MrBtongue Extended Cut Review

This is really a good review. This is a better than Angry Joe's review.

However, MrBtongue, gives use a real review and doesn't suck up to BioWare.

Check it out:

No, I don't like this review at all. Author says like 2-5 lines about what Extended Cut does right and goes right into what's easier -> hating. We all knew that EC is gonna be clarification, no removal of 3 choices or Starchildl, so this is just another Crucible bashing video that doesn't have to do much with Extended Cut.
Yeah he also says that Starchild doesn't explain who designed the Crucible, but what, you wanted to hear some weird alien name? Or a lecture about their looks and culture? 'You wouldn't know them ( I know I wouldn't) and there isn't enough time to explain ( people are dying around you, hello).
So no, I prefer Angryjoe's because it's actually about the EC.

Eh, the guy has already spent hours elaborating upon the entire game and I think he covered the good aspects. It's not as if you REALLY need to expound on "the slideshow gives a sense of closure to the different races and characters" or "there's now chronological coherence to the narrative" at length, hell - it's not as if you CAN expound at length on that.

He said what everyone knew from the outset - that this was an exercise in shining up excrement. I don't really think you can say he was hating on it. He's very articulate and his criticisms are all grounded in fact, it's not "THIS SUCKS! I HATE IT!"

Honestly, I think he sums it up all pretty nicely in 10 minutes. There's just not a whole lot that can be said about the extended cut because it really adds very little apart from some tidying up and pretty slides. It papers over the cracks but the cracks are still there.

As to the "You wouldn't know them" line, that's just an example of how basically all the Catalyst's additional dialogue is... well, useless to the narrative. Sorry, that should have been ALL his dialogue... and his very existence.

You can't fault him for getting back to criticizing the basic ending, what the Extended Cut does right doesn't matter because it's a band-aid on a cracked dam.

However much it spruces up the current ending it'll still be fundamentally broken, and no amount of Twitter clarification or ingame slideshow is going to fix that.

We're parroting a lot at the moment, I mean how much can we talk about excretion with a bow on top without talking about the way it smells.

There's really just not a lot that can be said about the ending that hasn't already been said. It's a lot like the Star Wars prequels - it's all been said a hundred times at least. Some might say it more wittily, others might do it in a more articulate and erudite manner and some might be able to critically analyse every single point... but it has all been said.

There's little that the extended cut adds and really, as I've said before - it's time to start drawing a line under this. The Bioware that gave us such timeless classics as KOTOR, Baldur's Gate 2, Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origin is dead and buried. They got bitten by the bloated zombie corpse of the all consuming EA and have succumbed to the infection and are now little more than a twisted parody of what they were before.

Don't cry for Bioware - they're already dead.

The point being, in the tiny amount of dialogue they added, what's the point of giving Shepard the option to ask who designed the Crucible, and then answer it with a refusal to answer? It's weird.

What I really wish I could put here is a drawing (and please let it be by someone with a hell of alot more artistic ability than I have) with a tombstone with Bioware (1995-2011) with all the signature characters from all the games in black mourning garb standing under umbrellas in a light drizzle.

Yzma: Well, he ain't getting any deader! Back to work.

Do we all get to toss a handful of soil onto the coffin then?

I was fine with AngryJoe and Jeremy Jahns, and I'm fine with this. They all stuck to their original opinions regarding the ending's problems. In different ways, I agree with all three of them. On the one hand, the EC did a fine job of explaining and expanding many aspects of the ending, and on those points I mark it as a success.

On the other hand, when MrBTongue listed off his four criteria (Genre, Character, Theme, and Narrative Coherence), I knew how he would rate them ("not fixed, mostly fixed, not fixed, and kind of fixed" respectively) before he even said the words. I feel exactly the same way as he does on those topics.

While the EC achieved a measurable level of success fixing certain things, such as the character focus of the story, it still failed to make the end sequence mesh thematically with the conflicts and themes that had been introduced in the other games. There's just no good way to make the Catalyst and his explanations fit. I believe the EC was kind of doomed to (at best) mediocrity because of this.

Works for me.

Shepard auto-asks it and Starchild provides more useful answer. What Crucible is and that Reapers spotted it few cycles ago and thought they wiped out the record.

