Giant Bomb Thread The Third: #TeamBrad

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Just end the game with
Shepard and Anderson looking out on the space battle, then cut to earth and see the catalyst/citadel do its thing and destroy the Reapers, and your teammates maybe looking up and happy that they've won, yet sad that Shep died.

I don't think they needed Space Kid or even giving people those red, blue, green choices. That bit felt like somebody said "We need a big decision at the end!" when keeping things simple yet executing on that simplicity would have possibly been more rewarding.

Well that was what I thought would be the ending. Until it just kept on going. But yes I fully agree with you. That would have been a better ending. Nobody dares to make the simple endings nowadays though. You see that both in the movie and the gaming Industry.
 
If they wanted speculation, they could have faded to black with
Shepard's death
and just left it at that. Maybe cut to
Buzz Aldrin just to confirm that the organics survived or something.
 
Way before the game came out, I thought
that with the emphasis on Earth and the human race, and past Mass Effect themes about humanity's role in the galaxy and whether or not the ends justify the means, that the ending would reveal that whatever Reaper-destroying device you'd found would cause massive destruction, and you'd have to choose between annihilating the Earth and yourself to save the galaxy in a localized detonation, or spare Earth and mess up the rest of the galaxy by spreading the energy out.
 
Just end the game with
Shepard and Anderson looking out on the space battle, then cut to earth and see the catalyst/citadel do its thing and destroy the Reapers, and your teammates maybe looking up and happy that they've won, yet sad that Shep died.

I don't think they needed Space Kid or even giving people those red, blue, green choices. That bit felt like somebody said "We need a big decision at the end!" when keeping things simple yet executing on that simplicity would have possibly been more rewarding.

Yep, there you go. Bittersweet ending that makes most of the players happy. I mean, I'm sure that someone would have complained about it, but probably not the extent of the "space magic" ending.
 
As for Shepard,
Killing him is just pathetic. These "You can save everyone but you have to die" endings are terrible. Stupid, lazy, unoriginal, so obligatory. It's such an utterly pathetic, focus test-friendly, generic way of trying to induce pathos and tears, and it DOESN'T WORK. The way it's handled is generally bad, and Mass Effect 3's is no exception whatsoever. When John Marston dies in RDR, it's effective because he doesn't sacrifice himself in some obligatory scheme. He dies like a nobody, gunned down just because his job was done and they couldn't stand letting him live. And it's also why the accusation that people didn't like ME3's ending for not being happy enough is laughable, because the ending of RDR is heavily-lauded. It's all in the execution, not the mere concept of the main character dying = instant award winner.

^^^RED DEAD REDEMPTION SPOILERSSSSSS^^^
 
Way before the game came out, I thought
that with the emphasis on Earth and the human race, and past Mass Effect themes about humanity's role in the galaxy and whether or not the ends justify the means, that the ending would reveal that whatever Reaper-destroying device you'd found would cause massive destruction, and you'd have to choose between annihilating the Earth and yourself to save the galaxy in a localized detonation, or spare Earth and mess up the rest of the galaxy by spreading the energy out.

So ME1's ending, but on a way bigger scale.
 
Way before the game came out, I thought
that with the emphasis on Earth and the human race, and past Mass Effect themes about humanity's role in the galaxy and whether or not the ends justify the means, that the ending would reveal that whatever Reaper-destroying device you'd found would cause massive destruction, and you'd have to choose between annihilating the Earth and yourself to save the galaxy in a localized detonation, or spare Earth and mess up the rest of the galaxy by spreading the energy out.

Something that would've that what we got.
I'll put it on the pile gently to make sure it doesn't fall over.
 
Well that was what I thought would be the ending. Until it just kept on going. But yes I fully agree with you. That would have been a better ending. Nobody dares to make the simple endings nowadays though. You see that both in the movie and the gaming Industry.

Yeah... I'd point to The Walking Dead as an example of a game where the ending isn't necessarily super surprising or complex but its fairly simple, well executed and just works.

