Mass Effect 3 Ending Controversy

[Imp_Emissary]

Wow. That fan-fic ending was way better than the actual ending. Like, by a ton. I actually get the feeling that Bioware was going in the direction of that ending, but just did not have enough time to do it for some reason. I really wonder why... EDIT: For clarification, this is not sarcasm. I really do wonder.

Anyway... I have mixed feelings both about the ending [footnote]As the fan-fic ending showed, it could have been a bloody brilliant ending if done well, which it was not. But, I still appreciate what they were going for with it, even if they fell flat on their asses doing so. Good idea, horrendous execution.[/footnote] and the controversy over demanding a new ending. I understand people angry over it and demanding a new ending [footnote]my favorite game of all time is KOTOR 2. You think I was completely satisfied by that ending? Hell no.[/footnote], and they have every right to do so. I don't think Bioware has to change it. Unfortunately, it is currently a lose-lose situation for them, as you say. They really should have delayed the game to work on the ending more. I know I sure as hell would not have minded another 1-3 months so we can get an actual good ending. :/ Guess that is how software development works sometimes...

To answer your question about why they didn't have enough time; its generally because the end of the game is the last thing game creators work on last. That is also why if something about the game ends up feeling rushed, unfinished, just bad, or is a bit bugged it is normally the ending of the game/near the end of the game.

Yahtzee actually gave a good option one could take to avoid this. Make the ending first, then the beginning, and the middle last.

The idea made sense to me. If ya make the ending first then you have all the time you need to make it the best part of the game. Then you still can have a fair amount of time to make the beginning pretty good, but not out shine the ending. And then if something gets rushed or has to be cut it will be something in the middle.

But I guess BioWare would have a problem with that because it would be harder to make the ending first, and then try to tailor it to fit all the things that come before.
BioWare having the whole make your choices affect/change the ending thing going...........Yeah, that could be hard on them.

However like Shamus said; if you plan well enough ahead you should be fine.

 

[Frankster]

It's a very nice mix of denial, wishfull thinking and self-reinforcement.

I'm not entirely sure what evidence you're basing this on.

You can't disprove the "indoctrination theory" using evidence because the "indoctrination theory" isn't based on evidence: I believe that's the literal point of Nimcha's statement.

That's simply not true though, as a healthy number of pro indoctrination hypothesis vids really do try to use evidence to support their claim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZOyeFvnhiI This vid as good as any.
The only real point that gives me pause in the above vid is that sheperd gets the indoctrinated eyes in all endings save destroy+ the kid is seen to die before you meet him. But those can all be oversights so don't view it as concrete proof.

Personally I agree with Shamus in if that the hypothesis was true though, we would have known about it by now. I guess it's because I honestly don't believe Bioware has the writing cajones to pull off such a feat and I can more easily picture Casey Hudson wanting to insert an artsy statement for kicks then believe him to be a writing genius who uses the full interactivity of the medium and acquired conditioning throughout the 3 games (blue=paragorn, red=renegade and your conditioned to think as such only to have it used against you at the end) to make an ending that is pure concentrated genius.

As for whether the ending will or should be remade... I am neutral despite having been as gutted at the ending as anyone. As far as I'm concerned me3 ends when you return to earth.

But to add some positivity, I believe the control ending could have been a nice bitter sweet ending if they cut out the bit about joker running away and the relays destroyed. Sheperd becoming a pseudo king of the reapers and being in charge of the cycle of extinction is truly bittersweet in that whilst you do save the galaxy you are now a monster who will likely be back in a few thousand years to continue the reaper's mission.

 

[Agayek]

It seems like a lot of people want Shepard to survive above all things. And the possibility that s/he doesn't is making them furious. I can see this being a testament to how connected they are to the character they have created that it can inspire this much emotion.

However, I could not disagree more. Why is the concept of self-sacrifice so horrendous? I feel that if you can't think of any thing in your life that you would risk/sacrifice your life to preserve then you might need to cut back on the video games.

You really haven't talked to many people who were dissatisfied with the ending have you?

The problem is not "Shepard dies". The problem is that the ending makes no fucking sense, is tonally and thematically counter to the rest of the series, and is lacking in anything even vaguely resembling closure.

