must rig the roll, right?)

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/04/05/mass-effect-3-extended-cut-dlc-free-this-summer-offers-furth/That's settled then, I'm waiting until the summer for my FemShep playthrough. I was planning on going with Destroy for her, hopefully the ending will be bearable by then.

Huh, how about that then. 1) Free 2) Detailing what actually happened 3) Lacking any interactivity.

Two out of three aint bad, I guess. Honestly, I think completely redoing the ending would've come off worse than 'clarifying' ... but that's just my opinion.

[Belial]

I think completely redoing the ending is always going to look bad, but when you've released an ending that is complete trash, it's the best of a list of bad options. Because "not have released a shitty ending in the first place" is unfortunately not on the table short of a time machine.

As it is, unless they're about to engage in some sort of logical wizardry undreamt of by man, there is no way to make this ending tolerable. The whole thing is based on a premise that is belied by every minute of previous gameplay, and then underlined by the devs kicking over all the sandcastles on the way out. Adding some cutscenes inbetween to explain how your squad got on the normandy doesn't fix that. It doesn't change a series-invalidating ending into a decent conclusion.

It's just a longer series-invalidating ending.

Which just essentially means that I get to head-canon it out of existence, and never see an actual ending to this series. It's like mass effect got cancelled two episodes before the finale. Frustrating.

[SecondTalon]

The only .. only acceptable way out is for Bioware to step up and say "Communication is a skill. If you explain something to someone else, and they don't understand, you're a terrible communicator. We were terrible communicators for the Mass Effect 3 ending. We're sorry." and.... move on. Maybe write some shit explaining what was going on at the ending.

That's it. Redoing it is a terrible precedent. Saying "I can't believe you didn't understand it" makes you an elitist prick and is also terrible. Fuck, blame EA. EA doesn't give a fuck, say it got rushed in the final crunch. EA will soak the hate and use it to fuel more Battlefield servers, and Bioware keeps the warm fuzzies they spent years building.

[VectorZero]

say it got rushed in the final crunch

That might've worked if DA2 hadn't already happened.

[Dauric]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs&feature=player_embedded

Perfect video, 37 minutes long, but out of all I seen the most cogent one in explaining what is wrong with how the ending was handled.

This video was linked earlier in the thread, but it does an excellent job of analyzing why the ending is not simply unsatisfactory, but actually broken because of literary-technical faults with it's execution. They're not problems you "clarify" away, they're failures in the basic structure of a story.

One of the big ones is that the whole conflict from the first scene in ME1 is the Council Races Vs. the Reapers this continues to be the main conflict of the story right up until the end, where the main conflict in the story is abruptly changed to be resolving the (non-*)conflict between organics and synthetics. They change the main arc of the entire story of all three games in 14 lines of dialog.

*Of course if you've resolved the problems with the Quarians and the Geth and even gotten Joker and Edi dating this seems like a fundamentally flawed premise in the first place

This is shit that if you turned it in to a creative writing class (assuming you had a competent teacher) you'd be heavily marked down for turning in a story that made this kind of sharp change in the last paragraph.

The problem with "Clarifying" is that they're not addressing the sudden shift of the main conflict (or the change of genre from Star-Trek like Socratic ethical discussions to "Flip this two or three-sided coin"), they're just extending the story past the inartfully abrupt shift of focus.

Edit:

The only .. only acceptable way out is for Bioware to step up and say "Communication is a skill. If you explain something to someone else, and they don't understand, you're a terrible communicator. We were terrible communicators for the Mass Effect 3 ending. We're sorry." and.... move on. Maybe write some shit explaining what was going on at the ending.

That's it. Redoing it is a terrible precedent. Saying "I can't believe you didn't understand it" makes you an elitist prick and is also terrible. Fuck, blame EA. EA doesn't give a fuck, say it got rushed in the final crunch. EA will soak the hate and use it to fuel more Battlefield servers, and Bioware keeps the warm fuzzies they spent years building.

"Clarification" is essentially doing the first, I'm just not sure that it's even acceptable. I think that they may be contractually obligated to not badmouth EA because EA does actually give a fuck about their reputation, they're just not that good at not doing stupid shit, so Bioware doesn't even get to take that route.

[Belial]

Redoing it is a terrible precedent.

I don't understand how it is terrible or a precedent.

