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I've watched several good videos about that theory that has been running around the internet with Mass Effect 3's endings. I heard Bioware's appeals to their fans, I felt something strangely familiar.
Then it hit me.
I was saying the same things several years ago when I launched my first game
My game was built around NPCs trying to deceive not just the character you play as but you as a player.
What I noticed was that players were thinking that a lie made by a character was "the truth" and just bad writing. I had intended the lie to be a poorly-thought out lie so that players can recognize it as a lie. Therefore they would find the liar untrustworthy. But they just believed it and thought it was bad writing. And you can see this in a few of the reviews of the game.
Mass Effect 3 had the same thing happen on a far larger scale. People thought a lie was just "bad writing." It's one of the various practical problems of having choices in an interactive storylines. (as opposed to the overabundance of theoretical issues in making interactive stories in video games)
Conspiracy Theories? Had those too!
It was really interesting to see the arguments over the different forums as I was also the target of "conspiracy theories" when I received good review scores. Some people were wondering "Why did this game get such a good review?" Of course once they were in on the secret they seemed to suddenly go silent. Oh... it definitively looks like something bad is happening to whoever speaks up loudly and then goes unnaturally quiet. Maybe I'm paying them off? I hardly have the money to pay off that many people anyways. If you heard my story about getting to Anime Expo in LA...
How to Avoid the Negative Backlash?
That's the trick isn't it? While good publicity for their game, it's actually quite a handful to deal with and you have to survive long enough for enough people to figure out the truth. Undoubtedly for Bioware "handful" is an understatement.
One way is to throw the peers of the protesters at the protesters by letting a few of them know. They definitely tend to soften the blow. However, since no DLC isn't out yet there's no way to know for sure. For myself, it was simply a matter of speaking few spoilers to stop them from going too far. Those still under the illusion are a handful and those who broke your illusion are your best allies.
Second way? You absolutely need to make sure you teach (or burn) the player with your trickery by about mid-to-late game so that they understand that you can pull this stuff off. They MUST understand that they were fooled and you gave them enough of a chance to figure it out themselves.
What does this all mean?
That theory that is flying around about the Mass Effect 3 endings? Based purely on Bioware's reaction to the uprising (i.e. Retake Mass Effect) and how it compares to my experience releasing a game with free will and player choices like Bioware's, it seems there is another piece of evidence is added to large pile supporting to the theory.
I'm throwing my chips on this theory and declaring it true. I'm calling before they reveal the DLC!
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It will be very sad to see other companies follow same path.
That said, the ability of dlc to extend the actual plot line will be incredibly limited. I think what you're talking about is sort of the Alan Wake phenomenon where the ending was very vague, and required that the player buy dlc to get some closure. I think what Bioware did was make an ending that was final, but so vague that it left the player with lots of questions. Both tactics point to this new trend of developers to forfeit their ending in exchange for extending the content flow.
Even if ME3s ending -is- just bad writing, by now Bioware will never admit to it and instead release a DLC structured around one of the "indoctrination" theory variants.
Additionally its mechanically unsound and dishonest to withhold content from the game and instead give us a "lie" and then expect us to pay later with DLC.
You don't end on a lie, -that- is bad writing.
As dissatisfied as I am with ME3s ending (be it a lie or not) I will not buy any upcoming DLCs, out of principle and consumer integrity.my wallet 1 : Bioware 0
That said, I sure hope they don't release DLC that explicitly confirms or denies that the ending was Reaper indoctrination. That would remove, to me, one of those cool discussions about the nature of the endings. What I hope they actually do is rework the ending cinematics so they are a little more distinct. The "green" ending, for instance, has a neat bit where Joker is getting out of the crash site. His arms reflect a green, circuit board-like pattern and his eyes change color. Maybe that needs to be made a little more explicit?
Not impossible, just implausible at this point.
So, to sum up your article and opinion, you believe the current ending of Mass Effect 3 is a blatant lie/falsehood, therefore not the true ending. And that the player base is taking the 'lie' of the false ending as truth. And you believe there will be DLC in the form of the 'real' ending?
Well, two questions for you then, since you've on a level compared your past gaming development experiences with Mass Effect 3's.
First, I'm curious to know if you yourself have played any of the Mass Effects of Mass Effect 3?
And second, as a developer how do you feel about not 'truly completing' a game, and saving the final X percent for DLC which you will then charge for. (Let's go on the assumption that BioWare will charge for the potential ending DLC).
