As players and consumers grow older, they naturally seek experiences and entertainments that advance and grow along with them. Perhaps when they were kids and young, they were excited by action orientated twitch and reflex based games, where OCD was king of grind. As they grew older, they may just all of a sudden decide that they want romance, or good stories, or a philosophical context to the plot: things that do not subsist on twitch reflexes or action orientated entertainment.
The question is, has the Western game industry grown with their consumer base… or have the consumers themselves aged and matured faster than the pace of game design philosophy?
A feature article at Adrenaline Vault, one of my early pc gaming review magazines I read regularly for game news and currently an independent review site, has its own thoughts to that issue.
Eve Online is a very interesting MMO simulation game. It simulates human conflict, morale, logistics, economic decisions, and several other things. At times it is a war game. At other times it is an espionage and financial game. Finding a warlord in Eve Online and seeing how they apply the Art of War to a simulated online environment, is very interesting since one of my primary interests is the freedom to express one’s will through physical movement in martial arts and H2H. This is a very tactically limited fight and is nowhere close to the battles Sun Tzu fought 2500 years ago in China, but the same principles apply strategically and even logistically.
Many people can read Sun Tzu. Few can understand it. Even fewer can apply any of its principles in actual practical fighting against real human opponents.
I can definitely say that Alan Wake is a significantly different experience in the gaming genres. It is proof that single artistic vision, true artistic integrity that follows a consistent plan and vision from one person, can do much that larger committees of writers, such as Mass Effect 3′s team, could not.
There is a significant “fingerprint” that I can detect when I’m viewing or consuming the work produced by a single cohesive artistic vision. Whereas conglomerated works or committee works often feel “off” in one sense or another.
Each of the six episodes acts as its own beginning, middle, and end. And while the climaxes aren’t as dramatic as some I have seen in Japanese visual novels, the story line, the characters, the themes, the world, and the game play all fit together very well. Finishing an episode only takes a few hours, but afterwards you can continue or take a break. This siesta type rest then reinvigorates the viewer’s curiosity and draws the player back into the game world.
Like most of the comments said here at the Forbes article, this is not a guarantee that Bioware even has a clue what they are going to do to solve the various problems created by taking the original Mass Effect universe of Drew Karpyshyn and giving it to Casey Hudson and Mac Walters to cook up as a poisoned stir fry.
The co-owner or some such finally decided to make an official statement. I suppose it had to be done by someone and their PR advisers were cooking it up as fast as they could.
This thread at Bio forums on the insider info sold as an Android App by one enterprising insider journalist on the ME3 Making of a Game documentary is still going strong.
This poll at Bio forums is still up, cataloging all the forum registrations. If anyone ever said that the polls are skewed because of people pounding the internet firewalls, how come that includes those signed up at Bioware’s own forums? Can a game publisher to have their fan base cut down from 100% to 10%?
Just another reason why ME1-3 fans would probably easily transition into the visual novel fan base as well. Voice actors are not a hot commodity in the US, where some people even hire their own software developers as voice actors. There is no professionalism and no long term contracts, unless you’re a star like Mark Sheen or something. Mass Effect keeping the voice actors consistent throughout is a testament to their cash flow reserves and certain evolutions in American media.
But what really matters is that the fans actually have their favorite VAs and they know them by name, and sound. Same as is true for Japanese anime and visual novel fans.
I was curious about Jennifer Hale’s background, since she took the vast plurality of Best VA votes over at Bio forums. I found out that she is an actual professional VA. And the startling eye shocker is this. Hale interpreted the voices of Fall-From-Grace and Deionarra in the computer-role-playing-game Planescape: Torment. She voiced the female version of Commander Shepard in the video game series Mass Effect, noted for her nomination for “best performance by a human female” award at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards (Mass Effect 2). She is also known as the “voice” of Samus Aran in all three games in the Metroid Prime trilogy, providing grunts and screams as the player moves and takes damage.