Its like BioWare wanted to have another shocking KoTOR type revelation with the ending when they should have quit while they were ahead. It doesn't really even match up tonally with the rest of the game which is pretty straight forward save the world, unite factions, use MacGuffin sort of a story, but it mostly works. Keeping it simple and executing that really well is better than trying to imbue a story with some slipshod last minute revelations.

If they wanted speculation, they could have faded to black with
Shepard's death
and just left it at that. Maybe cut to
Buzz Aldrin just to confirm that the organics survived or something.

The whole Buzz Aldrin thing was another example of not knowing when to stop. Seriously, why was that even in there at all? Other than it seemed like BioWare and Casey Hudson really wanted to shove Buzz Aldrin in their space game somehow?
 
Just end the game with
Shepard and Anderson looking out on the space battle, then cut to earth and see the catalyst/citadel do its thing and destroy the Reapers, and your teammates maybe looking up and happy that they've won, yet sad that Shep died.

I don't think they needed Space Kid or even giving people those red, blue, green choices. That bit felt like somebody said "We need a big decision at the end!" when keeping things simple yet executing on that simplicity would have possibly been more rewarding.

Woops, I said the same thing a few pages ago and forgot to spoiler tag, that has now been corrected. I also went back and read some of my old posts in the massive spoiler threads we had upon release and I'm surprised to see they hold up. Glad to know I retained my sanity fighting in the trenches.
 
HEY EVERYBODY, I SPOILED RDR HERE TOO, SO DONT CLICK UNLESS YOU WANT RDR SPOILERS, GUYS. - Snacks by proxy.

As for Shepard,
Killing him is just pathetic. These "You can save everyone but you have to die" endings are terrible. Stupid, lazy, unoriginal, so obligatory. It's such an utterly pathetic, focus test-friendly, generic way of trying to induce pathos and tears, and it DOESN'T WORK. The way it's handled is generally bad, and Mass Effect 3's is no exception whatsoever. When John Marston dies in RDR, it's effective because he doesn't sacrifice himself in some obligatory scheme. He dies like a nobody, gunned down just because his job was done and they couldn't stand letting him live. And it's also why the accusation that people didn't like ME3's ending for not being happy enough is laughable, because the ending of RDR is heavily-lauded. It's all in the execution, not the mere concept of the main character dying = instant award winner.

Much thanks for the RDR spoilers.

Hey everybody, surprise RDR spoilers in post above.
 
As for Shepard, RDR SPOILERS TOOOO
Killing him is just pathetic. These "You can save everyone but you have to die" endings are terrible. Stupid, lazy, unoriginal, so obligatory. It's such an utterly pathetic, focus test-friendly, generic way of trying to induce pathos and tears, and it DOESN'T WORK. The way it's handled is generally bad, and Mass Effect 3's is no exception whatsoever. When John Marston dies in RDR, it's effective because he doesn't sacrifice himself in some obligatory scheme. He dies like a nobody, gunned down just because his job was done and they couldn't stand letting him live. And it's also why the accusation that people didn't like ME3's ending for not being happy enough is laughable, because the ending of RDR is heavily-lauded. It's all in the execution, not the mere concept of the main character dying = instant award winner.

Excellent point.
The problem with the ending was never that it was sad, because it wasn't sad. The problem (one of them anyway) was that it had no emotional payoff of any kind. It wasn't fulfilling, uplifting, tragic, bittersweet or whatever else you can come up with. There wasn't even tension. It was a bad moment and to end the whole trilogy on it.... god.

Mordin's death is simultaneously the saddest but also the best and most powerful moment in the entire series. Shepard dying could've been a great moment, but it was so arbitrary and in those final moments Shepard didn't have any agency anyway, so Shepard doesn't even die being Shepard. Actually, there was practically no emotion in any of the Earth-assault part of the game. It's like they forgot that the series has always been about, and been grounded in the characters. A good ending and final mission should've involved the characters, just like the suicide mission.
 
