At the Fan Expo in Vancouver, we pulled aside the voice of lady Commander Shepard for a quick chat. She tells us how she felt about the Mass Effect 3 ending and reveals her upcoming plans to visit Australia.
In Real Life
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and why couldn't you go to Supanova in Melbourne!?
Or Oz Comic Con or AVCON in Adelaide?!
Man, I love Jennifer Hale. (Loved Mass Effect 3 too.) Gonna leave this article and never come back to avoid the inevitable debate. :P
Good call man!
bla bla bla ending sucked bla bla bla.
I love the top image. :P
Interviewer: "So Jennifer, what did you think of the Mass Effect 3 ending?"
Jennifer Hale: Cacks herself.
Interesting to note that she didn't actually answer the question. Just like so many other people involved in the development of the game.
yup, dodged it like a pro (which she is). She probably didn't like it, but wanted to stay on EA and BW's good side.
She's VERY smart. She retweets fans who are anti-(original)Ending without a word. Latest was retweeting the Turn On/Turn Off ME3 Campaign YouTube trailer.
That way she has plausible deniablity with BW and EA.
"I just posted what my fans want retweeted! I get millions of these damn things!"
What a terrible response. People didn't hate the fact it ended, they hated the fact that it all felt like some last minute decision to leave the series open ended and make room for more sequels/spinoffs.
Does she not have an opinion... at all...?
EA/Bioware are her paycheck.. so no.
Spinoffs maybe, dunno about sequels with the events that happened and how different the games would be with each choice.
It would be a pretty bad idea to not promote your game and burn any bridges with a big company like EA, she does have an opinion, but she is a professional.
Was it a terrible response? Not at all - it just wasn't one that fell neatly into one of the predefined categories that people can use to feel vindicated and lend weight to their own views of the game's ending. e.g. "See! Femshep hated it so we were right - it was bad !"
The vast majority of players have expressed their discontent and dissatisfaction at ME3's ending to varying degrees - and as the consumers who are paying for the experience - this is (should be) enough.
She's not saying people hated the fact it ended, she's saying she hated the fact that it ended, which is understandable given that it's her job and she was probably getting paid quite nicely for it.
You also have to realise that Jennifer Hale doesn't actually play these games, or at least not in the same way as fans do. There was an article a while back about how she'd just played some Mass Effect 2 for the first time and thought it was decent enough. It wouldn't surprise me at all if she'd never played Mass Effect 3 and if she has she's not going to be viewing the experience in the same way as fans view it, both because she hasn't had the same sort of investment in the series as the fans have had and also because she's voicing the protagonist, which has got to have an impact on how you view things (though I guess she could always play as broShep).
I'm also sure EA and BioWare asked her, and probably anyone involved with ME3, to be very diplomatic in their answers when it comes to the ending and not straight up state their opinion, which ever side of the fence that opinion may fall.
I'd also say that you yourself don't seem to understand why people hated the ending. While I'm sure there's quite a few people out there who felt it was all about trying to make room for sequels and spinoffs by far the most complaints have been about the lack of different endings, the logic surrounding the ending, the fact the ending doesn't feel like it fits the ME universe and the feeling that BioWare destroyed any future the Mass Effect universe might have had, including future games, movies, books and comics.
I'd say she doesn't play the games because she doesn't give two shits about playing video games - like most people.
Probably not, she's not a gamer. The script she's given probably doesn't give a good idea of the context of the lines, so she's just going off what the director tells her.
With the sheer volume of dialogue she's covering, and how it changes by context, along with the quality of her work in really feeling the scenario? I'd guess she has a pretty good idea.
Spotting the voice actors in games who DIDN'T give a shit and who don't play games... that one's always fun.
Imagine yourself in her position for a minute. How would you respond? Are you really going to give your honest opinion, potentially offending dozens of people you've worked with for months and have come to respect? Her answer was perfect. I was worried she would endorse the ending like some tool of EA. If she actually liked the ending, she would have said so. Read between the lines a little.
WHY NO MELBOURNE FEMSHEPARD :(((
I got my Scorpion signed by Joel and Marshall.
Oh sweet Shep is coming to Perth! ^_^
I found any ME game I've played boring as balls, and the crusty old bat at the top of this article won't change my mind about that. FFS, even her armpits have armpits. We don't need these visuals.
You okay, champ? Is everything all right at home?
I can't smoke weed because I have a sore throat.
Haha just fill your bong with Listerine ;)
People were complaining about the ending of ME3 less than TWENTY-FOUR hours after launch. I don't know if there's anything more knee-jerk than that. There are lots of perfectly valid criticisms of the ending though i've yet to see many that are actually constructive. It didn't fit thematically? It didn't provide closure? It didn't give you enough choice? (well, at least the last 5 minutes didn't, you did play 100 odd hours of gameplay before that) While I have a number of things I would have liked to see, including more of an epilogue and at least some sort of visual reference of my effects on the final battle. But in the end, I don't feel slighted because I try not to feel like I know what happens at the writing desk, I like to enjoy things and leave at least some of my cynicism at the door. If I didn't, I'd tell you that Mass Effect was horribly written and inconsistent the entire way through.
It comes down to the way people view storytelling, gamers seem to feel like they need to be "rewarded" for their efforts. If you win, you get the girl. If you do x and y, z will happen. I really don't think there's anything wrong with this but I'm not convinced that gamers and consumers should hold on to the notion that they know better than everyone else, when consumers can ask for art (and yes, a story is art, art isn't a measure of quality) to be changed or lash out the minute their story doesn't go as expected. Clearly, Bioware valued a different type of storytelling than a number of vocal fans did and that's it. Not everyone hated the ending. I didn't, a lot of my friends and co-workers didn't and I've only spoken to one, single human being (in person) who actually did. Criticism is valid of course but I don't like this idea that hardcore internet fans are speaking for the majority and I'm not sure what they feel gives their word more credence than those who didn't completely hate the ending.
With a game like Mass effect, there is a lot of anticipation, i myself finished it within 3 days of buying it. I am not surprised about people complaining about the end less than 2 days after it was released. The ending was extremelyterrible. If you found the first 2 games horribly written, i would say you don't understand how we feel because you were not as invested as us, and thats fine.
However, Mass effect has been about choices and consequences, its not just do x and y and z will happen, its do x in one game, y in the next and then you can make a decision about z in the third. Everyone's experience was unique, up until those last 10 or so minutes where you hop onto the plot hole filled deus ex machina. We feel brtrayed for that because of all the publicity and such from Casey Hudson and the rest of Bioware, saying everyone would get their own thing, no A, B or C endings and we were lied to, we expected an epic conclusion to the epic story, the stroy many of us put far more than a mere 100hours into, we played to save a galaxy and see everything we did have an effect, in the end, it means squat.
You don't mind the ending, thats fine, but again, you aren't as invested as we were. Bioware's storytelling has been excellent and that little segment at the ed just feels incredibly forced and lazy, as if they ran out of time, money or ideas. I find it strange you have only met one person who hated the ending, i've only seen, met or heard from around 7 people who didn't mind the ending, including you, and i doubt any of you are hardcore fans.
We speak for the majority because without us, those firs games would not have been a success and you wouldn't even have a third game to play, we are the harcore fans because we were there at the beginning and basically paid for those games. I am a mass effect fan, i would not say the series is perfect, but the element of choice made it a lot of fun for me and majority of players. Those choices were meant to culminate in something and in the end we get nothing. Even with the extended cut coming, extending something that sucks will not make it suck less.
It was a very ... diplomatic response. But no, she really didn't answer the question.