Yea, he hits the nail on the head. The part of me that loves the Characters loves thier resolutions buuuuuuuuuut without that ME1 Full Circle/From the Rubble moment my brain still picks up on the Logical silly that is Starkid. Like I said in my blogs if they put a metric ton of Heart into the EC it would have overloaded brain and told Logic to take the back seat.

Exactly, the ME1 Shepard rubble scene would be *exactly* the same as the breath scene had we seen only Shepard's glove or something and a twitch. But it's incredibly satisfying to see her him scaling that piece of rubble and walk away smiling.

ME3 Breath needs that. I could've filled in headcanon whether various things in the EC were shown or not, the *one* most important piece that they could have added in regards to everything post-"choice" you make they again, fizzled/half-baked on.

MrBTongue's original ME3 ending video () really resonated with me, and I think with many others out there who felt confused/betrayed/irritated/resentful with the original ending. I was expecting a much shorter review of the EC because, well, the EC was relatively "short" and didn't involve any major thematic or conceptual changes to the ending. Personally, I am much less satisfied than MrBTongue is with the EC, although I will acknowledge that it does provide some degree of closure. That being said, I think he does a good job of trying to be balanced about the strengths and weaknesses of the EC.

Love this guy!

And the ME1 rubble scene was inverted in ME2 with Shepard being the first one to get up and then help the other two (if they were alive). I guess they felt that fake outs with Shepard dying were a bit of a larf.

That scene reminded me of something my grandfather said, he was in the Korean War, and they were shelled(?) or mortared at (I forget which) but it left a crater some ways away from his men (he was a Major I think), no one was hurt as far as I remember, but he said (paraphrasing):

"There's no better feeling than helping someone up and seeing that they're full and fine." (In war and peace too ).

I'm afraid that what he does is justified. Why? Because that's how bad the situation is. The things the EC fixes without caveats CAN be summed up into 2 lines. Me, I'd'a ragged on the slides A LOT if I was in his place, but I already did that in the HTL podcast, so...

Yes, for crying out loud, we WANTED to hear some weird alien name, if only to have real proof that the Crucible wasn't another Reaper trap! Because what the Starchild says basically throws the positive points the presence of the investigation options just earned right back out the window! Because it's contrived hipster crap. "You wouldn't know them." Then tell me, for Arioch's sake! I'm about to die anyway, the universe won't end if you and I think this through for another five minutes, will it?

I mean, saying "The tralalalians, around 1234 cycles ago" would've taken LESS time than the hipster crap he opts to say instead. Enough time to maybe add "They used to eat flies."


Bottom line: I liked the video, I am in agreement with the guy - though it does solve some problems, the EC ultimately is a sign of how poorly staffed (or managed) the BioWare writing team is. They didn't understand the existing problem, they didn't try to make the Crucible and what it does to the galaxy more consistent with what we know about the universe, and most of the fixes they introduced don't actually make the plot hole GO AWAY, they just make it smaller. Which is an improvement, but ANYTHING would'a been an improvement over the original ending, so it's not as big an achievement as you'd expect it to be.

I still hate the ending, and the EC made it worse.

Hell, I was willing to sit there and listen to what the star brat had to say about who created them, and talk about Harbinger, and so on.

"I don't have time to explain..."

WHAT?! You brought me up here to talk about what's my favourite colour, you little shit, you certainly will make time for explanation. Of course, you know, I'd rather hear Mr Codex Man's voice than listen to that kid, but hey...an explanation would've still been great.

You just don't mention something new in a story, especially at the end of a trilogy, but then go, "Hey, here's several pretty colours for you to pick and...oh, and your character is going to die. Make a choice now. KTHXBAI. ZE END!" I would never do that, let alone introduce a new character near the end of a story. Both are no-no's in the rules to creative writing. -_-

Well I suppose this is just the matter of opinion then. I personally wouldn't like the explanation about blablablaeans over 9000 years ago.

I'll just say this. I don't believe there could be done much more with RGB choice that they did in Extended Cut. Whole game is centered about DEM that is Crucible. I don't like that, most people don't like that, but changing just the ending wouldn't help, whole game would need to be remade and rethought. It's simply impossible.
EC does what they said it would: Some explanations, epilogue, cutscenes and additional dialogue.
People shouldn't bash Extended Cut for not doing things it wasn't supposed to do.