Way before the game came out, I thought
that with the emphasis on Earth and the human race, and past Mass Effect themes about humanity's role in the galaxy and whether or not the ends justify the means, that the ending would reveal that whatever Reaper-destroying device you'd found would cause massive destruction, and you'd have to choose between annihilating the Earth and yourself to save the galaxy in a localized detonation, or spare Earth and mess up the rest of the galaxy by spreading the energy out.

It's the ME1 ending choice situation on a larger scale, which would have been a great way for ME3 to close the loop in a grand way.
 
I had always hoped Bioware would have some guts and
make the Renegade choices the "good" choices and the Paragon choices come back to bite you in the ass. It could have been awesome to be rewarded for being a no-nonsense, hell-bent asshole because holy shit the universe is ending. The choices could have been viewed through the lens of what is nice, and what is necessary.
 
I had always hoped Bioware would have some guts and
make the Renegade choices the "good" choices and the Paragon choices come back to bite you in the ass. It could have been awesome to be rewarded for being a no-nonsense, hell-bent asshole because holy shit the universe is ending. The choices could have been viewed through the lens of what is nice, and what is necessary.

No way Jose,
that's even worse than sucking up to Paragons. A healthy mix of both would have been fine.

I play a space paladin Jesus Shepard and I like it that way.
 
Way before the game came out, I thought
that with the emphasis on Earth and the human race, and past Mass Effect themes about humanity's role in the galaxy and whether or not the ends justify the means, that the ending would reveal that whatever Reaper-destroying device you'd found would cause massive destruction, and you'd have to choose between annihilating the Earth and yourself to save the galaxy in a localized detonation, or spare Earth and mess up the rest of the galaxy by spreading the energy out.

This is literally what I thought the final choice was going to be up until the moment I hit the ending. I was convinced that the Bioware writers would be so short-sighted as to think it was even a choice.
My Shepard isn't from Earth and has no connections there. Fuck 'em. Let Earth burn.

Then we got the actual choice, and I realized that even the idiotic Bioware writers in my head were too smart for reality.
 
So I just forced my way through Binary Domain. It's a poor game. It shouldn't have been on any of their lists as must plays before GOTY deliberations. Although, I think Patrick was the only one (other than Vinny) who actually played it anyway.
 
So I just forced my way through Binary Domain. It's a poor game. It shouldn't have been on any of their lists as must plays before GOTY deliberations. Although, I think Patrick was the only one (other than Vinny) who actually played it anyway.

ibz81DCz1FnZ9R.gif
 
So I just forced my way through Binary Domain. It's a poor game. It shouldn't have been on any of their lists as must plays before GOTY deliberations. Although, I think Patrick was the only one (other than Vinny) who actually played it anyway.

It is now my mission to become a mod so I can ban you.

I haven't played BD yet I just got it for 10 bux on black friday
 
The ending of ME3 was pretty bad, but I don't understand why people point to
the fleet being stranded at Earth and Garrus and Tali having nothing to eat as evidence of the ending being bad. Complain about the deus ex machina, but just because defeating the Reapers had some negative consequences doesn't mean the ending was bad in a narrative sense.
 
On a side note, Klepek is taking suggestions on what to do with all this 999/VLR knowledge.

I suggested doing a spoilercast with some other press guys that played them.
 
Personally I always found it dumb that
they have the Catalyst suggest the Destroy option to Shepard in the first place. The Catalyst and his Reapers have killed billions, possibly trillions, of lifeforms over hundreds of thousands of years all in service to his ideology. He clearly wants Shepard to pick Synthesis (or even Control as a second place option). So why tell him about the option that runs counter to everything he's done for millennia? Why would the Catalyst run the risk of letting Shepard pick the "wrong" option?

^(in response to Brad wanting an example of something that's logically inconsistent with the Mass Effect universe's fiction)
 
Is the Binary Domain love around here

ironic or what

or maybe I played a different game

Really. The game is afraid to progress the story without a combat sequence. It's just fight sequence after fight sequence and the gameplay just isn't very good. You're fighting the same robots throughout the game and they're all destroyed the same. And when they give you a brief story moment between these overlong, tedious fight sequences it's almost always uninteresting. The dialogue and events are predictable for almost the entire game. The only thing I didn't guess was the twist because it was so stupid and terrible it never entered my mind. UGH WHAT A BAD GAME IT IS.

