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Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread |OT2| Taste the Rainbow

firehawk12

Subete no aware
Yea, every site I've read that's against those against the ending. Have acted so superior and look at those that are disappointed at the ending as lesser beings that don't understand what they want. And they only talk to one another for validation and pretend like we are all kids that don't know shit.

I wish E3 was sooner, it'd be great discussing in person...

Maybe this is revenge for all the times people have complained about their reviews for other games.
 
Which is why they never should have had reapers in the first place and it should have basically been firefly with aliens and minovsky particles.

Well, that was my grip with the ending of Mass Effect 2, so that couldn't be fixed. The Arrival however, just it worse, until ME3 killed it entirely.

The concept art for the human reaper was a lot better in explaining why it was there than the actual game. Which is rather telling, I think.

Btw, for those new to the thread after completing ME3:

ib2h3dHgA7pr0e.gif


Now buy some DLC!
 

Tajin

Banned
Can we ban all of the gaming sites now?

How dare fans have a strong opinion about something we unanimously rated favorably?! Quick, launch ad hominem attacks!

I think the ending debacle really shows how different the passionate gaming crowd and the gaming journalists differ. We play for the love of the game; they play for a paycheck. It's just a different mentality.

I would really like to know if any of the pre-meltdown reviews even mentioned the abruptness and lack of choice in the ending.
 

Dany

Banned
GameTrailers and GiantBomb make mention of it.

Jeff had mentioned it, he reviewed it, that he knew about the ending to varying degrees back in January when people were sending him details. He thought it looked bad on paper. But after playing it I think he just thinks its fine but still disappointing.
 
Forbes went from "Wow there is a disagreement about the ME3 ending" to "Wow reviewers fail."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidth...fect-3-gears-of-war-3-and-why-reviewers-fail/

Look at the score system from IGN – Google’s de facto champion of game reviewing. Never mind that reviewing any piece of art out of 100 is a ridiculous endeavor, but look at the actual scores. The vast majority of popular games fall somewhere between 8 and 10, and a competently executed blockbuster will almost never score below a 9.0. The tacit message being sent here is that most of this stuff is awesome, it’s just a question of how awesome it is.

Critics are unpopular people. They take other people’s artistic babies, things that people have worked years perfecting, and they rip them to pieces. The best tend to still be impossibly arrogant, but sharp enough that they’re hard to disagree with. Game critics, however, delve into that territory very rarely. We tend to be quick to forgive, quick to see things from the developer’s point of view, and quick to hope for improvements in the sequel.

For a case study, we’ll zoom into Gears of War 3, and the realm of subjective opinion. I thought this game was terrible. When I played Gears of War 3, I saw a slick shooter with a responsive engine appropriate to a long-honed blockbuster series. I also saw an utterly boring title devoid of soul or style, embarrassingly marred by ham-handed attempts at emotional dreck.

Here’s the subtitle for IGN’s Gears of War 3 review: “Does Gears of War 3 live up to the hype? Duh. Of course it does. Let’s chainsaw some fools!”
 

RyanDG

Member
Nope, even in Liara's room she has her red dots in her iris... what's going ooooon ?

I think its like the same kind of scarring that you get in ME2 for choosing renegade choices. I didn't experience it in this game I think because I purchased the cosmetic surgery to get rid of it in ME2 - which I noticed is a flag in the save that is imported in based on the import screen.
 
GameTrailers and GiantBomb make mention of it.

Gertsmann's review is pretty accurate, in my opinion. It's rated 4 stars, and going by the text, it's really 3 stars +1 star for Mass Effect fans. A fair score; I would personally take away the last star since the ending undoes all the good the game does for Mass Effect fans story wise, leaving it at 3 stars.
 

NeoForte

Member
So today I thought about what would be the best way to fix somethings in Mass Effect 3 and I began to think about how to fix the child from the start. Almost everyone doesn't like how it was handled. So this is what I came up with.

It's not perfect but it's probably a stronger opening than what we got.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
Forbes went from "Wow there is a disagreement about the ME3 ending" to "Wow reviewers fail."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthi...eviewers-fail/
Jesus Christ. When the hell did Forbes get awesome?

From my Twitter feed, it looks like there are some gaming people jumping on the Forbes guy.

Protecting the tribe and all that I guess.
I realize that I have no respect for the critics in this industry any more. Video game writers are the People/US Weekly of the gaming industry.
 

