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holydragon2808 · 4 years ago

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Mass Effect 3 Ending Reframing from an Aspiring Video Game Story Writer

Hello everyone! It’s been awhile (Waves to followers). I don't post here much anymore but I'm a veteran ME fan and like many were burned by the original endings of ME3. Until I played the LE recently, I hadn't kept up much with ME anything at all since ME3's original release.

Before I continue, let me just say that I'm not trying to beat the dead horse debate on whether or not the endings even after the EC patch sucked. That's been done enough.

Rather, as an inspiring game storywriter working on some of my own original gaming ideas with some friends, over the years I've made more of a habit of analyzing existing RPG stories (in this case ME) to help myself with structuring and flow, and keeping what I think worked and what didn't and I wanted to share what I've come up with for ME3 LE version.

Needless to say, there will be massive spoilers in this post so if you haven’t completed the trilogy, then don’t read any further! I posted this on Reddit as well but figured I’d say something here too.

And for the record, I actually did like a lot of the things the EC added to the endings as well as the Leviathan (or the idea of it anyway), mainly the slide show closure for the characters, the voice over narrations (Hackett's in particular is my personal favorite), and Liara's time capsule thing playing a part. Those were all great ideas, but since IMO, Bioware didn't address the core problems (mainly the Starchild and his ridiculous choices), those great ideas currently are still mired by poor execution IMO.

My attempted rewrite here strips away what I personally thought didn't work in the canon portrayal of the endings (mainly, the starchild, Synthesis ending option, and Control ending option) and attempts to focus more on player choice and TMS, whether in victory or defeat.

All of this is largely modeled after ME2 suicide mission structure, and just like ME2 suicide mission (even if Shepard and her friends survive, the Reapers are still coming) even the "best" ending has lingering problems and issues.

With all of that said, this is how I would have framed the final moments depending on choices (I made slight adjustments to the TMS (Total Military Strength) requirements for the LE version only):

MAX TMS Destroy Ending Reframing: (8000 or higher score)

Shepard is at the console (only moderately injured in this scenario, pretty bad but not life threatening due to cybernetic implants), opens up the arms of the Citadel and primes the Crucible to fire. Anderson (who is still critically injured no matter what) says Shepard did good and he is proud of her (My shep was female). Anderson dies as Shepard thanks him for saying that (basically, I'd keep this moment intact because it was great). The scene fades to black as the "I'm Proud of You" theme playing in the background comes to a close.

Then cue victory cut where the Crucible fires, destroys JUST the Reapers across the galaxy. Hackett voice over plays where we see the slide show of our choices while reflecting on the immense cost of victory and how long it will take for everything to get back on track and how this future will be one that many never get to see as we see a brief flashes of all key characters who have died since this started on Eden Prime from the person left on Virmire, Wrex (if applicable), Navigator Pressly (as a reminder of the SR-1 Normandy Crew), Mordin (if Genophage cured), Whomever died to save the Salarian Councilor (Thane/Kirrahe), Legion, and Anderson.

Mass Relays sustain moderate damage but are still intact if still temporarily inoperable. The Hackett voice over reminds us that the Leviathan, the entity that created the Reapers in the first place, is still a threat and on the horizon but feels that the galaxy may can still come together and face them if necessary.

Shepard is aboard the Normandy in front of the memorial wall with her friends standing next to her love interest. She puts Anderson's name on the wall and hugs love interest. Cut to credits.

MIDRANGE TMS Destroy Ending Reframing (4500-7999):

The part with Anderson is largely the same, but in this scenario Shepard is critically injured and dies next to him right after Anderson tells her he's proud (She says "Thank you sir" and succumbs to her injuries right next to him) as the scene fades to black.

The next scene shows the Crucible firing, but it isn't built/calibrated right due to lack of people and resources (it also took some damage since there wasn't a strong enough military force guarding it). The Crucible destroys all synthetic life along with the Reapers, Mass relays heavily damaged but still intact, though organics will be in the dark ages for quite some time until the relay network is repaired.

Hackett voice over and similar slides show idea mentioned above (but also adds EDI and any other crew members that might not have survived to this point to it) including looming potential threat of Leviathan and is not quite sure the galaxy will be able to oppose them anytime soon, but for now the United galaxy has won the day. Love interest puts Shepard name on memorial wall, cut to credits.

