Well, it's the day before the Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut DLC comes out, so this is my last chance to express my full feelings on this whole matter before it hopefully ends once and for all. This is extremely long and contains a few spoilers, so you've been warned. I'm also going to copy this to a couple of other sites. So if you read it there, this is exactly the same thing.
I've just finished my third playthrough of Mass Effect 3's single-player campaign and it finally dawned on me as I was getting closer to starting the final battle on Earth. I get it. I finally get it what they're talking about with the ending. And by "they" I mean Bioware/EA. Not the multitude of whatever section calls themselves "dedicated fans". But to truly understand why I got what I got from the ending, we have to start from the beginning.
Late Spring, 2007:
I'm eagerly awaiting the release of this brand new epic game from Bioware called Mass Effect that's coming out in June. The only previous Bioware games that I've played were Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (I know Obsidian did that one, but Bioware did play a big part in that one), and Jade Empire on the Xbox. Every piece of information that I hear about this game makes me want it more and more. One piece of information involves giving your character a back-story before the game starts. I'm in the early stages of trying to come up with that back-story when I receive the heartbreaking news that the game has been pushed back until late November. So I lie around in my room one day and look at my shelf of Xbox games, and one in particular catches my attention. A little known first-person shooter set during the Vietnam War by the name of Men of Valor. I remember that the main character in that game went by the name of Dean Shepard. So I figured that I would make my Shepard a direct descendant of that character. By the time the game came out, I already had my fully fleshed out and realized back-story in my mind. Dean's experience in Vietnam had traumatized him and his family so much, that they used it as a cautionary tale toward their family away from anything remotely involved with the military. This worked until the story got to Dean's great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, Alaina (pronounced like Elena), who was enamored by the tales and wanted to be a heroic soldier just like him. This led to a rift between her and her parents and when she was old enough, she joined the Alliance Military and severed all ties with them. When I saw the three options for family history, none of them initially seem to fit with the back-story that I had become so devoted to and I was disappointed at first. But then, I looked at the Colonist back-story again and discovered not only was it the closest to what I had in my mind, it also gave me an idea for a slight improvement to my back-story. Everything happened as before except instead of abandoning her parents, they were killed in the Batarian attack and she felt so guilty about fighting with them that she initially honors their wishes and doesn't join the Alliance. But eventually she realizes that this is what she wants to do and joins anyway. She even carries Dean's dog tags, which became family heirlooms, around for luck and support.
"Why are you wasting my time with this" you're probably asking yourself? Because I wanted to show an example of how you can take something that may initially seem out of place, and mold it to something that One thing I've noticed about games like Mass Effect where you choose your outcome is that if something conflicts with what you think your character would do in the story, most likely it's because you chose the option that conflicts with it. If I spent all this time reprogramming and rehabilitating the Geth, realizing their self-awareness as individuals and brokering peace between them and the Quarians, allying them in my fight against the Reapers, and then I was told that my option of getting rid of the Reapers by destroying them also destroys the Geth, then that option is off the table.
One of the arguments I've heard someone make about the endings is that their Shepard would never accept any of the choices that were given to them. Let me make something abundantly clear:
I don't care about your Shepard.
Actually replace the words "I don't care about" with a something a lot stronger that means the same thing and you've got what I actually think. And while we're at it:
I don't care about your Hawke.
I don't care about your Revan.
I don't care about your Exile.
I don't care about your Grey Warden.
I don't care about your Student.
I don't care about your Vault 101 Dweller.
I don't care about your Third Street Saint Leader.
I don't care about your Crackdown Agent.
And I don't mean that in a "If I saw you on fire, I wouldn't bother to piss on you to put it out" kind of way. I mean it in the sense of "Don't tell me I'm wrong for finding enjoyment in something you don't like".
