Eastbound and Down (or anything McBride has done) would be way worse with bleeps, it definitely depends. It kills me every time they bleep something on Parks or The Office so it definitely works there South Park is a lot better with the bleeps too
F is for Family works with actually hearing the words, imo. P&R, AD, The Office bleeps are funnier than hearing the word, but for some of these I don’t think they’re too comparable. F is for Family swears all the time. If that was bleeped out with a sound effect that would get old super quick vs P&R, AD and The Office who used it in very limited fashion.
The ending to Mass Effect 3 is not that bad. What it is, though, is the perfect example of the limitations of choose-your-own-adventure storytelling. As much as the writers and developers may talk about wanting to give the player choices, there is almost always something that "feels" more right than others.
The Mass Effect 3 ending isn’t bad at all. My truly unpopular opinion is that Andromeda isn’t that bad. Flawed, but overall solid.
I have been thinking of the games since the remaster was announced, and I had not realized that the third game is essentially the Matrix sequels. It is why the only ending that makes sense is Shepard synthesizing organic and robotic lives. Killing all robots, enslaving them, or choosing not to act are terrible endings that miss the point of the story, which is why it might have such a bad reputation.
Mass Effect series is one of my favorite series of any medium. Loved finding all the shit in the first game using a PHYSICAL guide book before everything was online. Good times. Except that vehicle in the first one. That drove like shit lmao
When people talk about the greatest moments of the Mass Effect story, they tend to be events that all or almost all players will experience mostly the same way, regardless of their choices. The same goes for the first season of the Telltale Walking Dead game. The handful of big choices don't really change the overall structure of the trilogy-long story; you can't have Shepard suddenly become possessed by the Reapers and spend the next two games killing everyone. Some of the choices in a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 almost felt like the developers were trusting you to pick the "right" choice. I never played through the entire game as a bad guy, but the various clips I have seen seem like such a less interesting story than the Arthur Morgan who is upright and moral. The first time I remember choices was in Grand Theft Auto IV, but when you see the diverging paths from the choices they became less impactful. Even worse, the choices almost always had an option that was much more beneficial to the gamer, if not the character.
Video games are such an interesting medium in that way. I remember playing Red Dead Redemption II and I was mostly pretty peaceful, handling everything I could without hurting anyone, then got into a conversation with someone at camp and in a cutscene they asked Arthur what was troubling him and he was like, "I've been killing... a lot" and that wasn't reflective of the Arthur Morgan I'd been playing, really. Even the best and most well-written video games come up against that dissonance and few if any have perfected the balance of giving players meaningful choice while telling a story that is 100% cohesive in its thematics/characterization/narrative