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

[MiloP]

I would kind of like to read through this thread (200+ replies, wow) but the spoilers are quite rampant here, my bad, I did put a warning in the thread title.

I'll make the point however, that the difference between this and Fallout 3 is that the ending for Fallout wasn't changed due to the entire internet whining, it was changed because Bethesda themselves found the ending to be lacking. If BioWare come out and admit that "yeah we thought that ending sucks, we're sorry, we'll sort something out", then fair do's, like I said, they have the right to change whatever they want, but no-one has to right to pressure them into doing it, and especially not demanding it.

 

[Meacul]

In the end, the choice is for the player, and for me that gave a pretty nice moment to examine my Shephards life from the first game up to that point. Should the ending have been just a cutscene. NO! Maybe if they had shown us the concequenses of our earlier choises after the ending from the final part it might have been a better ending.

 

[Korten12]

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.

It doesn't matter if the journey is great if it is all for naught. There is no point to the journey if the end has no relevance to the journey.

Basically the destination destroyed the journey.

 

[Rawne1980]

The endings are not the problem in themselves.

The problem is they take away from everything you do up until that point including the choices you made in the previous 2 games and any choices made in ME3 up until that point.

It does not matter what you do the outcome is the same no matter what.

The only thing that changes is the colour of the beam that blows up the mass relays.

A downer ending I can live with. We all knew this was the last we'd hear from Commander Shepard so I was pretty much expecting what would happen.

A downer ending that makes everything up until that point irrelevant and doesn't "finish" off the story is what pisses me off.

And before anyone else says "it sets it up for DLC" ... no, just no.

Unless the ending IS changed then the story has no where to go.

Spoiler

Shepard is either dead, babysitting giant homicidal synthetics or stranded on an exploding Citadel with no chance of the Normandy coming to rescue. The Normandy and it's entire crew are now stuck on a random planet. The entire fleet is floating around wondering why the hell all the mass relays just blew up

It could carry on and let us know what happened to all the races but then again, who honestly gives a shit.

I want to know what happens with the characters i've spent the past few years with other than "ooh look .... trees".

I would have preferred an ending similar to Dragon Age where it gave little snippets about what happened to everything afterwards rather than that mess we got left with.

Don't get me wrong i'm not saying ME3 is in any way crap, it is a great game (I even enjoyed the multiplayer after abusing it something rotten). Nor am I saying the downer endings are bad. What I am saying is it didn't give any kind of closure for me. We know how it ends for certain things but not for others.

 

[Guilty Bystander]

I was more angry that they built this series up on 'being able to make decisions that will affect the ending' and lived up to it for the first two games, so if they were going to spoil us like that, it seems a bit counterproductive to give us 98% of a good game that we control and then shoot us in the knee by telling us that the last three games were pointless and you have to play by a god's never-before-mentioned rules instead of making your own like the rest of the series. It was disappointing and we just want to make it better... is that so selfish? If so; voice your opinion like we are, I?m sure they will listen to you if they ever listen to us.

-The Guilty Bystander

 

[Something Amyss]

It wouldn't be the first time...

I always forget they did that. Partially because I've never beat Fallout 3 (Other stuff gets in the way)

Was that a fan petition, though?

Not what we "deserve" what we fucking spent money and 100+ hours on.

Hey, hey, I said nothing about "deserve" If you're talking about what MoS said, why not quote him? If not, well, don't bring me up, especially swearing about it.

Anyway, back to the point. I get that spending 100 hours or money and not getting what you want is frustrating, but you were spending that time and money on someone else's creation. You were always gambling with your money and your time and were never guaranteed an ending you liked. Didn't Bioware even say the ending would piss people off?

This is the problem I have. As consumers, you've already thrown your money at them, based on little more than blind faith. Now, that's fine, I can't tell you how you spend your money. But especially with the endings leaked beforehand, especially in an era where we should be spending more carefully, people are throwing their money at an easy-to-know entity and then complaining how it turned out.

Yes, the ending is dumb. I'm not pretending otherwise. But you didn't--At least, I hope not--spend 100 hours on the promise of an ending you wanted. Or spend all that money on the games. Am I wrong, here?

 

[Warped_Ghost]

In my opinion, an epilogue would improve the ending.... immensely. It would give us closure.

Dragon age had a few lines of text for each character in your party and that was enough to satisfy everyone.

 

[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.

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.

Well, DE:HR was a prequel so the shitty endings had to be shoehorned in.