LOW TMS Destroy Ending Reframing (Anything 4499 or below Hey, these ARE Reapers we're dealing with lol):

No "I'm proud of you" speech from Anderson as he and Shepard die immediately from their injuries after the final confrontation with TIM. In the next scene, the Crucible fails to fire at all, we see a desperate struggle ON SCREEN of all our allied forces dying to the Reaper threat in a desperate final stand. Reapers win. Liara's capsule thing plays warning the next cycle about both the Reapers and Leviathan. The next cycle is much better prepared since Liara made sure to include "every linguistics program she could find" to assure that the next cycle could possibly better UNDERSTAND the warning (something the Protheans failed to do thanks to their arrogant supremacy regarding "primitive" ways of communication) and they're able to modify the crucible to destroy both the Reapers and Leviathan and ensure they're gone for good.

No Starchild bullshit, no forced choices that don't line up with the story we just experienced, just endings where player choice takes effect and ties everything together whether in victory or defeat while still leaving room to tell any potential new stories in the Milky Way and giving everyone the chance to have the sort of ending that best reflects their Shepard.

None of these outcomes are "perfect" or "happy" (and with ME, that's exactly how they should be), but I'd still like to think there's something here that a lot of people could at least get behind. The idea here wasn't to railroad anyone into a "Shepard lives" or "Shepard dies" ending either.

The bottom line is that regardless of one's personal preferences on that matter, having more variety in the ending options increases replay value and THAT was my primary aim. I don't understand the "Shepard should have....." anything really because every Shepard is played by a different person and what works for one person and their interpretation of Shepard may not work for someone else's Shepard and ME has always been about shaping one's own destiny with their choices so I wanted to focus on preserving that idea.

Anyway, what do you guys/gals think? And thanks for reading this if you did!

EDIT:

And before I'm bombarded with comments saying that I just want Shepard to live let me just say that no not quite. Mass Effect 2 did the best job in the trilogy considering player choice in the matter. I've played that game multiple times and achieved all three possible outcomes (everyone surviving, some surviving, or all dying) and found each outcome equally compelling and well executed for different reasons.

My personal preference is to have endings for ME3 rooted more in player choice regardless of whether or not they're hopeful or bleak and just felt that destroy was the easiest one to reframe with those goals in mind. Just to clarify.

#mass effect 3 #mass effect 2 #Mass Effect #me3 #me3edit #me3le #mass effect legendary collection

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holydragon2808 · 4 years ago

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Thoughts On Dragon Age II after Replaying (Massive Spoilers)

Hello fellow DA fans! It's been quite some time since I last posted anything here on Tumblr. Hope everyone has been safe during all of the world's craziness. Figured I'd post something to let people know I'm still alive.

Anyway, DA2 was first released back in 2011. I was 20-21 years old at the time. Back then, while I still acknowledged the lack of genuine player agency with Hawke (in comparison to the Warden before them), I did belong in the camp of people believing that people went way overboard with the DA2 critiques regarding those complaints, at least back then.

Now though? After replaying the game again a decade or so later, and also in light of the Inquisitor and DAI, I now personally believe that Hawke's story stands out as (overall), all the more unbalanced in comparison to both the Warden and Inquisitor.

Massive Spoilers for the franchise abound beyond this point. Last warning.

Despite a lot of the old critiques leveled at DA2, it isn't a 100% terrible experience, and despite the oncoming rant, I do love the game overall.

Even though I've personally always thought that DA2 story was centered around tragedy a bit TOO much, in light of the growing franchise and the directional tone of the other protagonists thus far, it unfortunately stands out even more to me, and not in a good way.

A shame really because DA2 could have been a better and interesting contrast to DAO in tone and direction had it been more balanced with meaningful successes and failures for Hawke as a character rather than veering too far over into angst and tragedy.

For example, in DAO, your Warden character is railroaded into success against the Blight no matter what. Regardless of the origin, regardless of what sort of allies you acquire, no matter if you live or die in the end or which warden gets the final blow, you succeed.

This sort of narrative framing gave the writers a much easier way to balance genuine tragedy and success throughout the journey without veering too far in one direction or the other, and also without making nearly everything the player does seem like an exercise in futility.