As I commented on with Mr. Sousa, I think this is a rather questionable (to put it lightly) business practice. And from an art standpoint, it's disingenuous to offer a product that is suppose to be complete, when it in fact isn't. I suppose one could debate that the 'false' ending as it is put, is a part of the story and an ending you can live with an accept if you so choose... But, as an artist, if you consciously know this isn't the end, is there no responsibility to say, I'm not providing the complete, A to B product here?
I've actually done the day one patch myself. I'm like the only Indie that sells boxed games. So I sell at conventions and needed to get my second game to thecd manufacturing 2 weeks in advance of the convention. I had to ensure I told every customer that they need a patch.
What's different here is that they could be hiding an alternate ending trigger anywhere in the game. Maybe it's somewhere on the galaxy map unmarked. It becomes an issue of the "devil's proof". You can't prove it doesn't exist but you can prove it does just by showing it. Maybe prothean was meant for the secret ending on the disc and not DLC.
Maybe pigs can fly and just nobody seen it yet.
The default position is the disbelief of a claim until evidence has been provided.
I can engage in pointless speculation all day long.
Also, I'd be interested to hear your comments post Mass Effect 3 play through.
Your situation though is slightly different in terms of size. Your size and logistics limit you in that nature in terms of patching.
'They could be hiding' doesn't really cut it here. It's speculation as Mr. Adamkiewicz says, and without proof, or even evidence of prior activity it doesn't offer anything concrete.
I have been spoiled for the endings of Mass Effect 3. I am going through it to see if I missed anything else.
What kind of comments are you looking for? About the interactive story part of the game? Or about something else?
You have a point about the player 'missing' something which can effect the story of the players opinion. But, if something is that vital, wouldn't 'good' writing make sure that it couldn't be missed? I suppose there will always be a certain amount of players or people who just miss it or don't get with any art, whether that be games or movies. But, we can judge the 'effectiveness' of the 'good' writing by the amount of people who didn't.
In other words, the amount of people that are speaking out against Mass Effect's ending suggests to me that the game suffered from 'bad' writing. Whether by it just being a bad ending, or bad writing due to some critical element not being obvious enough, or being to subtle.
Maybe they'll say the DLC will be free with their online code (project 10 dollar), but to get any ending worth it's salt, I think they'll need to really invest with voice-actors and new cutscenes. That's expensive. As a consumer I certainly would rather get my money's worth. Free might not be enough.
Then again, the more I think about Mass Effect 3 and it's story, juxtaposed with it's advertising campaign and everything you thought it was going to be based on this, the more I question whether it was the ending or really the entire game. The ending just being a straw on the camels back. But, that's a different discussion.
And in the end it doesn't matter.
If you, as a writer, came up with a really clever double ambiguous ending that you think is a masterpiece but the audience thinks its badly written and "didn't get it".
YOU DID IT WRONG.
Your job is to convey what you want your audience to experience, you have all the tools at your disposal, its your responsibility, not the internets, to make us "get it".
Its bad writing if you intend X but receive Y as the result. You failed as a writer.
And by now we are not even talking about a tiny minority that "doesn't get it" (or does, as there is no way to determine if the ending is genuine), we are talking a substantial amount of people, else the game wouldn't have a 3.7 rating at metacritic user-reviews with every second comment mentioning the ending as one of the reasons, around 80k people on Biowares own forum and a fund-raiser that managed to raise +50k$.
The issue with "making sure it wasn't missed" kinda leads to issues with the "branching story" and player freedom. But also you have to be sure you're asking the right questions to solve the implied issue. The real issue to solve is "Does the player have what they need to solve a mystery/make a choice at the time they need to?"
Even that issue has another underlying issue that I found but that's a trade secret I developed. I still want to challenge the Mass Effect series in terms of interactive story with gameplay. I do think I can blow them out of the water with the interactive story part. I already made a game where the genres changes based on your choices. With the Mass Effect series you can't really change the structure of main story.
Like seriously, when trying to support players with various issues they tend to send me branching story diagrams. The issue is that they are all structurally different and they don't quite help me that much.
For the ending budget, I think it would be already allocated before any DLC sales.
@ General
I think the current "ending" is more of a publicity stunt to raise visibility to outside the traditional more than anything. (Forbes anyone?) And looking at the huge response of the fundraiser, it looks like it worked. And to change all the negativity into something positive with a single DLC... wow.
