Mass Effect 3 - Narratological Review @ RPG Codex

CrustyBot, a forum member on the BSN's ME3 boards points to a review of Mass Effect 3 made by TNO from RPG Codex. As the title says it takes a narratological look at the ME3 game in the review. Spoilers abound, so read at your own risk. TNO discusses everything in the series as well as the ME3 game itself, from the characters to the Choice&Consequence, akaC&C, as well as the ending.

Here's a bit from the beginning of the review just to get us started, as TNI sees it, Mass Effet 3 jumps the shark here:

And here - within the first five minutes - is when ME3's plot jumps the shark. Why isn't this the game over screen? ME1's entire plot hinged on the fact that if the Reapers show up, the galaxy is finished (and this is repeated in the Arrival DLC). All the backstory shows that a single Reaper can only just barely be taken down by the might of the entire galaxy, and now hundreds have arrived. You're told how they crippled the Protheans in a single decapitating strike and then mopped them up piecemeal.

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A quote on the characters in the game:

By contrast, the new companions you get in ME3 mostly suck. There's your new Marine sidekick Lieutenant James Vega: Jersey Shore meets Jarhead with a side order of roid abuse (amazingly, not a love interest). Or the flatly-acted and fanservice-costume equipped Diana Allers. Or the new EDI, whose fairly limited 'AIs are so zany!' shtick is horribly overplayed when Bioware make her a party member with a scavenged cybernetic body and drum up a romance with Joker (!!!). Worst of all is Kai Leng, a cerberus henchman/space ninja who fell out of the metal gear solid tree and hit every cliché on the way down. The one passable addition is Traynor, your communications expert, assisted by an able voice actor (she also replaces Kelly Chambers as your starship NPC emotional distress monitor).

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And finally, TNO's thoughts about the ending:

C&C: The three final choices, besides being foisted in (and working via) incredulous space magic, are just recolourings. The plot coupon readiness system effectively serves no purpose besides arbitrarily determining the availability of particular colours. You also never see the consequences of anything you've done, and so the 'long range' outcomes of having Wreav instead of Wrex as Krogan leader, making peace between the Quarians and Geth versus taking one side, and so on, are nil.

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Do you agree with TNO?
More information.

Some comments on bioware's forum are priceless IMHO Bioware has one serious problem with one word.. 'evolving'. While ME(1) was a decent game with some big flaws (awful equipment, booriiiing planet-scanning, AND VERY @#$@%# sidequests), it had it's background. The narration was (at least for me) very good, I truly was devouring the story of Saren, then ofc Reapers.
-The second game was for me a dissapointment.. They had problem with equipment? They nerfed all customisation happiness (DA2.. what a coincidence). I tried, but there was no immersion in these whole companion-quests. I know it is very subjective but I have always looked at these type of sidequests as an add-on, which you accomplish to fully understand your party - because you want to!. If they are an essence of the whole story.. well it is too forced for me. Lack of customisation, less dialogues with npcs - EVOLUTION..
-In ME3 you can listen to others conversation, without interaction and in that way pick up a quest... WHY THANK YOU BIOWARE FOR such EVOLUTION OF RPGS!

Hear the truth.

I agree Misha.
In Mass Effect 1 I found an OK game with a fantastic Sci Fi story and I loved it.
I would have happily played the next 2 games with the same engine and mechanics as long as they kept to the initial story.

I guess it goes to show a coherent storyline is hard to achieve with a team of 12 writers, who jump in and out of the project.

I share the feeling, that in ME1 the whole Reaper threat sounded much more "Lovecraftian": Big horrors in outer space that should never, ever reach known space. But, to be true, it IS said in ME1, that the Protheans were crippled because the reaper controlled the Citadell und through it, the Mass Relays, thus allowing them to kill the Protheans one system by system, while the Protheans couldn't do much more than wait. It is also said, that the process took hundreds of years.

So, as much as I agree that ME3 is pretty weak, especially the ending - and could have been much better, story-wise - some points the reviewer simply got wrong.

"Do you agree with TNO?"

No.

For example, the ending - who cares? I play games to enjoy playing them. It's the journey, and I don't need some artist to tell me I had Wrex instead of whatsit - I know I did. I know I had both the geth and quarians on side and that gives me my own satisfaction. I don't need some voice over to pat me on the head afterwards.

