Castle Magus

Right. It's totally the fans' fault that these guys left. I'm sure the fact that they headed a company that began producing demonstrably inferior video games after they sold themselves out to EA had nothing whatsoever to do with it. I'm sure that definitely had no effect on the matter at all. Poor, pitiful, tiny baby doctors. I feel so sad for them and their wittle hurt feewings. *eyeroll*

Well, as the old saying goes, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." Looks like they got out of the kitchen all right. I'm sure they're crying into their huge piles of money this very minute.

Seriously though, I do shed a real tear for the BioWare that used to be. This shambling corpse that exists now is BioWare in (diluted and abused) name only.

PC Gamer asked several game writers and designers what they thought about BioWare potentially changing the ending of Mass Effect 3. Very interesting read, I thought. (No spoilers that I can tell, at least not in the article itself, anyway. Beware the comments, but then, that's generally good advice for any article on a site like this.)

I don't really have a horse in this race, at least not yet, since I've already decided for separate[1] reasons that I'm simply going to hold off on getting ME3 at all until some point in the nebulous future. Generally speaking, however, I think I have to side with the "don't change it, even if it's terrible" crowd. Whether or not they insert DLC later that adds to it and perhaps explains or clarifies it or whatever is a whole other kettle of fish altogether, and one that I've ranted about more than enough in the past and won't get into here, but I don't think they should change or remove what is already there.

Then again, as I said, I haven't actually seen the endings yet (though I've been moderately spoiled on the gist of them, and what I've heard does indeed sound rather blah), so maybe the (seemingly) very many people who are truly enraged over the whole thing are right and BioWare should completely scrap and redo the whole thing. I don't know. That's the problem with vocal minorities... you never know if there is a multitude of others out there who are nodding their head in agreement with them, or if there is a multitude of others who wish they'd just stfu with their whining already.

Of course, at this point, I also don't know that I trust EA/BioWare to even have the ability to fix this mess in a proper manner, no matter what they end up doing.

[1] - Looking back on that, though, I'm not sure how the multiplayer is able to "affect the ending" when most people seem to generally agree nowadays that all of the possible endings are crap, and have little or nothing to do with any decisions you do or don't make prior to reaching that point. Huh.

So, in addition to all of the other stuff that's wrong with ME3, I hear a lot of people complaining about how the ending is nonsensical or pointless or otherwise just plain bad. I've been trying to avoid spoilers, so I don't know if this is just the Internet being the Internet or if these are actually valid complaints.

Could anyone who has played through and finished ME3 let me know WITHOUT SPOILERS OF ANY KIND if you agree with the general consensus that the ending sucks? Or is the Internet just blowing a lot of hot air? I mean, if there was one thing that the Mass Effect series has gotten right in the past, it has been the story. I'd hate to think that they managed to screw even that up in the final game. :/ I'm not looking for specific plot points or anything (WITHOUT SPOILERS OF ANY KIND), I just want to know if you give the endings a general overall "Yes, it was good and the Internet is full of it" or "No, it completely sucked, the Internet is totally right" or "Eh, it was okay I guess but not nearly as awesome as it could have been."

(EDIT)

Well, so far I've gotten a "...yes, the outrage is justified on multiple levels. Not just a 'bad' ending. 99% of ME1~ME3 is pure awesome storywise, ME3's last 10 minutes pees in the face of the entire franchise and its unique storytelling." response via Twitter. I can safely say that this is a bad sign. :/

(/EDIT)

My ability to give a crap about Mass Effect 3 continues to spiral ever farther down the drain.

This isn't really news though. It's still the case, apparently, that you don't have to play the multiplayer in order to get the best ending. No, you just have to have played the previous two games absolutely perfectly (which is kind of difficult given that there are bugs in those games that screw over some of the minor quest results, as well as bugs in the process of carrying over data from ME1 to ME2) in addition to playing the singleplayer part of ME3 itself perfectly as well, including all of the mind-numbing minigame crap.

You used to be great, BioWare, but not anymore. I won't ask what happened to you and why you became so crappy though, because I already know the reason for that.

(EDIT)

Oh, and here's another thing. I don't have Xbox Live Gold anymore, so even if I wanted to play ME3 multiplayer (which I vehemently do not) I couldn't do so, at least not without paying Microsoft some arbitrary non-insignificant amount to reactivate a Gold account.

So there's that too.

(/EDIT)

This. (For the most part.)