Another thing that enrages me is how now all of not only Mass Effect 3's hours of admittingly awesome elements are rendered nonexistent because of "the last 10 minutes", but now EVERYTHING THAT HAS REVOLVED AROUND THE MASS EFFECT NAME FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS has now been negated because of "the last 10 minutes". So everything I mentioned above about Alaina, her debates with Mordin over the ethical justification of the Genophage, her attempts to talk Garrus out of his rage fueled obsession of revenge against Sidonus, her connection with fellow Mindoir survivor Talitha, her showdown with Wrex on Virmire, her hope to save Kaidan despite knowing in reality that she can't, her and Kolyat delivering Thane's last rites, her speech that inspires Veetor and Kal'Reeger to step up to Tali's defense during her trial, not to mention Miranda telling off the Illusive Man, Conrad Verner's redemption from obsessive fanboy to actual legitimate contributor, Tali discovering her father's body and the experiments he was conducting on the Geth, the entire Grissom Academy and Ardat-Yashi temple missions, and of course, "That was for Thane, you son of a *****!". I'm supposed to just forget about all of that and have my last five years of enjoyment, excitement and emotion be snatched away because the lot of YOU can't stand "the last 10 minutes"?
I consider Seth from Street Fighter IV an abomination of any character in a fighting game, let alone a boss character. Cheaper than the Kasumi clone in Dead or Alive 4. Cheaper than Magneto in X-men: Children of the Atom (at least he's somewhat expected to be as powerful as he is). My rage against him has grown to the point where I will stop the game when I have to face him. As far as I'm concerned, the games boss for each character is their destined rival that you face before him. It's not worth getting my blood pressure up to the point where I'm ready to throw my controller through my $1500 wide screen TV. But is this a good enough reason to have him suddenly become the sole representation of everything related to Street Fighter? Am I supposed to let 25 years of gaming history be boiled down to some pale muscle bound dork with a ying-yang symbol inside his gut? He's not even enough of a reason to stop playing Street Fighter IV!
And let me make perfectly clear that this didn't just develop over the last three and a half months. This has been lingering inside me for over the last four years. Long before Bioware became a part of EA. The hundreds of thousands of beefcake\cheesecake fan art drawings of Garrus, Wrex and Tali. The overwhelming need to try and shoehorn them into a love story that did not exist in the beginning. The way they wanted to shove every non-human character to the limelight by trampling on top of all of the human characters that aren't named "Shepard" or "Joker". The constantly needless complaints about the Mako sections. (It's an armored dune buggy with a cannon mounted on the top driving mostly on unpaved, unexplored terrain. What kind of handling did you expect it to have?) By the time details about the second game started coming out and the "Gears of War clone" accusations started to fly around, the hatred that I had built up for this little subsection had gotten to the point where I didn't even want to acknowledge their existence. Now don't get me wrong. Some of the comedy related strips are genuinely funny, the fanfic stories that take place in the same universe but don't involve any of the main characters are usually very good. For example: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/escapist-comics/9758-Blue-Rose-of-Illium. And any of the straight up serious portraits of any one or group of characters deserves every positive endorsement that I can give. Here's an example of that: http://facuam.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4qkra8. But the ones that were gushing over with their fixation or disdain over characters was what drove me beyond the limit. If I have to read one more complaint about Jacob being "boring", I swear I will lose my mind. (If I was unreasonably paranoid, I'd think people's problem with him would be centered on another word that begins with the letter "B".)
You'd think that this would make me hate them to the point that I would gladly set my game up so that they would die horrible screaming deaths just to spite all of their super fans. But ironically, none of that garbage spilled over into the games for me. Tali is still my favorite character in the series followed by Garrus and Kasumi. It never affected how I chose my party members because I always made sure that I always went for maximum conversation potential. And if that wasn't a factor, than I just randomly chose anyone unless I had already chose them for the previous mission. That's because I made a decision long ago that I was not going to let this game that I love be tainted by them. I kept my ever growing anger towards the obsessives focused solely on them. You know the ones that think that they're such vaunted experts on everything Mass Effect related and envision how things should be done that they spit in the face of anyone who suggest anything different, even the original creators. I maintain this belief that if George Lucas had died at some point in the early 90s and the Star Wars prequels turned out exactly as they did today, same cast, same script, same everything, the obsessive section of the fanbase would view him as the patron saint whose grand epic was sullied by the soulless corporate jackals that were in charge of Lucasfilms. Meanwhile, Gene Roddenberry could still be alive today, had either personally directed the 2009 Star Trek movie or handpicked J.J. Abrams to direct it, have it turn out exactly like it did either way, personally tell everyone that would listen that it was the best representation of Star Trek and how proud he was to be involved with it, and the Trekkies that hated it before would label him the biggest traitor in the history of the world. Because of course the creators have absolutely no business taking the stories that they wrote and taking them into the direction that they want. And they have no right to hire people to help them go with that direction in the best way possible. It's not even about the fanbase as a whole. It's all about the loud, whiny annoying section of it that didn't exist back when their favorite franchise was in the early stages of development. How many of them were present expressing their devotion or disapproval when someone in the Bioware offices first said, "Hey, I've got an idea. Let's set our next RPG in the future. We can have our main character talk to a bunch of different aliens, only they'll all be like an established government. Kind of like Star Trek." Were they the ones that suggested that there be an alien race of only blue skinned women that live for 1000 years? To put it another way, if your individual name does not appear anywhere in the credits of the first game, then you should not expect any opinions you have on what changes and what stays the same to actually be enforced, especially when no one asked for them.
