I_am_a_Spoon said:
It isn't just a patch-up or unnecessary twist. It puts the entire ME3 narrative into a whole new league of sophistication and execution, vastly better than any generic but satisfying ending we might have been happy with on the disc. It would give ME3 one of the most original and intelligent endings in science fiction history, and constitute successful meta-gaming on a global scale.
What?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllJustADream
Even if we were to limit ourselves to science fiction endings in which the climactic events are revealed or implied to be a product of the protagonist's mind, that list would include Total Recall, The Butterfly Effect, Vanilla Sky, Brazil, possibly The Matrix, Inception, the occasional Star Trek episode... that's just off the top of my head. So no, it's not the least bit original.
Intelligent? That depends entirely on what follows it - fans of Indoctrination Theory don't seem to understand that even if it's implemented, there's no guarantee that the "real" ending would be any better than the current one. You're actually asking for two different things here: that IT invalidates the Star Child scenes
and that some other ending delivers what we should've had the first time around. These two things are totally unrelated: having IT doesn't automatically mean that the "new" conclusion does what it's supposed to do.
It would also, as a result, reinvigorate Bioware's reputation and bring back fans who might have mistaken what was actually a veiled cliffhanger for bad quality, as well as reach the ears of every gamer out there (who hasn't heard about the shitty ending?) and motivate them to pick up the series (knowing that the trilogy you're about to buy has one of the most mind-blowing endings in video game history is a hell of an incentive).
"Mistaken"? Are you serious? They published a game. The game had a fantastic story and a Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad ending. Those are the facts, that's what actually happened. BioWare had
no reason to withhold some imaginary "true ending", especially after the PR beating they took. You honestly think they would've risked
real damage to the IP for some experiment in meta-gaming? Commercial entities don't work that way.
And here's the thing: even if the scenario you're describing were remotely possible, they would've had the "real ending" finished and ready to go
before things like Retake ME3 started. The fact that they're just
now pulling in voice actors and getting the material together (to say nothing of delaying the rumored Omega DLC) indicates that they had
nothing planned. This isn't some master manipulation on the part of BioWare: they're admitting "mea culpa" and doing their best to salvage the situation. Good for them, but they wouldn't have
been in that situation to begin with.
I_am_a_Spoon said:
But like I said, maybe we don't fully understand what they mean by artistic integrity yet. They might have a very good reason for being stubborn about it.
I happen to have a higher opinion of the average gamer's intelligence than that. To be blunt, if BioWare had had any cards to play after launch, they would have done so. The "artistic integrity" rhetoric was used by the developers as a way of
defending their product, not coyly advertising some future plan we poor little silly gamers just can't comprehend.
And apparently the team did throw around indoctrination as a possible ending (alongside others), but figured that it wouldn't mesh well with their gameplay if implemented...
There's no evidence of that. No one at BioWare has suggested that indoctrination was
ever a real narrative possibility. Even if it were, they obviously chose not to implement it - are we supposed to believe they went digging through the trash for a plot twist they'd already discarded?
Or it could deliver way more than what most people are expecting...
Not saying I have unconditional faith in Bioware, but you don't need to be so pessimistic.
It's not pessimism, it's realism. The problem here is BioWare's lack of transparency: so far, they've offered no clarification on exactly what the EC will contain, other than the fact that it will
not change the existing endings. As I've said, that's not necessarily a dealbreaker - there's still plenty of leg room within the current framework - but it'll come down to the question of whether or not they understand
why the ending didn't work. And to be blunt, if the people working on the EC are the same people who gave us the Star Child in the first place? I don't think there's any reason to "hope for the best", as it were.
Well, nobody other than Bioware can answer that. And they might be able to, you never know.
Again, if they could have, they probably would have by now. If it got to the point where Ray Muzyka had to acknowledge the backlash in a public forum, where discussion of the game's ending has overshadowed
every other aspect of the game by a ridiculous margin... the time to act, to say something substantial, came and went.
As I've said before, if the EC works, it'll placate the fans who are still upset, and who haven't been motivated to play the game a second time since. But I doubt it'll have any effect on the gamers who shrugged their shoulders and wrote the whole thing off a la "Battlestar Galactica". And
that represents a real loss for BioWare that they would never have consented to risk in the first place if they'd planned this all along.