McNum

Member
Forbes went from "Wow there is a disagreement about the ME3 ending" to "Wow reviewers fail."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidth...fect-3-gears-of-war-3-and-why-reviewers-fail/
I still can't really believe that it's Forbes, of all people, that's doing this.

Honestly, I'm beginning to like that Mass Effect 3 ended like it did. Not because I like the ending, it's still awful, but because of things like this. Frankly, if it took a bad ending to Mass Effect as a while to catch the eye of actual journalists that something is rotten in the game review business, then I'll take it.

This is slowly, but surely, turning from just a bad ending in a video game to almost a form of event. And that's pretty much the last thing EA wants to happen about it.
 

Minion101

Banned
What's going on, why are most of the Game "journalists" so against gamers, especially on this. I've always been extremely for developers interests, but I completely understand this scenario... What's wrong with all these sites?

I don't think they are against hating something. They are against wanting to change it because some vocal gamers say so.
 
Real journalism FTW.

Does Forbes have a dedicated gaming section? Or this just in the entertainment area?

The guy who wrote the article seems to focus on tech. I think management at Forbes changed somewhere, because hes be writing progressively more and more gaming articles since the start of the year.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
I still can't really believe that it's Forbes, of all people, that's doing this.

Honestly, I'm beginning to like that Mass Effect 3 ended like it did. Not because I like the ending, it's still awful, but because of things like this. Frankly, if it took a bad ending to Mass Effect as a while to catch the eye of actual journalists that something is rotten in the game review business, then I'll take it.

This is slowly, but surely, turning from just a bad ending in a video game to almost a form of event. And that's pretty much the last thing EA wants to happen about it.

The reality is that Forbes probably doesn't need EA ad money for their website.

Justin McElroy is losing his shit on Twitter right now...
Ugh.
 
Does anyone know of a tool I can use to change my gender/class?

Would like to try a femshep Vanguard runthrough, but it doesn't let me change either when importing my completed save.
 
Justin McElroy is losing his shit on Twitter right now...

Justin McElroy said:
But when do a hatchet job in a major outlet on an industry you're angry at (because you can't find a way into it?), you owe some apologies.

I like this bit here. I don't write for a living but if I did I would kill for a chance to get into Forbes. You're transcending you industry and are being used in reference to business as a whole that's a big deal.

Why are so many people against this? It's ultimately pro-consumer which is what we strive for in all business isn't?
 
I'm not sure why anyone's losing it over the article though.

His main point is a thing that people have said over and over again---that game journalism has an 8 to 10 scale for games and that the cozy relationship many of them have with members of the industry has the potential to cause things to feel skewed.

Bringing up ME3's end and the huge discrepancy between reviewers and the fanbase is just the best example.
 

inky

Member
Forbes went from "Wow there is a disagreement about the ME3 ending" to "Wow reviewers fail."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidth...fect-3-gears-of-war-3-and-why-reviewers-fail/

I'm glad that people with a louder voice are finally expressing these thoughts. They have been relegated to gaming forums in a US vs. THEM manner for far too long. Guess this guy won't be "contributing" to IGN.com anymore =/

I still can't really believe that it's Forbes, of all people, that's doing this.

Well it's no different from how other sites work, honestly. It's still Forbes, but it works like any other blog with contributions from a variety of writers and freelancers. The only difference is that there doesn't seem to be an editorial mandate to what they can publish, or how can it harm relationships with developers because there aren't any as entrenched as with other sites.

This is slowly, but surely, turning from just a bad ending in a video game to almost a form of event. And that's pretty much the last thing EA wants to happen about it.

Hopefully this spirals into some kind of benign introspection. I am not really expecting a change from the gaming sites and how they operate, but from readers and hopefully some get to realize why they should stop swallowing their marketing materials dressed as journalism and questioning them more and more, or at least stop visiting them.
 

Derrick01

Banned
Justin McElroy is losing his shit on Twitter right now...

That clown is one of the very last who should be jumping on anyone for competent journalism.

This fucker tore down a game for being shitty on Joystiq because he didn't know how to read a mini-map. Gaming 101. Not to mention all of the other troll articles he wrote while he was there.

Let's also not forget that stupid dancing skyrim gif.
 

