BioWare "Considering" Calls for New Mass Effect 3 Ending

[Ashoten]

It's cute that Bioware calls their fan base "Loyal" when they already have a lawsuit in the works.

Bioware is really good at offering player choice and then retroactively changing all your choices or just contriving some reason to make them not matter.

I'm firmly on the side of them needing to change the ending, because that was not wroth 150 hours of my life. (and it's actually way more because I have 7 Shepards)

Why does your personal investment of time mean the ending needs to be changed? In any other media, I expect you wouldn't make the same demand. Do you go back and demand that Saving Private Ryan have a happier ending? Did you make a demand that the book Survivor end in something other than a suicidal plane crash? Assuming that you are generally a rational person, I'd wager the answer is no.

The heavy use of choice as being a major draw to the game is likely the cause of the problem. Somehow, it would seem, being asked to make a handful of minor decisions from a pre-determined list of actions has convinced thousands (millions) that they are a part of the creative process. I suppose we are, in a way. Our role is to buy (or not) a product as a commentary of quality.


But, more to the point, I don't particularly understand why people think the game deserved a happy ending. The saga revolves around a pattern of extinction that has occurred at least 700 times. At least 700 races rose to power and were annihilated in an instant. The only difference is that this time around, the sentient races had a little more time - that is, in reality, the only thing any action the player performs actually achieves. The reapers still achieve complete strategic surprise. The reapers still have a fleet that is more massive and more powerful than anything the sentient races could muster.

The ending provided is already far too happy to be reasonable. It already leans heavily on deus ex machina in order to make what the player does count for anything more than one last shout of defiance in the face of annihilation. To give me an ending where the sentient races are saved, even in part, is more than the fiction could justify. To give me an ending where my player character and my allies and friends all survived and lived happy ever after goes beyond unreasonable.

It treads dangerously into children's fantasy. The story demanded sacrifice. The story demanded that there be a cost for choice. For two games we were told that annihilation was one decision away; but that was a lie. The choice between Ashley and Kaiden was hardly a choice (The situation demanded securing the bomb site or the whole mission was for nothing). Saving Wrex was the result of a speech check. Surviving the suicide mission was trivial. In a fight for the survival of advanced life itself, in a fight where the machines won hundreds of times in a row, the best any could hope for was for a little extra time. One does not get to simply walk into hell time and again without there being a cost and one does not get to break a cycle that has persisted for so long as to effectively be a process of the galaxy itself without expecting to pay something dear.

I honestly hesitated when it came to putting the disc in to see the final chapter through. Even with the best laid plans, how could the game end well? In the end, friends and allies were dead. Two entire races were gone and the legacy of countless more were shattered. The outlook for our heroes was grim at best. But this wasn't a fight for the people on the Normandy. It was a fight for people. The sacrifice of billions bought entire generations yet unborn the opportunity to live and make mistakes and struggle and die. The sacrifice bought them life itself.

Is it the happy ending I wanted? No. But it was happier than a reasonable man would dare hope.

Well said. I think this might be a problem with fantasy story's in general. To make the threat big enough to fit the scope of a galactic adventure it needs to be impossible to beat. Which means that the use of a deus-ex to destroy them was unavoidable.

 

[tangoprime]

This is freaking stupid. There are plenty of movies that have crapsack endings where everyone dies. These are often critically acclaimed. Plenty of books have "bad" or sad endings. These are also critically acclaimed. It's one thing to expect everything to be ok when you're 10 and it's a fairy tale. We aren't 10 anymore and Mass Effect certainly is not a fairy tale.

I don't want a fairy tale ending, I just want an ending that makes slightly more sense than the Evangelion ending. What about the dark energy thing? Why are crew members who were just with me during the final charge on Earth suddenly on board the Normandy running away at top speed? The ending just doesn't making any f'ing sense, and feels like (though we know this isn't the case) they just ran out of time and someone deciding what to do had just watched a Matrix marathon on Spike TV.

Maybe I was just hoping for a heavier moral choice, like "let the reapers do our reaping so we can stop a bigger threat to everything, or destroy us and hope civilizations can fix the universe their way."

 

[Spygon]

I just completed the game an hour ago and i know i will flamed for this.But i cannot see what the big deal is the ending were good and were the only way to end the big build up while making sence.

