Mass Effect 3 "Change The Ending" Petition (almost certainly spoilers)

[Asita]

Who said anything about chains? The use of Mass Relays only had a negative effect in that it streamlined one potential line of technology, the one that the Reapers had already trod and thus were most familiar with.

As Soverign said in ME1

the use and dependance of the Mass Effect relay leads civilizations down the path the Reapers cahse for them.

the Mass Effect relays are tools of limiting species technological development by creating a dependency on outside technology and exploiting the races assumptions that since they will always be there there is no reason try try to make more.

The study of the Mass Relays, the citadel, and the Keepers was almost totally banned and attempts to study them were met with imprisonment and death.

It restricts the technological development of races by forcing them down a dead end path the reapers set out.

the Mass Relay system works in this way regardless of if The reapers are physically present or not.

It's never described as a dead-end path. It's simply one that has already been trod. Allow me to counter your Nazara with a Legion:


The key concept here is that there's more than one answer to a given tech-issue. By learning about one solution, you focus on that solution and continue to develop around it, especially when that technology is so much further along than what you're accustomed to. That is not inherently a bad thing, nor is it inherently a good thing. And it especially does not mean the path ends abruptly. And regardless of the Relay's continued existence, the vast majority of galactic civilization had already been set down that path and had been applying it on lesser scales for decades at the very least, removing the relays would not put the various cultures on another technological path any more than removing the Citadel's Krogan monument would change the aftermath of the Rachni Wars and Krogan Rebellions.

The study of the Relays was never banned (though opening up uncharted ones was, due to lessons learned from the Rachni Wars), the study of the Keepers was banned because they're essential in keeping the Citadel running and because they literally self-destruct during most attempts to study them. The study of the Citadel similarly wasn't banned, but it was incredibly difficult due to various factors (not the least of which was the fact that the keepers maintained most of its functions and weren't exactly much for explanation)

 

[L34dP1LL]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qYm738hq1o Watch that video for a good mass effect 3 laugh, it's exactly how I feel about the endings.

 

[Smiley Face]

How is it galactic enslavement? If the enslavers are dead, are you still a slave?

If you still wear their chains and go down the path they set for you how can you be free?

The path the Mass Relays are supposed to set you down ended the moment they fulfilled the purpose the Reapers put them there for - to make it so they could find and harvest, and expect what was coming. The Mass Relays aren't supposed to have any adverse effect on organic life after the defeat of the reapers, because the reapers didn't expect to LOSE. The Mass Relays aren't a giant 'fuck you' failsafe to organic life - they were a trap, and it sprung, and it failed, and now you have a nice, shiny trap to decorate your house with. It's not a threat.

Or to use flowery euphemism, the slavers gave you chains and a path, but you forged those chains into a sword, killed them, and now you have a nice cobblestone path to build a house by. You're still free, and you have the dead Reapers to prove it.


EDIT: To address the OP, my main problem with the endings isn't that they didn't go a certain way I wanted, it's that they were badly done. They're TECHNICALLY bad. They are of poor quality. I don't like that, I want good quality. Shepard can still die, maybe we can still have the exact same choices, but they should have done it better, and there's nothing wrong with pointing out that they dropped the ball.

 

[Bvenged]

Actually, I liked that part where I Shepard was giving off the vibe that they're getting more psychologically harmed, more exhausted as the game went on and losing more and more hope. At one point in the endgame you even tell the "Illusive man" You've sacrificed too much" when he claimed he could control the reapers and had sacrificed much to do so.

Then Shapard levitates to a room with a god-child saying he made the reapers kill organic life to stop the reapers killing him, because creations will always turn on their creators (despite you forming an alliance between geth and quarian), admitting his solution is no longer working then telling Shepard they have to make 3 coloured choices. So shepard gets mentally worn, emotionally traumatised and crushed by the pressure of the galaxy, and doesn't even get to see how things pan out for them because Shepard gets vaporised in the "supposed" paragon ending that still feels like a kick in the balls for absolutely everyone.

Actually, I don't like that bit at all. It's just a massive killjoy.

Die, control reapers, relays & all that old tech; and the normandy's screwed regardless but synthetic and organic life can go on as normal.
Q: What happens to everyone/reapers/population of council... etc. etc.

Die, synthesise organic and sentient life into harmony, relays are destroyed and Normandy's screwed regardless. All life isolated to their clusters.
Q: What happens to "/"/"""/... etc. etc. Are all species killed and new ones formed? Do all synthetic life gain organic component and all organic life gain passive/controlling reaper parts?