It is why this stuff has been happening, why it is still happening, and why it will never stop happening, despite the vocal minority (including myself) raising a huge stink every time some new piece of poo comes floating down the sewer pipes and into the eagerly waiting mouths of the general gaming public who otherwise doesn't care about this kind of thing. owsf2000 and I have been saying this very thing for years now. Gamers bring it on themselves. Companies like EA do stuff like this because gamers are going to suck it down no matter how horrible it may be. It's just the way it is. I hate that this is the reality of the situation, but it's just the way it is. And it's only going to continue to get worse from here on out.

Now to explain the "for the most part." I'm pretty sure I don't agree with this guy's reasoning for why paying, in this case, $60 for Mass Effect 3 and an extra $10 for Day 1 DLC is a "bargain." It sounds like he's merely trying to rationalize his weak-willed capitulation to the very thing he's complaining about.[1] And I certainly don't agree that "I love Mass Effect $70 worth" (as it's the general principle of the thing that is more important than the particular dollar amount). Aside from those minor quibbles, however, I otherwise fully agree with the guy. Companies like EA aren't doing any of the terrible things that they do for the love of video games. That should already have been more than blatantly obvious, and I don't know why this guy is talking about it as though it were some sort of startling revelation, since he claims in his article that it didn't hit him that it was the case until he saw a comment from someone explicitly saying "EA seems like they only care about money." Really, EA and other big mega-publishers like them are, and always have been and always will be, doing it purely and explicitly for the $$$$$. As long as we keep letting them nickle and dime us (or, more appropriately, $10 and $20 us) like this, they will forever continue to do so. They have no other goal aside from keeping their shareholders happy, consumers be damned as long as we are willing to continue eating this shit.



I will be completely honest here, though. While watching that video there, I had to stop and go back more than a few times to hear what the guy was actually saying, because I kept getting distracted by the visuals... yeah, I still want to get Mass Effect 3, despite all this crap surrounding it... but I'm still going to sit on it for a while. I'm not outright boycotting it because, damn, look at that. I'm weak. I've freely admitted this before.[1] But I'm not buying it Day 1 either. Will wait for the inevitable price drop, even if I don't end up waiting for a "Complete" edition to be released, assuming one ever is. (EDIT 2) And now, over a year later, I still haven't bought it yet. That said, I'm also still not ruling out buying it at some point if I can find it somewhere for <$10-$15 or so, but my interest ever continues to wane with the passage of time. (/EDIT 2) (EDIT 3) I eventually did buy it for dirt cheap, but I never even ended up taking the shrinkwrap off of the damn thing before I sold it along with everything else. So while I did, at one point buy and own Mass Effect 3, I still have never actually played the game. (/EDIT 3)

After this point, however, I will be looking at every future product BioWare releases through the lens of this game here and the other recent ones that came before. If they release a Dragon Age 3 and it has this same sort of crap? Definitely not buying that (especially not after the relative piece of crap that was Dragon Age 2). If they release a Jade Empire 2 and it has the same sort of crap? Grrraaaaugh. That would be a tough one, I admit, but I'd probably have to pass on that as well.

Also, as an aside, I would just like to say this one more time, as I am seeing the subject being brought up in some of the comments under the headline article: I don't care how much you hate this kind of thing, it is not a valid excuse to pirate the games. That is all. (EDIT) Wait, hold on... is someone in those comments really trying to equate buying non-Big-Name-brand food or clothing with software piracy? Seriously? o_O Okay, I'm not going to make a whole other post about it, but I just want to say that this is one of the most ridiculously asinine things I've heard said about piracy yet. What's next? Buying Big Name brand clothing for cheap at Good Will is the same as software piracy? No, wait, I guess that's more similar to buying used video games (which is the same as software piracy in the eyes of devs/pubs/retards these days). (/EDIT)

[1] - And, to be fair to that guy, I've hypocritically done the very same exact thing regarding crap I've complained about in the past as well. Though, again, the Catwoman stuff at least wasn't being charged extra for if you bought the game new and thus still wasn't quite as bad as the ME3 thing here, similar to the stuff that TotalBiscuit mentioned for ME2 in the video above, but then I guess that's just me being the one doing the rationalizing now. Yeah, seriously, see how easy it is to fall into the trap of saying "Well, I guess all that horrid stuff that they did before wasn't so bad after all, given that they're doing stuff now that's way worse."? I mean, after all, they were only gouging used buyers with that other stuff so I guess that makes it okay now, right? No, no it does not. It's how we progressed from CD keys to limited activations to always-online DRM, for example. I wonder what horrid thing will come along next that makes this thing here seem not so bad after all. For me at least, though, I've already reached my own personal limit for what I'm willing to accept.