McNum

Member
The reality is that Forbes probably doesn't need EA ad money for their website.
The cynical part of me says that Forbes might be seizing an opportunity to reach out to a whole new demographic that didn't care about financial magazines before. If so, mission successful. They've got the attention of tens of thousands of angry and/or disappointed Mass Effect fans.

I would love it, though, if it turns out that there's a story about the seedy underbelly of video game journalism brewing. There's material for one, for sure, and the problems are business related... Just need the bait and there's a whole new generation of subscribers.

But it's probably not that sinister. Would be awesome to watch happen if it was, though.

Justin McElroy is losing his shit on Twitter right now...
Who?
 

Zeal

Banned
Even though the dark energy plot was very interesting, I really don't see a need to keep discussing it, based on the fact that it was not included in any way and only confuses new people.

Anyway, since all technology was based on it, and dark energy is the byproduct of element zero usage, that means that the relays and everything else using it would ultimately have to be destroyed in the same way as the current shitty ending. The only way to stop it would be to end FTL travel and all major scientific discoveries based on it, resulting in a technological dark age once more.

Basically all I'm saying is that Bioware intended on destroying the relays long before the trilogy was completely planned out, and they were trying to find a plot device believable enough to do it. They were hell bent on 'resetting' everything for some unknown future reason.

The MMO theory is actually starting to make a lot more sense. Please, god no.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
The cynical part of me says that Forbes might be seizing an opportunity to reach out to a whole new demographic that didn't care about financial magazines before. If so, mission successful. They've got the attention of tens of thousands of angry and/or disappointed Mass Effect fans.

I would love it, though, if it turns out that there's a story about the seedy underbelly of video game journalism brewing. There's material for one, for sure, and the problems are business related... Just need the bait and there's a whole new generation of subscribers.

But it's probably not that sinister. Would be awesome to watch happen if it was, though.
I don't think there's really some kind of seedy underbelly with money changing hands or whatever (fucking Diana Allers is just weird shit though).

It's just that these sites both want the respect of The New Yorker but the "popularity" of US Weekly or Entertainment Weekly, and those two things just don't mix at all.


No one important.
 
That clown is one of the very last who should be jumping on anyone for competent journalism.

This fucker tore down a game for being shitty on Joystiq because he didn't know how to read a mini-map. Gaming 101. Not to mention all of the other troll articles he wrote while he was there.

Let's also not forget that stupid dancing skyrim gif.

I can't find the Gif people made of that anywhere. Does somebody have it?

Edit: Well I'm late.
 
The guy who wrote the article seems to focus on tech. I think management at Forbes changed somewhere, because hes be writing progressively more and more gaming articles since the start of the year.

Don't be naive. The Mass Effect 3 ending is probably causing Forbes the most views on their blogs since the day they went digital.

They are only on 'our side' as long as that side / niche is available. They work by the same mechanisms of global commercial journalism as everyone else, which makes all -unfortunately- kind of predictable.

Eventually, Forbes will be lured into the PR trap just as much as any other outlet. You are either with or against the PR. And even the 'against' is itself a category to be exploited.

The key word here is 'exploited'. That's what PR does, most of the time. The PR dude who took over from the now-famous "OceanMarketing" is really the exception to the rule, applying some good old mom-and-pop store logic to how to actually promote a product and keep the market clean. I really hope that is the future of PR, but I think it's future is focused on an ever greater illusion of control.
 

tino

Banned
Jesus Christ. When the hell did Forbes get awesome?


I realize that I have no respect for the critics in this industry any more. Video game writers are the People/US Weekly of the gaming industry.

They are basically male versions of Jessica Chobot.
 

McNum

Member
I don't think there's really some kind of seedy underbelly with money changing hands or whatever (fucking Diana Allers is just weird shit though).

It's just that these sites both want the respect of The New Yorker but the "popularity" of US Weekly or Entertainment Weekly, and those two things just don't mix at all.

I didn't mean anything criminal, but the reviewers and game publishers are way too close. "Conflict of interests" doesn't even come close to describing it. See Diana Allers, as you said. How can IGN ever be trusted for anything about Mass Effect 3 when they're part of the game?

And this is probably what has the game journalists so angry. They're pretty much exposed here. One step too far, and it shows. And now writers from Forbes are pointing it out for all to see. I don't think anyone saw that coming.

No one important.
Clearly.
 
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