And just look at all the press this has generated. If they had a textbook ending we'd all go 'very good Bioware. Yawn.' and have forgotten the series by now.

kalniel said:

"Do you agree with TNO?"

No.

For example, the ending - who cares? I play games to enjoy playing them. It's the journey, and I don't need some artist to tell me I had Wrex instead of whatsit - I know I did. I know I had both the geth and quarians on side and that gives me my own satisfaction. I don't need some voice over to pat me on the head afterwards.

...

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You make an interesting point I believe applies to a substantial population of gamers. In particular, many gamers play primarily for the physical challenges of a game. Story is secondary; icing on the cake, as it were.

Other gamers, like myself, play RPGs for the story and fantasy immersion, allowing temporary escape from the confines of reality. In my case the ME3 ending essentially undercuts the entire story, and effectively defeats the possibility of immersion in future play throughs.

IMO BW was trying to craft a game with ME3 that would accommodate the desires of both classes of gamers (those who play for gameplay challenges, and those who seek story immersion). Sounds like the game succeeded for the gameplay challenge gamers. That's a good thing IMO.

IMO the story immersion was quite good, for the most part, until the end of the game. A partial success for the story immersion gamers, but a killer for the re-playability aspects of the game.

__

Nice to see some people, anyway, appreciated ME1 as I did. It had some flaws, but they were quite minor in comparison to its achievements. The story and universe were exceptional. The only thing I felt needed improvement was making galactic exploration exciting and enriching, as it sometimes was in the great space games of yore. Unfortunately, they went the exact opposite direction. They did a decent job w ME2 and 3 but butchered the story in favor of an increasing amount of hyperbolic internal conflict, and substituted fanservice clips for choices & consequences.

Although I was very disappointed, I did enjoy my time with the games. At this point, tho, I really don't care nearly enough to play more mass effect, free dlc or otherwise. I'm not totally bitter, but I vehemently disagree that the controversy has been better for the memory of the series. If it had had a truly compelling or ingenious ending, the series would be legendary (in a good way). It is just about the widest received, most cinematic (not artistic exactly, but polished and compelling) vg series to date (Uncharted is technically more impressive and consistent, but not nearly as ambitious imo).

RPG Codex hasn't been a site worth going (or listening) to since about 2007, but TNO raises a few decent points (about the plot) along with some rubbish ones (about the characters).

Quite a well put together review. I could also point to some great Youtube reviews...but I won't.

RPGFool said:

You make an interesting point I believe applies to a substantial population of gamers. In particular, many gamers play primarily for the physical challenges of a game. Story is secondary; icing on the cake, as it were.

Other gamers, like myself, play RPGs for the story and fantasy immersion, allowing temporary escape from the confines of reality. In my case the ME3 ending essentially undercuts the entire story, and effectively defeats the possibility of immersion in future play throughs.

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While like you, I play for the story and fantasy immersion, I disagree with you about the effect of the ending. The story in my eyes occurred while I was playing through the game - I resolved the quarian-geth conflict for example. That all happened at the right place in the game. I don't need a voice-over at the end of the game reaffirming my choices because I already know that it made a difference in my story.

It's almost like the majority of gamers don't have room for imagination any more, and have to have everything spelled out (or read out) to them. In the past games, books and films all left something to the players' imaginations.

kalniel said:

It's almost like the majority of gamers don't have room for imagination any more, and have to have everything spelled out (or read out) to them. In the past games, books and films all left something to the players' imaginations.

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You do know it's a fact when you get older you lose your imagination. Its part of growing up.

Couchpotato said:

You do know it's a fact when you get older you lose your imagination. Its part of growing up.

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Then my wife must be happy that I am younger than my age

qpqpqp said:

The only thing I felt needed improvement was making galactic exploration exciting and enriching, as it sometimes was in the great space games of yore. Unfortunately, they went the exact opposite direction.

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this exact opposite direction is >Evolution<!
(sry for repeating myself xD)

kalniel said:

While like you, I play for the story and fantasy immersion, I disagree with you about the effect of the ending. The story in my eyes occurred while I was playing through the game - I resolved the quarian-geth conflict for example. That all happened at the right place in the game. I don't need a voice-over at the end of the game reaffirming my choices because I already know that it made a difference in my story.