I am shocked, shocked I say, that this harebrained scheme hasn't quite gone as planned.

Dear BioWare,

If this Thing™ that you are doing (and have been doing at least since Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2, except that you're gouging everyone this time, rather than just used buyers) is something that you feel the need to "defend" from everyone who is calling it a very crappy thing, then perhaps you should take a step back and consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't be doing said crappy thing?

Sincerely,

Someone else who is also very sick and tired of Day 1 DLC, regardless of any bullshit excuses and rationalizations for it.


In any case, between this and all the other crap swirling around this game, I've pretty much decided now that I'm just going to wait for a "Game of the Year" or "Ultimate" or "Complete, and not hacked up into various pieces of DLC" version of Mass Effect 3 before I bother to get it, if I get it at all. I can wait. I've got plenty of other things to keep me busy in the meantime. If such a version of the game is never released, then I can still wait until the hacked up version is suitably bargain bin price, such that it plus any DLC (assuming the DLC is even still available at that point) would be around the price of a normal full game altogether, rather than as it is now, i.e. a game at full price plus what will likely end up being an additional almost full game's price worth of DLC on top of that.

My only regret now is that I didn't do the same sort of thing for Mass Effect 2 as well, given that all of the DLC for that game that I may care to get currently comes to a total of 2480 Microsoft Points, or around $31 (and if I ever do get it, it will only be if/when there is a sale on it). But then, there hasn't been an "Ultimate" version of ME2 made available yet (at least, not for the Xbox 360 anyway), which leads me to be pessimistic about there being one for ME3 either. Oh well.

(EDIT)

And would you look at that. Yet another industry brown-nosing op-ed piece by that dumbass Chris Pereira guy at 1up.com. This guy's starting to bug me even more than Jim Sterling of Destructoid does.

(/EDIT)

"So there you go. I really have no idea what to make of it, other than to quite aggressively feel that if I’m required to take part in some co-op in order to be able to properly enjoy the single-player campaign, I’m going to be furious. The implication appears to be that I will not, especially if I chase after all the side-quests, which I certainly will. But this is tenuously thin ice BioWare have chosen to tread, especially for a company formerly so deeply dedicated to single-player gaming. While I have not a scrap of evidence, and the claims are that they’ve been planning to include such a component since the first game, this really does reek of marketing before design. However, I’ve still enough faith in BioWare to assume that they’ll get this right. Right?"

Except, perhaps, for the last sentence or two, I couldn't agree more or have said it better myself. So I wont. Don't feel like going into yet another big, futile rant about this right now. More details, if you care to read them, concerning the multiplayer crap in ME3 (along with other, even crappier stuff) in the link there.

I will never stop believing that this whole situation has the taint of EA all over it, I don't care how much supposed autonomy BioWare claims they have.

I was planning to go to the post office this morning, but it's closed due to Columbus Day. So, instead, I'll use this extra time to look at my Google Reader. Hey look, a story about totally unnecessary multiplayer in Mass Effect 3! *weary sigh*

Well, hopefully the multiplayer in ME3 will indeed be "something separate from the main game," since then I will be able to more easily ignore it completely as I have absolutely zero interest in it. But I guess it'll be there for those who do care, so hopefully at least for them it won't end up being the tacked on waste of time that I figure it will be. And, more importantly, hopefully the work on the main game won't have been hurt too much by the effort and resources wasted to work on the unneeded multiplayer.

Sadly, as Bioware themselves recently admitted. "they are EA" now ("And I always chuckle because we are EA"). Yeah, I know that the point of that article was for them to claim that they supposedly still have autonomy from EA and all that. But if that really is the case, then that just makes all the boneheaded decisions they're making lately even worse in my eyes. I'd honestly rather have the "well, it's obviously EA's fault" excuse than to believe that Bioware is just seriously losing their touch. If "think[ing] a lot more about the commercial elements than we used to" is what is causing them to suck so much lately, and if they really do have the autonomy that they claim they do, then maybe they should seriously consider going back to doing what they did best, rather than toeing the EA corporate line like that.

Link.

Okay, I'm sure this has been and will be asked a million times, but... what's wrong with the default Shepard that's already been around since the first game? Especially given that the default male is what has been plastered all over the marketing for the game ever since the beginning.