Fixing something you fucked up is standard in art. It's why books have editors. You, as an author, get to be confronted by the fact that this scene you've written is utter dog garbage that makes no sense, doesn't fit with the themes of the rest of the book, and just isn't worthy of the rest of your work. And then you fix it. Getting past the editor somehow (presumably whoever was in charge of sanity-checking these endings was dying of alcohol poisoning at the time) to the "public" doesn't change the fact that your art was always mutable and subject to improvement. And if someone can point out a legitimate reason why what you produced is just awful, there's nothing wrong with deciding to fix it and release an updated version.

Furthermore, it's been done. See Fallout 3. Or the various directors' cuts of blade runner. If there's a terrible precedent to be set here, it was set years ago.

[SecondTalon]

Sets one.. Whoops.

Still, the terrible precident that would be set in this case isn't "Fucked up something? Fix it later!" but "Fans screaming about something in a piece you considered done? Better fix it for them!"

Not even adjust your later works to better appeal - fix the one they're yelling about.

Fallout 3 was an "Oh shit, we forgot DLC". Blade Runner was Director and Studio arguing, then Director forgetting what they were doing in the first place. Star Wars is Lucas trying to get more scratch and not having anyone around anymore to say "Yeah.. okay..we could... Or we could do this.. because this doesn't suck" Don't get me wrong, they fucked the ending. I just don't really see it "fixable" in any satisfactory way. Best case is for them to admit they fucked up hard.

[Dark567]

The problem with "Clarifying" is that they're not addressing the sudden shift of the main conflict (or the change of genre from Star-Trek like Socratic ethical discussions to "Flip this two or three-sided coin"), they're just extending the story past the inartfully abrupt shift of focus.

Edit:

...
"Clarification" is essentially doing the first, I'm just not sure that it's even acceptable. I think that they may be contractually obligated to not badmouth EA because EA does actually give a fuck about their reputation, they're just not that good at not doing stupid shit, so Bioware doesn't even get to take that route.

I have mixed feelings about 'clarification'. I mean, the ending really couldn't be worse so it can only get better. But how the hell do you clarify it? Explaining the star child? And why the Normandy was flying away? Sure, I guess it helps. But it still kinda sucks. "Polishing a turd" is the phrase that comes to mind.

EDIT: The fact they still write shit like this:

No. BioWare strongly believes in the team’s artistic vision for the end of this arc of the Mass Effect franchise.

Seriously? Your proud of that ending? Could you walk me through your thought process on why you strongly believe in that artistic vision. Because I don't understand either the ending or why anyone would be proud of it.

[An Enraged Platypus]

The wording of 'clarification' doesn't in the strictest sense rules out Indoctrination. That's what I will tell myself over and over until "soon (TM)" comes.

[Dark567]

The wording of 'clarification' doesn't in the strictest sense rules out Indoctrination. That's what I will tell myself over and over until "soon (TM)" comes.

Not going to happen.

[Belial]

Still, the terrible precident that would be set in this case isn't "Fucked up something? Fix it later!" but "Fans screaming about something in a piece you considered done? Better fix it for them!"

My hope was that they wouldn't fix it because the fans were yelling, they'd fix it because the fans were right. If someone points out legitimate, massive flaws in your narrative, ignoring those flaws to spite them or sticking by your "I don't care if it's terrible, it's what I made" arrogance is far worse than appearing to cave to fan pressure.

Admitting they fucked it up, but refusing to fix it, would just be an elaborate form of the first. It would be saying "Yeah, the ending was terrible, but if we fixed it y'all might start thinking we care what you think. So it stays the same, because we can't have you getting ideas." So spite, basically. Spite toward your fanbase is not generally considered a "good" thing in an entertainment company.

The wording of 'clarification' doesn't in the strictest sense rules out Indoctrination. That's what I will tell myself over and over until "soon (TM)" comes.

The other stuff does, though. If Shepard is going to wake up and finish the real fight, she's not going to do it in a cutscene. There would need to be a significant amount of additional gameplay. They say they're only adding extended cutscenes. Which means that's not what's going to happen.

[Dauric]

More "Tasteful Understated Nerdrage" videos from MrBtounge about Mass Effect 3

Indoctrination Theory

A Tale of Two Companies

Edit:

I mean, the ending really couldn't be worse so it can only get better.

Y'know you've just taunted Murphy when you say stuff like this right? You've thrown down the gauntlet and now the writers at Bioware will be unable to resist proving that nothing is ever so low you can't dig a deeper hole.

[An Enraged Platypus]

I ... I want to believe.