It's also incredibly sad that you could cut out the entirety of the Catalyst scene and the bit with the Normandy, leave everything else untouched, and it would be an acceptable ending, from a literary mechanics standpoint. If you're writing is mechanically improved by removing parts, you're doing it wrong.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

snip

what is it with people who havent played the games giving their opinions on them?

They're called different perspectives. Stop whining and reply to me in a more mature manner.

yes you have a different perspective, an ignorant perspective. there really isnt much more i can reply too until you play the games and actually know what you are defending.

ive already given my argument as to why ME3 is not anywhere close to even possibly dreaming of thinking of perhaps one day maybe being a subversion of anything. ive already given my assertion as to why even if they did it would be stupid and not the "greatest ending ever".

How is laying down a foundation of player choice and then ripping it out from under your feet not a subversion?

"you lose and everything sucks" is not a bold, artistic choice, and as shamus already said, this "message" can be given with much more brevity than 3 20-hour games.

Yes, the same message can be delivered in a shorter amount of time, but then it doesn't have the same impact does it? And as for your first part in that section, that's purely subjective. All of this is.

giving that message at the end of ME3, even if it was well done (which it wasnt)

I know it wasn't well done. I said that. I said if they kept the core themes of the ending and executed it better it would be great.

makes you a sadist, not an artist. people have life to disappoint them, to intentionally do it with an entertainment product is the epitome of trolling.

Have you ever heard of catharsis [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsis]? I'm beginning to get the impression that none of you have ever heard of what a tragedy is.

 

[Frotality]

i agree with shamus completely on this.


what gets on my nerves the most is that they most likely did not have a plan for ending the series.

oh they had a plan. drew kapyrshri-lanka or however you fucking spell it had the whole series written from the start like any good trilogy should be, but they abandoned his plan, apparently because a vague outline of it was leaked. on a completely unrelated note, drew recently quit.

and now we see what happens when two assholes try to hijack the ending of someone else's story. if your interested in the original ending (or at least what we know of it):

Spoiler

remember haestrom from ME2? that planet whose sun was expanding much faster than it should be? remember how it was proposed to be caused by dark energy? apparently, dark energy was going to fuck up the whole galaxy in a similar way if left unchecked.

but, an ancient race caught wind of this a very, very long time ago. time was running out, so in an act of desperation, they did the only thing they could. they could suppress the dark energy for a time (im going to take a wild leap and say it was about 50k years), but it meant something horrible had to be done. they had to utilize a very dark technology, taking their whole race, and turning it into harbinger, the first reaper.

SOMETHING about being a reaper or making a reaper held off dark energy for a awhile longer, at that was the reason for the cycle. the reapers would come by when the races of the galaxy had developed enough and harvest them into a new reaper, because they were unable to find a more permanent solution. that is what all of harbinger's racial comments in ME2 were about: he had singled out humans as the only suitable race to be a new reaper.

apparently, a human reaper was what they needed to stop the dark energy permanently, so the final choice of the game was going to be: subject your own race to the horrible fate of being a reaper for the good of the galaxy, or kill them all and say "we'll figure it out on our own, thanks."

i think that the reapers ended up killing all intelligent life as opposed to just harvesting the race they wanted as part of a "breeding" program to actually try and direct galactic evolution to make humans, like we were planned from the start as their final solution, but thats just my guess.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

its a lose-lose situation. bioware has quite effectively shot themselves in the foot.

EDIT: shot themselves in the "artistic" foot, i mean. their business foot will be healthier than ever before if they ransom the ending.

BioWare has a size 27 business foot, but a heart that is unfortunately 3 sizes too small.

Ha! Bad joke aside, I don't see why people keep saying that BioWare will lose their artistic integrity if they change their chosen ending because some of the fans asked. They have already done things that the fans have asked for in the past, and besides that their whole thing was that in game the player made all the choices. Hell they themselves said that it wouldn't have an A, B, or C ending. So changing it would actually just be in line with what they have been doing all along. This change in how the made the end really makes no sense, didn't do too well with the players, and thus doesn't need two stay as the ONLY ending. (Key word only.)