Now am I suggesting that Bioware/EA do the unthinkable and ignore fans when they voice their displeasure about something they created? Yes, yes I am. And not just them, it's all of these gaming companies. If you as a creator want to take your game and/or story into a direction that you personally think would be a benefit and the reason that you don't is because your fans don't think it's a good idea, then it's time for some hard decisions to be made. I may have mentioned this before but I have no interest in the new Tomb Raider game at all. And I'm not just jumping on the bandwagon now, I decided this way back when I saw that first trailer last year. I personally think that the direction that they are going with Lara Croft is a mistake. Crystal Dynamics/Square Enix doesn?t believe that. They decided that this was the way to go and I decided not to go with them and won't buy the game. And that's perfectly fine. They don't need my money, I don't need their game. They may be losing a number of old Tomb Raider fans, but they also seem to be gaining new fans that had never wanted to play the previous games. So something must be working somewhere, just not for me. The point is if you really want to go in this direction so bad and you can't convince those fans that want you to stay the nice comfortable way you are that the change is a good idea, then it's time to let them go. If not, then all you're selling is an unimaginative product, a game that is only there to stave of boredom of people's lives for an hour. And if that's all you're offering, then I can buy a deck of cards for way cheaper. And people had the nerve to use this as an argument. So after five years which produced four games, three comics, five novels and both a movie and anime in development, Mass Effect has become Air Jordan sneakers, the Nissan Ultima, the McRib, Head & Shoulders shampoo, the iPad, Haines underwear, the Slurpee, and Cover Girl cosmetics. Just another soulless thing that?s one and only reason for existing is to be bought by as many consumers as possible. And any changes to it should solely be made for that reason alone. Which legacy do you really think that a game like this deserves? Becoming popular because it turned into something that everybody else wanted it to be, or becoming popular because people liked what it had to offer?
Another thing that pissed me off to no end is the sheer and utter arrogance of these people. They didn't even have the common courtesy to take the typical "You're free to have your opinion" stance to anyone who disagrees with them. It's more like "We're right, and if you know what's good for you, you'd better not say otherwise." Think I'm overreacting? Let me fire off some examples. MovieBob Chipman, the local movie reviewer on the Escapist, voices his extreme displeasure against those that hated the Mass Effect 3 ending on Twitter. Not long after that, there's a thread debating on whether or not to boycott his videos, which are comprised of movie reviews and "The Big Picture" which cover more general topics. And this was based solely on his feelings on the ending on Twitter. Lance Henriksen, who voiced Admiral Hackett, was asked on G4tv.com about going back recording more lines for this extended cut. Basically he said, "Well, I thought we were done with this. But if they want me to do some more, that's fine." Apparently that was enough of an insult to them as a couple of posters pointed out how much he "needed to be educated on why people are really angry". And let's not forget the children's charity where people donated money thinking it was going towards paying to have the ending changed and not knowing they were actually donating to the charity. And when they found out, they started demanding their money back. And don't even get me started on the (inhale, exhale) "individual" who tried to bring the Federal Trade Commission in on this. I think this all stems from the fact that they were expecting gaming journalists as a whole to side with them. And when most of them didn't, instead of accepting the fact that not everyone shared their opinion and maybe a second look was in order, their credentials were suddenly suspect. And I'm finding it harder to accept "Well it's the Internet being the Internet" as an excuse anymore. Was the ending what I expected? Not necessarily. But you know what, neither was Enslaved, Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit), The Longest Journey, Dreamfall, Syberia, Syberia 2, Assassins Creed or Batman: Arkham City. That doesn?t make them bad, just unexpected. And Mass Effect 3's overall story seemed to hint pretty much that that was going to be Shepard's ultimate fate, no matter how much you wished it wasn't true.
