Conspiracy Theory: ME3 Backlash was fake

[Hypernetic]

The individual user scores obviously do not honestly represent the opinions of that particular user, but the aggregate of scores can be useful. For AAA titles with a high critic average, a low user score is a warning that something may be amiss. For a more obscure game with average or low critic reviews, a high score is a suggestion that the game may be strong if you like that niche. For a game that may have a lot of content or lasting appeal, the user scores may provide longevity information that professional reviewers do not have the time to investigate.

I've generally found that professional reviews are almost entirely worthless when they are positive. They can be good for steering you away from a really bad game, but any game that is "AAA" tends to be extremely overrated. Usually reviewers completely ignore major aspects of the game (How many D3 reviewers touched inferno before doing their reviews?)

MMOs are an example of how broken the professional review system is. They have to pump out a review within a certain time frame for their magazine or website to draw readers/subscribers while the game is still fresh. This time frame makes it impossible for them to do anything end game related whatsoever. So the meat of the game is left unreviewed, which is unacceptable. It's a sad state of affairs really, journalists need to come up with a new way for reviewing online games and MMOs.

[DzX]

Just skimming the article, not much of it actually contradicts the rest of the game.

I didn't say everything did - only that the ending does contradict the rest of the game. I was referring specifically thematically.

I wouldn't use [nor really care for opinions on] that article to explain the problems with the ending to anyone. Deano was insistent he not watch the more in-depth videos.

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

Is probably the best explanation.

[deano2099]

You don't hate an ending that refuses to acknowledge the big reveal is directly contradicted by events of the game?

http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect...ans-are-right/

The article doesn't go into the depth the videos do but it's a decent quick look at the subject [as from this thread you've seemingly stated you're yet to research the reasoning behind the anger.]

Read and commented on that way back in the previous epic thread. Any plot-holes I saw in the ending were easily explained away in my head. Thematically it was odd in that it focussed entirely on one of many themes of the games, but at least that beats the Dark Energy idea some people seem to like which addresses none of them.

You are making a giant mistake in assuming that the non-vocal players were happy with the ending simply because they didn't come to a message board to post about it.

I'm not assuming that. All the arguments you make in your post are the exact reasons you can't say "everyone hated it" any more than I can say "everyone not posting on message boards loved it".

EDIT; Also why in the hell would you assume that the male/female Shepard rate would be 50/50? What are you basing that figure on? Why would you assume that all classes would be an even split? What figure are you basing THAT on?

On a general feel based on what people talk about in forums. In threads like "What class will you play?" or "Male or Female Shepard?" - Though here's a random poll I Googled after the fact http://biowarefanclub.deviantart.com.../poll/2520994/ My point is simply that you can't extrapolate 90% of people on forums hate the ending therefore 90% of all people hate the ending. Because they're a self-selecting group that provably bear no relation to the total population.

Nor am I saying that everyone not posting on message boards hated it. My friends were split around 50-50 to be honest, none of them being on forums. Anecdotal, doesn't mean anything. Yes, the evidence we have from forums is the best we can get, and the best we're ever going to get (though expect to see a "Did you like the ending? Y/N" button in future Bioware games :) ) - so on the best evidence available, you guys are totally right. The problem is, the best evidence is shit. And we know that because we do have evidence on how differently Bioware 'fans' and dedicated forum-gamers react to the game compared to the total market.

That's the thing though, the ending completely ruined not just ME3 but the entire series for me. Mass Effect has become the gaming equivalent of The Matrix trilogy for me now.

But you enjoyed the preceding 100 hours of gaming right? The only thing that the ending impacts on is the last five minutes, and what you'll get out of it when re-playing it.

And again, outside of our dedicated gamer communities, the vast majority of people won't play the game more than once so for them it isn't really relevant. The ending doesn't retroactively make the time you spent on all three games leading up to it no longer fun. So sure, you mark it down for a bad ending damaging the replay value if you really want to.