If the people who like the ending don't want it replaced then they can keep it. I just want to be able to have a choice. The original ending, or one that I may like better.

 

[Rad Party God]

FINALLY!!!, someone with common sense that has actually finished the game!

I don't have anything better to comment on the matter, I'm starting to feel tired of it and my week has been depressing overall.
*starts googling "cute puppies"*

 

[Imp_Emissary]

i agree with shamus completely on this.


what gets on my nerves the most is that they most likely did not have a plan for ending the series.

oh they had a plan. drew kapyrshri-lanka or however you fucking spell it had the whole series written from the start like any good trilogy should be, but they abandoned his plan, apparently because a vague outline of it was leaked. on a completely unrelated note, drew recently quit.

and now we see what happens when two assholes try to hijack the ending of someone else's story. if your interested in the original ending (or at least what we know of it):

Spoiler

remember haestrom from ME2? that planet whose sun was expanding much faster than it should be? remember how it was proposed to be caused by dark energy? apparently, dark energy was going to fuck up the whole galaxy in a similar way if left unchecked.

but, an ancient race caught wind of this a very, very long time ago. time was running out, so in an act of desperation, they did the only thing they could. they could suppress the dark energy for a time (im going to take a wild leap and say it was about 50k years), but it meant something horrible had to be done. they had to utilize a very dark technology, taking their whole race, and turning it into harbinger, the first reaper.

SOMETHING about being a reaper or making a reaper held off dark energy for a awhile longer, at that was the reason for the cycle. the reapers would come by when the races of the galaxy had developed enough and harvest them into a new reaper, because they were unable to find a more permanent solution. that is what all of harbinger's racial comments in ME2 were about: he had singled out humans as the only suitable race to be a new reaper.

apparently, a human reaper was what they needed to stop the dark energy permanently, so the final choice of the game was going to be: subject your own race to the horrible fate of being a reaper for the good of the galaxy, or kill them all and say "we'll figure it out on our own, thanks."

i think that the reapers ended up killing all intelligent life as opposed to just harvesting the race they wanted as part of a "breeding" program to actually try and direct galactic evolution to make humans, like we were planned from the start as their final solution, but thats just my guess.

Wait! I have yet to play ME3 (Had to let my friend go first.) I knew that dark energy crap would be important as soon as Tali said it was probably nothing.

So what, they just not talk about it? Damn that's lame.

 

[BreakfastMan]

i agree with shamus completely on this.


what gets on my nerves the most is that they most likely did not have a plan for ending the series.

oh they had a plan. drew kapyrshri-lanka or however you fucking spell it had the whole series written from the start like any good trilogy should be, but they abandoned his plan, apparently because a vague outline of it was leaked. on a completely unrelated note, drew recently quit.

and now we see what happens when two assholes try to hijack the ending of someone else's story. if your interested in the original ending (or at least what we know of it):

Spoiler

remember haestrom from ME2? that planet whose sun was expanding much faster than it should be? remember how it was proposed to be caused by dark energy? apparently, dark energy was going to fuck up the whole galaxy in a similar way if left unchecked.

but, an ancient race caught wind of this a very, very long time ago. time was running out, so in an act of desperation, they did the only thing they could. they could suppress the dark energy for a time (im going to take a wild leap and say it was about 50k years), but it meant something horrible had to be done. they had to utilize a very dark technology, taking their whole race, and turning it into harbinger, the first reaper.

SOMETHING about being a reaper or making a reaper held off dark energy for a awhile longer, at that was the reason for the cycle. the reapers would come by when the races of the galaxy had developed enough and harvest them into a new reaper, because they were unable to find a more permanent solution. that is what all of harbinger's racial comments in ME2 were about: he had singled out humans as the only suitable race to be a new reaper.

apparently, a human reaper was what they needed to stop the dark energy permanently, so the final choice of the game was going to be: subject your own race to the horrible fate of being a reaper for the good of the galaxy, or kill them all and say "we'll figure it out on our own, thanks."

i think that the reapers ended up killing all intelligent life as opposed to just harvesting the race they wanted as part of a "breeding" program to actually try and direct galactic evolution to make humans, like we were planned from the start as their final solution, but thats just my guess.