Maybe i am wrong but i feel mass effect asked you alot of questions to build up to one large one about what you thought of the mass effect galaxy and how it works.

What did people expect shepard punching out every reaper on his own then retiring on a beach.

 

[The Wykydtron]

False advertising? Come on, I know people like to rag on the endings but false advertising complaints?! Nobody's gonna take that seriously!

While that's kind of extreme, it's not completely wrong, is it? I think it's been in the end of the Angry Joe "Ten reasons we don't like the ME3 endings" video that you could see all possible endings play out next to each other - they look pretty much the same (not just similar). The fact that one of the main selling points went something like "since we're not making a sequel, we can have an array of wildly different endings" is questionable at best.

While it kinda does make sense if you look at it that way, saying it's "not completely wrong" doesn't get you anywhere in court.

I am quite sure it would never hold up in a court of law. If this complaint thing can evolve into a proper lawsuit that is (American Law is not my strong suit)

We all know that lawyers can drag things out when it comes to non-criminal cases, who exactly said that the endings would be different? Was it an offical statement by EA/Bioware? (v.important!) Was it mentioned in actual trailers? Was it implied or explicitly stated? (V.V IMPORTANT!)

To be honest I can't even say if the complaints would get a word in edgeways, fans sue a company over 10 minutes of content in a 30 hour+ game that has won many critical acclaim awards? That sounds close to just getting thrown out in two seconds flat.

I'm running off what I remember of English Contract Law here, I'd imagine it would be similar to the US in cases like this.

To be honest i'm not even sure if stuff like Twitter posts and the like can even be counted as "proper" advertising according to the law at the moment. Bioware has done a lot of Internet marketing for ME3.

Certain Acts may need to be updated at some point I think.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I'm still a firm believer of the indoctrination theory.

If Bioware manage to pull off what I think they're pulling off, it will be awesome.

I think it would be silly for them not to run with it honestly. Most the work is done for them.

Even if they didn't intend Shepard to be indoctrinated, the shit they pulled established a pretty descent theory that could logically work in ME3. They would be retarded not to go along with that.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

Meh. What does it matter? The die has been cast, and yet another promising Sci-Fi goes the same route as Star Trek and Star Wars; fading into obscurity down paths the fans didn't follow. The reasons and excuses and second-tries are moot.

 

[Hat Man]

It's not like wanting to paint a new smile on the Mona Lisa because the one on it is blands.

It's more like wanting to paint a new smile on it because the painter got lazy and decided to scribble the smile on with a blue crayon.

 

[Lattyware]

Let's face the reality where if Bioware were to do this, we would end up with a fluffy 'and everybody lived happily ever after' ending, which really isn't the issue here. Bioware have a bad history of taking criticism and going way too far with changes (ME1 -> ME2).

What we need is an epilogue. Free DLC, not necessarily much (if any) game-play, but rather a good amount of time spent following up what happened in the universe, and what happened to the characters we spent so much time with in the previous games. It's about giving people the sense of an actual ending - giving some closure

 

[putowtin]

Good, you know what I want changed?

the fact the the last thought my Shep has is of Liara not Garrus!

(oh and the rest of the ending!)

 

[TheApatheticDespot]

I still think the idea of demanding a new and "better" ending is ludicrous.

Sure, that's why Star Trek was cancelled after 2 seasons and why Sherlock Holmes died at the end of The Final Problem. Anything else would be ludicrous.

 

[Chevalier noir]

For the most part, the fans aren't asking for the endings to be changed. They are asking to get endings where all their choices, made over the span of three games, will play out before them. They don't mind the current endings being kept. All they want is a chance to stay true to the whole adventure and fight the impossible odds. Not be constricted to a color choice.

Picking the red or blue color choice is what its amounted to in the past 2 games as well honestly.

Don't get me wrong, I like Mass Effect but the choices you make only have superficial impacts on how you play through the last 2 games. I never really felt that you to to experience the impacts of most of your choices. In the second game a lot of your choices from the first game end up only getting brief acknowledgement in the form of emails from people...I mean jeez emails? Show me, don't tell me. Its an interactive medium isn't it?