[Hypernetic]

Read and commented on that way back in the previous epic thread. Any plot-holes I saw in the ending were easily explained away in my head. Thematically it was odd in that it focussed entirely on one of many themes of the games, but at least that beats the Dark Energy idea some people seem to like which addresses none of them.


I'm not assuming that. All the arguments you make in your post are the exact reasons you can't say "everyone hated it" any more than I can say "everyone not posting on message boards loved it".


On a general feel based on what people talk about in forums. In threads like "What class will you play?" or "Male or Female Shepard?" - Though here's a random poll I Googled after the fact http://biowarefanclub.deviantart.com.../poll/2520994/ My point is simply that you can't extrapolate 90% of people on forums hate the ending therefore 90% of all people hate the ending. Because they're a self-selecting group that provably bear no relation to the total population.

Nor am I saying that everyone not posting on message boards hated it. My friends were split around 50-50 to be honest, none of them being on forums. Anecdotal, doesn't mean anything. Yes, the evidence we have from forums is the best we can get, and the best we're ever going to get (though expect to see a "Did you like the ending? Y/N" button in future Bioware games :) ) - so on the best evidence available, you guys are totally right. The problem is, the best evidence is shit. And we know that because we do have evidence on how differently Bioware 'fans' and dedicated forum-gamers react to the game compared to the total market.


But you enjoyed the preceding 100 hours of gaming right? The only thing that the ending impacts on is the last five minutes, and what you'll get out of it when re-playing it.

And again, outside of our dedicated gamer communities, the vast majority of people won't play the game more than once so for them it isn't really relevant. The ending doesn't retroactively make the time you spent on all three games leading up to it no longer fun. So sure, you mark it down for a bad ending damaging the replay value if you really want to.

Mass Effect is a story more than it's a game. The ending of the series completely ruined the games for me. I no longer have fond memories of the previous games.

Mass Effect 2 was pointless. I didn't enjoy ME2 nearly as much as ME1 from a story standpoint, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt as a "middle of the trilogy" story that intentionally left things open ended. I figured ME3 would resolve all of these things.

Mass Effect 3 made 2 entirely pointless. Literally nothing that happens in ME2 aside from the Arrival DLC needs to happen for 3's story to make sense. (Speaking of overarching plot here, not introductions to individual characters such as Mordin). In the context of the entire trilogy Mass Effect 2's story makes absolutely no sense and the events of the game served no purpose whatsoever. This means that I may as well have never played the game. What is the point of the collectors? Why are they building a human reaper? Why do the reapers need this to happen before they attack when the destruction of the human reaper has literally no affect on their invasion? We are told they are making another human reaper at the end of ME3 anyway, why couldn't they just have done that to begin with. What was the point of Mass Effect 2?

Let's come back to the "mystery of the Reapers" part again to hopefully get you to understand why the entire series was ruined for me. The simplest example I can give is that throughout ME1 and ME2 we are told by Sovereign and Harbinger that the motives are simply too complex for our simple human minds to understand. Sovereign tells us that Reapers are entire NATIONS of minds, etc, etc, etc. Fast forward to ME3 and the God Child informs us that the goal AND motivation of the Reapers is to protect and preserve organic life.... WAT? That was the super complex explanation that neither Harbinger or Sovereign could tell us because we wouldn't be able to understand it? It takes a nation of minds to understand THAT?!

Honestly I would have been happier if they never told us anything at all. If the crucible destroyed the reapers outright, simply made them go away, or even if it didn't work and the current cycle was wiped out. If everything was left unexplained I would have been ok with it. The crucible seems like a neat idea on the surface. It's a crazy device of sorts that has been designed and pieced together by various civilizations in different cycles dating back who knows how long. Cool idea, until the God Child arrives. Once they introduce the God Child the crucible no longer makes any sense. The God Child tells us we are the first to set foot in his chamber. Nobody knew of it's existence prior to Shepard. How the FUCK did they design the crucible then? You can speculate if you want, but leaving something THAT open to interpretation is poor story telling. The one and only logical conclusion is that whoever designed the Reapers also designed the crucible, but why? There are simply too many questions created by what is supposed to the CLOSING of a series.

tl;dr: God Child completely destroyed the entire series for me. I don't look at each game as an individual story but as separate chapters of the same book. The ending of the "book" was bad enough to negate any positives from the rest of the story for me. The universe and it's lore seem stupid and contrived to me now and I can never look at it the same way again.