In other words, there were failures and successes more properly balanced throughout, from experiencing meaningful failures and heartache during the chosen origin stories, to failure at Ostagar, to having more balance with the party members and their struggles (they weren't too boring or too dysfunctional), romances that stood out as a light for the Warden amidst all the fighting and death and their massive burden, to succeeding with building the army to take on the Darkspawn, to potential personal sacrifice to save the world and so on.

The option to play a more tragic, angsty or "evil" character who alienates everyone around them and then ultimately dies in the end is there too. The point is that the game largely gave the player the reins and let THEM decide what sort of story they were interested in shaping within the confines of the narrative railroading.

This balance just isn't there with DA2 as the player progresses. Hawke is railroaded into failure in almost every way from start to finish, whether in their personal life or with the massive political struggles in Kirkwall.

I'm sure most people would have been fine with the main plot between the mages/Templars spiraling out of their control in the end (thanks Anders), the Qunari rampaging no matter what, and even the Hawke family being forcefully separated as the story progressed.

However, to me some of the railroaded bleak tragedy should have been offset by Hawke (and by extension the player) at least having the OPTION of being able to keep their family alive.

I'm fine with the tragedy of losing the whole family being ONE POSSIBLE option in the game, but when this tragedy along with the main plot failures, the dysfunctional party members that are too problematic to help ease Hawke's burdens (in fact, they all add to Hawke's worries, which if Inquisition shows anything, that it finally takes its toll on Hawke) is THE ONE AND ONLY OPTION in light of everything else wrong in Kirkwall, then that's a potential writing issue and could potentially alienate the player more than make them care about anything that happens and wonder why they aren't given the option to just nope out and leave Kirkwall to its fate.

Tragedy can be fine, don't get me wrong, but not everyone wants to role play a COMPLETE AND UTTER tragedy from start to finish with no option to deviate in any way from that narrative. Options in the way people progress (especially where people can break the story down and see the holes in the narrative where it COULD have possible but just wasn't allowed), should be presented in a ROLE PLAYING game.

I personally find it more realistic and relatable when a character experiences a nice blend of both MEANINGFUL success and failure. However, the writers seemed intent on railroading Hawke into just being at the mercy of the main plot with little to no agency.

In stark contrast to DAO, planning for the entire story in DA2 (or just in an RPG period) to end in failure no matter the player choices is already a bold enough risk on its own. It can definitely work with the proper balance of both positive and negative experiences along the way though in both the political and personal aspects of the player characters life, to keep the player actively engaged in a way that doesn't leave them thinking that their presence in the story amounts to little more than the equivalent of holding a book and simply turning the page rather than actively doing something.

But combining an already planned bleak ending with a very corrupt setting where the leaders on all sides are either completely moronic or passive, party members where the majority of them have too many burdens of their own to give Hawke a genuine sense of a reprieve from the madness even if romancing one of them (except for Varric, Aveline, and Bethany, if alive, everyone else is either a whiner or dysfunctional. It's very telling that Hawke's PET DOG gets more no strings attached visits from the party members than Hawke does. Just saying), railroading Hawke to lose the majority of their family in some way, AND having what little success and influence Hawke DOES acquire to come back and bite them in the ass in the end (Hawke struck it rich and became Champion of Kirkwall?! Awesome!.....right up until its revealed the red lyrium idol they found in the deep roads played a part in screwing up everything), then at that point, a serious argument can be made that the writers veered far too heavily into tragic overdone melodrama for some people.

How cool would it have been to be able to leave the game with "Well, okay, I couldn't do anything about the corruption in Kirkwall or the mage/Templar tensions spiraling out of control, but at least my whole family is alive and well"? There could have even been an achievement/trophy for this very outcome called "The pride of the Hawkes" or something.

Just one possible example of how the railroaded political failures could have been offset by giving Hawke, (and by extension the player), the OPTION for personal success in a more meaningful way. The option for extreme tragedy with some or even all of the Hawkes dying can still be there of course for people who want that degree of angst, but again having multiple OPTIONS is more likely to accommodate more people and their preferred play styles or stories, and thus, give more reasons to play the game multiple times.

