![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Here At the End of All Things
Mar. 10th, 2012 04:05 pm(No actual spoilers for ME3, just musings...)
So, Mass Effect 3.
You know, in a funny way, I don’t just feel like I’m at the end of the Mass Effect series. I feel like it’s the end of my playing Bioware games in general. I’ve been playing their RPGs since the first Knights of the Old Republic game. I’ve liked them all; KotOR is still one of my favourite parts of the Star Wars universe, Jade Empire has one of the best villains ever, the Mass Effect universe is one of my favourite fictional settings. Even Dragon Age had more than its fair share of memorable moments, tedious as it sometimes was.
But now… well, I’ve no interest in subscription MMOs, the Dragon Age franchise really never grabbed me, and after Mass Effect 3, well…
You know the worst thing? I love Mass Effect 3. It’s got some great moments, wonderful character interactions, enough call-backs to make it really feel like the culmination of everything that began so long ago fighting the Geth drones on Eden Prime. It’s a wonderful game – except.
Except the last ten minutes, which – well, I won’t be overdramatic. It didn’t retroactively make everything before it bad. But the fact that Bioware thought an ending like this was suitable as the conclusion to their greatest epic is… well, it’s a sign that maybe it’s time for me and Bioware to part company. They’re not telling the sort of stories I like any more, and that’s a pity.
It’s not even that the ending is bad, it’s just… incoherent at best. A deus ex machina that comes out of nowhere, a choice that not only isn’t based on anything that happened before but actively contradicts themes the series had been working towards for so long. So much foreshadowing and detail thrown away in support of… well, nothing really. Bioware apparently felt a good way to end the series was to utterly destroy the setting they’ve spent so long investing us in – which might have even worked, had the ending not been so utterly flat.
I was prepared to accept a bittersweet ending, a tragic ending, or an ambiguous ending. But to get one so utterly incoherent, so completely out of line with everything that had gone before – I’m not even disappointed, just baffled.
So, Mass Effect 3.
You know, in a funny way, I don’t just feel like I’m at the end of the Mass Effect series. I feel like it’s the end of my playing Bioware games in general. I’ve been playing their RPGs since the first Knights of the Old Republic game. I’ve liked them all; KotOR is still one of my favourite parts of the Star Wars universe, Jade Empire has one of the best villains ever, the Mass Effect universe is one of my favourite fictional settings. Even Dragon Age had more than its fair share of memorable moments, tedious as it sometimes was.
But now… well, I’ve no interest in subscription MMOs, the Dragon Age franchise really never grabbed me, and after Mass Effect 3, well…
You know the worst thing? I love Mass Effect 3. It’s got some great moments, wonderful character interactions, enough call-backs to make it really feel like the culmination of everything that began so long ago fighting the Geth drones on Eden Prime. It’s a wonderful game – except.
Except the last ten minutes, which – well, I won’t be overdramatic. It didn’t retroactively make everything before it bad. But the fact that Bioware thought an ending like this was suitable as the conclusion to their greatest epic is… well, it’s a sign that maybe it’s time for me and Bioware to part company. They’re not telling the sort of stories I like any more, and that’s a pity.
It’s not even that the ending is bad, it’s just… incoherent at best. A deus ex machina that comes out of nowhere, a choice that not only isn’t based on anything that happened before but actively contradicts themes the series had been working towards for so long. So much foreshadowing and detail thrown away in support of… well, nothing really. Bioware apparently felt a good way to end the series was to utterly destroy the setting they’ve spent so long investing us in – which might have even worked, had the ending not been so utterly flat.
I was prepared to accept a bittersweet ending, a tragic ending, or an ambiguous ending. But to get one so utterly incoherent, so completely out of line with everything that had gone before – I’m not even disappointed, just baffled.