 

[ConeFTW]

I don't really have a stake in either side of this debate

Most other games writers are reporting on how bad the endings are so saying the opposite attracts more attention, bringing more views to your article...
It's fine to have a controversial opinion but please don't make it out like it doesn't benefit you as journalist.

 

[Riff Moonraker]

I'm still a firm believer of the indoctrination theory.

If Bioware manage to pull off what I think they're pulling off, it will be awesome.

I think it would be silly for them not to run with it honestly. Most the work is done for them.

Of course, if they do run with it, prepare for a new firestorm of ME3 threads, this time with people gloating and calling all the haters of the original ending and/or indoctrination theory 'indoctrinated'. I'm all for them running with it, but I don't look forward to the Gaming Discussion forum being jammed up by ME3 threads for another month if this comes to pass.

Man, I honestly could give a care what the forums said, if they changed the ending and gave us something better than they did.

 

[Chaos42]

Look the endings them selves aren't bad but are just limited. Here is the problem they said it would be a combination of everything you did and in actuality its a choice of A B or C and while the endings are ok they are not up to the quality we usually see -the other problem is the endings are very similar so much that it almost doesn't matter which you pick -the rest of the game seems to have taken up more time than was spent on the ending and i think that people demanding they make it better are justified. While talking about how similar the endings are -i would like to see a lot more variety in them. After all they want our money we want quality

 

[tzimize]

Good thing I didn't pay for the Mona Lisa

True, and even though its probably been said, it would be more of a comparison if the mona lisa didnt have a mouth at all. Or a dogs mouth. Or something along that line.

 

[JoshTheater]

You know what I really don't understand about this whole movement to get a new ending? What makes anyone think that even if BioWare DOES make a new ending, that it will be the ending you hoped for? If they couldn't provide a satisfying ending with their original plan for the story (which I'm sure they put an enormous amount of thought and effort into writing, or at least as much as they were capable of), what makes you think they'd be able to do better a second time around?

If anything, a new ending would feel tacked on and just be total pandering. They wouldn't be giving you their idea for the ending, they'd be giving the fans a footnote cobbled together at the last second based on what they've been told the ending should be, and it wouldn't feel like a natural part of the story they spent so long developing at all. You'd be better off just writing the ending you were hoping for yourself and then pretending it's the actual ending that was in the game.

If you're so upset about the ending of ME3 to the point of wanting to do something about it, then simply stop supporting BioWare with your wallet. If you're not willing to do that, then you should nut up and accept the fact that getting a shitty ending is just one risk you take by being the customer of entertainment. Sure, express your frustration to your peers about how disappointed or angered you were, but to expect the creators to change the ending because you didn't like it? Imagine if that sort of thing was allowed in any other medium, if people just allowed filmmakers to retcon the shitty ending of their movie after hearing everyone say how shitty it was, or if musicians could re-record albums they already released because the original sounded like shit? That's encouraging a low standard of quality...you're saying artists can get away with selling a poor product at first as long as they're able to fix it based on feedback later and then sell you a whole new product. That's madness.

I understand that the Mass Effect games are incredibly immersive, I love the games and have become totally emotionally involved while playing them. But at the end of the day, entertainment can fail to meet your expectations...this isn't a new concept. When it does, you need to step back and realize that it's only entertainment, and that perhaps you don't need to place as much importance in it as you might want to. Expecting creators of art (and the Mass Effect games are excellent examples of games as art) to tailor to your every whim, instead of crafting the story that they wanted to craft as an artist, contradicts the whole idea of art in the fist place. When you do so, you're acting entitled and childish.

This is the sort of silliness that causes people who don't know any better to look at the gaming community and say "What a bunch of nerds."

 

[teh_Canape]

I'm fine with the ending I got, granted there's some questions unanswered for me, but it was good enough for my experience with it

Spoiler: speaking of the ending

I find it pretty silly of people saying that the "destroy the reapers" ending, which also kills the geth, is bad because they put so much effort into saving the geth only for them to be destroyed as well
it's not bad, it's the catch
you can save the galaxy from being exterminated but you will exterminate an entire race to do it

I agree, with most choices throughout the series, there is usually a few choices in which there will be a catch. i.e. Curing the genophage, but losing the support of the majority of the Salarian fleets.