Die with a slight chance of survival, destroy absolutely everything computerised, relays are destroyed, normandy's screwed regardless, because everything electronic with a processor is destroyed galactic civilisations are plunged back into the medieval ages, screwing over generations to come as they're all aware of space and technological advance.

Preferred expected endings

Destroy reapers and god-child, maybe citadel, maybe die to - relays stop working but not destroyed, with galactic knowledge could be make viable again. Normandy safe on Earth.

Fail to stop reapers, lose everything, cycle continues or at very best, is skipped for 50000 years.

 

[Cranky]

Destroy reapers and god-child, maybe citadel, maybe die to - relays stop working but not destroyed, with galactic knowledge could be make viable again. Normandy safe on Earth.

Fail to stop reapers, lose everything, cycle continues or at very best, is skipped for 50000 years.

Yeah, what I thought would be great too. But still, it's extreme of some fans to petition for a new ending. A game is a game. Get over it.
On a side note: Nobody on the Internet seemed to complain that much about DX:HR endings then, which I felt shares a lot in common with ME3 endings.

 

[distortedreality]

Destroy reapers and god-child, maybe citadel, maybe die to - relays stop working but not destroyed, with galactic knowledge could be make viable again. Normandy safe on Earth.

Fail to stop reapers, lose everything, cycle continues or at very best, is skipped for 50000 years.

Yeah, what I thought would be great too. But still, it's extreme of some fans to petition for a new ending. A game is a game. Get over it.
On a side note: Nobody on the Internet seemed to complain that much about DX:HR endings then, which I felt shares a lot in common with ME3 endings.

The endings are more reminiscent of the original Deus Ex - the system however is very much in the Human Revolution vein. There was a small outcry with HR - don't think it was as vocal as what we're seeing now though.

I don't mind this way of ending games generally, I think it's actually necessary in some cases (not so much HR, but possibly ME3).

 

[JeanLuc761]

Yeah, what I thought would be great too. But still, it's extreme of some fans to petition for a new ending. A game is a game. Get over it.
On a side note: Nobody on the Internet seemed to complain that much about DX:HR endings then, which I felt shares a lot in common with ME3 endings.

A game is a game, but we're within our rights to ask for a better ending to a series we've followed for 5 years, especially when the ending we were given is NOT what Bioware promised us. Of course, Bioware is equally within their rights to ignore us and do what they want.

As Miracle of Sound said elsewhere, (paraphrased) "People arent' asking for an ending they deserve; they're asking for an ending Mass Effect deserves." We WANT Bioware to succeed. We WANT them to have an epic ending that will be remembered for years. We want to make this right.

 

[wintercoat]

Up until the elevator brings Shepard to the Catalyst, ME3 had one of the best endings of any game I've ever played. From that point on, it's just utter bullshit. If it had just ended at that point, with Shepard collapsing, alive or dead, doesn't matter, and the Citadel's arms extending, then firing off the red beam and pulse when fully extended, it would have been perfect. But no, they had to ruin it with a "Choose Your Ending" deus-ex-machina piece of shit. Failure could have come at any time during the final mission in London, with the Reapers winning because you didn't build a large enough army and they're able to destroy the Crucible.

 

[Elate]

Maybe these people should take more heart in the old adage "It's not the destination that matters, but the journey." give or take, I loved the entire game, my only complaint was that at 26 hours, it was too damn short, but, that only means I was enjoying it enough to want even more (I even got the DLC.) Sure, the endings were a bit depressing, and yes, the whole "Push a button, receive ending" was a bit of a kick in the teeth, but honestly I didn't even notice it when playing. I enjoyed the game, the ending was suitable.

Spoiler

For the record I chose the middle one, Shepard jumping into the beam and integrating synthetic and organic life, I like to think that it didn't kill him, since it was never mentioned that it would "Kill" him, and rather, he became some godlike leader of the new lifeforms. Seems legit, and not entirely negative. I guess it all just depends on what you expects, because frankly I can't really imagine an ending where Shepard just blows the reapers to pieces and walks off into the sunset. I was glad the crew survived in the end, that made me happy.

 

[Durgiun]

A DLC ending. Didn't FFXIII-2 do exactly that?
And the worst part is that some people would buy the ending DLC. Even if it cost like 20$. Hell, I know a guy who's so butthurt over the endings he will do that if it becomes an option. At which point, I will promptly kick his ass for encouraging EA.