Fall from Grace and Deoinarra were both my favorite voiced lines in Planescape Torment. Just perfect. My only regret was that only a few lines were voiced, given the quality that I had heard. No wonder I favored the female voice for Shepard over the male one once I had time to do a comparison. She just had that emotional matrix down, and even though sometimes I disliked how she voiced the lines, I started realizing that I was actually feeling something whereas with male Shep I just didn’t feel much of anything. Given her work in Planescape Torment, it wasn’t her voice at fault, but just the writing probably. The writing in PT was superb and I found no fault whatsoever.
She voiced Bastila Shan in the award winning Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and returned for a brief appearance in the sequel, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II The Sith Lords.
Bastila was one of my favorite characters from KOTOR. She almost seemed like a character the Japanese would create. Another job done well, that I never knew about given the unpopularity of connecting VAs to their characters in the US. If all American voice actors and actresses had her talent at singing and her professional focus in VA, American voice acting would be light years ahead. However, the quality she brings out to a writer’s story is the minimum standard expected in Japan for visual novels rated for adults. That’s the minimum quality. Therein you see the difference. The Illusive Man in ME3 and Jennifer Hale, those are “normal” performances in Japanese VN, not the ones that stand out from the rest. Another reason why I like Japanese visual novels, for the story as well as the voice talent providing that story an audio output (and it almost doesn’t matter that it is in Japanese, since I’ve learned to understand a substantial portion of words by now)
To Sum it all up, 45146 votes thought the ending sucked and let them down. One went to a shrink because of the emotional depression. Others reacted a little bit better, but not really.
3359 and 1043 voters either liked the ending as it was, or liked the main character’s ending but thought the ending needed the crew as well. So that’s about 45k to 4k or 10 to 1, in favor of ME3′s ending being horrible or full of holes.
Japanese visual novels usually have 3 types of endings to fit the belief, preferences, and desires of the fan base: a good ending, a true ending, and a bad ending. Fate/Stay Night had “a lot of bad endings” that involved the main character making the “wrong” choice and dying horribly as a result. In fact they were pretty entertaining once you got used to the gruesome nature of the deaths (they are written in novel format and much more immersive than some CGI characters on screen). The after death session where they explain your mistakes, a hint corner, is also hilarious and does much to take the psychological pain away.
The True Ending (FIN) is basically the artistic vision of where the writer thought the story and characters should go. Usually it completes story arcs from day 1 of the visual novel and has elements of good and tragedy to go together. The Good Ending is just what it says it is, it doesn’t let anyone important die and lets the main character live with his or her love interest and friends, happily ever after. Classical Hollywood happy/sappy ending. And there you have it. And there you also have an example of how Mass Effect 3 tried to reach Japanese dramatic levels… and failed. Didn’t even fail because they made mistakes that couldn’t be taken back. They failed because it’s like they reached the finish line then decided to take a nap : similar to the story of the rabbit and tortoise. Could have won, if they had bothered to try. That’s the kind of ending Mass Effect 3 feels like.
The better the gameplay was, the more horrible the end turned out to feel for players. As for me, I’m rather more objective on this matter than other players. They haven’t experienced G Senjou no Mao or Muv Luv Alternative. Being emotionally connected to fictional characters and seeing bad things happen to them, as if it was life, and you can’t do anything to change it, is tough. But you get used to it. Hardens you up emotionally, and if you don’t get this hardening, you’ll probably be too afraid to pick up another emotional and dramatic visual novel (especially from Key). As they say about life, love is only worth it because of how much it hurts when your loved ones die or are taken before their time. The only way to avoid the pain is to avoid the joy as well.
P.S. Some of the customers of Bioware wrote very emotional descriptions of their reception of the game and its ending. Too bad I can’t find them any more: their social forum thread is 1300 pages in length, after all. Yes, you read correctly: 1300 pages, with 10-30 comments per page. It took me an hour just to read a few pages to get a sense of customer dissatisfaction and its cause. And that is only one thread in one forum. Imagine what is going on everywhere else. It’s like the Reaper invasion… hence the Literal Video you see up here.
UPDATE1:
While I haven’t finished the game yet, if the endings are as bad (and bitter) as people are saying they are, ME3 will be my last Bioware game as well. The lack of not only a, I’ll say, more happy than bitter ending, but also the lack of a “Reapers win” ending really seem to make these endings ridiculous.
