Reply With QuoteAllowed? Of course. Should your opinion carry any weight when compared to that of someone who's actually played through the games in question? Of course not.
So... I've played ME1. Found it likable enough, liked the setting, the characters, had issues with the gameplay though, finding it fairly meh.Originally Posted by Dave Markell
I didn't get ME2, or ME3, but I still followed the story, since I wanted to see where it was going.
Am I allowed to have an opinion?
Allowed? Of course. Should your opinion carry any weight when compared to that of someone who's actually played through the games in question? Of course not.
Taking into account that we're talking about story, I'd posit that it's possible to critique the story without experiencing the game, just as one would critique a book or movie, without living through the story. Provided one reads the story and watches the clips on the Youtubes, one can have a valid opinion on the story.
On the game? No. If you asked me if ME 3 is awesome, or if the shooting is better than TF2, or the RPG elements work great, I wouldn't know.
Also chiming in here with a "wot's the big deal" about the ME3 ending.
He dies, she dies, everybody dies. Earth is saved. Reapers are put to bed. End of trilogy. Noble sacrifice, Shepard goes down like Achilles in a blaze of glory. Guess gamers these days ain't heard of Homer (or any other literature these days beyond Harry Potter, Twilight, and the Hunger Games).
I was more pissed about the final battle. I do enjoy a final battle that doesn't have a gimmick/boss fight involved, but it being a straight-up horde mode full of the game's biggest bullet-sponge enemies was kind of a letdown. I mean, fuck those Banshees.
But how did you find out enough about the story to present your own opinion? From other people who have played, right? So your opinion is based entirely on people's second hand experiences, colored by their own perspective. I agree that you're allowed to have an opinion about the game. But you must recognize that I am not going to take your opinion, or anyone else's opinion who has not played the game, very seriously at all.
That's, uh... Not what happens.
I don't agree. The vast bulk of the game's story is delivered through the playing of it. Mission briefings, dialogue with companions and enemies, brief expository cut scenes, and much more cannot be experienced simply by watching YouTube clips of the ending, and the ending cannot be judged in a vacuum. Without actually playing ME3, it's impossible to evaluate whether or not the game and its ending constitute an appropriate, organic whole. Does it resolve three games worth of plot developments in a satisfying way? Is it consistent with all that's been learned over that period? Is the tone correct? These and many other questions can't be answered by a couple clips, just as Koontz couldn't provide meaningful reviews of films he never saw on the basis of web comments and a trailer.
If only the ending was written as well as Homer. Shepard's sacrifice isn't the issue.
Simple thought experiment. Let's imagine grandpa Glenn is babysitting little Jimmy. And Jimmy's being a pain in the ass, demanding stories, and Glenn's already told him the one about the Princess Bride, and the one about how little Ani became the baddest man in the Universe, only to turn back because of family.
So he tells the story of Shepard. Maybe the details aren't all there, but Shepard learns of the Reapers, gains allies, faces Saren, Sovereign dies, and then... Shepard dies! But comes back, gains new Allies, faces the Collectors, yadda, yadda, yadda, mass relays explode in a R/G/B colored explosion, etc...
Oral storytelling, old as the human race. And in the end little Jimmy says "Grandpa, that ending sucks!" or alternatively, "Grandpa, I'll pay you to change that ending!".
Is little Jimmy any less entitled to his opinion because grandpa told him the story, instead of playing through it?
http://ryanmarkel.com/2012/03/16/cri...mass-effect-3/
http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect...ans-are-right/
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/to...dex/10022779/1
http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/5...ersial-ending/
http://jmstevenson.wordpress.com/201...mass-effect-3/Imagine Frodo, dangling the One Ring, over the fiery chasm of Mt. Doom. He turns, and says, “The Ring is Mine!” and slips the One Ring onto his finger.
Suddenly he’s whisked into a universe contained inside the One Ring, an entire world trapped in the essence of the ring. He meets the Keeper of the Ring, an ethereal spirit who has dwelled within the ring since its creation and now Frodo must make the ultimate sacrifice. He has to become the ring, in order to destroy it.
How many people in the theater, watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, would have stood up and said: “What the fuck is this shit?”
You and Jimmy are both entitled to hold whatever opinion you want, just as we're entitled to tell you that your opinion is nearly worthless because it's not based on your own experiences. Grandpa told you and Jimmy 1% of the tale and probably distorted even that small amount, so your opinion is worth less than 1% of that of someone who actually played through it.
A little too simple. For one thing, if grandpa just wants the kid to get off his back, he can make up whatever end he wants. He could have Elmo show up and save the day. He could leave it on a cliffhanger and pick up the story tomorrow night. Grandpa is essentially the owner of that story, regardless of its origins. And the stakes pretty much couldn't be lower; there's an audience of one.
Not so here. Bioware has to get teams of people to get together to spend who knows how many man hours to write a new ending, build new art assets, code new logic, record new vocals, etc. Plus there are a million Jimmys, and there's no way in bloody fucking hell you are going to put together a story as awesome as the one in their head, i.e. the one where Shepard builds a gun that fires antireapers and then sticks his tongue down Tali's throat.
But then there's this additional audience of people who never played the game. They just heard the ending sucks. So they make up not only what they think the ending means, but the context, how everyone got to the this point. What the Illusive Man wants. Why Wrex won't just join my damn party. Why there's a loading screen right in the middle of the damn Normandy.
And I'm cool with that. But you're at least one remove away from people who have actually at least seen what we're discussing. By all means, tell us what you think about what you think could have happened. But ultimately it's speculation about speculation. Why should I care?