 

[Palfreyfish]

To be fair to most people, I don't think they're angry with the ending being a downer, I think they're angry with the endings available essentially boiling down to "push a button to choose your ending", which means that hardly any of the important actions from the prior two games have an effect.

For example: Rewriting or not rewriting the Geth in ME2 becomes irrelevant because with one button push all synthetic life is destroyed.

There's nothing wrong with a downer ending, or multiple downer endings. The series HAD to end like that. They just could have been implemented better.

I think ultimately the problem is that there are too many choices over the broad course of the game's history for them to have given them all justice in the ending. I mean think about it. You just brought up the whether or not to rewrite the Geth, which was a choice I had FORGOTTEN about, and you were upset that it wasn't impactful to the ending of the game.

I mean, just think about all the choices you make in Mass Effect 1 and 2 and even 3. To give all of them justice in an ending, it would take DISCS. The game would be like 5 discs. Instead, they did two things with your choices.

1: Your choices earn you war assets, you get enough and it's determinative over whether or not Earth is destroyed in the end and if Shepard lives. I'd say those are pretty important things.

2: Your choices also play out over the course of the ENTIRE game. For example, earning Mordin's Loyalty has no real impact on the end of the game, but it is determinative of whether or not Eve dies synthesizing the Genophage. Hell, if you save that Asari woman on Virmire you get an email stating she blows up a building killing a bunch of people. The choices you make do play out in the game, they just don't all have their own special, meaningful impact on the ending.

Fair point, there would be a lot to account for, and the fact that the choices made play out over the game is great. And I wasn't saying I was upset that the Geth thing wasn't impactful at the end of the game, just that with what amounts to a push of a button it's made irrelevant. If it hadn't been so simple, I think most people would have been okay with it.

Again, I don't particularly care what happens in any endings, I, and many other people, are disappointed in how the endings were executed... At least, I am.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

DLC ending is the only DLC they will be able to sell after what they've done.

 

[Cranky]

Yeah, what I thought would be great too. But still, it's extreme of some fans to petition for a new ending. A game is a game. Get over it.
On a side note: Nobody on the Internet seemed to complain that much about DX:HR endings then, which I felt shares a lot in common with ME3 endings.

A game is a game, but we're within our rights to ask for a better ending to a series we've followed for 5 years, especially when the ending we were given is NOT what Bioware promised us. Of course, Bioware is equally within their rights to ignore us and do what they want.

As Miracle of Sound said elsewhere, (paraphrased) "People arent' asking for an ending they deserve; they're asking for an ending Mass Effect deserves." We WANT Bioware to succeed. We WANT them to have an epic ending that will be remembered for years. We want to make this right.

I see your point and I think I may have been to direct with the "Get over it". Still, in my own opinion I've seen a few who have taken the complaints too far. And yeah, I do feel thesentiment for giving Mass Effect a proper ending, just that I don't quite agree with ragging on Bioware for it.

 

[JeanLuc761]

I see your point and I think I may have been to direct with the "Get over it". Still, in my own opinion I've seen a few who have taken the complaints too far. And yeah, I do feel thesentiment for giving Mass Effect a proper ending, just that I don't quite agree with ragging on Bioware for it.

I understand. Insulting Bioware is way, way out of line but simply saying they dropped the ball is criticism, pure and simple. Strong, yet civil dialogue is what's needed here.

 

[Elamdri]

Fair point, there would be a lot to account for, and the fact that the choices made play out over the game is great. And I wasn't saying I was upset that the Geth thing wasn't impactful at the end of the game, just that with what amounts to a push of a button it's made irrelevant. If it hadn't been so simple, I think most people would have been okay with it.

Again, I don't particularly care what happens in any endings, I, and many other people, are disappointed in how the endings were executed... At least, I am.

I mean, really what they ultimately did was pull a Deus Ex.

 

[Palfreyfish]

Fair point, there would be a lot to account for, and the fact that the choices made play out over the game is great. And I wasn't saying I was upset that the Geth thing wasn't impactful at the end of the game, just that with what amounts to a push of a button it's made irrelevant. If it hadn't been so simple, I think most people would have been okay with it.

Again, I don't particularly care what happens in any endings, I, and many other people, are disappointed in how the endings were executed... At least, I am.