Can I get a citation please? Mainly because I don't know whether to believe that as true or not without one. And that ending also sounds awesome anyway. Way better than the one we got now, at any rate.

 

[zinho73]

Fantastic article, although I do not agree with some points.

First, the concept of change. I guess just a very little part of the people that are complaining is expecting that Bioware erases the ending and places another in its place.

For example, the ending of Mass Effect 2 was not the ending for me, because I bought the Shadow Broker DLC, inspired by the request of fans, that really add to the lore and story of ME.

Bioware can simply add to it with DLC or even a simple explanation of the more egregious plot holes.

Also, real change is not out of the table if they think that they damaged the universe they created - they recently promised to revise the book Deception because of similar issues, namely plot holes, inconsistency with previous lore and total absence of internal logic.

Also, as I said elsewhere: I do believe games are art, but when the artist treats it as a commodity he is inviting himself to compromise his own work, because he will have to deal with mundane market issues, specially when he promises something and delivers another in the eye of the consumer (see Casey Hudson's declarations).

Change already happened and happens all the time in media (if you want examples, I can give a few but people already talked about them a lot). The issue is more of false advertising and quality than about changing an artistic view.

But, again, congratulation for the article, I really liked it.

 

[Karathos]

I've read some of your articles in the past, and quite a few I've disagreed on for various reasons. Some even made me just shake my head and sigh, and sort of mentally file your articles under "Don't bother". This article shows just how stupid that is, and I'm not too proud to admit it.

An excellent read, and you summed up the massive shitstorm Bioware is in perfectly. Good on ya, sir!

its the only thing thats made sense about the way the writing is so jarring and different than anything enlse in the game so i tend to believe it and bioware are just in duck and cover mode

Agreed. The shift of tone in the writing is just so unbelieveably apparent -something- must have happened. Someone must've been ill, someone must've stepped in to cover for a writer. Someone decided to do a solo piece without checking with the other writers.

I refuse to believe the brilliant game I played and the brilliant story arcs I enjoyed through my playthrough were created by the same people who made the ending. It's like two different games.

 

[flaviok79]

In my opinion Bioware tried to pull an "Inception" ending. Casey Hudson is not Christopher Nolan. It did not work. I feel betrayed.

 

[Callate]

Eloquently stated, and a good deal more thoughtful than how a lot of the debate on ME3 has been presented. Thanks, Shamus.

 

[walsfeo]

So you didn't actually read the article you linked to?

Nothing anyone from Bioware indicated they were going to change what happened. The closest relevant quote I could find was "answer the questions, providing more clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey" doesn't even imply change. It hints at more hand-holding for the people who just couldn't understand what happened and aren't able to accept a somewhat ambiguous ending as an opportunity to discuss the issues raised.

 

[shadowmagus]

Drunk. Tired. I really hate all of you.

The ending was good.

Your constant bitching is bad, and you should feel bad.

 

[irishda]

Mass Effect 3 Ending Controversy

Mass Effect 3's endings have left quite a few people wanting. But for what?

Read Full Article

Thanks. Happy to see someone on the Escapist other then Critical Miss cover this from the bad ending side.

You cover the issue very well. Bioware is in quite a pickle with this. I really hate to see this happening, because there isn't a game company I love more. But really they should have known better. If they didn't then they have become divorced from their own work, to the point of customer suicide.

Again thanks. We needed more then just Forbes to understand where we are coming from, and not talk down to us.

You didn't read the second page did you?

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Well said, though affirmation doesn't necessarily have to be a happy end, it just has to be the end you could conclude was coming. With no affirmation of the preceding 90+ hours of play, no explanation of what happened in the end with that established physics breaking nonsense, and no closure whatsoever, we can effectively say there was no ending. It's like the last section of filmed got all tangled up, so they cut out everything from the final charge on the black gates with Frodo and Sam walking up the mountain right up to the end before the credits, showing Gandalf and Frodo getting on a ship with the elves--we'd have no idea how they got there, why they were leaving, or what happened to the other characters. Everything else was in order, and we loved every step of it, but suddenly things cease to make sense.