I just don’t understand why they would not add one of each of those to cover all the bases, not to mention pretty much destroy any future for the franchise due to no relay travel. From the sound of how the endings work out, they seem way too… “emo”, I guess would be the best term. Whoever thought the fans would be satisfied with the outcome obviously didn’t take time to go to the Character and Romance forum to see how many people wanted, not only a happy ending with their respective LI, but also wanted the franchise as a whole to be a success and allow for further content in the future (books, games, etc., and yes, obviously NOT with Shep, as this was his/her last hurrah).
After the debacle with DA2, ME3 is the final nail in the coffin for Bioware. Heck, even the DA2 ending seems better than what I’ve read about the ME3 endings, and that is saying something.
Edit: Just to add, what I’ve played so far, I’ve really enjoyed, but just knowing how contrived the ending was really scares me.
—
I’ll also add that I actually stopped my current playthrough of ME3 (my FIRST playthrough) and went back to ME2 in the hopes that Bioware sees the fan displeasure with the ending and offers a patch/dlc for additional endings like those suggested in my copied post, or until they respond to the fan backlash at least. Heck, if they do and decide to make future content in the ME universe, they can just go with whatever ending they want to canon (like they did with the Udina councilor deal) Fallout style. Seriously, the back to back disappointment with DA2 and ME3 has turned me off of all Bioware games from now on, and I’ve been with them since Baldur’s Gate. Heck, even BG2:ToB had happy endings!
I honestly don’t know what’s with all the “dark, edgy” stuff going on lately. I mean, I get it for the DA series, as thats what it’s always been presented as, but ME had always seemed to have a more Star Trek kind of vibe going on where there was way more hope than despair and “grimdark”. This honestly feels like a NWN2 “rocks fall, everyone dies” ending. And there was a lot of disappointment with that (that thankfully got fixed in an expansion).
- mjb203
Strike2k2
2012-03-09 05:07 AM
I’m really confused right now. I finished the game about an 8 hours ago but i’m not really feeling like the game is complete. I mean, The ending was lack luster and very cliche. The whole fear of machines taking over or killing everything has been done so many times… sigh… And in every ending Shepard dies, not just in the one i saw for my only play through? I’m not even sure what to think about the game at the moment. And that in it’s self is a very bad thing.
After ME1 I thought “Wow. I’ve never loved characters in a shooter before this. The Story telling was freakin awesome. And I can’t wait to take it to the Reapers”
After ME2 I thought “Wow. Shepard dies, is brought back, And still owned Reaper face! AWESOME! I can’t wait to see what happens in ME3″
BTW, the Suicide Mission was one of my favorite gameplay experiences ever. On my first play through with no spoilers I actually caught myself holding my breath on Shepard’s jump to the Normandy on the end run.
After ME3 I thought “Wow. I……. Finished…… the “Game”.
The Game itself was great. I liked how MP was blended with Single player (I got my readiness up to 91% before the assault on the illusive man). It added a connection to the new content which was cool. There was plenty to do in the game. The banter between crew mates was epic. At times i’d laugh out loud and wish i had saved before the convo so i could hear it again.
But once i got to the end it feels like all the connections i made with the crew emotionally were basically…. severed. I mean, what basically happens is, no matter what Shepard does he’s still screwing billions of people. The Mass Effect Gates go up in smoke leaving planets cut off from their colonies, people cut off from their families and loved ones and Shepard dead. I mean really? WTF.
If you ask me Shepard got off easy. There are now 20+ species in the SOL system and all of them have to survive of the resources of a single planet, Earth, that already had a population of 12 billion. They most likely would have hung him and posted it on the extranet. It doesn’t make any sense.
This ain’t the damn Bible. Why kill off the main character in every end scenario? At least one ending should of had Shepard live happily ever after with his/her Li. Maybe that’s the Ending that would have made me play through again. But for now, what would be the point? Re-playability was just murdered for me as was the ME franchise.
Strike2k2
Additional excellent analysis about the ending and the reaction to fan disappointment. I particularly liked the “5 reasons why the ending sucked” article: very entertaining.