[DzX]

Read and commented on that way back in the previous epic thread. Any plot-holes I saw in the ending were easily explained away in my head.

If your attitude toward plot holes in a series known for its very literal story-telling is to make up your own explanations to suit events you'll be happy with just about anything.

[TillEulenspiegel]

I've generally found that professional reviews are almost entirely worthless when they are positive. They can be good for steering you away from a really bad game, but any game that is "AAA" tends to be extremely overrated.

Yep. It's extraordinarily rare to find a videogame reviewer with strong, identifiable tastes like you do with film critics. Or even one who will describe gameplay in a useful way.

Strangely, I find Zero Punctuation's nitpicking of everything tells me a lot more about a game than a typical review. I'd love to see serious written reviews in that style, aimed specifically at examining flaws: "this is a very good game, but here's everything wrong with it". Good luck selling ads for a site like that, though.

[DzX]

Strangely, I find Zero Punctuation's nitpicking of everything tells me a lot more about a game than a typical review. I'd love to see serious written reviews in that style, aimed specifically at examining flaws: "this is a very good game, but here's everything wrong with it". Good luck selling ads for a site like that, though.

Errant Signal does that to some degree though they're not really reviews.

The Max Payne 3 video does a good job of examining the games lack of consistency between gameplay and narrative, aside from nit-picking everything else in the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx5MZfpQIEk

[Kadayi]

No one expects anyone to hate the ending of ME3 here (there are lesser gaming sites and communities that can do that inarticulate 'rage' thing quite adequately) however one expects that the criticisms brought up by innumerable people regarding the ending can be assessed on the basis of their expression (the weight of the words themselves), not on whether they may or may not represent a majority viewpoint (which is frankly moot).

[deano2099]

Mass Effect is a story more than it's a game. The ending of the series completely ruined the games for me. I no longer have fond memories of the previous games.

That's interesting and certainly valid. Memories can be changed.

Mass Effect 2 was pointless. I didn't enjoy ME2 nearly as much as ME1 from a story standpoint, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt as a "middle of the trilogy" story that intentionally left things open ended. I figured ME3 would resolve all of these things.

Mass Effect 3 made 2 entirely pointless.

That's interesting actually. I felt the same about ME2, even before playing 3. It felt like it barely had a main plot, just some character stories. And what plot there was was awful.

To pose an interesting question, now we no longer have to give ME2 the benefit of the doubt as the middle of the trilogy, and hoping things would pay off (they didn't) - how good was the ending of ME2? The suicide mission was great, but the actual story ending, I thought it was way worse then ME3.

No one expects anyone to hate the ending of ME3 here (there are lesser gaming sites and communities that can do that inarticulate 'rage' thing quite adequately) however one expects that the criticisms brought up by innumerable people regarding the ending can be assessed on the basis of their expression (the weight of the words themselves), not on whether they may or may not represent a majority viewpoint (which is frankly moot).

Right - but this thread is specifically not about the ending itself (hence why I'm mostly avoiding engaging with debating that in any more than a very general manner - feel free to bump one of the other threads if anyone wants to argue the specifics some more) - the thread is about the reaction. Which is probably the strongest we've ever seen against a game. Stacked against a very positive critical reaction and huge sales. I think it's interesting. I think it's worth discussing. I don't think it was a conspiracy like the OP, but I also don't think it's as simple as 'everyone hated it'.

[DzX]

No one expects anyone to hate the ending of ME3 here (there are lesser gaming sites and communities that can do that inarticulate 'rage' thing quite adequately)

The word 'hate / hater' is used so often during the first few pages I get the feeling this is some kind of in-joke I'm missing.

however one expects that the criticisms brought up by innumerable people regarding the ending can be assessed on the basis of their expression (the weight of the words themselves), not on whether they may or may not represent a majority viewpoint (which is frankly moot).

