Soooo....Mass Effect 3

[Lissa]

BUT, the point that I was trying to make by mentioning the talk about law suits, FTC complaints and class action suits spooking through people's heads is the sheer *scope* of how much people feel cheated, lied to and betrayed by a company they used to love.

BioWare, in one single act of greed or stupidity, has managed to destroy 10+ years of reputation building, killed their community (which has degraded into flame wars, insults and stubborn denial of each others points) and destroyed not only their own credibility, but also those of dozens of magazines and internet sites, that blindly and ignorantly repeat their PR platitudes and fail to even recognize objective facts.

Maybe I'd feel differently if I'd played the game already? I guess I just don't get the sheer visceral reaction. So they made a good game with a bad ending. So it wasn't exactly what was promised - your choices don't matter to the resolution, you get to pick your ending rather than it emerging from previous choices (from what I understand). That's bad, but it's hardly a deep personal betrayal that will leave you shattered for ages to come. People use the word "love" here - as if what BioWare had with its customers was a romance, and the heartbreak therefore justifies the opposite reaction, a rage born of trust betrayed. Maybe it's the plot-centric nature of their games that makes them the target for this? Maybe it's the sense that EA had a hand in it? I'm not getting it.

I've played loads of BioWare games, some of which I've absolutely loved (BG, BGII, ME2) some of which have been pretty damn good (DA, ME1, KotOR), and some of which I haven't particularly cared for (Jade Empire, DA2, NWN.) I feel like BioWare makes quality games that are, on the whole, worth buying. But I don't, despite actually knowing people who work there, feel like they have some profound personal obligation to me. It is disappointing that DA2 isn't very good, but it doesn't fill me with rage and indignation. I don't deserve my money back, and I don't feel like yelling about it either.

Does anyone remember KotOR 2? (Not BioWare, just to be clear.) That game was outright broken. Parts of it were simply unfinished, and obviously so. You could break plots, dialogues, characters by sneezing on them (my Hanharr had 99 wraparound bugged strength... by accident.) The ending was simply nonexistent. Placeholder graphics stood in for actual finished product. There, I could maybe see the argument that I'd been sold a bill of goods, that the game was shipped unfinished. (Even then, probably not good enough for a formal complaint.)

But here? Because the ending isn't what people expected or wanted? Because it doesn't reflect their choices in the way Casey Hudson implied? I don't get it. It's just not that infuriating to me - and I'm as deep into Cmdr. Shepard's story as anyone, having logged well over 300 hours in the series so far.

-Jester

Think of it this way Jester, you've spent 300 hours on something, you add another 30 or so hours to that, and then everything is completely invalidated in 5 minutes, wasting all that time you spent. The ending to ME 3 reminds me of a Choose Your Own Adventure book I read while in elementary school where the optimal outcome, as stated at the start of the book, was to make no choice at all. No matter how much you tried, you could not reach that optimal ending, this is what ME 3 feels like to me. Literally, everything you've done up to the ending, all the time you've invested, is for naught.

While, as I've said, the game is good up to that ending, the ending does not present closure, just more questions along with numerous plot holes. And as you pointed out, ME 3 almost parallels KotOR 2 (difference being that ME 3 is more polished and finished), where it leaves more questions than answers when it finishes.