A Take on "Artistic Integrity"

People all over the internet on both sides of the Mass Effect controversy, whether journalist or fan, seem to be throwing around the term "artistic integrity" haphazardly and with very little understanding of its function.

What artist integrity is NOT: The idea that an artist's work is unchangeable. The idea that an onus or vision has been achieved and should only be discussed in its current form. A blanket statement that protects a piece of work from criticism.

Artistic integrity refers to the ideals, philosophy, social construct, whatever, that the artist is trying to convey, challenge or construct with their piece. When you say a piece's artistic integrity has been compromised you are making the claim that somewhere along the line a person, group of people, or some set of circumstances forced the artist to change or modify the initial vision of the work, usually in a way that is detrimental or counter productive to the message intended.

Critique is a vital part to the process of creating art. It seems like people are painting artists as mystics that can envision a final product the instant the idea comes to them, when in fact, it usually takes many iterations, changes and the input of others to help guide a truly successful piece from the mind of the artist into a tangible creation. Go to a gallery opening where the artist is taking comments and questions or better yet, if you can swing it, find a local art school especially if it has a graduate program that allows you to sit in on critiques. You will find that very rarely does an artist come up with a perfect piece on their own, there is almost always something wrong or unclear. And when I say wrong I mean that there is something causing the piece to falter or fail to convey the artist's message in the best possible way. It could be that there are too many conflicting ideas and something needs to be cut out or there's something that needs to be added to show a contrast or clarify the meaning behind the idea. It can be a tiny stylistic change to a single element or a glaring hole in the concept itself but the intention of the critique is never to change the ideal/philosophy/message of the piece, only to help make it more impactful, more coherent, more in tune with the artist's intentions.

With that said, the rest of this post will be more opinionated and focus on why I think it is not a bastardization of artistic integrity to change the ending of ME3.

1.) The ending is not the “art”

In the same way that the upper right hand corner of a painting is not “the painting” and the bridge in the middle of a song is not “the song”. The ending of ME3 is a small, albeit important portion of the greater overall story. If someone decided to go baroque for 95% of a painting and then pick out a random portion of the picture to do in abstract line drawing it would be out of place and hurt the piece as a whole. The criticism would be “Wtf were you thinking? Why did you suddenly change styles at the very end? There's no coherence or meaning in your choice.” (Unless of course the subject matter of the piece directly addresses the reasoning behind such a stark shift, which I do not believe ME3's ending does or was intended to do.) Changing the ending (adding, explaining or completely rewriting it) to bring it back in line with the rest of the established philosophies of the Mass Effect universe is not an affront to artistic integrity, quite the opposite. It's the integration of critique which makes the piece more powerful as a whole.

2.) “The customers are the infringers of the artist's intentions”

I find this argument to be completely disingenuous. No one arguing for keeping the “artistic integrity” intact wants to tackle the fact that the financial backers for the game are actually the first wave of destruction to the artist's vision, I.e EA → Bioware. The same thing runs through the entire mainstream entertainment industry. Hollywood movies are cut up by executives who think a certain plot twist or ending will make the product more marketable, editors tell writers to chop chapters or fix character arcs, and games are no exception to this. The fact that the artist (Bioware) has to bend to the whim of their financial backer is the first roadblock people ranting about “artistic integrity” should be fighting to break down. In a perfect world EA and other distributors/backers would give the artist free reign because they like the art/product/potential they see in the group. They should not have their hands anywhere near the process of creation and they shouldn't be able to have a “final say” in what any portion of the game is. In a perfect world they take a gamble because Bioware is known to make great games and they believe they'll turn a profit by letting them do their thing, but as many articles and anecdotes around the industry show, this is not how it works. Sometimes companies can be very hands off, sometimes everything needs to be approved, but the instant the backer is making the decision is the instant the “artistic integrity” becomes compromised. The customer is only responding to the already modified message which could be better or worse than the original idea the artist had. The same thing happens with the ridiculous deadlines movies and games have to meet, forcing the writers and creators to shift elements, cut things or drastically change portions to meet company whims for increased Q1 earning reports and shareholder happiness. If you don't want to address the first detrimental wave to artistic integrity you shouldn't suddenly attack the fans for being the second. How is this rectified? Beats the hell out of me. I think indie games are a good start because they're more or less crowd sourced by consumer funding, have much less to answer to, and can take even greater risks than mainstream games; and in that sense we become the EA, the backer to their product. Anyways, that's a topic for discussion elsewhere, I'm just trying to point out the hypocrisy with shunning the fans for the “destruction of artistic integrity”.

3.) Critique as improvement

Finally, as I've already stated, critique whether constructive or destructive should show the artist that something might not be right, or better yet, isn't clear enough to mesh the overall ideas. The outcry from fans to change the ending should be taken the same way a panel of artists critique a piece for the benefit of the creator. Sure, I understand that most people playing the series aren't professional writers, artists, or even creatives by trade, but that doesn't mean they can't dissect logical inconsistencies or compare X to Y. Being an artist doesn't matter when all you have to do is point out plot holes, contradictions and poor execution. Those alone should be enough evidence to show that the ending as intended does not get the artist's message across.

From just a literary stand point I would argue that changing ME3's ending would improve the intended message (read: artistic integrity) of the piece and saga as a whole, making it a more solid, polished and finalized work. From what I've been reading for the last few weeks is that almost everyone agrees that the ending is riddled with plot holes, fails to follow the consistent themes of the other 2.95 games and is lackluster in overall quality. I've seen it mentioned in articles and posts defending the ending and almost universally in ones deriding it. Changing the ending of the game will not take away from the overall message the artists have crafted over the last 5 years, it will actually help to solidify it and redeem an otherwise masterful series from a silly oversight.

Art lives and dies by critique, it's just usually handled away from the general public by the creator and their friends/mentors/peers. This is nothing new to the art world but it's still always up to the artist to accept or reject any critiques, all we can do is make suggestions.