What excatly happened in the ending that caused people to lose their minds? I keep hearing about it and I keep wondering what's wrong. I would appreciate an answer or two, because I never played the games since I only own a wii (it was the least expensive.)
My question on the Mass Effect 3 ending.
- Thread starter Hannabella Doe
- Start date
It introduces concepts to the story in the last five minutes that are never even hinted at previously in the series, fails to address any of the questions these new ideas bring up, doesn't provide any sense of what happens as a result of the ending, and the ending sequence itself makes almost no sense in context. It's also precisely the same no matter what you do, rendering all of your previous decisions in the narrative moot.
Basically, they tried to go for a traditional What-The-Fuck Sci-Fi Ending, and failed to execute it properly.
Basically, they tried to go for a traditional What-The-Fuck Sci-Fi Ending, and failed to execute it properly.
This is a pretty fair summation.Hal10k said:
There was also a little boy who was a magical ghost, spouting exposition. I think little magical ghost boys are universally accepted as stupid, all due respect to Oriolo and Reit.
Well for starters, from a prose standpoint it's just plain poorly done[footnote]Counting the flaws: No denoument, no closure, no sense of catharsis, new elements and characters are introduced in the climax that further complicate the scenario rather than tying up loose ends, character actions feel out of character, invocation of deus/diabolus ex machina, ending's thrust feels contrary to the themes of the series as a whole, flimsy justification for the villains, events occur that run contrary to established lore...[/footnote] which is reason enough to be disappointed given Bioware's reputation for writing...if you want more details on those fronts you're going to have to be a bit lax with regards to spoilers. If you're willing to indulge in that, this, this and this are good places to start.Hannabella Doe said:
It's not that bad, it was definitely set up ahead of time. But it's the end of an enormous beloved franchise and everyone had their own ideas about how they wanted it to end. It wasn't a strictly speaking "happy" ending and it left some ambiguity to what might happen after and lots of people wanted answers. That's all.
The ending was eitherHannabella Doe said:
A: Written by a hack brought in during the last five minutes of the game, and just through something down on paper, and submitted his first draft as the script for the ending.
B: Designed to be a "retconnable" ending, with the intention of selling DLC.
Bioware was writing an epic to rival Star Wars. They promised the world, and everybody believed they could deliver, they had done such a great job up until now. The story of Mass Effect is rich, intricate, complex, and unmatched thus far in the gaming world.
The ending of the game gives you three "options", the only difference being the hue/coloring of the cut scene. No matter what your goal was throughout the entire series, it matters not. No matter what the goal of the Reapers was, it matters not.
In the final cut scene, the big bad is revealed for the first time, and is a complete idiot. These massive super intelligent, ancient warmachines are led by the biggest idiot in the history of the galaxy. The whole charade of "our motives are too complex for you to understand", was just the Reapers trying to save face when in fact the motives were too stupid to repeat.
----------------------------------
Personally, I subscribe to the theory that the last 20 minutes were all a crazy dream brought about due to painkillers in Shepards blood from the massive blast that hit him.
Which means there was actually no ending to the game at all.
It irritates me that people reply with such garbage. Read the footnote to the post right above yours. Asita laid that out better than any of my previous attempts. There are things in the ending that are blatant writing faux pas. Judging by the "definitely set up ahead of time" you are a believer in the indoctrination theory. I hope so anyways because if you are not, I have no words. Either way, the writing is bad and breaks Writing 101 structure in addition to more formal ones. When people say the end of Mass Effect 3 is hack writing, it isn't just to be hateful. Try getting someone to publish writing like that and see how far you get. They just successfully sold hack writing to millions due to brand recognition.Eusebius said:
I'll use my favorite analogy.Hannabella Doe said:
Imagine you are watching the original Star Wars trilogy. Everyone is fine up until the end of Return Of The Jedi, but when Luke is about the enter the Emperor's throne room the screen whites out. The next thing you see is a colorful swirl accross the screen of the sort movie makers in the 70s used to emulate an acid trip, in the middle of the acide swirl appears a rainbow hued platypus that in a deep Barry White-esque voice introduces itself as "Mingo, embodiment of the force". Mingo proceeds to ramble on about the natures of the light and dark sides of the force, and what has happened in the series so far. Mingo then talks about what might happen from here on out, but also tells you that it doesn't matter because what actually seems to happen might not actually be what really happens... sort of like Luke's experience in the cave on Degobah... and oh hey, who said Luke ever actually left that cave? Then with nothing else, the end the credits roll... after the credits your treated to this old astronaut geeze walking along with a little kid begging him for another story about The Skywalker.