OT: All I can say is that Zeel is probably going to have to eat his words if his last thread was any indication. At least for now.

hell, even earlier in ME, when you could get the cure of the genophage but it was done so that the newborn krogan would basically be slaves to the reapers to a genetic degree

 

[The Wykydtron]

I'm down with the idea of open and productive communication with fans [although runaway incivility rarely seems far behind] but I still think the idea of demanding a new and "better" ending is ludicrous.

Please, explain why? As a customer it's Your duty to demand that the product You buy is of as good quality as it's advertised. If You pay for a 60$, so called "tripple A" title why should You be satisfied with something that doesn't meet Your expectations? When You buy a fancy TV that cost several thousand $ and find out that you can't change channels with a remote are You just accepting it is a "innovative, artistic expression"?
The game lacks an epilogue, an integral part of storytelling and writing. As customers we aren't slaves to companies and frankly if a company does something wrong we should yell about it, so next time they will think twice before making same mistake.

AH! Loss of enjoyment! That's what that's called! Two years of business school finally pays off! You can sue for that!

Oh and using an actual physical example when compared to an intellectual property really doesn't work. Yes if a TV has doesn't recognise its remote you can get a replacement (Sale of Goods Act 1979) but this is an experience people are trying to sue for. How do you debate or indeed judge, the quality of an experience that differs from person to person?

Honestly I think if this was an English court case it would get either dragged out for ages or thrown out in half a second. Probably the latter.

You can't apply standard Good/bad working/broken principles to an IP, it just simply doesn't work. You could have one person say it's a damn masterpiece yet the next says it's an utter mess.

You'd also need to decide on what exactly is wrong with it to claim for... It has "no closure" or it has "no epilogue" sounds really, really bad in court.

Really the major thing wrong with this whole lawsuit thing is that how do you measure the extent of the "damage" inflicted or indeed if there was anything wrong with it at all. Something disappointed you, so sorry, no you cannot sue for it. You set your own expectations

If this gets through and wins (it won't) fuck me everybody is gonna be suing every writer, artist etc etc in town. That's how the British legal system works. You take past cases, look at who won there and apply it the present case (very basic version).

"Oh look Bioware lost to rabid fanboys due to a "crappy ending" bam the benchmark is set. *cue lawsuits against Lost, The Sopranos ect etc.

Overall, it was as advertised and is of good quality. I fail to see the logic here (as a certain red coated devil once said)

 

[Canadish]

Good thing I didn't pay for the Mona Lisa

/thread.

Though saying that, the Mona Lisa does have a smile.
That's what many people find makes it such an enduring classic...
And the fact Mass Effect 3 clearly wasn't treated as a piece of art by the developers.
Considering the original vision was admittedly compromised by them with the folded in multiplayer...and the fact artist's don't sell 2/3 of the painting to you and then expect half the price again on top to fill their pockets...

Poor analogy on the original posters part I think.

I'm just staying away from any and all EA products in future. They just abuse their customers way to freely. I really hope the Escapist and other gaming media sites avoid using EA ads and refuse their early promotions in future.

Between the ruination of both Dragon Age and Mass Effect, as well as the long list of other talented studio's and fantastic franchises that have all been liquidated and destroyed, and their new policies on mandatory multiplayer, cutting content for early DLC, the horror stories of abuse to their employee's, talks about selling individual clips to players in micro transactions...

They're just scum.

No new ending for Mass Effect is going to change that.

 

[Avatar Roku]

For the most part, the fans aren't asking for the endings to be changed. They are asking to get endings where all their choices, made over the span of three games, will play out before them. They don't mind the current endings being kept. All they want is a chance to stay true to the whole adventure and fight the impossible odds. Not be constricted to a color choice.

Picking the red or blue color choice is what its amounted to in the past 2 games as well honestly.

Don't get me wrong, I like Mass Effect but the choices you make only have superficial impacts on how you play through the last 2 games. I never really felt that you to to experience the impacts of most of your choices. In the second game a lot of your choices from the first game end up only getting brief acknowledgement in the form of emails from people...I mean jeez emails? Show me, don't tell me. Its an interactive medium isn't it?

It was simple, binary choices in the previous games, but they at least were led up to. This one just came out of nowhere.