UPDATE2: For those wondering about Visual Novels mentioned above, check this section out. If you were wondering if Japanese visual novels gave the reader more closure… most definitely. I don’t watch American movies any more precisely because it’s been “Hollywood” morphed into some kind of brain dead mess. I wasn’t emotionally connected to Mass Effect 1, or 2, or 3, as much as some fans were, because I spent my time with Japanese visual novels. That was all the emotional attachment I needed. Or could handle.
UPDATE3:
Interesting Quotes: (Please note, some of these I’m transcribing from Video’s. I’m trying to be as accurate as possible. Will try rewatching the videos later and updating then.)
Mac Walters on the Star Child/Reapers
“Originally, with the catalyst, the star child at the end of the game, I had written that much more in the guise of a investigative style conversation, where there is something he tells you but then, you get to ask a bunch of questions and you get your questions answered. But then me and Casey talked and decided, lets keep the conversation “High level”. Give you the details that you need to know, but don’t get into the stuff that you don’t need to know. Like “How long have they been reaping?” You don’t need to know the answers to the mass effect universe. So we intentionally left those out”
Casey on after Mass Effect 3
“Whatever we do would likely happen before or during the events of Mass Effect 3, not after”
On delaying the game
In march 2011, he also faced a roomful of Mass Effect developers who expressed concern about hitting the promised holiday release date… New release date set for March 2012. After much deliberation, the CAT mission (or rather, the Prothean mission) had to be removed from the set of tasks. The missions would later be completed as post-release content”
Casey on the End Boss
‘We had the final fight with the Illusive man in the game, but it just felt very Video Gamey. It didnt fit in with the themes. And really, is there a point of the end boss if only for the sake of an end boss?’
The article also states ‘Although art was created for this sequence, it was ultimately dropped because it felt too predictable to end the series on a massive boss battle.’
On Tali’s Face
We eventually decided that she gives you a memento of her pictures, but the team was throwing around a lot of pictures and designs until we decided on something and said “Yup, that’s her”.
On Deciding the End of the Game
The illusive man boss fight had been scrapped… but there was still much debate. ‘One night walters scribbled down some thought on various ways the game could end with the line “Lots of speculation for Everyone!” at the bottom of the page.’
In truth the final bits of dialogue were debated right up until the end of 2011. Martin sheen’s voice-over session for the illusive man, originally scheduled for August, was delayed until mid-November so the writers would have more time to finesse the ending.
And even in November the gameplay team was still experimenting with an endgame sequence where players would suddenly lose control of Shepard’s movement and fall under full reaper control. (This sequence was dropped because the gaemplay mechanic proved too troublesome to implement alongside dialogue choices).
-End Quote
More “insider” news or rumor, depending on where you stand. Like I said before, making anything, including a story, end based upon a committee of people who think they are smart… is not a good idea. Yeah, yeah, pass the ideas around and then “everyone agrees” that “it is her” is… pretty stupid all in all. Creative vision is not some hive mind of the reapers enforced from above. Creative vision is individual and often disagrees with everybody else around. That’s what makes it individual creativity and not “lowest common denominator”.
There’s a reason why authors don’t collaborate with more than one other author if they can help it. People’s abilities to write tend to go down hill when you add a third author, a fourth author, and so on and so forth.
UPDATE4:
This is really discouraging. They really just totally blew it.
In one of the other threads there was rumor of division in the writer’s room over having Mac write the final sequence with little input from the rest of the team. When I read it, and knowing a little about office politics, I thought, this is the most plausible theory out there–that they put a massive responsibility to tie everything together in the hands of one guy. And the guy they picked was the guy that wrote Arrival…
Here’s the thing. As a story idea, without worrying about all the decisions the players made, I think this is an emotional, epic ending, and if you played through in a very specific way, this particular ending might be okay. But this is a game where huge decisions made by the player should have altered the game much more than it did. I’m not just talking about the ending, either. Whether you destroy or save the Collector base makes no difference, really, and that should have made a huge difference. In short, they wrote the story and ending that they felt best, but ignored that it wouldn’t make any sense with 99% of all three games. They just completely blew it…
-Captain Arty
One of the commenters at the Final Hour Android app thread describes the development process thus. I don’t think this contradicts my line that stories should be written by a single creative director and author. What they did was take out Drew Karpyshyn and replace him with… the ones responsible for ME3′s ending. DK actually knew the lore of the ME universe judging by how he wrote his books. If they had given the authority to decide the ending all up to him, good things would have happened. But Bioware decided to delegate authority to a group of other writers, with predictable results. Even if they chose one person and that one person had final say, it was still a decision made by committee. With all the attendant problems that happens with decisions made by committee, including the fact that nobody is “really” responsible if it all goes to hell.
