[General Battuta]

The ending is not the place to leave your reader/viewer/player filling in the holes. And it's outrageous that the people who wrote the rest of the game weren't given the input they wanted on the ending.

[Valathil]

I thought those were "rumours" i dont put much money on rumours.


ALSO

The ending is not the place to leave your reader/viewer/player filling in the holes.

THE END OF EVANGELION NUFF SAID

[The E]

There's cut content on the disc which seems to explain some of this. Bioware clearly just ran out of time.

Can we please not make statements like that WITHOUT BACKING THEM UP? I really do not have the time and patience required to dig into the depths of the bull**** notwork or youtube or any of the other gazillion places on the net where people are dissecting the game.

[General Battuta]

There's cut content on the disc which seems to explain some of this. Bioware clearly just ran out of time.

Can we please not make statements like that WITHOUT BACKING THEM UP?

All the information is available if you poke around the internet (or, well, the disc) -- there's cut audio content from Joker, for instance. I can try to get everything together later.

I spent a while yesterday tracking down statements from the guy who wrote the ME1 codex and Legion/ME2 EDI/Thane/etc. He offered some insight into what he thinks will happen to the setting with the mass relays gone.

[Valathil]

I wonder if hes noticing that by getting all worked up and doing research and stuff he already proved that the endings of the game were really effective in getting people emotionally involved. Which again i think was BW's plan all along. You know how much ****ing publicity for the game the complainers generate?

[MatthTheGeek]

Riiiiiight. Most people I know won't even try the game because they're being told from all over the place that the ending suck. Talk about publicity.

[achtung]

There's cut content on the disc which seems to explain some of this. Bioware clearly just ran out of time.

Can we please not make statements like that WITHOUT BACKING THEM UP?

All the information is available if you poke around the internet (or, well, the disc) -- there's cut audio content from Joker, for instance. I can try to get everything together later.

I spent a while yesterday tracking down statements from the guy who wrote the ME1 codex and Legion/ME2 EDI/Thane/etc. He offered some insight into what he thinks will happen to the setting with the mass relays gone.

If you can provide some links later that would be pretty cool. I'm very interested in what the writer has to say, and what content was left out.

I wonder if hes noticing that by getting all worked up and doing research and stuff he already proved that the endings of the game were really effective in getting people emotionally involved. Which again i think was BW's plan all along. You know how much ****ing publicity for the game the complainers generate?

The rest of the game was good at getting people emotionally involved, the ending(s) were an act that destroyed that emotional involvement. Don't even get me started on how wrong the "no publicity is bad publicity" myth is.

[General Battuta]

I wonder if hes noticing that by getting all worked up and doing research and stuff he already proved that the endings of the game were really effective in getting people emotionally involved. Which again i think was BW's plan all along. You know how much ****ing publicity for the game the complainers generate?

By that standard a better ending would've been a snuff film.

If I go on a date with you and then conclude the date by beating the **** out of you, you're 'emotionally involved'. You might even get my name on the police blotter! That doesn't make it a good date.

As Swantz said, the whole game was emotionally involving; the ending felt like a betrayal.

[Valathil]

I wonder if hes noticing that by getting all worked up and doing research and stuff he already proved that the endings of the game were really effective in getting people emotionally involved. Which again i think was BW's plan all along. You know how much ****ing publicity for the game the complainers generate?

By that standard a better ending would've been a snuff film.

If I go on a date with you and then conclude the date by beating the **** out of you, you're 'emotionally involved'. That doesn't make it a good date.

That happens to me a lot... 

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Riiiiiight. Most people I know won't even try the game because they're being told from all over the place that the ending suck. Talk about publicity.

Yeah, if this is actually what's going on...it's a stupid move. Not quite as stupid as leaving the terrible ending as-is, but even if they do plan on releasing a better ending later and going, "Just kidding," there's still gonna be a lot of pissed off people that may actually not care because they already felt too cockslapped. I will be one of those people. I am so totally done with BioWare at this point that I don't know if I can give them another chance. It's like a bad relationship. And knowing EA's money grubbing ways, it'll be a paid DLC.

"You want an ending that doesn't suck? Haha, suckers, give us $10!"

If it comes down to that, I will wait until the GOTY/Gold/Booger Edition of the game is in the bargain bin before I buy it.

[Gloriano]

I really enjoy the game just last 3 choices are horrible but rest awesome, would have liked stuff about the whole Cerberus plans tho

[Valathil]

I also wonder if the last sentence of the Stargazer has any significance "Ok, one more story..."

On a different note: http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/711

[achtung]

http://social.bioware.com/633606/polls/28989/

I think a general consensus is being expressed with that poll.

[Valathil]

against what player base? must we talk about sample sizes and statistics? nevermind the "forum is always full of complainers cause the people that are fine with it dont go to the forums" effect.

[General Battuta]

I agree with the poll but - while the sample size is enough to be representative - it's not a random sample and thus can't be taken as truly diagnostic.

If this thread is going to turn into an argument about whether the ending is good or not I think I'm out.

[achtung]

The poll isn't accurate, but I still find it interesting.

[Valathil]

And I find it interesting how BioWare enforced the inevitability of hopeless situations upon an unsuspecting playerbase.

[General Battuta]

And I find it interesting how BioWare enforced the inevitability of hopeless situations upon an unsuspecting playerbase.

I think you're giving them way too much credit - none of this was by design. Nor are the complaints about hopelessness, or Shep's death - I think most players wanted Shep to die. The complaints are about what people perceive as low quality and bad execution.

It just looks like something went horribly wrong. Consider that as recently as February Casey Hudson said:

    It's not so much that there is a fixed set of alternative endings, but all of your choices really determine how things end up in the universe. So, how you approach the end-game, for every player, you're going to have a different set of results in terms of who is alive and who is dead, and which civilisations survived and which ones were wiped out.There is a huge set of consequences that start stacking up as you approach the end-game. And even in terms of the ending itself, it continues to break down to some very large decisions. So it's not like a classic game ending where everything is linear and you make a choice between a few things - it really does layer in many, many different choices, up to the final moments, where it's going to be different for everyone who plays it.

(emphasis mine)

Casey Hudson is a good guy. He's not the kind of PR flack who would straight-up lie about something like this. Yet we didn't end up with 'the final moments, where it's going to be different for everyone who plays it'; we had three palette-swapped cutscenes. So the question is - what happened?

[achtung]

    It's not so much that there is a fixed set of alternative endings, but all of your choices really determine how things end up in the universe. So, how you approach the end-game, for every player, you're going to have a different set of results in terms of who is alive and who is dead, and which civilisations survived and which ones were wiped out.There is a huge set of consequences that start stacking up as you approach the end-game. And even in terms of the ending itself, it continues to break down to some very large decisions. So it's not like a classic game ending where everything is linear and you make a choice between a few things - it really does layer in many, many different choices, up to the final moments, where it's going to be different for everyone who plays it.

(emphasis mine)

Casey Hudson is a good guy. He's not the kind of PR flack who would straight-up lie about something like this. Yet we didn't end up with 'the final moments, where it's going to be different for everyone who plays it'; we had three palette-swapped cutscenes. So the question is - what happened?

EA happened. That's my guess.

[Valathil]

And I find it interesting how BioWare enforced the inevitability of hopeless situations upon an unsuspecting playerbase.

I think you're giving them way too much credit - none of this was by design.

Maybe I'm wrong. I'm sure that more about this will come out in the following weeks/month. I'm just saying the endings weren't good but that the endings don't incite the rage that it seems to incite in 90% of players(c what i did thar?) in me cause even tho i'm disappointed by the outcome i can deal with it.