It's almost like the majority of gamers don't have room for imagination any more, and have to have everything spelled out (or read out) to them. In the past games, books and films all left something to the players' imaginations.

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Who said anything about needing a voice-over reaffirming my choices? If you believe "a voice-over reaffirming.. choices" is the only other ending possible, or is the only possible ending other gamers seek, you need to examine the scope of your own imagination.

BTW, what I didn't need was an ending that undercut my choices. Which is what I got.

Although you imagine that "the majority of gamers don't have room for imagination any more", it seems your imagination doesn't leave a lot of room for trying to actually understand others, what others have written, or the imagination of others. You certainly managed to constrain and misinterpret what I wrote.

One final thing. It's neither my fellow gamers nor I who lack imagination. It's the ME3 team at BioWare who lacked sufficient imagination to create a proper ending for ME3 (instead of the piece of crap ending they actually did create). Its not supposed to be the job of the game player to "imagine" an ending for the game story. Indeed, the BioWare "artists" were actually paid to do that. They even claimed repeatedly and falsely, that they had done that.

Its time for people to stop trying to blame gamers for BioWare's failure.

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RPGFool said:

Its time for people to stop trying to blame gamers for BioWare's failure.

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I agree. Its happening on every forum, blog, and other review sites. The journalists just love to bash the disgruntled gamers who don't like there perfect game.

I love kalniel's posts on the topic throughout the ME 3 debacle. They always make me laugh as he is part if the crowd your talking about.

Couchpotato said:

Its happening on every forum, blog, and other review sites.

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There's a good reason for this as well, some gamers need to take a long hard look at themselves. For example the public uproar over the Mass Effect 3 ending contributed to EA being voted the worst company in America for their terrible anti-gaming stance to games, beating out the banks who only contributed to the worst recession the world has faced in nearly a century and the current housing crisis in the US. I'm sure some gamers out there like to think EA's actions over the last decade are far worse than the Banks of America causing families to lose their homes, but these people need to step outside every once in a while . These sorts of reactions to Bioware and EA only serve to show how out of touch with reality some gamers are, and it's this sort of behaviour which makes gamers easy targets for journalists.

RPGFool is right and Bioware needs to take responsibility for its own failure. The problem is the failure is a minor one and the gross overreaction by the fans makes them easy targets for mockery by the journalists and other members of the community. When people start saying "120 hours of the game was great but the final ten minutes completely ruined the whole series, it's all EA's fault THEY CORRUPT EVERYTHING, I can't even look at it any more, IT'S FALSE ADVERTISING" people will rightly roll their eyes and walk away.

drae said:

RPGFool is right and Bioware needs to take responsibility for its own failure. The problem is the failure is a minor one and the gross overreaction by the fans makes them easy targets for mockery by the journalists and other members of the community. When people start saying "120 hours of the game was great but the final ten minutes completely ruined the whole series, it's all EA's fault THEY CORRUPT EVERYTHING, I can't even look at it any more, IT'S FALSE ADVERTISING" people will rightly roll their eyes and walk away.

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I haven't played the game myself but hey, even in my eyes ending was really big let down. It would have been huge anti climax and I can see how that would have ruined the experience for me. Some people may think "Hey it's the only ending that sucked. Big deal" but not everyone thinks like that. Whether it is overreaction or not, the fact is huge number of people were disappointed about ending, and I think fans have right to voice their opinion to Bioware/EA's failure. It didn't help that ME3 happened so soon after DA2.

BTW, I think this comic pretty much sums up a lot of people's reaction towards ending of ME3

http://epantiras.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4w8c8n

purpleblob said:

Whether it is overreaction or not, the fact is huge number of people were disappointed about ending, and I think fans have right to voice their opinion to Bioware/EA's failure.

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They certainly do, people also have a right to mock what they perceive (rightly or wrongly) to be ridiculous behaviour by spoilt members of the community. It's called a 'consequence' to an action, and accepting these consequences is part of what makes people mature members of the community. Not whining that you are being deliberately targeted by journalists and other gamers and whatnot.