The game desperately needed more quiet moments to break up the tedious gameplay. There's two times (I think) the game takes a break and both don't involve anything interesting happening and you're forced to walk at a snail pace during them. In fact, you're walking at a snail pace the whole game. You're so fuckin' sluggish, the movement speed should have been just a little higher.

Also the PC port is still bad.
 
Personally I always found it dumb that
they have the Catalyst suggest the Destroy option to Shepard in the first place. The Catalyst and his Reapers have killed billions, possibly trillions, of lifeforms over hundreds of thousands of years all in service to his ideology. He clearly wants Shepard to pick Synthesis (or even Control as a second place option). So why tell him about the option that runs counter to everything he's done for millennia? Why would the Catalyst run the risk of letting Shepard pick the "wrong" option?

It is not a thing that you can comprehend.
 
So I just forced my way through Binary Domain. It's a poor game. It shouldn't have been on any of their lists as must plays before GOTY deliberations. Although, I think Patrick was the only one (other than Vinny) who actually played it anyway.

I wouldn't say it's poor, it does some cool things, but this idea that it needed to be played before year's end is crazy.
 
On a side note, Klepek is taking suggestions on what to do with all this 999/VLR knowledge.

I suggested doing a spoilercast with some other press guys that played them.

You know, seeing as it's getting increasingly rare for two or more of the GB guys to have played the same game to completion (especially the more obscure stuff like 999), it might be a good idea to do Jartime-like vids of just Patrick or whoever talking about a game they recently finished - complete with all out spoilers.

It's not as ideal as a Bombcast discussion, but I think it's a fairly good compromise and would be way better than Spookin' (no offence Patrick, but I'm just not a fan of that series).
 
I wouldn't say it's poor, it does some cool things, but this idea that it needed to be played before year's end is crazy.

I disagree. It has the dialogue options but they don't really change anything so they might as well not have been there. At least then they could have had your dude and your squadmates have properly voiced, better written dialogue. What's in the game is
"Blah blah blah."
"Yeah."
"I know, right? Blah blah blah."
and it's so hard to be engaged in any of it.

I'm takin' a stance, man. The game has no redeeming qualities. There's nothing in it worth seeing. Patrick should have spent his time on a different game instead.
 
I'm also of the opinion (as I mentioned earlier) that Binary Domain is way overrated. It has some wacky, funny, and over-the-top stuff especially in the first half, but that's it. The combat is okay at best, and the second half of the game is just dull.

Was this recently or still at Whiskey Media (Whiskey support worked quite well and efficiently)? Did you mail their support form (never got any response while at CBSi from that)?

I love that GiantBomb's support site still lists their Whiskey Media address - really shows how serious they are about solving issues: support@whiskeymedia.com
https://auth.giantbomb.com/support/?from_site=giant-bomb

Mine was also in September (like another poster mentioned in response to this post), and I also used the web form on the page linked above except that I sent two forms and never got any response. It is what it is at this point, and I in no way would expect them to refund me now, but they've also guaranteed that I will never, ever give them money again.

Also some other people mentioned this as well, but the 2013 subscriber shirts feel cheap and flimsy as fuck, so that doesn't help either.
 
I disagree. It has the dialogue options but they don't really change anything so they might as well not have been there. At least then they could have had your dude and your squadmates have properly voiced, better written dialogue. What's in the game is
"Blah blah blah."
"Yeah."
"I know, right? Blah blah blah."
and it's so hard to be engaged in any of it.

I'm takin' a stance, man. The game has no redeeming qualities. There's nothing in it worth seeing. Patrick should have spent his time on a different game instead.

I'm only a few hours in, but I think I feel the same way. The controls feel awful on KB/M and the combat doesn't seem great. The story and characters seem interesting so far.

It is now my mission to become a mod so I can ban you.

