Mass Effect 3 [Massive Spoilers]

[velveeta]

@Johnny_Angel

This ‘artistic integrity’ defense is a funny one, because if we believe in taking art seriously, we muddy the waters if just anything counts as art. Never mind that artists themselves have been doing just this for decades. Look at it this way: if you hire a wedding photographer, and he takes a bunch of pictures with his thumb in frame, then you would object, not only because you don’t want thumbs in your wedding photos, but because this is a recognizable marker of poor photography skills. But suppose that the photographer objects that what most people see as signs of incompetence obscuring or overshadowing what the pictures were supposed to represent, and the photographer claims that if he gave into your demands for a refund or a reshoot that he’d be violating his own artistic integrity. The name of art itself is invoked in a circular argument in defense of artistic failure.

People making the ‘artistic integrity’ argument are defending incompetence or indifference in the name of art. As the veteran of many writing workshops, whatever you think of that institution, one of the things they for the good of mankind is beat out of your heads the idea that the audience owes the artist something. It’s the other way around. This isn’t to say you can’t subvert the audience’s expectations – but subverting is not the same as ignoring or failing to understand. The artist owes the audience something for their time, and there are tried-and-true ways of achieving this, and well-trampled paths of error, known from antiquity and as a public service drummed into the heads of would-be writers.

The points I’m about to make are related to each other, and to how the ending of Mass Effect 3 is in itself evidence of its failure as art.

Ars est celāre artem - A somewhat smoother restatement of Ovid’s observation. The art is to conceal the art. One is reminded of this whenever someone attempts to justify something that doesn’t make sense by invoking Art as a blanket license. If something doesn’t work without the audience having to appeal to Art Itself as some kind of ineffable, infallible authority, then it’s failed as art.

Before a wooden leg can be a symbol, it must first be a wooden leg - Flannery O’Connor was talking about one of her own short stories. I believe it was in the Mystery of Manners collection, but the upshot was that there was a wooden leg in the story which served as a symbol. But in her own explanation it was absolutely essential that the wooden leg actually be an object in the world independent of its symbolic meaning, and that to bear the symbolic weight its literal role in the story had to be important to the story on the literal level. You can’t just toss shit in to be symbolic.

The gun on the mantle - Chekov famously observed that if there’s going to be a gun in the third act of a play, it had better be introduced in the first act – there for the audience to see. And, just as importantly, if there is a gun sitting on the mantle in the first act, it had better come into play in the third act, otherwise you’re wasting the audience’s attention by making them wonder about it.

Mass Effect 3 violates all these principles of story telling. It breaks immersion to force you into a ‘look how deep this shit is’ sequence. It introduces shit at the last minute that is supposed to be symbolic, but clearly doesn’t have the connectivity to the literal story to bear the weight of the symbolic significance. Furthermore, it puts a lot of guns on the mantle in the first act which are mysteriously replaced with three galaxy-buster bombs in the third act.

The artist is there to serve the art, not the other way around. The artists job is to win the audience over. It’s not the audience’s job to gratify the artist’s ego.

Clap, clap, clap
Bravo! Well said.

[oft_wears_hats]

@velveeta

Here’s a great video on why it fails basic story telling. It’s almost 40 minutes long, but it’s well done.

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

New video (12 min) by the same guy talking about his opinion on the Indoctrination Theory. I like this guy.

[Ike_Witt]

I was wondering, if you did none of the loyalty missions in ME2, who would survive the suicide mission? Hmmm, I am curious what happens in ME3 if you killed off everyone, or most everyone in the first 2 games…

[Mr.Kobayashi]

@Ike_Witt

I was wondering, if you did none of the loyalty missions in ME2, who would survive the suicide mission? Hmmm, I am curious what happens in ME3 if you killed off everyone, or most everyone in the first 2 games…

Depends who you leave when you fight the human Reaper; each character has ‘defence points’ that go towards a threshold. Grunt, Garrus and Zaeed have the most, Tali, Jack and Mordin the least. Miranda is partially protected by plot armour (unloyal she can still lead the fire team without dying). People die if you don’t upgrade the Normandy, too.

Most of the time they’re replaced by a suspiciously similar substitute (Oriana for Miranda, Padok Wiks for Mordin, Admiral Raan for Tali etc).