I've been debating on whether or not to download this extended cut since it was first announced. The fact that it's free is the only reason I'm even considering it. If it wasn't, believe me, I would be laughing my butt off at all of the massive amounts of rage from all the haters and "Retakers" that demanded this and found out they had to pay out of their pockets for it. If ever there was a time for EA to truly become the evil, money-gouging, corporate gaming representation of Satan that everyone already accuses them to be, this was the perfect opportunity. And if they did, it would've made up for snatching up the NFL and NCAA licenses. That's because now I won't be able to look at it as nothing more than "Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Please like us again. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. This is what you wanted, isn't it? Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander." Even if this was the original plan for the ending, that they were going to release this five or six months from now and the complaints just sped up the timetable, I won't be able to truly believe it. So if I do go ahead and download this thing tomorrow, it better be a piece of immaculate perfection. From the moment the survivors step out of the Normandy to the credits roll, I'd better not hear one instant of something that I might find even a little off of what I currently have in my mind for my ending. Not one syllable uttered wrong, not one note slightly ajar, not one microscopic facial tweak too many, and not even the slightest hint that anything about the original endings have changed, no matter how minor. We're only supposed to be explaining the endings that are already there in greater detail. If not, then I will immediately delete it from my hard drive and replay my ending the way it's supposed to be. And if you still hate it because it's still the same, then hate it all you want. Complain about it all you want. Declare how much you will never buy anything with an EA logo on it as much as you want. But I don't want to see anymore petitions about it. I don't want to see any more lawsuits about it. I don't want to hear anymore calls for people to lose their jobs over it. This whole sad pathetic affair is over. Done. Finished.
The "Retakers" want to use "Hold the line" as their signature catchphrase? Well here's my signature catchphrase from the first game to them: "Don't piss in my ear and call it rain." - Urdnot Wrex.
If I seem to come across as angry and bitter about all this, there's actually a reasonable explanation for that. I AM ANGRY AND BITTER. This is more for me to vent that anger and bitterness than anything else.
Oh, by the way, "tl;dr (too long; didn't read)", then DR&DC (DON'T READ & DON'T COMMENT).
I've just finished my third playthrough of Mass Effect 3's single-player campaign and it finally dawned on me as I was getting closer to starting the final battle on Earth. I get it. I finally get it what they're talking about with the ending. And by "they" I mean Bioware/EA. Not the multitude of whatever section calls themselves "dedicated fans". But to truly understand why I got what I got from the ending, we have to start from the beginning.
Late Spring, 2007:
I'm eagerly awaiting the release of this brand new epic game from Bioware called Mass Effect that's coming out in June. The only previous Bioware games that I've played were Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (I know Obsidian did that one, but Bioware did play a big part in that one), and Jade Empire on the Xbox. Every piece of information that I hear about this game makes me want it more and more. One piece of information involves giving your character a back-story before the game starts. I'm in the early stages of trying to come up with that back-story when I receive the heartbreaking news that the game has been pushed back until late November. So I lie around in my room one day and look at my shelf of Xbox games, and one in particular catches my attention. A little known first-person shooter set during the Vietnam War by the name of Men of Valor. I remember that the main character in that game went by the name of Dean Shepard. So I figured that I would make my Shepard a direct descendant of that character. By the time the game came out, I already had my fully fleshed out and realized back-story in my mind. Dean's experience in Vietnam had traumatized him and his family so much, that they used it as a cautionary tale toward their family away from anything remotely involved with the military. This worked until the story got to Dean's great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, Alaina (pronounced like Elena), who was enamored by the tales and wanted to be a heroic soldier just like him. This led to a rift between her and her parents and when she was old enough, she joined the Alliance Military and severed all ties with them. When I saw the three options for family history, none of them initially seem to fit with the back-story that I had become so devoted to and I was disappointed at first. But then, I looked at the Colonist back-story again and discovered not only was it the closest to what I had in my mind, it also gave me an idea for a slight improvement to my back-story. Everything happened as before except instead of abandoning her parents, they were killed in the Batarian attack and she felt so guilty about fighting with them that she initially honors their wishes and doesn't join the Alliance. But eventually she realizes that this is what she wants to do and joins anyway. She even carries Dean's dog tags, which became family heirlooms, around for luck and support.