It may be moot but that was the area of discussion Deano brought up - citing the fact that internet forums don't make up the majority viewpoint of players. It depends if we're discussing if/why the ending itself was so poor or the reaction to it. For the most part it's the latter, though Deano's desire to ignore the former has hurt discussion somewhat.

[NathanH]

But you enjoyed the preceding 100 hours of gaming right? The only thing that the ending impacts on is the last five minutes, and what you'll get out of it when re-playing it.

This is a spectacularly bad argument. The best video games, like the best of pretty much any form of entertainment, offer far more value than just the individual moments in which you were playing them. If there's a problem in the game that taints it globally rather than locally, then that problem has tainted every memory you have; it taints every discussion about it. For your average game you're probably not going to think about the game very much afterwards, so such a problem isn't a big deal, but when you have a series like Mass Effect that for many people was right up there as one of their favourite video game series then it's really bad to undermine it like this.

As an extreme example, suppose you've read a very intricate and detailed murder mystery which had you gripped and thrilled throughout, and kept you guessing and theorizing at every turn. If on the last page it was just revealed that a wizard did it, or it doesn't even tell you who did it, then you'd judge that book poorly, even though you only actually read the offending words for about 30 seconds.

[The JG Man]

Stacked against a very positive critical reaction and huge sales. I think it's interesting. I think it's worth discussing. I don't think it was a conspiracy like the OP, but I also don't think it's as simple as 'everyone hated it'.

I feel like Occam's Razor is the most appropriate here; it really can be as simple as the fact that people really did just hate it. For critics, they have to knock back a lot of titles under a short amount of time so they don't spend as much time dwelling on matters and, for what it's worth, the majority of the game is definitely fantastic. It's why games that come out during the summer tend to receive more scrutiny because they have the time. The worst ending for anything is the one you have to spend time on because that's when you know it's really bad. If it wasn't, the people producing whatever product that was would more than likely have picked up on it themselves.

The only thing I'll throw in critics' favour is how they went about reviewing ME3 and thus derive a result - was it its own title or the trilogy finisher of a series? Even then...

[Hypernetic]

I highly doubt most critics even finished the game before publishing their reviews.

[DAdvocate]

Fast forward to ME3 and the God Child informs us that the goal AND motivation of the Reapers is to protect and preserve organic life.... WAT? That was the super complex explanation that neither Harbinger or Sovereign could tell us because we wouldn't be able to understand it? It takes a nation of minds to understand THAT?!

The funny thing is that Harbringer/Sovereign were right in a fashion, many players didn't properly understand the explanation as seen by the "we kill organics to save organics" memes.

The Reapers don't destroy all organic life, they destroy the advanced civilisations in order to reset any technological progress. This reduces the chances of any species creating an AI that could wipe out all organic life (not just civilisations). A self-replicating super AI only has to be created once for a permanent "game over" on life in the galaxy. While this is an unlikely event from the perspective of a human lifetime, the Reapers were considering it from the “now to forever” timespan which makes it far more likely (i.e. monkeys typing Shakespeare).

It's a little like doing research on super-flu variants, it only has to escape once to cause mass devastation, the Reapers are the equivalent of those who would ban all biological research to avoid the risk, however small. Please note, I don't mean to imply that I approve of this viewpoint.

[Hypernetic]

The funny thing is that Harbringer/Sovereign were right in a fashion, many players didn't properly understand the explanation as seen by the "we kill organics to save organics" memes.

The Reapers don't destroy all organic life, they destroy the advanced civilisations in order to reset any technological progress. This reduces the chances of any species creating an AI that could wipe out all organic life (not just civilisations). A self-replicating super AI only has to be created once for a permanent "game over" on life in the galaxy. While this is an unlikely event from the perspective of a human lifetime, the Reapers were considering it from the “now to forever” timespan which makes it far more likely (i.e. monkeys typing Shakespeare).

It's a little like doing research on super-flu variants, it only has to escape once to cause mass devastation, the Reapers are the equivalent of those who would ban all biological research to avoid the risk, however small. Please note, I don't mean to imply that I approve of this viewpoint.

