Mass Effect 3: The Wall

[Blade_125]

The new endings are what should have been there in the first place for the what the story played out at the end. The only issue is that the way the story played out at the end is terrible. Anyway you look at it the story doesn't make sense at the end. Introduce a new villian at the end? Any literary class you take will tell you not to do that.

Mechanically it failed too. What is the point to gathering all the war assets? They do nothing for the end. Even if it limits you to one or two coloured explosions you can still win. All your effort seems hollow since I could skip everything and run to the end and still be able to win. There was so much potential with the war assets that was skipped, I assume due to budget or rushing the game out.

If you forgive bioware and say you are satisfied because now there is closure you let them off the hook for writing a terrible end to a great story otherwise. If this was a book I would have a tough time reading it again, so I don't see much difference with a game.

I don't mean to harp on the issue, but the amount of people stating that the ending is good now really irks me. Seeing what happens after does not make up for horrible plot turns. I still don't get how a green explosion suddenly makes everything in the universe a cyborg. Guess I'll have to chalk it up to space magic.

 

[newdarkcloud]

I agree with that assessment of the Extended Cut. Yeah, it's still a bit "space magic"-y for my tastes. Yeah, I still wish you could use Charm/Intimidate to convince the god-child he's wrong (because he still is), but they did very well and fixed most of the other issues I had with the plot.

Also, props to Bioware for doing this free of charge. Most companies would've just written it off as a PR loss.

 

[Riff Moonraker]

I agree. I saw all the endings, but the ending I have to go with, is Destroy. Thats what MY Shepard would have chosen. He would be terribly sorry for having to choose the fate of EDI, and the Geth, but he has had to make hard decisions before. I am also happy to be allowed to say goodbye to my Shepard, but I miiiight not be done dead yet!

These extended endings were much better, and fleshed out alot of the biggest problems. Personally, I thank Bioware for this. I truly do.

 

[The3rdEye]

"She's pushing it... she's pushing it..."

"She is not just a really cool character to me, she is a fully realized person, with a clearly-defined value and belief system."

"... and she just pole vaulted over the edge."

You picked your background, the previous 30-some-odd years of your life from a list of three possible options, the binary morality system (which I still say is borked at times, changing who someone is against their will is comparatively more 'renegade' than just killing them), etc etc ad nauseam. Good character? Yes, but "fully realized person, with a clearly-defined value and belief system"? Koolaid.

My problem is that the new endings would never be as exciting or as cool as the indoctrination theory. As I tweeted to Grey, nothing can beat a mountain dew fueled conspiracy theory.

I was right for the most part the new endings with the plot holes dry walled and patched just doesn't leave me disappointed but it doesn't excite me either.

Now that the ending is out I would like to see Casey Hudson give a play by play on why this video is completely wrong.


Like why are the piles of bodies next to the pillar of light, why are the dead bodies wearing the same default armors as Ashley and Kaiden.

Why you see the oily shadows during the confrontation with TIM and Anderson. Why when you shoot Anderson you are then wounded and why when you reach the top of the light you arn't wounded anymore?

There are tons of tiny details that are still left unexplained and I would really like some answers.

Some or all of that probably shares the answer to "Why is '1M1' written backwards on certain points of the citadel during 'The Long Walk'"? Bioware wasn't paying attention.

Now they've gone back, realized they made some huge fuck-ups, and retconned the entire thing. After Deception, nothing should come as a (unpleasant) surprise anymore.

...anyone else feel the refusal ending was Bioware giving a big "fuck you" to the people who called them out on the original shitty endings?

That was the absolute first thing to cross my mind. "Huh... well fuck you too Bioware".

Too bad they'll be too busy rolling around in their truckloads of MMO generated revenue to give a shit about writing and character development anymore. Ah well.

 

[Roboto]

The endings still suck. Now they only suck less. Atleast this shit is done with.

Also anyone else feel the refusal ending was Bioware giving a big "fuck you" to the people who called them out on the original shitty endings?

Well the refusal simply takes what the player could expect to happen and makes it happen. The crucible is the last chance of all the galaxy and is the only thing they have left going for them. The last plan hinged on it, and that is where everything was amassed. You were given choices on how to fire it, but if you choose simply not to use it, the Reapers will continue to curbstomp the galaxy as they had been, regardless of how much military effectiveness there was. What else could be done? All that military might was only covering how well the crucible could be protected. Pushing back and defeating the reapers? Wasn't ever a remote possibility, which is why the crucible was made.

