[QUOTE="texasgoldrush"]Wrong..... The Witcher 2's first release did not go into the result of what happens after the council well, thats the lack of clarity. The first version failed to adequately explain the consquence of choosing the companion over recuing Triss and vice versa. In fact, I posted here after TW2 release saying that the decision to NOT rescue Triss was so lopsided in conquence in that its triuly the right decision, that they should have actually killed Triss to balance the choice out. However, now that things have been adequately clarified, THIS IS NOT THE CASE. Now it clearly shows, [spoiler] not rescuing Triss amounts to the Witcher version of Dragon Age's Rite of Annulment, a mage genocide. [/spoiler] The endgame was abrupt, lacked teeth, lacked variation, and hell, it was too ambigious as well for closing the plot arc. TW2's ending is no where near controversial because, as well, the Mass Effect trilogy is far more hyped than TW2, with far more beloved and popular characters. Mass Effect clearly has a far more passionate and dedicated fanbase...almost to disturbing levels in regards to the character fanbases. Also, it was the end to the trilogy. Nevermind, that up in coming studios have more leeway in making mistakes so fans are more forgiving on TW2's flawed ending.SciFiRPGfan
Well, I recommend you to stop using that "wrong" of yours. It's a discussion mostly about personal prefferences and reasons behind them. There's no right or wrong, only disagreements.
I've never said that Witcher 2's ending was perfect and it surely did not offer much closure or varying choices. But in terms of clarity, the problem with Mass Effect 3 is not only, like you demonstrated with Witcher 2, the lack of explanation of what our choices mean, but lack of clarity about some of the most trivial things and behaviours of characters.
Let's look at such basic things as:
1. The way the individual scenes follow each other and whether and how much suspension of disbelief or own explanations they require:
[spoiler] In Witcher 2 - very briefly:
- after the fight with the Dragon, Geralt climbs the ruins and is greeted by Triss or companion
- then they have a short conversation about what happened while Geralt fought the Dragon and about some background about it
- then the companion / Triss tells Geralt that Letho is waiting for him
- Geralt goes and confronts Letho - they can discuss about many things and either fight or not
- after the fight / conversation with Letho Geralt returns back to Triss and / or companion and walk away
See, the scenes / events follow each other very naturally and there's little to no room for speculation about who did what and why. Also there's almost nothing that would make audience go like "What?" or "Why?" - i.e. there aren't many things that require our suspension of disbelief.
Now let's look at Mass Effect 3:
- after Harbinger's attack, Shepard stands up and goes towards the beam and uses it - The first thing that might be somewhat confusing is the question what happens to 2 Shepard's henchmen unles they are dead. Major Coats reports entire force to be decimated, which does not have to mean that they are dead, but does not make it clear about what happened to them either.
- then Shepard is teleported to Citadel, meets Anderson, whose presence on Citadel is not properly explained either - especially question such as why only Anderson made it to the beam (he is like one of the most important officers of the whole operation so one could expect some bodyguards or something) comes to mind.
- both Shepard and Anderson are confronted by Illusive man who uses his newnot properly explained powers on them and Shepard has to deal with him
- then Shepard activates the Citadel and is confronted by Catalyst (I'll talk about him later)
- Shepard basically accepts one of three solutions - strangely enough without (m)any additional questions let alone objections
- and has to perform some of the weirdest things in the whole game which Catalyst tells him to do and can behave very strangely during them as well (walks towards exploding container) - not to mention there's no explanation whatsoever about how the whole device is supposed to work and given how big changes it can cause, that's quite unfortunate
- but the real problems follows now - in following cutscene we find out that Normandy is (suddenly?) in the space and pretty far from Earth (we see several exploding relays before the camera jumps to it) and most importantly, that our two or at least one of the henchem were aboard all the time
- then Normandy crashes, we can find out that not all synthetic life (EDI) would have to be destroyed should Shepard decide to destroy "all" synthetics
- then we see the "Stargazer scene" that si supposed to happen some time after the events in ME3
To say the least, there are some scenes that are downright questionable (how did Normandy managed to pick up squadmates and fly so far away in such short time) and the rest of them require either a lot of suspension of disbelief (Anderson was the only one who managed to get to the beam) or a lot of work on our part (Shepard and Anderson must have been at least partially indoctrinated and Illusive man was able to control even lightly indoctrinated persons).