"Why are you wasting my time with this" you're probably asking yourself? Because I wanted to show an example of how you can take something that may initially seem out of place, and mold it to something that One thing I've noticed about games like Mass Effect where you choose your outcome is that if something conflicts with what you think your character would do in the story, most likely it's because you chose the option that conflicts with it. If I spent all this time reprogramming and rehabilitating the Geth, realizing their self-awareness as individuals and brokering peace between them and the Quarians, allying them in my fight against the Reapers, and then I was told that my option of getting rid of the Reapers by destroying them also destroys the Geth, then that option is off the table.
One of the arguments I've heard someone make about the endings is that their Shepard would never accept any of the choices that were given to them. Let me make something abundantly clear:
I don't care about your Shepard.
Actually replace the words "I don't care about" with a something a lot stronger that means the same thing and you've got what I actually think. And while we're at it:
I don't care about your Hawke.
I don't care about your Revan.
I don't care about your Exile.
I don't care about your Grey Warden.
I don't care about your Student.
I don't care about your Vault 101 Dweller.
I don't care about your Third Street Saint Leader.
I don't care about your Crackdown Agent.
And I don't mean that in a "If I saw you on fire, I wouldn't bother to piss on you to put it out" kind of way. I mean it in the sense of "Don't tell me I'm wrong for finding enjoyment in something you don't like".
Another thing that enrages me is how now all of not only Mass Effect 3's hours of admittingly awesome elements are rendered nonexistent because of "the last 10 minutes", but now EVERYTHING THAT HAS REVOLVED AROUND THE MASS EFFECT NAME FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS has now been negated because of "the last 10 minutes". So everything I mentioned above about Alaina, her debates with Mordin over the ethical justification of the Genophage, her attempts to talk Garrus out of his rage fueled obsession of revenge against Sidonus, her connection with fellow Mindoir survivor Talitha, her showdown with Wrex on Virmire, her hope to save Kaidan despite knowing in reality that she can't, her and Kolyat delivering Thane's last rites, her speech that inspires Veetor and Kal'Reeger to step up to Tali's defense during her trial, not to mention Miranda telling off the Illusive Man, Conrad Verner's redemption from obsessive fanboy to actual legitimate contributor, Tali discovering her father's body and the experiments he was conducting on the Geth, the entire Grissom Academy and Ardat-Yashi temple missions, and of course, "That was for Thane, you son of a *****!". I'm supposed to just forget about all of that and have my last five years of enjoyment, excitement and emotion be snatched away because the lot of YOU can't stand "the last 10 minutes"?
I consider Seth from Street Fighter IV an abomination of any character in a fighting game, let alone a boss character. Cheaper than the Kasumi clone in Dead or Alive 4. Cheaper than Magneto in X-men: Children of the Atom (at least he's somewhat expected to be as powerful as he is). My rage against him has grown to the point where I will stop the game when I have to face him. As far as I'm concerned, the games boss for each character is their destined rival that you face before him. It's not worth getting my blood pressure up to the point where I'm ready to throw my controller through my $1500 wide screen TV. But is this a good enough reason to have him suddenly become the sole representation of everything related to Street Fighter? Am I supposed to let 25 years of gaming history be boiled down to some pale muscle bound dork with a ying-yang symbol inside his gut? He's not even enough of a reason to stop playing Street Fighter IV!
And let me make perfectly clear that this didn't just develop over the last three and a half months. This has been lingering inside me for over the last four years. Long before Bioware became a part of EA. The hundreds of thousands of beefcake\cheesecake fan art drawings of Garrus, Wrex and Tali. The overwhelming need to try and shoehorn them into a love story that did not exist in the beginning. The way they wanted to shove every non-human character to the limelight by trampling on top of all of the human characters that aren't named "Shepard" or "Joker". The constantly needless complaints about the Mako sections. (It's an armored dune buggy with a cannon mounted on the top driving mostly on unpaved, unexplored terrain. What kind of handling did you expect it to have?) By the time details about the second game started coming out and the "Gears of War clone" accusations started to fly around, the hatred that I had built up for this little subsection had gotten to the point where I didn't even want to acknowledge their existence. Now don't get me wrong. Some of the comedy related strips are genuinely funny, the fanfic stories that take place in the same universe but don't involve any of the main characters are usually very good. For example: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/escapist-comics/9758-Blue-Rose-of-Illium. And any of the straight up serious portraits of any one or group of characters deserves every positive endorsement that I can give. Here's an example of that: http://facuam.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4qkra8. But the ones that were gushing over with their fixation or disdain over characters was what drove me beyond the limit. If I have to read one more complaint about Jacob being "boring", I swear I will lose my mind. (If I was unreasonably paranoid, I'd think people's problem with him would be centered on another word that begins with the letter "B".)