I mean, really what they ultimately did was pull a Deus Ex.

Yes, but to paraphrase someone else on here who countered that point, the ending of DE:HR had to fit into the storyline of the next two, as it was a prequel, so consequently not much could be changed. ME3 is not a prequel, so Bioware didn't have to shoehorn anything into the ending.

Also, can I just point out that the new captcha system is utter shit and the pictures load around 1 in every 10 refreshes. Is this a shady business tactic to get people to sign up for the Pub Club, or is it shit programming, or is it just happening to me?

 

[Abedeus]

You played the game for 6 hours and you are going into discussions about endings.

Yeah, I thought the game was fucking amazing, literally game of the fucking year, for the first 30 hours of it.

Then last 15 minutes was spent watching Bioware fucking with every single fan that played all of the games over the last 5 years.

I really don't get the logic behind defending something you haven't seen yet. Unless you saw the endings already, don't talk about them.

We aren't discussing the ending. We are discussing people being upset with the ending and starting a petition demanding it be changed.
There's a difference, keep that in mind.
If we were actually discussing the ending, I wouldn't be here.
And from what I've read, it seems to have the same problem Deus Ex (that worked itself in pretty interestingly right there) where you pick your ending.
I didn't see a petition demanding that be changed.

Because people kind of... gave up after second Deus Ex? And it isn't as popular now as ME3 is.

But if you want to talk about the validity of the ending:

If I remember correctly, didn't Mass Effect 1 end the same way no matter what you did?
The big issue is people want to see what effects their decisions had on the galaxy over the last three games, but these games were never about that. You never truly saw any result to your actions other than character X or Y living or dying.
Does it sound like a shitty ending to a game so engrained with choices? Yes. But an ending where your decisions didn't change much isn't new for Bioware. Last I checked, the only effects my decisions had on Mass Effect 2's ending was who lived and who died.
Please, correct me if I'm wrong, it has been a long time since I played the first two, but there it is. It's not making your decisions invalid because your decisions were never truly that important, you never got to see the world you had created.

Uhh. In ME1, you can make the council live or die, and they continue in next games. If they died, humanity gained more "favorable" councilors, but if you saved them at cost of some Alliance ships, humanity had the gratitude of the galactic community. You can make Saren kill himself or fight him if he stubbornly refuses to see that he was indoctrinated. You could kill Wrex or convince him to stay loyal.

And it doesn't matter, because it wasn't the last game. So was ME2. The choices from ME1, ME2 and ME3 were supposed to influence the ending of the series.

Also the other reason people are protesting against this ending - no closure, no information regarding what happened AFTER the endings. This would've passed in ME1 and ME2, since they were the first and middle parts of the trilogy. All good endings give the audience at least some of the answers for their questions.

This reminds me a lot of the Gilgamesh ending (the manga later adapted to anime). The protagonists fight hard to prevent the end of the world. However, last episode happens, and every good hero dies within few seconds, Big Bad that never came out of the hiding suddenly appears and causes the world to end.

But to clear things up, there's a final scene, where a new world is being shown, with new humans. And instead of the "Mass Effect 3" ending, where the screen goes black and nothing is explained after the ending, we get to know that there is a future in the anime/manga's.

Hell, Matrix Revolutions, a failure when compared to previous movies, had a shitload more closure than ME3, even if we still don't know why and how Neo died - was it a part of the plan? Was it something inside of him that destroyed the Smiths? If machines needed the humans, why did they agree to remove them from Matrix? Very little explained, but still more than ME3.

 

[Aurgelmir]

To be fair to most people, I don't think they're angry with the ending being a downer, I think they're angry with the endings available essentially boiling down to "push a button to choose your ending", which means that hardly any of the important actions from the prior two games have an effect.

For example: Rewriting or not rewriting the Geth in ME2 becomes irrelevant because with one button push all synthetic life is destroyed.

There's nothing wrong with a downer ending, or multiple downer endings. The series HAD to end like that. They just could have been implemented better.

That is my gripe with the ending really, much like the ending of Deus Ex 3.

At the same time it feels like everything you did up to that point was meaningless. But should they change the ending? No! Should they learn from this mistake? Yes.

I mean in ME2 you made choices on your WAY to the ending which affected your ending, this was such a much more delicate way of doing things.
In ME3 you are presented with the outcome of your two choices and choose...

Also why does the ending HAVE to be a downer? there isn't any reason for that.