That's still not something that is "beyond human comprehension". Also it's entirely lame.

[Sketch]

While the 3 endings did take away from replayability a fair bit, the fact that Mass Effect 3 is almost like one big ending, resolving stuff from the previous games - the Geth, Rachni, Genophage etc I'd say there is more than enough their to justify multiple playthroughs.

[DAdvocate]

That's still not something that is "beyond human comprehension". Also it's entirely lame.

It's a relatively original and logical motivation in a genre which normally considers "these be evil people" as sufficient.

Wouldn't a genuine "beyond human comprehension" motivation involve not explaining it to the player at all, in which case you would be adding it to your list of plot holes and claiming it's another example of bad writing.

[deano2099]

It may be moot but that was the area of discussion Deano brought up - citing the fact that internet forums don't make up the majority viewpoint of players. It depends if we're discussing if/why the ending itself was so poor or the reaction to it. For the most part it's the latter, though Deano's desire to ignore the former has hurt discussion somewhat.

Totally happy to discuss it, but could we go into the specifics of it here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/foru...ing-DLC-Update or here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/foru...LERS-OBVIOUSLY as I think this stands as an interesting yet separate topic

This is a spectacularly bad argument. The best video games, like the best of pretty much any form of entertainment, offer far more value than just the individual moments in which you were playing them. If there's a problem in the game that taints it globally rather than locally, then that problem has tainted every memory you have; it taints every discussion about it. For your average game you're probably not going to think about the game very much afterwards, so such a problem isn't a big deal, but when you have a series like Mass Effect that for many people was right up there as one of their favourite video game series then it's really bad to undermine it like this.

So for your average gamer who won't think about the ending that much, it wasn't that bad? That's kinda what I've been saying all along.

As an extreme example, suppose you've read a very intricate and detailed murder mystery which had you gripped and thrilled throughout, and kept you guessing and theorizing at every turn. If on the last page it was just revealed that a wizard did it, or it doesn't even tell you who did it, then you'd judge that book poorly, even though you only actually read the offending words for about 30 seconds.

I've played Still Life (yes, it a whodunnit that doesn't tell you whodunnit). Unlike that, in ME3 for me the ending didn't invalidate what went before though. I can see that choosing Destroy would (hint: that's a bad call) and the relays looking like they might explode was a spectacularly bad piece of writing. Or miscommunication between the writers and FMV team. But in the ending I picked, at the end, I'd changed the galaxy for the better. It worked for me.

As messy as the endings might be, the only way where they genuinely undermine all the prior narrative is if a) you assume the relays explode and blow up the galaxy or b) you assume everyone starves to death. These were misconceptions I never had, but many players did, and they were fixed up in the new endings.

I guess the other problem could be if people saw the whole series as a 'what are the Reapers up to?' mystery, in which case yes, the reveal sucks. But many people that really hated the ending have said they'd have been happy for that mystery to remain.

Outside of that, I'm still open to thinking it was a poor ending, but I don't get how it can invalidate everything else. To counter your example, how many cancelled TV shows have you watched that never got a real ending? I've watched loads, it's annoying when it happens, but I still enjoy them regardless. Deadwood and Carnivale are lessened by never resolving their stories but I'd still recommend them as amazing pieces of TV. A poor ending isn't enough to ruin what has come before unless it actively craps over it, and I don't see that here.

I feel like Occam's Razor is the most appropriate here; it really can be as simple as the fact that people really did just hate it.

Maybe. But you can bet some of those haters were the same ones that attacked Jennifer Hepler or had a fit about the launch DLC. The internet can be very loud sometimes, and it can sometimes feel like the majority are just morons. But sometimes you agree with them and sometimes you don't. But you don't get to selectively pick wisdom of the crowds when it suits.

[Hypernetic]

It's a relatively original and logical motivation in a genre which normally considers "these be evil people" as sufficient.

Wouldn't a genuine "beyond human comprehension" motivation involve not explaining it to the player at all, in which case you would be adding it to your list of plot holes and claiming it's another example of bad writing.