[Belial]

That...honestly just makes the ending stupider? I didn't even think that was possible.

But saying the relays can be easily rebuilt is taking what was a terrible artistic choice and making it into a complete goddamn non sequitur. At least when they all blew up and everything was ruined forever, it was just a really shitty way to break the universe. Now it's just...a thing that happened for no reason, like a lightbulb exploding and the janitor going to get a new one out of the storeroom?

Fuck, it's like they said "FINE! We'll change the endings, but we refuse to make them better! If we're going to move at all, it's downhill only!"

[Dauric]

That...honestly just makes the ending stupider? I didn't even think that was possible.

But saying the relays can be easily rebuilt is taking what was a terrible artistic choice and making it into a complete goddamn non sequitur. At least when they all blew up and everything was ruined forever, it was just a really shitty way to break the universe. Now it's just...a thing that happened for no reason, like a lightbulb exploding and the janitor going to get a new one out of the storeroom?

Fuck, it's like they said "FINE! We'll change the endings, but we refuse to make them better! If we're going to move at all, it's downhill only!"

The Conduit was a Prothean-built relay, so there is canon for non-reapers to build relays, with sufficient research at any rate. Now it does leave the question of how long said research would take and would the Turians and Quarian fleets starve in the interim.

And yeah, if it's too easy to rebuild the relays then exploding the galactic transit system is kind of a non-event, unless those exploding relays take out the planets they're near...

[Ghostbear]

While I'm not placing very high hopes on this revision based on what they've said, I think the "additional cinematic sequences and epilogue scenes" is getting too much focus as a limiting sentence. It doesn't say that it will only be that, so I'm holding out some hope that there will be actual, you know, gameplay (and not just token amounts). If it's just "here's a longer cutscene with some text bubbles next to the default art of each character" it'll be a worthless piece of garbage though, because it'll focus on only part of why the ending sucked, while missing the big details.

[VectorZero]

But Shepard, if we rebuild the Mass Relay network, we'll miss the Battle of the Bands!

[Belial]

The Conduit was a Prothean-built relay, so there is canon for non-reapers to build relays, with sufficient research at any rate.

I'm not questioning the plausibility, I never really understood why the relays were so tricky to build in the first place (Eezo core the size of a small moon + a bit of shaping + a ton of power + a giant railgun/deceleration net= profit). I'm questioning why even include their destruction at all like it was a big deal?

[Weeks]

It's like mass effect got cancelled two episodes before the finale. Frustrating.

I never watched the ending for Firefly, now that I think of it.

[Belial]

If by that you mean Serenity it...also didn't make a whole ton of sense, or fit very well with what came before it. But at least it was fun to watch.

[Weeks]

I watched Serenity before the rest of the chapters, so no.

[Xanthir]

The Conduit was a Prothean-built relay, so there is canon for non-reapers to build relays, with sufficient research at any rate. Now it does leave the question of how long said research would take and would the Turians and Quarian fleets starve in the interim.

Turians and Quarians presumably visit the planets of levo-protien races, for tourism and such, and I doubt they're expected to carry weeks of food themselves. I assume that there are places on Earth that have set up dextro-protein greenhouses and such to grow food for them.

[Xanthir]

I watched Serenity before the rest of the chapters, so no.

In that case, the actual Firefly series didn't have a finale. It got cancelled before it could even finish out a season.

[Weeks]

Just like Mass Effect!

[Woopate]

In the director's commentary, they talk about "The Message" being changed a bit in order to sing the series out, but otherwise there is indeed no finale.

[Dark567]

If by that you mean Serenity it...also didn't make a whole ton of sense, or fit very well with what came before it. But at least it was fun to watch.

Serenity definitely made more sense than the ME3 ending. Although it didn't really fit well with the series(I swear they rewrote the entire character of the doctor).

[VectorZero]

I'm questioning why even include their destruction at all like it was a big deal?

To go from Arrival's "blow up the system" to "eh, not a big deal to replace" would be mind-bogglingly bad plotting.

