Casey Hudson, Mass Effect's Project Director, Leaves BioWare

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

On the one hand: a guy who might have a few interesting ideas to work with in New Bioware(because the oldguard that made their games as amazing as they were have long since departed, being replaced by new talent).

On the other hand: the ending to Mass Effect 3 was and still is atrocious: he takes full responsibility for that mess. Even without the cut corners, Dragon Age 2 was pretty unimpressive in the story department, and the combat system turned the game into a dry hack'n'slash with an upgrade system.

So... yeah. Kind of happy he won't have a chance to f**k up Mass Effect 4, though Inquisition might already be tainted by his 'writing'.

 

[Mike Hoffman]

Wait, I thought the problem with the Mass Effect series was that each game was handled by different writers. Sure Casey might've been responsible for the dismal ending, but the writing was already on the wall with ME2 doing nothing to progress the plot. I don't know how much weight Casey Hudson had at the company, but I doubt he was the sole reason everything went a bit shitty.

Rampant speculation and rumor-mongering: Drew Karpyshyn had a decent layout for the series, and the games had always worked with the lead writers writing the game, then a team working together to go through it all and make it work. Sometimes whole portions were completely rewritten or stuff might remain unchanged. The point was that a team of people put the work into it or at least approved it. Then Karpyshyn left and supposedly they had to change the ending (apparently due to a leak?) and Hudson just wrote his own, new ending and didn't let anyone else work on it. Once again rumor and speculation, but it's what I think happened.

The original ending actually worked really well with Mass Effect 2. Remember that planet Tali was on when you actually recruited her? She was researching weird shit happening with dark energy. Dark energy also got a mention in ME1 and came up a couple times in ME3 (it would have been more if the ending hadn't changed). The Reapers were created by harvesting all the advanced life and creating new reapers that would absorb the chaotic dark energy that was going to destroy all life. They had to take all the species because they needed the genetic diversity, but humans were special because - compared to the other species - even they alone had enough genetic diversity to make a reaper of only humans. Hence the human reaper in ME2. Shepard's choice at the end would have been to sacrifice all humanity to save the rest of the species or destroy the reapers and give the galaxy a couple hundred years to come up with a new solution before the dark energy wiped everything out.

Once again, mostly rumor, except for bits and pieces confirmed by Karpyshyn. And it wasn't completely finalized, so there are a couple issues with that proposed ending. But yeah, ME2 would have been more significant than simply a story connecting Shepard to Cerberus.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Rampant speculation and rumor-mongering: Drew Karpyshyn had a decent layout for the series, and the games had always worked with the lead writers writing the game, then a team working together to go through it all and make it work. Sometimes whole portions were completely rewritten or stuff might remain unchanged. The point was that a team of people put the work into it or at least approved it. Then Karpyshyn left and supposedly they had to change the ending (apparently due to a leak?) and Hudson just wrote his own, new ending and didn't let anyone else work on it. Once again rumor and speculation, but it's what I think happened.

The original ending actually worked really well with Mass Effect 2. Remember that planet Tali was on when you actually recruited her? She was researching weird shit happening with dark energy. Dark energy also got a mention in ME1 and came up a couple times in ME3 (it would have been more if the ending hadn't changed). The Reapers were created by harvesting all the advanced life and creating new reapers that would absorb the chaotic dark energy that was going to destroy all life. They had to take all the species because they needed the genetic diversity, but humans were special because - compared to the other species - even they alone had enough genetic diversity to make a reaper of only humans. Hence the human reaper in ME2. Shepard's choice at the end would have been to sacrifice all humanity to save the rest of the species or destroy the reapers and give the galaxy a couple hundred years to come up with a new solution before the dark energy wiped everything out.

Once again, mostly rumor, except for bits and pieces confirmed by Karpyshyn. And it wasn't completely finalized, so there are a couple issues with that proposed ending. But yeah, ME2 would have been more significant than simply a story connecting Shepard to Cerberus.

I don't know, even with that explaination I don't think ME2 would've added much to the plot. The whole thing with Tali's research was such a small footnote in the game that you even had to ask whether or not I remembered it. I think they should've focused more on Legion, introduced him way earlier in the game, and made him a plot central character, much like Liara in ME1. And you know, actually make the plot revolve around stopping the Reapers, not a bunch of B-team enemies.

 

[PsiMatrix]

Aside from looking like Sylar's evil twin I just don't really care. We never really got to see whether we succeeded in our mission. We had snapshots of the future but never got a real answer to the question; did we win?

Was the whole Hudson-and-Walters-barricaded-themselves-in-the-writing-room story ever actually proven or confirmed in any way?

I mean, I love a good rumour as much as the next clown and it's nice to be able to pin it on two specific individuals, but a rumour really is just a rumour.

Basically it was Patrick Weekes, known under an alias on the Penny Arcade forum, who blurted it all out but then had it withdrawn and any mention of it was deleted/moved/edited. It was them reported that it was an imposter hijacking the account but more likely Weekes had spoken out, broken a confidentiality clause in his contract and it was deleted so he could remain in Bioware. I know because even the food group I worked for had such a clause and every email was tagged with "confidential, do not share, etc." even for the mundane stuff.