I haven't played BD yet I just got it for 10 bux on black friday

YOU'RE A POOR GAME

What's good about it? I really went into the game wanting to like it, it just seems extremely bland other than a goofy story and good characters. It's no Vanquish.
 
Personally I always found it dumb that
they have the Catalyst suggest the Destroy option to Shepard in the first place. The Catalyst and his Reapers have killed billions, possibly trillions, of lifeforms over hundreds of thousands of years all in service to his ideology. He clearly wants Shepard to pick Synthesis (or even Control as a second place option). So why tell him about the option that runs counter to everything he's done for millennia? Why would the Catalyst run the risk of letting Shepard pick the "wrong" option?

^(in response to Brad wanting an example of something that's logically inconsistent with the Mass Effect universe's fiction)

I was always kind of on board with ME3's ending, I actually liked it. But this is making me rethink everything.
 
Binary Domain is overrated? Really? Overrated? A tiny-ass console shooter that constantly gets LTTP threads because nobody actually played it when it came out?
 
You know, seeing as it's getting increasingly rare for two or more of the GB guys to have played the same game to completion (especially the more obscure stuff like 999), it might be a good idea to do Jartime-like vids of just Patrick or whoever talking about a game they recently finished - complete with all out spoilers.

It's not as ideal as a Bombcast discussion, but I think it's a fairly good compromise and would be way better than Spookin' (no offence Patrick, but I'm just not a fan of that series).

Good idea. You should pass it along.
 
Little-to-no updates this week, damn. Maybe it's time for me to finally watch the Persona 4 ER.

They've already "paid me back for paying them" in full. I think I'll dabble thru the older Premium videos for gems.

Yeah, I think that's sort of where a story heavy game like The Walking Dead does things right- it absolutely nails the ending, which makes you more likely to view the whole game in a more positive light, since it ends so strongly. ME3 has some nice moments within, but it just has such a nonsensical and contrived ending that leaving the ending as the last impression you have of the game is not a good thing, and makes you more apt to view the whole game in a more critical/negative light.



Its just a matter of at least trying to pay attention to your own details and lore that you've established up to that point. And BioWare couldn't even do that with the original ending, either willfully or just as an oversight. The whole "Space Kid Explains the Universe in 5 Minutes!" bit just felt bizarre considering everything that comes before it. And even if you accept the Space Kid trying to explain everything, the original ending becomes even more frustrating because you had so many unexplained, bizarre plot holes within the ending, like what the Normandy was running away from, where it landed, how your crew on Earth got on the Normandy, why the whole universe didn't explode with the relays, why anything you did mattered with the relays gone and everyone stuck, and so forth. Why bother trying to explain everything with Space Kid if you're just going to be lazy with the details with the rest of the ending?

It's even more mind-boggling that it was a planned trilogy, planned as a trilogy and has this many "scribbled out on yellowpad the day before" feel to it. In a medium that is very violent towards this kind of iterative story-telling over sequels (Suikoden, anyone?), the ammount of suspension of disbelief they seem to ask of the player is huge. I mean, if they seem to not give a shit about giving a shit, why should we (along with money)?
 
The ending of ME3 was pretty bad, but I don't understand why people point to
the fleet being stranded at Earth and Garrus and Tali having nothing to eat as evidence of the ending being bad. Complain about the deus ex machina, but just because defeating the Reapers had some negative consequences doesn't mean the ending was bad in a narrative sense.

It doesn't make it narratively bad, but it does essentially undo any good you could have done in the universe, especially regarding the Quarians. "Good job saving the Quarians. Too bad they're now all going to die before they can get to any food they can eat." It's yet another way it feels like a giant "LOL I HIT RESET BUTTON NOW" by the starchild. Yet another way the game takes the many decisions you made throughout the series and squished them into the uniform paste that the ending creates.

Possibly the worst thing about it is that despite the implications that people drew from the ending, if Bioware did actually want to go that dark they refused to actually own it---instead giving a heavily protracted and heavily unexplained ending that forced people to read into it without making them spell it out.
 
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