Now you might be thinking "Therumancer, you are jerking my chain, that makes no sense whatsoever" the scary thing is that it's almost a direct analogy point by point to what happens at the end of Mass Effect 3 (and I use Star Wars as an example, because Mass Effect was defined as a spiritual successor to Star Wars: Knights Of the Old Republic). Some people who have played ME3 have told me it's rather clever that way. Assuming your familiar with Star Wars, imagine if it had ended that way instead... and now you can understand the rage afflicting the Mass Effect community.
There are other issues connected to it, like lies being made about the ending, which EA made clear in other interviews that got leaked (from an intended app about the ending they wanted to release) about having no plans to give people the promised answers to long standing questions in the series, or satisfy people with a conclusion, but instead drum up discussion and contreversy.
Then there is the issue of the whole thing being monetized, basically the trippy ending is garbage, but there are a few verry minor variations that change based on your collection of War Assets (which ironically makes no sense). There are not enough War Assets to see all the variations in the game, meaning that to see everything possible in the ending your going to need to buy DLC where they add more assets, purchuse a planned app called "Mass Effect Infiltrator" that ties into the game, or "out of the box" raise your readiness rating to de-nerf some of your war assets by playing the multiplayer mode, which is intentionally designed as a frustrating, painful grind, which can be made easier if you pay Bioware real money for random weapon unlocks instead of earning them.
So basically Bioware lied about what the ending was going to be, made it clear they were lying, and then decided to try and charge people real money to fully enjoy all the myriad layers of stench rising off the stinking dungpile of an ending they created.
Part of it is also that Bioware is screaming "artistic integrity" when part of the selling point of the series was that it was all planned out from "Mass Effect 1" with Bioware telling people that they were not making this up as they went along. Yet those app interviews show that they were making this ending to the trilogy late into the design process for ME3. They apparently ditched the original ending due to their declared intent to make Mass Effect into a franchise (and wanting to make that as easy as possible... a WTF ending that might not have even really happened definatly leaves their doors open, and discussion about it would act as hype for the next game), the current ending exploiting technologies to make money off of people that weren't even really viable for this when ME1 came out so it couldn't have possibly been planned. Basically EA/Bioware decided to sell out, gouge people for money, and then is trying to hide behind claims of artistic integrity when people are basically accusing them of having none since the ending doesn't even fit the series. The result is a lot of REALLY bad blood.
Oh yes, and most recently it's come to light that there was apparently some 7 year old German kid who suggested part of the ending (which lead to the bit with the old Astronaut I mentioned) and had his letter tacked to the door of the head writer as a guideline for "this is what I want". I've been actually looking for some way to disprove this one, but there is an interview out thre that seems to come directly from Bioware (like the other ones) that even say so, like they thought that re-doing the ending to please a 7 year old's sensibilities would go over so well with the fan base...We didn't even get a GOOD 7 year old when you get down to it, not one Axecop or Dinosaur Soldier in sight.
Actually, I have to disagree, this is about a lot more than that which I have laid out a few times (and covered in a briefer form in this post). One mistake your making is about how it was "set up ahead of time". Part of the anger comes from interviews from Bioware which were supposed to be part of a $3 Mass Effect app they wanted to sell, where the writers pretty clearly say they were coming up with this at the last minute.... among other things, such as deciding NOT to give people the answers that had been promised by Bioware previously, and wanting to set up an unclear ending to generate discussion... and so on. It was a last minute thing.Eusebius said:
If you've seen pictures of the "cocktail napkin" floating around, the point of that joke/borderline meme is that in that interview they claimed at the very end they plotted out the ending on a cocktail napkin and that was it. The joke being that someone found it laying around.
Then we have another interview saying that part of this ending came from fan mail written by a 7 year old german kid.
Then there is the monetization of the ending, which I went into in detail in my last post in this thread.
Just because there is a not being written, and a lot of ranting, does not mean that you should be so quick to dismiss the problems. Fans do rally for a lot of stupid reasons, but this stands out because it's not a minority of people doing it... it's on a truely epic scale, it's forcing industry attention, and for once it really is deserved.
To some extent I thin familiarity with fan rage has bread contempt, to the point where people on the outside of the specific issue have become incapable of recognizing when there is a legitimate issue with a game and/or company.
Lol! That's the most concise explanation ever. Good game!Uszi said:
Captcha was Mumbo Jumbo Oh the irony!