You'd think that this would make me hate them to the point that I would gladly set my game up so that they would die horrible screaming deaths just to spite all of their super fans. But ironically, none of that garbage spilled over into the games for me. Tali is still my favorite character in the series followed by Garrus and Kasumi. It never affected how I chose my party members because I always made sure that I always went for maximum conversation potential. And if that wasn't a factor, than I just randomly chose anyone unless I had already chose them for the previous mission. That's because I made a decision long ago that I was not going to let this game that I love be tainted by them. I kept my ever growing anger towards the obsessives focused solely on them. You know the ones that think that they're such vaunted experts on everything Mass Effect related and envision how things should be done that they spit in the face of anyone who suggest anything different, even the original creators. I maintain this belief that if George Lucas had died at some point in the early 90s and the Star Wars prequels turned out exactly as they did today, same cast, same script, same everything, the obsessive section of the fanbase would view him as the patron saint whose grand epic was sullied by the soulless corporate jackals that were in charge of Lucasfilms. Meanwhile, Gene Roddenberry could still be alive today, had either personally directed the 2009 Star Trek movie or handpicked J.J. Abrams to direct it, have it turn out exactly like it did either way, personally tell everyone that would listen that it was the best representation of Star Trek and how proud he was to be involved with it, and the Trekkies that hated it before would label him the biggest traitor in the history of the world. Because of course the creators have absolutely no business taking the stories that they wrote and taking them into the direction that they want. And they have no right to hire people to help them go with that direction in the best way possible. It's not even about the fanbase as a whole. It's all about the loud, whiny annoying section of it that didn't exist back when their favorite franchise was in the early stages of development. How many of them were present expressing their devotion or disapproval when someone in the Bioware offices first said, "Hey, I've got an idea. Let's set our next RPG in the future. We can have our main character talk to a bunch of different aliens, only they'll all be like an established government. Kind of like Star Trek." Were they the ones that suggested that there be an alien race of only blue skinned women that live for 1000 years? To put it another way, if your individual name does not appear anywhere in the credits of the first game, then you should not expect any opinions you have on what changes and what stays the same to actually be enforced, especially when no one asked for them.
Now am I suggesting that Bioware/EA do the unthinkable and ignore fans when they voice their displeasure about something they created? Yes, yes I am. And not just them, it's all of these gaming companies. If you as a creator want to take your game and/or story into a direction that you personally think would be a benefit and the reason that you don't is because your fans don't think it's a good idea, then it's time for some hard decisions to be made. I may have mentioned this before but I have no interest in the new Tomb Raider game at all. And I'm not just jumping on the bandwagon now, I decided this way back when I saw that first trailer last year. I personally think that the direction that they are going with Lara Croft is a mistake. Crystal Dynamics/Square Enix doesn?t believe that. They decided that this was the way to go and I decided not to go with them and won't buy the game. And that's perfectly fine. They don't need my money, I don't need their game. They may be losing a number of old Tomb Raider fans, but they also seem to be gaining new fans that had never wanted to play the previous games. So something must be working somewhere, just not for me. The point is if you really want to go in this direction so bad and you can't convince those fans that want you to stay the nice comfortable way you are that the change is a good idea, then it's time to let them go. If not, then all you're selling is an unimaginative product, a game that is only there to stave of boredom of people's lives for an hour. And if that's all you're offering, then I can buy a deck of cards for way cheaper. And people had the nerve to use this as an argument. So after five years which produced four games, three comics, five novels and both a movie and anime in development, Mass Effect has become Air Jordan sneakers, the Nissan Ultima, the McRib, Head & Shoulders shampoo, the iPad, Haines underwear, the Slurpee, and Cover Girl cosmetics. Just another soulless thing that?s one and only reason for existing is to be bought by as many consumers as possible. And any changes to it should solely be made for that reason alone. Which legacy do you really think that a game like this deserves? Becoming popular because it turned into something that everybody else wanted it to be, or becoming popular because people liked what it had to offer?
