Soundwave on 21 March 2012
| Khuutra said: I can't agree with Mr. Levine. Mass Effect has, from the beginning, been sold as a product of community involvement, where the development of the series has been largely dependent on fan feedback. This reflects in the game mechanically (better combat in 2, more RPG elements and bigger decision-based consequences in 3) as well as in terms of story progression. Levine's perfectly right that it's possible for games to have "artistic integrity" in the sense that the authorial vision is primary, and there's nothign wrong with that. It works out positively for many games. However, that's not how BioWare operates, and it hasn't been how they operate for over a decade. BioWare's games are exactly about the back-and-forth with their fanbase, about building trust as a way to further the producer-consumer dialogue. They benefit from that relationship, because it makes fans spend money, and gamers benefit from that relationship, because it gives them something to spend money on. There is no violation of the vision of the auteur in the decision to expand upon and explain the ending (BioWare has not stated any intent to change anything, not yet) because Mass Effect was never built upon the image of a single person, or even a single team of people. It's the product of thousands of voices, and has been sold as that from the start. |
Why not just let the fanbase write the entire story then? Why just stop at the ending?
If a sizable portion of the FF7 userbase had their way the game would've ended with Cloud resurrecting Aeries and the two getting married or some crap like that.
