Mass Effect 3.7B: ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL OF THIS FORUM (Story/Spoiler Thread!)

[Psyren]

You were glossing over that you asked a very specific question, which was the differences between Half-Life 1 and Mass Effect 3 and why so many fans had more issues with the ending of the latter over the former. They're very different games.

Are they, though? Are they really? From a story perspective, that is. We're coming back to the "illusion" point again. How much do appearances ultimately matter to the reality? I posit that the differences are more academic/cosmetic than you appear to believe.

Spoiler

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When I played Half-Life 1, I wasn't after any plot or character decisions, as the game never sold itself as aiming to achieve that. What Half-Life 1 was was a FPS based around environmental puzzles and occasional gunplay sections, with a paper thin plot told through an unbroken first person perspective. I didn't have any problems with the ending choice because it did not register as a choice at all - it wasn't the "good ending" vs. the "bad ending", it was the "ending" vs. a non-standard game over screen. And that's fine, for Half-Life 1.

For Mass Effect 3, I was expecting a game similar to the other Bioware games: an RPG with action sections (third person shooter in Mass Effect's case) with a strong mostly linear story (i.e. optional ordering of chapters) and plenty of the character-based decisions (Paragon/Renegade, Light Side/Dark Side, Heroic/Jerkass) that is Bioware's trademark. I also expected payback for all the major decisions I had made through the other two games, as they promised through all those loading screens in ME1 and ME2 that told me to hold on to my saves for import. That's why, when the game glossed over those decisions and started to impose Bioware's writer's will on Shepard's characterisation, I was disappointed.

All right; let's talk about some of those other Bioware games.

Jade Empire - aside from the Water Dragon, your other major choices included Tien's Landing, Chai Ka vs. Ya Zhen, and how to handle Death's Hand. Yet not one of those choices truly impacted the ending, or was even really represented; only the Water Dragon choice impacted your ending, because it was the one thing that truly mattered.

DA:O - Lots of big choices here, like the Dwarven king, Dwarves vs. Golems, Elves vs. Werewolves, Templars vs. Mage Circle etc. In the end these also amounted to little more than War Assets, with the only real choices being reduced to Logain and Morrigan.

These games showcase what I've been saying all along - that the journey is where those narratives find meaning, not the destination. Just because the ending of the game doesn't incorporate every thread that has come before, doesn't make those threads meaningless. There's still a great deal there to contemplate, debate and ponder.

Now you can argue that Bioware didn't explicitly make any promises about character agency in ME3 (although I'm sure I or others can find direct quotes that say otherwise. ), but that doesn't actually matter. Bioware implicitly made those promises by the previous games in the series and by their signature style in their games. I buy Bioware games for that Bioware style of linear story bent to character personality choice, so I was annoyed when they took that away. Theoretically Bioware might have got away with it as a deliberate artistic choice, but for it to work that had to nail it so exquisitely that players like me would be in awe with their artistic skill. It was impossible for them to do when they half-assed the writing of the ending (or in the case of the original cut, fully-assed it).

As I pointed out above, "Bioware's signature style" is not what you remember it to be. They certainly weave fantastic tapestries of the journey, but when it comes to tying up all those threads only a handful of choices truly matter in terms of the result you get. And this is a necessity to keep the universe(s) manageable.

(Additional: I only have one Shep, but I know some die-hard fans made a point of saving all different kinds of permutations of decisions so they could see all the differences who were crushed when they realised the answer was "not much". I know I spent a while considering what option to pick at the end of ME2 regarding the Collector Base, so I was annoyed to know it makes no real difference. If I replay ME2 every Shep will destroy that base because there is no reason not to. One of the biggest issues with ME3 is that it's killed a lot of the replay value of the entire series; there's no point in seeing how it plays differently, because it all ends up the same.)

I consider this to be highly unreasonable. You wanted deep and significantly different permutations based on decisions like the Collector Base, or the Council choice - but for those choices to be truly meaningful would mean crafting separate games for each. At some point the threads need to converge, for simplicity's sake if no other reason.