And the ending pretty much had to be a downer, with Shepard making various sacrifices along the way, such as squad mates dying, countless civilians dying, planets razed to the ground and so on and so forth. Having Shepard just waltz through the Reapers with no losses or anything bad happening would have been even worse than the current endings, and the backlash would be worse.

Shepard doesn't necessarily have to make the ultimate sacrifice, but if no one of importance died then it would have been like a terrible fan fiction where the main character and all his friends are never in any real danger, and can pull escapes out of their ass.

The ending can't have been all sunshine and rainbows. It just wouldn't have been right.

 

[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.

Well, DE:HR was a prequel so the shitty endings had to be shoehorned in.

And the ending pretty much had to be a downer, with Shepard making various sacrifices along the way, such as squad mates dying, countless civilians dying, planets razed to the ground and so on and so forth. Having Shepard just waltz through the Reapers with no losses or anything bad happening would have been even worse than the current endings, and the backlash would be worse.

Shepard doesn't necessarily have to make the ultimate sacrifice, but if no one of importance died then it would have been like a terrible fan fiction where the main character and all his friends are never in any real danger, and can pull escapes out of their ass.

The ending can't have been all sunshine and rainbows. It just wouldn't have been right.

But to me the ending was not a downer because no one should have died, it was a downer because they bloody destroyed EVERYTHING I was working to save.... I don't care if Sheppard or any of the rest of my team dies. But for me the Reapers might as well have won...

 

[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.

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.

Well, DE:HR was a prequel so the shitty endings had to be shoehorned in.

And the ending pretty much had to be a downer, with Shepard making various sacrifices along the way, such as squad mates dying, countless civilians dying, planets razed to the ground and so on and so forth. Having Shepard just waltz through the Reapers with no losses or anything bad happening would have been even worse than the current endings, and the backlash would be worse.

Shepard doesn't necessarily have to make the ultimate sacrifice, but if no one of importance died then it would have been like a terrible fan fiction where the main character and all his friends are never in any real danger, and can pull escapes out of their ass.

The ending can't have been all sunshine and rainbows. It just wouldn't have been right.

But to me the ending was not a downer because no one should have died, it was a downer because they bloody destroyed EVERYTHING I was working to save.... I don't care if Sheppard or any of the rest of my team dies. But for me the Reapers might as well have won...

And? The war was won, albeit at a great cost. In your opinion the cost was too high, in mine, well, everything turned out as expected, other than the mechanics of choosing an ending. I went into the game expecting huge amounts of people to die, and, in the back of my mind, I knew the Mass Relays had to go. They were a tool of the Reapers' machinations, and consequently, if the Mass Relays had survived, the Reapers probably would have too. It was the largest war in the history of the Galaxy. A lot of things are going to explode.

You could feasibly say the Reapers did win, in that they essentially reset the technology level of the Galaxy, killed billions if not trillions of people, and as a result of this, the Galaxy won't be swarming with people for a few thousand years...

 

[boag]

Is there any word yet on the Harbinger Audio files that have the original ending with the Dark Energy stuff?

I know most of the Joker and Anderson stuff has been found, but nothing of Harbinger.

 

[Acton Hank]

It wouldn't be the first time...

I always forget they did that. Partially because I've never beat Fallout 3 (Other stuff gets in the way)

Was that a fan petition, though?

Not what we "deserve" what we fucking spent money and 100+ hours on.

Hey, hey, I said nothing about "deserve" If you're talking about what MoS said, why not quote him? If not, well, don't bring me up, especially swearing about it.

Anyway, back to the point. I get that spending 100 hours or money and not getting what you want is frustrating, but you were spending that time and money on someone else's creation. You were always gambling with your money and your time and were never guaranteed an ending you liked. Didn't Bioware even say the ending would piss people off?

This is the problem I have. As consumers, you've already thrown your money at them, based on little more than blind faith. Now, that's fine, I can't tell you how you spend your money. But especially with the endings leaked beforehand, especially in an era where we should be spending more carefully, people are throwing their money at an easy-to-know entity and then complaining how it turned out.

Yes, the ending is dumb. I'm not pretending otherwise. But you didn't--At least, I hope not--spend 100 hours on the promise of an ending you wanted. Or spend all that money on the games. Am I wrong, here?

Sorry haven't quite nailed down how this quoting thing works.

 

[Acton Hank]

It's bloody art! ya don't go changin' tha Mona Lisa's eyes 'cuz ya think it would better match 'er dress!