Because something similar happened to me. After a page went up that spoiled (almost) everything about my first game, they all nearly disappeared. At the very least main force of all these protests will be silenced once the DLC comes out.
Frankly I see this more a philosophical marketing matter rather than a bad writing matter; however Neon Genesis Evangillion has one of the craziest poorly written endings and it took quite some time before the writers or caretakers of the series patched it. Then later after BluRay entered the market, they just decided to rebooted it in HD. So, in the future this may prove to be a good gamble for Bioware, but it remains to be seen how they play this out.
*Ex: Animatrix, Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, Enter the Matrix, Matrix Revolution, Matrix MMO.
I would be shocked if there wasn't backlash for something like the scenario described above.
And perhaps this is all part of BioWare's plan? I've no evidence to support this so it's just a wild theory, but BioWare planned this, new their fans would cry out, which would free them to make DLC that they could charge for AND seem like the good guys. And the wheels keep turning... DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUN.
How about a badly written lie?
I can see how some people (depending how they view/played their character) could be upset and if BioWare ends up adding more choices/endings that's fine (to me, more choice is always good).
No, in all seriousness, despite my *many* critiques of the writing that set it at war with the themes, label it bad writing... All that jazz... The ideas in it aren't terrible. The devices used to communicate it and the plot holes are huge issues, but the core ideas behind them aren't bad. And frankly, it's a good core to extrapolate from. The ending just had so many WTF moments and was so completely at war with the concepts of player agency and forced people into so many out-of-character moments and decisions that they absolutely hated the end (had to talk another friend down from returning his copy in fury last night until we at least find out about the ending DLC). So it manifests as them hating everything about it.
I might do a piece examining the ending... Because it's interesting that one of the main complaints that people have about it is that "all the endings are identical". This is interesting; because the results on the galaxy of choosing to try and control a race of sentient machines, combining all organic and synthetic life through space-magic and destroying all synthetic life would have ridiculously huge impacts on the universe. It's arguably the biggest choice you've ever made. But because it doesn't affect anything players care about, and the same things happen to their friends and allies regardless, the endings are termed 'identical'.
It's an excellent lesson in what many players truly care about.
It bothers me a bit that fans' expectations include being able to whine until the designers' vision is changed to their liking. What if Citizen Kane or Star Wars was made by committee instead of by the visionaries that created them?
Don't know if I'd agree that more choice is always good. Sometimes a solid narrative and a strong vision from the developers is better than choice. If you like the idea of choice as a mechanic in games, there's one way in which I feel like the ME series has always succeeded: It presents players with an effective ILLUSION of choice. Players are convinced that their actions have weight upon the game world, even though everyone is being steered toward the course of fighting off the Reapers and saving the day. Maybe that's why some folks were upset with the end? That illusion is laid bare with your final choice.
Regardless.... I thought it was a brilliant series and I thoroughly enjoyed the end.
I guess I cared more about the philosophical ramifications of the story than about Shepard and crew. I went into the ending with more or less the same expectations as Matthew Mouras, and also came away pleasantly surprised.
Really, I am not sure how BioWare could have done told THIS story much better. And I'm glad it didn't turn out to be a Hollywood space opera. Let's see what happens with their ending DLC and if it can make more people happy.
Fallout 3 is a free-roam sandbox and the game "ended" where it shouldn't have.
It wasn't that the "story" was shit (and it was) and the ending nonsensical but that the game didn't let you continue playing after the main questline.
You will notice that Skyrim for example doesn't have this problem, the story being almost as generic as in F3, it lets you continue your adventures after you defeat Alduin.
Most people didn't care one way or another about the F3 ending, because thats not what the game was about, it was about exploration and sandboxing, ME3 is story-driven, everything hinges on the story.
As a game it's very good. Especially when you don't really care about the ending anymore.
That said, the promise of having at least a little bit of a personalized ending was pretty large. It's absolutely nowhere close to what I know can be done with having player's choices matter. Even among what's already been done already in video games it doesn't reflect the player's choices that much (ignoring what I'm doing and some small video game experiments here and there).
However, if that theory is right then it changes everything and will go down in the history of player's choices in video games forever.
The main thing that is missed is the actual social aspect of talking about people's various play-through and comparing them. It would have made a lot more lasting discussion talking about the meaning behind the various story mechanics.