[Johnny_Angel]

@Ike_Witt

I was wondering, if you did none of the loyalty missions in ME2, who would survive the suicide mission? Hmmm, I am curious what happens in ME3 if you killed off everyone, or most everyone in the first 2 games…

You know, in playing through ME2 so my wife could catch up on the plot, I was explaining the sequences in the Suicide Mission which were the points where they would have killed off a character if I hadn’t managed to gain his or her loyalty. My wife said, “So, you have a character named Shepard, who is resurrected, and those who believe in her will be saved?” I said, “I know where you’re going with this, but forget it. It only applies to these twelve people she’s got traveling with her.”

[madmonk28]

Johnny Angel, you left off the part where he was resurrected in ME2 and at the end of ME3 (at least one of them) he pretty much ascends into the heavens.

[Crowbar_of_Irony_3]

@madmonk28

Johnny Angel, you left off the part where he was resurrected in ME2 and at the end of ME3 (at least one of them) he pretty much ascends into the heavens.

And if you choose Synthesis (which seems to be ending Bioware wants us to take), he literally dwells in everyone else, transforming them into a new creation…

@Mr.Kobayashi

Depends who you leave when you fight the human Reaper; each character has ‘defence points’ that go towards a threshold. Grunt, Garrus and Zaeed have the most, Tali, Jack and Mordin the least. Miranda is partially protected by plot armour (unloyal she can still lead the fire team without dying). People die if you don’t upgrade the Normandy, too.

Most of the time they’re replaced by a suspiciously similar substitute (Oriana for Miranda, Padok Wiks for Mordin, Admiral Raan for Tali etc).

But Miranda could not die, right? I have read that she re-appears at the end even if killed off…or am I mistaken?

Who replaces Garrus?

[Unauthorized_Cinnamon]

Not a new ending, really, but more information at least. And FREE. Mass Effect 3 to get extended ending at no cost to gamers - BBC News

[mikews99]

Official word from Bioware: We are sticking with that sucky ending, we don’t care you don’t like it, but we will add some more cut scenes to placate all you whiny people.

ETA: Ninja’d!

[Ferret_Herder]

Christ. Fine, I’ll withhold judgement until I see it, but it sounds like plot holes and crummy ending are intact. If that does turn out to be the case, Bioware will have to start performing actual miracles before I pre-order another game from them again.

[Bosstone]

See, I don’t think the ending was sucky, just the execution. They’re trying to re-execute it. shrug

[Ike_Witt]

So, it seems Bioware/EA will still not live up to their promises about how the series was going to end. And they are still flogging that ‘artistic integrity’ bullshit. And they are still saying that the people who don’t like the ending are a ‘vocal minority’. If I ask them nicely do you think they would kick me in the nuts?

I was willing to wait and see how everything played out before deciding whether or not to buy anymore Bioware/EA products. This press release has me listing heavily towards NOT.

If there had been just one dream sequence in the first two games (with or without the kid) the artistic integrity concept may have held some water.

[Ferret_Herder]

@Bosstone

See, I don’t think the ending was sucky, just the execution. They’re trying to re-execute it. shrug

I think it would be nice to find a little more out about what happens to people, sure. What I want to know is will it fix things like:

[spoiler]- the teammates who were reported as being probably killed with you in the rush for the Citadel beam hopping off the Normandy looking no worse for wear and chipper

• explaining how and why they got off Earth and back up onto the Normandy in time to just barely avoid gate explosion
• why they were escaping in the first place
• why the “destroy” button had the happy music and the other two had bad music
• why if you have maximum readiness and pick “destroy”, you wake up in concrete rubble back on Earth - but not for any other ending[/spoiler]

[Bosstone]

@Ferret_Herder

I think it would be nice to find a little more out about what happens to people, sure. What I want to know is will it fix things like:

[spoiler]- the teammates who were reported as being probably killed with you in the rush for the Citadel beam hopping off the Normandy looking no worse for wear and chipper

• explaining how and why they got off Earth and back up onto the Normandy in time to just barely avoid gate explosion
• why they were escaping in the first place
• why the “destroy” button had the happy music and the other two had bad music
• why if you have maximum readiness and pick “destroy”, you wake up in concrete rubble back on Earth - but not for any other ending[/spoiler]

Given that all of those are answered by the Indoctrination Theory, if that is the accurate theory and Bioware does make that more explicit, then yes, it probably will.

[Ferret_Herder]

@Bosstone

Given that all of those are answered by the Indoctrination Theory, if that is the accurate theory and Bioware does make that more explicit, then yes, it probably will.