You also don't advertise Mona Lisa as 'your painting' whose eyes match 'your choices'. I'm going to take a wild guess and presume you didn't play ME3.

An awful lot of the detractors appear to be the people who haven't actually experienced what folks are complaining about.

You kno with all the rage that's been going on this actually made me fell better
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzYLTbQQEZQ

 

[lumenadducere]

Now that's cleared up I understand some inconsistencies. but still, when you talk about food etc I still think that's OVERLY picky, i mean how often in mass effect do you see shepard eat a sandwich? or say "man, all this space stuff has got me thirsty"?

That's kind of a straw man argument. Sorry. You never see anyone eat food in the game, does that mean that it suddenly becomes a non-issue? Does Shepard get nutrition based solely off the number of people he kills? While that may make some strange sense due to the level up mechanics, we can all make the assumption that no, that's not the case. We're talking about internal consistency and established elements within the fiction - things that you can take from a scenario given what you know of the setting. It's mentioned many, many times that Turians and Quarians eat different food than the other species. There are numerous references to it in all 3 games. Garrus even mentions that it's good that Tali's coming aboard, 'cause then maybe the Normandy will get better Turian food. But we never see him eat, he's always calibrating the guns.

Things like that get left out from games because the development resources to show them don't have any payoff. Time and budget concerns keep them from showing characters from doing mundane things like eating and sleeping, but it's always implied in every game that those things happen. To assume that they don't simply because they're not shown is what's illogical, not the other way around. When characters get put into a situation which, given the game's established lore, those things are lacking, then it's logical to assume that it then becomes an issue.

It's a similar thing with the Mass Relays. Just because you don't see a cutscene with people being stuck and screwed, it's well established within the game's setting through all the codex information and dialog how important the relays are. You can't just say it's no big deal that they're gone simply because there's no cutscene showing how much it sucks. It is a big deal specifically because of all the information presented in-game before the ending about how important they are. To me it makes no sense to ignore everything the game presents before the ending and then say "meh, it doesn't matter because they don't show it in the ending." They don't show it in the ending because development funds probably went to other things - but again, they mention it enough times during the game itself to where it's only logical to assume that those things happen.

You mentioned Enslaved in an earlier post. Just because we never see anyone eat food in Enslaved, does it mean it's illogical to say that its ending sucks because all of a sudden you have those thousands of people stuck in the middle of the desert with no food or way to survive? No. Things like that are given and should be inferred, because it's logically consistent with the setting that the game establishes.

 

[lumenadducere]

sorry but you can't argue that enslaved's ending was okay and mass effect's ending is bad because of the exact same issue.

Though I understand why the ending is bad, it's bad because of inconsistencies and it defies every trait of the main characters, as well as giving 3 options, making it so that everything you did in the past was completely pointless. However being completely picky about the mass relays and the food IN THIS ONE GAME just because it's mass effect is kind of over the top. I was sold on people going too far with mass effect ever since that one guy tried to figure out what Tali's sweat would smell and taste like.

Except I never said Enslaved's ending was okay either, I was using it as an example as to what kinds of assumptions one is expected to make given the internal consistency of a fictional setting. It's not picky to assume that Enslaved's survivors are screwed and will starve because you never see Monkey eat a sandwich. It's also not picky to assume that the Turians/Quarians are screwed because you never see Shepard eat a sandwich. That's what I was saying, not that Enslaved's ending is fine and ME3's ending isn't.

And I don't get equating saying "lack of food and relays kills a bunch of people" with some random weird guy wondering what Tali's sweat tastes like. One is taking well-established information that many characters reference within a setting and applying it to the ending of a story, and the other is (unhealthily) obsessing over irrelevant information that nobody ever mentions. It has nothing to do with it being Mass Effect, I'd expect similar outcomes from any fictional setting that sets up a similar situation. It'd be like Uncle Owen's farm in Star Wars being destroyed (before they all die). They wouldn't have to show the aftermath on camera, but it makes total sense to assume that they're screwed because Tatooine sucks and they're a poor family. You take established information and follow it to its logical conclusion. It's beyond me how that's picky in any way, shape, or form.

But I guess if you're expecting people to go too far simply because it's ME then there isn't much I can say to counteract that bias.

 

[boag]

sorry but you can't argue that enslaved's ending was okay and mass effect's ending is bad because of the exact same issue.