Nope. As I stated earlier I would have been perfectly fine with them NEVER explaining the Reapers' goals or motivations. In fact, I think I would have preferred it that way.

What you described is most certainly not a plot hole. God Child as a deus ex machina is bad writing. A mystery or cliff hanger is not bad writing, take for instance the end of Inception. The main plot of ME could have been resolved without the PC ever learning the true motivations of the reapers. I don't need to know what a burglar is planning to do with the money he steals from me to shoot him dead just as the galaxy didn't need to know WHY the reapers were doing what they were doing to defeat them. You already knew that the Reapers were trying to perform some cosmic balancing act between chaos and order (aka entropy) and quite frankly that was a good enough explanation to leave things at.

I would have liked to know more about the Reapers in regards to how long they had been performing their duties and possibly some information on their origins, but that's neither here nor there.

[Kadayi]

Right - but this thread is specifically not about the ending itself (hence why I'm mostly avoiding engaging with debating that in any more than a very general manner - feel free to bump one of the other threads if anyone wants to argue the specifics some more) - the thread is about the reaction. Which is probably the strongest we've ever seen against a game. Stacked against a very positive critical reaction and huge sales. I think it's interesting. I think it's worth discussing. I don't think it was a conspiracy like the OP, but I also don't think it's as simple as 'everyone hated it'.

Critical reaction and huge sales are frankly irrelevances. The number of games journalists Vs the number of consumers out there is negligible. The notion that the masses are somehow wrong in their assessment and only the voiced opinions of game critics are pertinent and to be listened to is frankly laughable. If we go by what the critics would have you believe then GTA IV is one of the greatest video games of all time. If ever there was a prime example of why games journalism fails to put much credence in the importance of story line that is indeed the crowning glory. As regards sales, the bulk of those occurred either through pre-orders or within the first month. IIRC Transformers 2 broke box office records at the time, doesn't mean it wasn't a massive turd of a movie though. It sold well, therefore it must be great doesn't cut the mustard.

It may be moot but that was the area of discussion Deano brought up - citing the fact that internet forums don't make up the majority viewpoint of players. It depends if we're discussing if/why the ending itself was so poor or the reaction to it. For the most part it's the latter, though Deano's desire to ignore the former has hurt discussion somewhat.

I'd say it's far more likely that 50K + consumers are a lot more representative of overall public reaction to the games ending as a cross section of gamer society than a rather incestuous clique of a hundred or so games journalists tbh.

This is a spectacularly bad argument. The best video games, like the best of pretty much any form of entertainment, offer far more value than just the individual moments in which you were playing them. If there's a problem in the game that taints it globally rather than locally, then that problem has tainted every memory you have; it taints every discussion about it. For your average game you're probably not going to think about the game very much afterwards, so such a problem isn't a big deal, but when you have a series like Mass Effect that for many people was right up there as one of their favourite video game series then it's really bad to undermine it like this.

As an extreme example, suppose you've read a very intricate and detailed murder mystery which had you gripped and thrilled throughout, and kept you guessing and theorizing at every turn. If on the last page it was just revealed that a wizard did it, or it doesn't even tell you who did it, then you'd judge that book poorly, even though you only actually read the offending words for about 30 seconds.

Indeed. You could be in a fantastic relationship with someone for a couple of years, but when you come home early one day and find your partner in coitus with your neighbours Labrador it's likely going to be hard to set that particular spectacle aside, either moving forward or when trying and reflect on the good times. A bad conclusion colours everything. Half the fun of ME1 & ME2 was in playing the game differently and seeing how things turned out accordingly. With ME3 all roads lead to Rome, with little real variation in outcome based on previous events.

I feel like Occam's Razor is the most appropriate here; it really can be as simple as the fact that people really did just hate it. For critics, they have to knock back a lot of titles under a short amount of time so they don't spend as much time dwelling on matters and, for what it's worth, the majority of the game is definitely fantastic.

I'm not a fan of hate, but I think underwhelming is a more apt description.