Ah, so because I edited a comprehensive video walk-through, watching each segment at least twice including some branching choices, I'm 200% qualified! Nice to know!
Gotta like isolated structuralism.
Anyway, there's this thing called culture. And expectations. And the three-act structure. And games studies. And...wait, it's not that simple.
The medium isn't the entire message. Sometimes it's a carrier signal. In fact, it can be argued the entire "computer culture" is a search for synthetic experienced, hyperreality, rather than real ones - and indeed "immersion" has unavoidable elements of it. Criticising one irreal experience's accuracy to an advocate of hyperreality is worse than pointless. In the end, gamer culture is a consensus reality and ME3's ending is going to go down in posterity as a major element of gamer's re-evaluation of the worth of traditional Hollywood storytelling (as Bioware promised) in games, and potentially a major point of divergence between gamers and commercial reviewers.
(And if you don't understand that, tough! Welcome to the synopsis of my paper)
Last edited by Dawn Falcon; 03-24-2012 at 02:12 PM.
I agree with this completely--the fact that you've explored branching choices and spent more time with the game than someone who did just one playthrough does give your opinions more weight. That doesn't mean I'll agree with them, of course, but it does mean that I'll give them serious consideration.
And the opinion of someone who either lacks a receiver or never turns it on is meaningless.Anyway, there's this thing called culture. And expectations. And the three-act structure. And games studies. And...wait, it's not that simple. The medium isn't the entire message. Sometimes it's a carrier signal.
Well, I don't entirely. You do lose a lot of the sense of the gameplay, but from the bits I did play it's a good advance on ME2 but not exactly world-shaking in terms of new ground for cover-based games. Also, in places it seemed to rely overly much on wave-based gameplay.
(Which is pretty much what I expected, and I wouldn't ding it for it)
The problem I'm referring to is that many of the decisions you make (for war assets) turn out at the end of the game to be signal, not noise. Yes, some of the decisions (like the Genophage and Geth) are meaningful in their own right, but most of the game? Um. (Because it's not THAT hard to get all 3 endings, if you've imported a save). If you replay ME2, you'll do most, if not all, the loyalty missions. ME3? Unless you especially liked a mission... (Especially, say, the Geth fighter base.)
Meh. I'm not going to change my opinion that one does not need to play a game to be able to have a valid opinion on the story, and I guess people who don't agree with me aren't going to change their opinion either.
So, agree to disagree then.
It's what happened in my ending. The whole end meeting with Little Mikey Reaper smacks of that stupid retconned Matrix crapo -- endless of cycle of humanity rising and falling against the machines, you're not the first hero to rise, blah blah blah -- but you know what? Who gives a shit. As far as I'm concerned, my Shepard goes out in a blaze of glory, the Reapers are shut down (not taken over), and the endgame goes black just as Elvis Prestley steps out of the crashed Normandy. The galaxy does its thing for a while, somebody gets bent out of shape, and all of the races wipe themselves out, along with every other farrow race and planet capable of supporting life, leaving the entire Milky Way a desolate wasteland...thus showing the Reapers were right in the end. That's how I see it.
The whole wailing and gnashing of teeth over this is soooo overblown.
Did you read those articles Quitch linked to you?
So you are just creating your own ending, which is totally fine. We've all kind of had to. But you weren't accurately describing the ending Bioware gave us, which is all I was pointing out.
I don't think anyone disagrees with your right to hold an opinion. You may find however that the audience for an uninformed opinion is pretty small.
Since ME's ending is a "bring your own interpretation" one, uninformed opinion is all there is.
That's the point, isn't it? There are three endings no matter what you do. Nothing matters once you reach the Disappointment Funnel and your only "choice" is that you get to choose your color of explosion. Oh, if you pick green there's some old-timey circuit board shit on some leaves. That must have taken a whole hour or so to make.
It was fine right up to the point they decided to make everything before trivial. Including Shepard's sacrifice.
scharmers: If i wanted to create my own ending, i wouldn't have given bioware my $80.
I don't think you and I define "uninformed" the same way.
You don't know the story. You know a handful of major plot points and some quotes and highlights selected by other people, and you have to trust their impressions, because you never played the game.
It's as if some student read an entire book for a class. And highlighted certain passages to help them study. And then you came along and read just the highlighted passages. Why would I take your impression of the text as seriously as that of the person who actually read the whole thing?
All you know is what other people think was important. You have no idea if the other stuff might color that opinion, because you never experienced it. I can tell you personally I've "read" "around" people's impressions and re-tellings of stuff in ME3 that I flatly disagree with, based on my playthough.
Either I think there are other things that happened that contradict their assertions, things you don't know because you never played it, or I think they're not putting what they're talking about in proper context. The context being other parts of the game. The parts you don't know because you never played it. Or I simply think they misinterpreted what they experienced, maybe because they're stupid. You have no way to evaluate their statements, because you don't have your own perspective on what they're commenting on, because you never played the fucking game.
The what!?. Of course, you can comment something .... about what you know. But will be second hand versions, and not the experiente itself. You will be talking about shadows in a cave, not the real world.
Whoa, Teiman whipped out Plato on us. Who's willing to go Godwin?
And in an age of video walkthroughs I don't need to play the game, not to comment on the story. I can treat it like it's a movie, a very long movie.
It won't be enough to comment on the game, since no Youtube video is going to tell me if the game is fun and a game isn't a movie, but I'm only talking about having an opinion on the story.
Sure. And when I hear an audio book I'm not actually reading the book, it'll be a second hand version, shadows in a cave...
DarthMasta:
I think your opinion on the ending of Mass effect 3 is super-important. Can we move on now?
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