Another thing that pissed me off to no end is the sheer and utter arrogance of these people. They didn't even have the common courtesy to take the typical "You're free to have your opinion" stance to anyone who disagrees with them. It's more like "We're right, and if you know what's good for you, you'd better not say otherwise." Think I'm overreacting? Let me fire off some examples. MovieBob Chipman, the local movie reviewer on the Escapist, voices his extreme displeasure against those that hated the Mass Effect 3 ending on Twitter. Not long after that, there's a thread debating on whether or not to boycott his videos, which are comprised of movie reviews and "The Big Picture" which cover more general topics. And this was based solely on his feelings on the ending on Twitter. Lance Henriksen, who voiced Admiral Hackett, was asked on G4tv.com about going back recording more lines for this extended cut. Basically he said, "Well, I thought we were done with this. But if they want me to do some more, that's fine." Apparently that was enough of an insult to them as a couple of posters pointed out how much he "needed to be educated on why people are really angry". And let's not forget the children's charity where people donated money thinking it was going towards paying to have the ending changed and not knowing they were actually donating to the charity. And when they found out, they started demanding their money back. And don't even get me started on the (inhale, exhale) "individual" who tried to bring the Federal Trade Commission in on this. I think this all stems from the fact that they were expecting gaming journalists as a whole to side with them. And when most of them didn't, instead of accepting the fact that not everyone shared their opinion and maybe a second look was in order, their credentials were suddenly suspect. And I'm finding it harder to accept "Well it's the Internet being the Internet" as an excuse anymore. Was the ending what I expected? Not necessarily. But you know what, neither was Enslaved, Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit), The Longest Journey, Dreamfall, Syberia, Syberia 2, Assassins Creed or Batman: Arkham City. That doesn?t make them bad, just unexpected. And Mass Effect 3's overall story seemed to hint pretty much that that was going to be Shepard's ultimate fate, no matter how much you wished it wasn't true.
I've been debating on whether or not to download this extended cut since it was first announced. The fact that it's free is the only reason I'm even considering it. If it wasn't, believe me, I would be laughing my butt off at all of the massive amounts of rage from all the haters and "Retakers" that demanded this and found out they had to pay out of their pockets for it. If ever there was a time for EA to truly become the evil, money-gouging, corporate gaming representation of Satan that everyone already accuses them to be, this was the perfect opportunity. And if they did, it would've made up for snatching up the NFL and NCAA licenses. That's because now I won't be able to look at it as nothing more than "Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Please like us again. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. This is what you wanted, isn't it? Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander. Pander." Even if this was the original plan for the ending, that they were going to release this five or six months from now and the complaints just sped up the timetable, I won't be able to truly believe it. So if I do go ahead and download this thing tomorrow, it better be a piece of immaculate perfection. From the moment the survivors step out of the Normandy to the credits roll, I'd better not hear one instant of something that I might find even a little off of what I currently have in my mind for my ending. Not one syllable uttered wrong, not one note slightly ajar, not one microscopic facial tweak too many, and not even the slightest hint that anything about the original endings have changed, no matter how minor. We're only supposed to be explaining the endings that are already there in greater detail. If not, then I will immediately delete it from my hard drive and replay my ending the way it's supposed to be. And if you still hate it because it's still the same, then hate it all you want. Complain about it all you want. Declare how much you will never buy anything with an EA logo on it as much as you want. But I don't want to see anymore petitions about it. I don't want to see any more lawsuits about it. I don't want to hear anymore calls for people to lose their jobs over it. This whole sad pathetic affair is over. Done. Finished.
The "Retakers" want to use "Hold the line" as their signature catchphrase? Well here's my signature catchphrase from the first game to them: "Don't piss in my ear and call it rain." - Urdnot Wrex.
If I seem to come across as angry and bitter about all this, there's actually a reasonable explanation for that. I AM ANGRY AND BITTER. This is more for me to vent that anger and bitterness than anything else.
Oh, by the way, "tl;dr (too long; didn't read)", then DR&DC (DON'T READ & DON'T COMMENT).