Why not? Its a work of fiction, and we're already accepting space magic as the only other possible solution. They couls have easily.worte " The war was brutal. Death was in the billions. But by the end we saw what few reapers remained flee back into dark space. We won on our terms." I thought of that in 30 seconds. Bioware could have made it work. Instead they chose to take their ball and go home if we didnt like their dumb endings.

"Rocks fall and they die."

EDIT: Hell, if they really wanted they could have tied it into EMS or something so that it would actually reflect our playthrough.

Thus negating the entire plot of building the crucible since you would have won anyway and probably would have won better if all the resources weren't put into it.

 

[Callate]

...Huh. Well, that sounds like a game I wouldn't mind playing. Thanks for sharing.


Pity about Origin, though.

 

[Akexi]

Ending repaired? Very much so. Regained my respect for Bioware? No, still don't like them.

 

[PureIrony]

My biggest problem with the extended cut ending are that they're retcons that aren't retcons; they accomplish the same goal as simply rewriting certain parts of the ending without actually doing it.

Take the Mass Relays; in the original, they blow up, and we're left with no implication that they would be fixed. People hated that. So in the new version, they blow up the relays again...and then immediately have them fixed. The end result is the same as just not blowing up the relays, but its done under the pretense of keeping the spirit of the original; its the epitome of having your cake and eating it too.

Almost everything that doesn't work with the new endings is the result of the old; they should have just started over. They didn't preserve any of their integrity by sticking to an ending that they came up with less then six months before release; if anything they diminished it.

 

[RaNDM G]

It kinda seems worse now. I especially hate how they copped out and used still shots for parts of the ending. Come on BioWare, this isn't 2001. Your space odyssey deserves more than that.

[sub]Heh heh. See what I did there?[/sub]

 

[Agayek]

I think with the new extended endings they did the best they could have done given what they had before.

The star child still irks me to no end but atleast now the endings make sense. For example they changed the way the mass relays "explode" and they also show how the galaxy rebuilds after the war.

And the endings carry alot more emotional weight then the original endings ever could wich is nice.

Thought if they had done this from the start they could have avoided this whole debacle to begin with... shows that bringing a saga to an end deserves the extra bit of work and effort put into the ending.

This is pretty much my take on it. With what they had, the EC is probably the best we could have hoped for.

It doesn't address the biggest issues with the ending (e.g., the utterly asinine explanation of "to stop you from being killed by robots, I'm gonna kill you with robots"), but it does make it far more emotionally satisfying. They wouldn't be able to address the big issues though without re-doing the entire ending sequence, and that just wasn't going to happen.

EC was about what I had expected, and it definitely improved the ending a substantial amount, but a shinier turd is still a turd.

 

[Susan Arendt]

"She's pushing it... she's pushing it..."

"She is not just a really cool character to me, she is a fully realized person, with a clearly-defined value and belief system."

"... and she just pole vaulted over the edge."

You picked your background, the previous 30-some-odd years of your life from a list of three possible options, the binary morality system (which I still say is borked at times, changing who someone is against their will is comparatively more 'renegade' than just killing them), etc etc ad nauseam. Good character? Yes, but "fully realized person, with a clearly-defined value and belief system"? Koolaid.

To me, she is fully realized. I'm not talking just about what's in the games, I'm talking about the mindset that I use to make those choices. I know who Joanna is beyond the material that's provided in the Mass Effect lore. I know how she would react to virtually any situation, be it an awkward first date or an attack by space vampires. It's not Koolaid, it's personal investment in the character.

 

[TheDoctor455]

I think with the new extended endings they did the best they could have done given what they had before.

The star child still irks me to no end but atleast now the endings make sense. For example they changed the way the mass relays "explode" and they also show how the galaxy rebuilds after the war.

And the endings carry alot more emotional weight then the original endings ever could wich is nice.

Thought if they had done this from the start they could have avoided this whole debacle to begin with... shows that bringing a saga to an end deserves the extra bit of work and effort put into the ending.