Though I understand why the ending is bad, it's bad because of inconsistencies and it defies every trait of the main characters, as well as giving 3 options, making it so that everything you did in the past was completely pointless. However being completely picky about the mass relays and the food IN THIS ONE GAME just because it's mass effect is kind of over the top. I was sold on people going too far with mass effect ever since that one guy tried to figure out what Tali's sweat would smell and taste like.

Except I never said Enslaved's ending was okay either, I was using it as an example as to what kinds of assumptions one is expected to make given the internal consistency of a fictional setting. It's not picky to assume that Enslaved's survivors are screwed and will starve because you never see Monkey eat a sandwich. It's also not picky to assume that the Turians/Quarians are screwed because you never see Shepard eat a sandwich. That's what I was saying, not that Enslaved's ending is fine and ME3's ending isn't.

And I don't get equating saying "lack of food and relays kills a bunch of people" with some random weird guy wondering what Tali's sweat tastes like. One is taking well-established information that many characters reference within a setting and applying it to the ending of a story, and the other is (unhealthily) obsessing over irrelevant information that nobody ever mentions. It has nothing to do with it being Mass Effect, I'd expect similar outcomes from any fictional setting that sets up a similar situation. It'd be like Uncle Owen's farm in Star Wars being destroyed (before they all die). They wouldn't have to show the aftermath on camera, but it makes total sense to assume that they're screwed because Tatooine sucks and they're a poor family. You take established information and follow it to its logical conclusion. It's beyond me how that's picky in any way, shape, or form.

But I guess if you're expecting people to go too far simply because it's ME then there isn't much I can say to counteract that bias.

What i'm saying is that a lot of endings don't take into account minor details like these however no one went up to Fable 3 and said 'THIS GAME SUCKS BECAUSE IF YOU KILL EVERYONE THEN HOW IS THE HERO SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE AS NO ONE IS THERE TO MAINTAIN FARMLAND OR DO DAILY ACTIVITIES TO MAKE THE LAND INHABITABLE!', but when Mass Effect 3 doesn't take these details into account, people crawl all over it.

Fable 3 had a whole other set of problems with its ending.

And Besides, Fable 3 lets you roam around the game after its ending, providing some sort of closure to your actions

 

[lumenadducere]

What i'm saying is that a lot of endings don't take into account minor details like these however no one went up to Fable 3 and said 'THIS GAME SUCKS BECAUSE IF YOU KILL EVERYONE THEN HOW IS THE HERO SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE AS NO ONE IS THERE TO MAINTAIN FARMLAND OR DO DAILY ACTIVITIES TO MAKE THE LAND INHABITABLE!', but when Mass Effect 3 doesn't take these details into account, people crawl all over it.

I think I get the argument. But where I disagree is that Fable or other games don't go specifically out of their way to include information about the farmers, and then go without mentioning them in the ending. That's the key difference, here. If you go out of your way to explain something about a setting, its omission later on becomes all the more glaring. If Fable had mentioned that food only comes from a certain part of the kingdom and that part had been wiped out and people complained about Albion being screwed, would they be justified in doing so? Even if the ending scene didn't mention it specifically? Yes, they would, because the game would establish that all the farmland is in region X and region X gets overrun with that shade thing. Thus, logically you'd be able to assume that the kingdom is screwed because no region X = no food.

That's the analogous situation here. You can't compare it to any stock part of another game because most games don't go into that much detail about their setting. If they do and an event like that happens in-game but it's not shown directly, then the complaints (to me) are justified.

The key difference is in the detail provided and what conclusions you can draw based on those details. Most games wouldn't bother mentioning anything, thus it'd be fine to not worry about it because it becomes easy to imagine those needs being fulfilled from other sources. In a setting like the ME universe, where it's well-established that it would clearly be an issue, you can't really just imagine that away unless you don't care about the lore of the setting. And if you don't then that's completely fine, but there are those that do and to them it's a glaring issue.

But at this point we should probably just agree to disagree, as I don't know if this is going anywhere.

 

[Mahha]

Think about this for a minute. Do you really think it's a good idea to force the developer to re-write the game? What king of message would we as a community be sending out?
Sure it wasn't the best ending, but by this point I really don't think any variation on the ending would do. It's not even about that. It's about forcing an artist to change his work because some of you think that they owe you something. They don't owe you anything. This would only set up a premise that insane amounts of whining can change an already finished product that whining can force an artist to change his work.
I know some are passionate about this, but let's face it: What's done, is done.