UPDATE5: I personally thought this fan author’s rewriting of the dialogue with Catalyst actually made sense…
UPDATE6: The Retake Mass Effect movement and charity drive paints a stark picture of the realities (ideological and political) that is mirrored by modern US status quo problems. Another way of saying human nature is flawed and nasty and doesn’t change just because the species gets older.
I mostly agree with this person’s description and feedback on the ending. Don’t read it unless you have already seen ME3′s ending or will never play the game, since it goes right to the end game spoilers: I’ll talk about it in such a way that it doesn’t spoil the game.
Now, minus the run-on sentences and improper grammar, (I am too tired to be bothered with proper grammar) I created in 15 minutes what a team of VERY talented writers did not do in 2 years: Give a satisfying (In my opinion), proper ending. I may not have tied all loose ends, I may not have made it perfect; but hell, neither did they. Bioware made me care about the characters and universe they created, and to end it the way they did is just an unbelievable shame. Everything about Mass Effect 3 was perfect, right up until that ending.
I’m become very well aware of the frustration American writers and Hollywood or commercial companies have outputted the recent 30 or 40 years. I’ve also had the benefit and chance to look at some alternatives, namely oversea market demographics (Japanese anime and visual novels) to see how they do things. People may remember Final Fantasy 8′s ending had an epilogue, which was sort of a travelogue of the main and secondary characters getting together and having fun at the post-victory party, full of humor and individual quirks. The perspective format used was that of a photographer and you saw snapshots of the party, and just from a few pictures alone, rolled out along with the ending credits, you felt nostalgic and pleasantly satisfied with the conclusion. Even though the actual ending didn’t have that sense of closure and epilogue… ness. Overall the Japanese are fans of alternative endings, time travel resets, and providing positive and fun ending epilogues. The only time they get bogged down is when they try to write an ending with a committee. And guess what the main complaint about the “team of ME3 writers” was… that they couldn’t write a good ending. That’s because, as we all know, committees are good for only one of two things: getting blown up by massive explosions to please the player and getting in the way of Shephard as the main hero tries to save the galaxy.
So if a committee of politicians can’t get anything done right, what makes people think a committee of writers is any better? The maximum recommended number for a collaboration novel or short story is Two Authors. Two. Not 5. Not 12. Not 20. Two.
SO for people wondering how talented writers could create good gameplay material that ends up sucking and not making any sense at the end, blame it on the fact that committees have an interesting formula for adding in talent. For every new person that is added too the committee, the total talent pool of the committee is divided by 4. Assuming a committee starts at a minimum of 3 people, that means that a total pool 200 talent from 3 people, will be reduced to less than half their strength if they add another guy with a talent of 200. Most people think adding 200 to 200 would double the group’s talent pool, but the way a hive mind works is that it divides exponentially and ends up with 100, half the talent of the group of 3 to begin with. We’re humans, not AI. We don’t get smarter the more processors are around us. We get dumber, in fact, the more people are around us.
And if playing Mass Effect 1-3 didn’t teach you what it meant to work with committees, real life will.