That's not very good writing no matter how I look at it. I am not the one who is supposed to come up with explanations and excuses. That's writers' job.
And more importantly, the scenes do not follow each other very well. The transitions are very abrut and random (scene with Shepard, scene with relays, scene with Normandy, Stargazer) without any system behind them. [/spoiler]
2. The behaviour of characters and reasons behind them
[spoiler] 1. The final villains / antagonists:
Witcher 2 - Letho:
Letho kills several kings of northern kingdoms, makes it look like it was on behalf of Lodge of Sorceresses and then waits for Geralt for final confrontation, because Geralt was accused of a murder instead of him and knows that he would pursue him. As for his motives, he supposedly does it for money that are offered to him by emperor who wants to conquer the northern kingdoms. As for why he wants the money? To rebuild the school for witchers.
Again. Everything works nicely and is perfectly imaginable and believable. And not only that - the dialogue with Letho is long and detailed with many questions for player to ask.
Mass Effect 3 - The Catalyst:
Catalyst claims that organics would at some point get into such conflict with synthetics that synthetics would destroy them (probably completely as opposed to Reapers who destroy only advanced civilizations). This is apparently too much to stomach for many people because it requires us to accept that 1. Synthetics will overpower organics in a fight (quite believable), 2. the conflict between the two will always happen (still believable), 3. synthetics will always want to destroy organics completely - no not just defeat, but exterminate (sorry but this is too much, especially since there are examples in Mass Effect that say otherwise). And of course, all three conditions must be met in same scenario.
Given how little we know about real A.I.s it's just difficult to simply accept such logic and games' lore does not help much either (in ME, A.I.s either can be convinced to stop fighting or are not invincible).
The other thing that's very questionable and is not properly explained is how did the Crucible changed his logic / motives and why his "solution" stopped working.
2. The main protagonists
Witcher 2 - Geralt:
At the end of the game, Geralt behaves pretty much the same way as he did for the rest of the game and he surely isn't affraid to ask when he does not understand something.
Mass Effect 3 - Shepard:
At the end of the game,Shepard is much less talkative than he used to be. He also isn't /can't be as assertive, investigative and combatative as he used to be. He accepts anatagonsit's logic without questions let alone objections. Sure, he is hurt and broken, but to take away player's imput at such important part of the game...
Even from basic observation, it's obvious that behaviour of most important characters in ME3 at the end of the game is either more questionable and less explained (Catalyst) or less consistent with behaviour in previous parts of the game (Shepard). [/spoiler]
As for your point about Mass Effect(s) being better or more anticipated and such, I told you, it works both ways. When somebody / something who is better screws up something, it's a bigger deal. No doubt about it. But it also takes a "bigger screw up" for it to be a big deal. Otherwise it would be overlooked more easily.
Mass Effects had great reputation and very obseesed fanbase. Many of those people would have forgiven smaller screw ups - such as lack of proper explanations of some consequences of some of our decisions (as was your example in case of TW2). It's just that with ME3, many people are questioning the most trivial things that happened or refuse to believe that they happened. That's not the case with TW2.
And the fact that ME3 was ending of the whole trilogy... well yes, it is a partial explanation of bigger reaction and greater dissappointment. But it is also aggravation for ME3, because Bioware knew (or based on many forum posts, should have known), that they have to finish the series properly and that they won't get a free pass like Mass Effect 1 and 2 did. First off, the "Destroy" ending IS Shepard rejecting the Catalyst...the notion that Shepard can't reject the Catalyst's logic is completely wrong. And second....yes Letho vs Geralt is far better expalined plotwise than the ending conflicts of ME3....HOWEVER, doesn't escape the fact that the entire consquences of your actions THROUGHOUT the game are VERY POORLY expalined in the first edition of the ending, which was NOT the case in the first game. Sorry but botching one of the biggest choices in the game is not a small screw up and both TW2 and ME3 are guilty here. The only real difference is that TW2 didn't explain the consquences of the story enough...they only tell, they don't show, while ME3 tries ambiguity in places it shouldn't, especially with the Catalyst.. Really, why did CD Projeckt even go back and enhance the ending? Because it was lacking, plain and simple. "That's not very good writing no matter how I look at it. I am not the one who is supposed to come up with explanations and excuses. That's writers' job." Wrong, many of the best sci fi stories leave the observer to make up his own interpetations. 2001 A Space Odyssey is a HUGE example.
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