And see, that I can deal with. So I’m withholding judgement for now.

[Bosstone]

And if it’s not the Indoctrination Theory and all the crazy inexplicable shit that happens at the end really did happen and isn’t actually a mindfuck attempt, then I’ll happily call it a shitty ending too.

[velveeta]

@mikews99

Official word from Bioware: We are sticking with that sucky ending, we don’t care you don’t like it, but we will add some more cut scenes to placate all you whiny people.

ETA: Ninja’d!

I’ve been reading about this on BSN off and on today. Their official Tweets see to contradict their FAQ.
FAQ just says cutscenes and epilogue, no new gameplay - which sounds pretty sucky to me.
When asked on Twitter why the DLC wasn’t going to have any gameplay, their head “Twitterer” said it would. But she also said, “no one starves”, “Shep and crew can be reunited”, and “relays aren’t all destroyed/can be rebuilt”. I don’t know if it’s just more smoke being blown up our asses, but this stuff makes me a little more hopeful that it won’t be a PowerPoint with circle and arrows explaining what a “Technological Syngularity” is to “all our dumb fans”.

[velveeta]

@Bosstone

Given that all of those are answered by the Indoctrination Theory, if that is the accurate theory and Bioware does make that more explicit, then yes, it probably will.

I was so hoping they would run with this, but the latest announcement makes it sound like this deeply shitty and cliched ending is the real deal. “Look how deep and artistic we are! You are just too dumb to get our art so we will explain it to you.”
I guess they could still surprise us with IT, but I’m not holding my breath. I just can’t imagine them not letting the cat out of the bag after so much backlash. They could have spared a lot more of it today had they gone with IT over “clarification and closure”.
They better have something huge planned.

P.S. I can’t edit my post above this one. Please excuse the spelling errors! I blame my iPad.

[Mr.Kobayashi]

@Crowbar_of_Irony_3

And if you choose Synthesis (which seems to be ending Bioware wants us to take), he literally dwells in everyone else, transforming them into a new creation…

But Miranda could not die, right? I have read that she re-appears at the end even if killed off…or am I mistaken?

Who replaces Garrus?

Miranda’s harder to kill off in the suicide mission but it is possible, as a result of her spat with Jack she was my only casualty on my first ME2 playthrough. Her twin sister Oriana appears instead of her.

You just end up a squadmate down if Garrus dies.

I’m reserving judgement on the ‘extended ending’ DLC, although it does please me that it exists and shall be free.

One other thing I hope they fix; War Assets. They told porky-pies about how multiplayer effects singleplayer, if you want to see every ending you need to play multiplayer to get galactic readiness and effective military strength up. You need over 5000 EMS for the ‘Shepard breathes’ ending, trouble is that the absolute maximum assets available in the game is 7515. Divide that by 2 for the 50% readiness and you get 3757. In my imported playthrough I had around 3600, cocked up by killing the Rachni queen and destroying the genophage data. Still, that’s a long way from the minimum threshold and I wasn’t that far from the absolute maximum.

[Quimby]

@Mr.Kobayashi

One other thing I hope they fix; War Assets. They told porky-pies about how multiplayer effects singleplayer, if you want to see every ending you need to play multiplayer to get galactic readiness and effective military strength up. You need over 5000 EMS for the ‘Shepard breathes’ ending, trouble is that the absolute maximum assets available in the game is 7515. Divide that by 2 for the 50% readiness and you get 3757. In my imported playthrough I had around 3600, cocked up by killing the Rachni queen and destroying the genophage data. Still, that’s a long way from the minimum threshold and I wasn’t that far from the absolute maximum.

I agree and I was mad about it too but as far a is know the only difference is the hint that Shepard survived and I can live with out that.

Personally I hate the Indoctrination Theory. I am perfectly fine with my Shepard dying to save everyone and everything (I kind of assumed that would happen anyway) but to have the end be that she is turned into the thing she fought against sucks. I can appreciate dark endings but after 150+ hours of game play (from all three games), dammit I want a victory!

I think that was what was unsatisfying about the ending we got. First the whole Mass Replays blowing up blows but I have already bitched about that, what was worse is we didn’t get the epilogue like Dragon Age and other similar games give us that lets us see the results of all our work. If the ending was almost exactly the same but had this epilogue I think few would have complained. The lack of this resolution is really what this is all about and it sounds like that is what they are planning to add.