Anywhoo, I'm thinking they can still fix the majority of the flaws pointed out in the story, even without interactivity. If it has:
[Cutscene showing Joker picking up the rest of the crew after Harbinger's attack]
[Reference to your previous choices in the SC's dialoginfodump]
[Cutscenes showing Palaven, Tuchanka, Rannoch, Thessia and Earth as influenced by your RGB choice, the outcome of the mission to that world and the status of your crew member of the relevant race]
[Some indication as to the state of functionality/fuckedness of the galaxy]

I'll be happy. I think the underlying structure (final outcome is one of three choices or die in indecision) is fine. I still don't think it goes against Shep's personality to have to choose one of the presented options, provided the impact of that choice is influenced by previous choices; it's made pretty clear that if Shep can't get the Crucible to work, well, we got nuttin'. TakeAFourthOption - work together with the reapers might have been more thematically consistent with the UnityUberAlles approach, but would tear apart the concept of the SC/Reapers as being beyond mortal comprehension (whether that's left intact at all is up to you, I guess.) And I don't think anyone here's truly advocating the icecream and cake ending, right?

I still wish the 'bad' endings had better visual cues. Just a cutscene or something for the Reapers catching the normandy while scanning, or seeing the crucible get destroyed by the Reapers.

[Ryom]

I'm disappointed with Penny Arcade over that comic. A happy ending is very much not what the complaints were focused on, it was just a lousy ending and people hated that fact. Most were stilling willing to accept a downer ending as long as it was good! They have gotten a little close to certain publishers and developers though, it seems like since they've worked with them directly (they've done comics for both Ubisoft and Bioware as I recall) they rushed to their defense and basically mocked their readership in a way.

[Jesse]

Really? I thought that was them mocking Bioware for not understanding people's complaints.

[SlyReaper]

Really? I thought that was them mocking Bioware for not understanding people's complaints.

It can be interpreted either way. If they meant it to mock Bioware, they did a poor job of communicating that.

[Obby]

I'm disappointed with Penny Arcade over that comic. A happy ending is very much not what the complaints were focused on, it was just a lousy ending and people hated that fact. Most were stilling willing to accept a downer ending as long as it was good! They have gotten a little close to certain publishers and developers though, it seems like since they've worked with them directly (they've done comics for both Ubisoft and Bioware as I recall) they rushed to their defense and basically mocked their readership in a way.

Yeah I kinda of agree. But PA has never been known to really care what people think, so I'm not all that surprised.

[SlyReaper]

[maybeagnostic]

Anywhoo, I'm thinking they can still fix the majority of the flaws pointed out in the story, even without interactivity. If it has:
[Cutscene showing Joker picking up the rest of the crew after Harbinger's attack]
[Reference to your previous choices in the SC's dialoginfodump]
[Cutscenes showing Palaven, Tuchanka, Rannoch, Thessia and Earth as influenced by your RGB choice, the outcome of the mission to that world and the status of your crew member of the relevant race]
[Some indication as to the state of functionality/fuckedness of the galaxy]

That doesn't address any of the major problems of the ending, it just makes them even more obvious. There is no two-minute cinematic they can make that will explain why the Normandy deserted; giving more lines to the SC is the opposite of an improvement (I guess they could switch the SC to being an avatar of Harbinger which is what I initially assumed until it said it created the Reapers); the 'best' ending destroys all organic life and it is weird to have no cinematics for it. I guess I don't have anything against finding out a bit about the state of the galaxy but I don't particularly want to either- it would just drive home the point that no matter what choices you made the galaxy is in the exact same place at the end of the story (unless you randomly decided to destroy all organic life forever at the last second).

[VectorZero]

the 'best' ending destroys all organic life and it is weird to have no cinematics for it. I guess I don't have anything against finding out a bit about the state of the galaxy but I don't particularly want to either- it would just drive home the point that no matter what choices you made the galaxy is in the exact same place at the end of the story (unless you randomly decided to destroy all organic life forever at the last second).

That was my point though, if they show how things are different according to your choices. Seriously, what do you want? Destroy eliminates the reapers and AIs. Control leaves them all alive. Synthesis assimilates (and we know from the current ending that living people aren't killed, so "destroys all organic life" is incorrect. The life persists, it's merely no longer only organic.) THEY ARE DIFFERENT OUTCOMES, AND THE STATE OF THE GALAXY IS DIFFERENT. Provided the impact of your choices are shown, that should be sufficient.

There is no two-minute cinematic they can make that will explain why the Normandy deserted

Joker swoops in to pick up the crew who've retreated after the harbinger attack (I think they've got a second shuttle still on board after Cortez crashed, right?) then heads to the citadel to meet Shep, but gets caught in the explosion?

[Belial]

It doesn't really change the fact that it was the ending of a different game.

One about the inevitability of organic/synthetic conflict.

That game is just wandering around without its ending now. Won't someone think about that game?