So to get back to my view of the ending, I’m quite well satisfied. Because I already understood that if you want a good ending, write it yourself. So I’m just going to modify the ending to Mass Effect 3 by my own hand, and just ignore the other stuff. You feel a lot less frustration when you understand how to manipulate “reality” like that. After all, the Japanese concept of multiple realities and branching decision paths in their visual novels already assumes this to be the case. How else could you start a new game, meet the same characters, at the same time, but do completely different things? From a Japanese point of view, there is no “canon” ending. So the ending from Mass Effect 3, for me, is not set in stone. The desire of American companies to create an ending set in stone is pretty inflexible and does not conform to the power or nature of the internet or player client base. A single original creator can create a solid ending, such as the Creator of Babylon 5, including the movie about the Earth-Minbari war, created a great ending. But only if he has creative control of the beginning or end, or at least the end. I doubt Bioware selected one writer and gave him or her the authority to decide how the ending would go. Not after having a team work together for the first 1-3 games. While game play components can fit together almost seamlessly with enough experience, if you have one writer write one character and another writer write the character’s lines for this battle or mission, but at the end of the game, you need someone calling the shots, getting it done, and doing so based upon the “big picture”. And it’s one that will not necessarily please everyone at the committee, company, or fan base level, but it will be Consistent. It will have artistic value and completion. It won’t feel like ME3, where promises were made to the player, but wasn’t fulfilled at the end.
American companies are still nowhere near the level of the Japanese when it comes to awesome endings. Some of the endings to my favorite visual novels such as G Senjou no Mao, had as many high moments as Mass Effect 3′s story, but the ending left me in a complete omnipresent daze for several days. The visual novel employed a double climax ending, with one normal ending which concluded the primary arc, and then when everything seems peaceful and nice, you get the “real ending”. It evokes a horror genre device of bringing back the villain when everyone thought the villain was alive… except there’s no cliff hanger. But that’s just a gimmick, the real strength of G Senjou is how it ended, and it doesn’t matter what gimmicks people try, what matters is the quality of the content. It was powerful enough to stun even me, who is relatively unaffected by Mass Effect 3′s ending, in a sad/depressed sense. Think about how it would affect all the other Americans who actually can get pulled down by ME3′s sorry state of affairs at the end. They would be destroyed, mentally and spiritually, by a Muv Luv Alternative. The quality and power inherent in the emotions such things evoke, is something American consumers desire, but they cannot quite imagine just how powerful it can get in a dramatic and emotional sense. Part of the reason ME3 is so powerful is because it carries over, in terms of character relationships and templates, from Mass Effect 1. So like a long fantasy novel, there’s a degree of investment involved. Cerberus brought Shephard into the fold precisely because they used the investment of the main character in the crew of the Normandy. Emotional investment is a powerful lure.
Perhaps I’ll write up a fan fiction synopsis of the “real ending” for Mass Effect 3, in so far as I envision it at least. It’s certainly something doable for the imagination.
Computer games have been mostly a male dominated craft. They have looked for more women, since that is usually more attractive on screen especially for a male dominated audience, but it has always been usually males who have played console and PC games. Recently, women have been provided more games suiting to their taste, such as the fashion designs of a Sim City 3, but that is only true recently. And speaking of recently, game reviews are mostly done by men as well, even in video reviews, except this one. Which is why I described it as a modern development. In the right direction, if you ask me. The other positive is that she’s more entertaining than the norm. Maybe because women received conversation training early on while men who programmed games and played them did not…..? Naww, couldn’t be.
On a side note, last year Starcraft II did a little something of a plot development with Raynor and his love interest. Romance is not a big selling point of video or PC games. (Gee, I wonder why) The usual “talent” pool for PC games just don’t have a lot of people who are really good at dating, relationships, or romance. It’s not like the Japanese visual novel market or galge (dating sims). That is also a “modern development”. They’re trying to put their hands on new things that have usually not been well explored. Women don’t play games much because games aren’t really about relationships, romance, and conversations. Whereas men don’t usually watch chic flicks precisely because it has no action, and too much about relationships.
If producers and coders keep branching out like this, they may see an inter cross exchange between different demographics. The Sims 3 has already proven that with the female demographic. So has casual games like Bejwelled. They are missing out on a lot of the market segment if they cater only to males.
EDIT: Here are some more entertaining thoughts on the same venue. Golden Age article
And a Mass Effect meme page. Of course, the Skyrim 3 meme even got to Yahoo Answers, days after their launch, which in my view is pretty amazing for memetic viral reproduction.
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