As it stands now, sure, Hawke can save the life of one sibling, but they're still railroaded into losing one of them before the prologue is over, the other is either killed by the Blight or forced from their side in act 1 because the game said so, and the mother is forced to die in the most shock value induced way possible (nevermind not even being able to warn Leandra in act one or follow up on this quest until it's too late in act two or the guards and Templars being forcefully incompetent for this to play out like the writers want).

Those have just been my thoughts as of late. Some people argue that in a way, this is the entire point of the game. That sometimes only REALLY crappy choices exist and there may not be a third option. I agree with that to a point.

But "there might not be" and "there NEVER is" an option for an ideal third way are two very different things and IMO, DA2 suffered in veering far too heavily in the direction of the latter, often being too focused on heartbreak and shock value (looking at you "All That Remains") to really work as well as it could have.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts a decade later. Make no mistake, I still love DA2 for what it is, love the general concept and idea of DA2, just not the execution. It's just sad to me that this game could have been so much better with more development time, more options to shape Hawke's story on a more personal level (whether with an ideal outcome of everyone in the family living, or a semi tragic one where some can die depending on choices, or everyone dying), and not being railroaded into tragedy to nearly nigh ridiculous levels to the point where a giant spider nightmare residing in the Fade in a whole other game mocks Hawke for their "failure is the only option" status.

And just to further clarify my point here, true, Kirkwall was a ticking time bomb with or without Hawke being there. They made the tensions between the two factions apparent as far back as DAO. A Mage/Templar war was all but inevitable, as was Anders eventually losing himself to Justice/Vengeance and after exhausting all peaceful options, finally doing the unthinkable and "forcing everyone to choose a side". That part was fine. And it makes sense for this part of the story to remain static and unchanged no matter what (as I said before, the issue isn't necessarily that DA2 had a planned tragic ending or was framed as a set story within a story).

The issue is that, at the end of the day, regardless of whether this is framed as a recounting of events already played out, Bioware still chose to present this part of the story to the world as an RPG, not a novel. It's just too easy to pick apart the current execution of the narrative and find too many holes and inconsistencies, far too easy to see that Bioware wanted tragedy and completely railroaded the player into it regardless of whether or not it made sense to do so at times. Part of it is definitely that it was rushed, but not all of it.

" Genuine inevitable tragedy" (example: the mage/Templar rebellion) and "railroaded and just never given the option to question/change anything because the game/developers said so but still forcefully insisting and trying to frame it as an inevitable tragedy" are two very different things (outright confirming in Act 1 that the remains of the serial killer's vicitms did indeed belong to one of the missing women (Ninette's wedding ring) and he gave them white lilies but conveniently never given the option to bring any of this up to the guards/Templars or pursue the quest or warn Leandra until it's far too late). Leandra's death isn't the only example of this problem, but it definitely is one of the most prominent and IMO, takes away from the intended story of a good woman who met a bad end with their oldest son/daughter being unable to prevent it when the game failed to let them (and by extension the player) truly try.

DA2 could have been a great contrast to DAO. Rather than having the influence to shape the fate of the world like the Warden and succeed in their goal, they could have compromised in DA2 with having the fallout of the Kirkwall Chantry destruction and the rebellion still happening no matter what (i.e. Hawke "failing" to stop any of the madness and still ultimately forced to flee Kirkwall in the end after finally dragging the Amell line back into prominence) but still given the player the option to save their immediate family members across the story if certain choices were made throughout. I'm sure most people would have been fine with a more "bittersweet" option being presented for Hawke, (and by extension the player) in the game, especially where again, one can pick apart the narrative and see where it could have been an option, but just wasn't allowed for no other reason than seemingly because of the "True art is angsty" trope.

Bioware could still have their own canon (similarly to how Alistair is shown to be king in their canon no matter what as an example) of the ultimate tragedy if they wanted, but again, DA2 is still an RPG where players expect to have more meaningful choices reflected in how they progress, even with an inescapable darker and downer ending.

Complete and utter tragedy is fine, but I just don't think it was the best decision to have it as THE ONLY option in an RPG.

#dragon age 2 #da2 #dragon age origins #dragon age inquisition #marian hawke #garrett hawke #bethany hawke #varric tethras #leandra amell #leandra hawke #da inquisition #dragon age #carver hawke #dai

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