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How to end Mass Effect 3 properly
8 April 2012 01:26 am
I know I know, jumping on a sucky ass bandwagon that's gotten totally out of control, so let me caveat this:
The "outrage" and "controversy" over the mass effect 3 endings is bullshit - it's a reasonably decent game to be honest, yes the endings suck, especially as they're chosen in a "you beat the last boss, and then you have three buttons, each of which starts a particular end game sequence" move that is bad game design...but this is bioware, who's endings always suck (Hell, System Shock 2 had a sucky ending.
You see, bioware made its name as a gaming company who basically created the best villain in computer game history, SHODAN, who was a precursor to GlAdOS, who starred in two games before bioware abandoned that property forever because it was good. And that's pretty much what Bioware can generally do well; Characters.
And Mass Effect 3 provides that and pretty much nothing else but that, honestly, so though the endings suck the game leading up to those? Not bad, 3 provides those wonderful character moments and that's basically what Mass Effect games are all about, because it's otherwise a rather boring game where you spend most of the thing hiding behind walls, occasionally shooting at things until you can move to another wall and start shooting things again. And the endings to the previous 2 games was also linear as fuck.
So I was thinking aimlessly, if I had to come up with a good ending, or several good endings, for Mass Effect 3, one(s) that would not only work and provide players the sense of choosing the ending in a non-bullshit fashion, but also be able to achieve the seemingly impossible: Satisfy the whiney, entitled manchildren that started all the wank over the mass effect 3 endings, what would those endings be?
But to answer that question, one has to think about writing and endings to stories in general a bit more than Bioware bothers to. (maybe there is also spoilers) ( Read more... )
The "outrage" and "controversy" over the mass effect 3 endings is bullshit - it's a reasonably decent game to be honest, yes the endings suck, especially as they're chosen in a "you beat the last boss, and then you have three buttons, each of which starts a particular end game sequence" move that is bad game design...but this is bioware, who's endings always suck (Hell, System Shock 2 had a sucky ending.
You see, bioware made its name as a gaming company who basically created the best villain in computer game history, SHODAN, who was a precursor to GlAdOS, who starred in two games before bioware abandoned that property forever because it was good. And that's pretty much what Bioware can generally do well; Characters.
And Mass Effect 3 provides that and pretty much nothing else but that, honestly, so though the endings suck the game leading up to those? Not bad, 3 provides those wonderful character moments and that's basically what Mass Effect games are all about, because it's otherwise a rather boring game where you spend most of the thing hiding behind walls, occasionally shooting at things until you can move to another wall and start shooting things again. And the endings to the previous 2 games was also linear as fuck.
So I was thinking aimlessly, if I had to come up with a good ending, or several good endings, for Mass Effect 3, one(s) that would not only work and provide players the sense of choosing the ending in a non-bullshit fashion, but also be able to achieve the seemingly impossible: Satisfy the whiney, entitled manchildren that started all the wank over the mass effect 3 endings, what would those endings be?
But to answer that question, one has to think about writing and endings to stories in general a bit more than Bioware bothers to. (maybe there is also spoilers) ( Read more... )