Even if they want to keep the theme of crushing defeat at the end, fine. Not every story needs to be happy. The entire fellowship could have died saving Middle Earth, and even though there were massive casualties on all sides, Middle Earth would have been saved. For Mass Effect, there's no such end, or choice of ending. Every action concludes that the galaxy is suddenly a worse place for having destroyed the Reapers. That's antithetical to everything that was previously established.

Perfectly said, though. No affirmation. No explanation. No closure. Not even the Greek tragedies would pull off an ending like that.

 

[Seanfall]

Shamus thank you not only for capturing how I feel about the ending, but for being one of the few contributors on this site who aren't mocking those upset with the ME3 Ending. I mean It's nice to know their's a few who get why we're upset. I seriously thought everyone on this site was just taking pot shots at us cause it was easy. But thank you for proving me wrong.

 

[Frotality]

snip

see, this is what im talking about. if you actually played the damn thing, you would see how very wrong you are. a subversion is making you think something will happen so that it is a shock when it doesnt, not giving you exactly what you expected (choice) in the most hackneyed, lazy way. that is just plain bad writing. they said 16 endings, and we got 16 endings, its just that they are 98% the same fucking thing. if they intended that as a subversion then they failed completely and as artists should have known people were just going to think they were lazy designers and they just failed to deliver what they wanted to. it is glaringly obvious that they wanted to give you choice in the ending, just utterly failed at it.

you seem to have fallen to the common fallacy that this is about not having a "happy" ending. a tragic end would have been absolutely acceptable, and was indeed expected by a lot of people. some have proposed the "indoctrination theory" that says the ending is a mind-control hallucination, and that your choices really reflect whether you submit to control or rebel against it: and most agree that if true it would be fucking brilliant. this is an ending where your best option leaves in the same desperate situation you were in before taking a laser beam to the face. this is NOT about people failing to understand a tragic tale. tragedy is like THE oldest fucking form of written story telling. understanding it is almost as primal as understanding our lust for sex and violence.

if a character you care about dies, you feel sad, which is actually GOOD because it makes you feel human and that your emotions are functioning properly. its the unspoken reason parents give their children pets: so they can eventually deal with the pain of death in an appropriate, manageable way.

this is the important distinction: proper context. a sad ending is only good if it makes sense. if all the characters in a story are unrelatable assholes, then if it ends with everyone dead and sad music playing, the sadness you feel is because you wasted 2 hours of your life on this bullshit, not because it was an effective tragedy: simply making you feel a certain way is not art, if it is then uwe boll is the greatest director of all time because of his stupid, bleak betrayal of countless source materials. art is about making you feel something(anything) in what your mind believes to be the proper, healthy way. bioware didnt rip the foundation of choice out from under you in a gripping tale of betrayal, they forgot what the foundation was and veered off into deus ex's story. the betrayal you felt wasnt in any logical context, it was simply what some people's brains defaulted to after seeing that nonsensical mess of an ending. it made you feel frustrated, like you should feel something and cant, which is the ANTITHESIS of art, and the ultimate failure of an artist. a lot of people fail to recognize this difference, people like children, hipsters, teenagers, and art snobs. this is how we get pretentious "artsy" films that dont make any sense; the creators believe that making you feel emotion in ANY form is art, that ANY sadness or disappointment is a satisfying conclusion. they believe that their overly-complicated and obtuse expression is perfectly reasonable. they fail to separate their own personal idiosyncrasies from the deeper workings of human emotion.

there is a big difference between negative emotion brought on by a gripping story and negative emotion brought on by frustration. a distinction you would probably know if you PLAYED THE FUCKING GAME. please dont reply to me until you actually play the series, because i have a feeling im just going to keep answering things that you would understand if you just knew what you were defending. the temptation to explain myself is just too great to resist, so please, take it upon yourself to either not continue this conversation, or wait until your play the games and actually experience this supposed "great" ending the way it was intended.

 

[Frotality]

Can I get a citation please? Mainly because I don't know whether to believe that as true or not without one. And that ending also sounds awesome anyway. Way better than the one we got now, at any rate.

OXM got the interview: http://www.oxm.co.uk/39736/revealed-the-mass-effect-3-ending-bioware-canned-before-release/