Perhaps, but all four endings still completely fly in the face of one of the most important running themes of the series: "victory by uniting and standing together in spite of differences." Destruction: sort of goes with the theme, but you still killed the Geth and Edi to do it, so screw them apparently. Control: yeah... there's just nothing better than showing that unity can win out by completely enslaving another sentient race; granted, they were trying to kill you, but still. Synthesis: this one is one of the worst endings; let's all unite to fight the Reapers and... then become allies with them by forcibly rewriting everyone's DNA so that EVERYONE'S THE SAME, throwing diversity and any significant differences completely out the window. Rejection: don't like the other terrible options? Well screw you audience, you get to utterly fail at saving the universe no matter how many resources you've gathered, once again affirming that one's choices in Mass Effect 3, in the words of Agent Kay from Men in Black, "mean precisely dick."

Furthermore, the starchild's very existence turns the entire first game into one Massive plot hole. Why did Sovereign need to take over the station's signal in the first place if the starchild was already there? How did the Protheans even disrupt the signal at all if the starchild was there? (and they didn't even know about it and therefore couldn't possibly have accounted for it)

 

[Fappy]

And this article pretty much solidified in my mind that Bioware really needs to shift their PLOTS to be more character oriented than they are. They are not as good at big-huge-world-in-danger plots as they used to be, nowhere near. However, ME3 shows how far they've come with their characterization. Yeah there are still some silly things and character cliches they are known for, but if they scaled down their stories and had character-driven plots that could logically be character-driven I think they'd have far more narrative success. People say DA2 was an attempt at this, but I refuse to believe that DA2's mess of a plot is a legitimate example of Bioware writing.

 

[Amaror]

I think with the new extended endings they did the best they could have done given what they had before.

The star child still irks me to no end but atleast now the endings make sense. For example they changed the way the mass relays "explode" and they also show how the galaxy rebuilds after the war.

And the endings carry alot more emotional weight then the original endings ever could wich is nice.

Thought if they had done this from the start they could have avoided this whole debacle to begin with... shows that bringing a saga to an end deserves the extra bit of work and effort put into the ending.

There would have been a debate nontheless, since the endings are still not really good, but there wouldn't have been a shitstorm like that.

The endings still suck. Now they only suck less. Atleast this shit is done with.

Also anyone else feel the refusal ending was Bioware giving a big "fuck you" to the people who called them out on the original shitty endings?

I actually thought it was the best of the four, because it's the only one that makes sense and keeps up with the theme of mass effect as a whole. The other ones just feel ... misplaced.
They don't belong in Mass Effect 3.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Oh look, more Bioware shill.

Look, i'll readily admit nothing will please me. Not after the haphazard, unprofessional, impolite and condescending way this whole sordid affair was handled. From the terrible narratively horrible ending, to the insults from the Bioware PR machine and the gaming media? Your better off letting this one lay and never bringing it up again.

 

[Doom972]

I chose destruction. When the moment came for Tali (my love interest) to put my name on the wall, she hesitated and didn't do it. Then I saw Shepard was still breathing. I'm going to assume they'll rescue him.
If I'm going to choose a bright new future for the current advanced races of the galaxy, I prefer one I have a chance to live through. Also, I came to destroy the reapers and no indoctrination-controlled illusion will change my mind.

 

[Zhukov]

The EC brings the endings from a F to a C.

I'd prefer an A+, but fuck it, I'll take a C if that's all that is on offer.

They now give sufficient closure to allow me to ignore the stupid bits.

 

[TimeLord]

Still no romance Legion option? Poor show BioWare.

Just kidding. I liked the endings originally and like them more now. Especially the Synthesis ending.

I wasn't kidding about the romance Legion option by the way. I want one.

 

[ZephrC]

I have to say... this article isn't wrong, but it just was too little too late for me.

I overanalyzed the original ending to death desperately searching for some way in which it didn't suck. I didn't find any; it failed on every possible level.

This ending, however, is actually pretty decent. If I'd gotten this to start with I would have been totally happy with the game, but because I found all those flaws with the original, many of which are still present in this version (simply much less noticeable between all the things that don't suck) I just can't enjoy the extended ending the way I should.

 

[Agayek]

I actually thought it was the best of the four, because it's the only one that makes sense and keeps up with the theme of mass effect as a whole. The other ones just feel ... misplaced.
They don't belong in Mass Effect 3.

I agree with this completely. The rejection ending is by far the best possible choice from a narrative standpoint. It's the most in-keeping with the rest of the series and makes at least a token effort at fixing the problems inherent with the Catalyst and it's "logic".