Actually, I might have a better analogy based on something that actually happened. Have you perhaps heard of "One More Day"? It's a small little story arc in Spiderman which essentially hit the reset button for the events and character development from the vast majority of the series due to the protagonists making a deal with a literal devil[footnote]which mind you, never displayed power on this scale before[/footnote] so Peter doesn't have to deal with the aftermath of his decisions of the arc immediately preceding it (contrary to the story's core message about responsibility). If you haven't heard of it, here's a nice primer and here's its Wallbanger page. If you have, think for a moment on the criticisms thrown at OMD, and then think about the criticisms of ME3's ending. It may just be me, but I'm noticing more than a passing similarity between the two.Therumancer said:
Well to be fair just by being comics it's not a fair analogy because they pretty much retcon themselves to death constantly. I did some catching up on the storyline, and honestly while it's bad, it's not totally unprecedented or unexpected. It's largely just another really badly written elseworlds story that messed with a status quo a lot of fans liked, probably because Joe honestly didn't like the way things were as the accusations go, but also because for business reasons Marvel wanted to have the "official" Spider Man in a state similar to the popular version that is being turned into movies, especially with plans for another reboot in the works (and I believe there were talks about another reboot even back as far as 2007). Besides which, some of the changes were ones I agreed with. I always thought organic web spinners were an affront to Spider Man myself, given that part of his whole schtick was being a genius as well as a guy with spider powers, and making some of his own gizmos (like special webbing for specific enemies).Asita said:
I think it fits more in the line of the movie trilogy I used as an example because we're not dealing with something that has been going as long as Spider Man, and to be honest you can say that what happened here can at least be justified as fitting within Marvel's universe to some extent, the various tropes on display having appeared elsewhere. The ending to Mass Effect was totally out of context to the story.
I'll also say that Mephisto's power level has varied, this level of power is not entirely unheard of as he's been a major player in cosmic events like say "The Infinity Gauntlet" where he was trying to confuse Thanos by acting as his advisor. Not to mention the reveals on what role he might actully play in the elseworlds type stories "Earth/Universe/Paradise X".
Mephisto has gone toe to toe with entire super teams over things like Thor's soul (back when he was cursed with mortality and couldn't heal, and was wearing the armor and eventually died), had a huge battle with Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom when they teamed up to try and rescue the soul of Doom's mother from hell, and has shown that he can stand up to Hella... again during the whole thing with Thor's soul many moons ago.
Basically if we concede that Wanda (The Scarlet Witch) can alter reality on a universal level, like with what happened to set House Of M/The Civil War in motion, and honestly that wasn't the first time she did this though mostly it was the result of other people using her as a focus to manipulate her potential power (like one Avengers storyline where she was the catalyst for turning the world into a sort of middle ages setting where the Avengers became fantasy versions of themselves), I honestly don't think it's an issue for Mephisto to do a bit of far more localized reality alteration/temporal retconning, he plays on a pretty big level even if he's usually holding his cards close to his chest, and has swatted the entire Avengers team (which I believe has included The Scarlet Witch as a member in the battle) a few times.
Now granted to be fair there was a time when Doctor Strange used to swat Mephisto almost like gnat (a few really, really old stories I've run into, like from my father's day) so his power level has varied, but it's not unprecedented for him to be portrayed on that power level.
It's a good example of crap writing, don't get me wrong, I'm not defending it seriously, I just don't think it's as bad as Mass Effect 3's ending, and not a paticularly good analogy given differant context. Especially seeing as you can justify a lot of it, if in no other way saying "well we've seen stuff as stupid before in that world".
I'll also say that I'm not sure if there is quite as much rage over this whole thing as there was over that whole Madeline Pryor thing. While I thought the whole storyline going up to Inferno was pretty good, there was a time when people would bring up "Madeline Pryor: The Goblin Queen" as almost a form of trolling given the whole mess with Jean Grey and the relationshup between here and her dupe, and the whole 9 yards. It's just that it all went down before the internet was that big a deal and less of a forum for mass ranting. I thought the whole storyline leading up to and including "Inferno" which tied in with that was pure awesome, but I'm not sure how many people agree with me even now, and they seem to have done their best to try and forget most of that ever happened.
This is pretty much spot on what i think aswell shame on you bioware for lying to your fans, selling out on your integrity & putting in a nonsensical hack ending just to further promote DLC.Hannabella Doe said:
Well, that is how it felt watching the Mass Effect 3 ending. The ending of Indigo Prophecy was not as bad as Mass Effect 3's ending though. Still, the overall second half did give the exact same feeling as the end of ME3.Smeggs said:
Correction, the ending to Indigo Prophecy wasn't as bad because Indigo Prophecy already had undertones of dark magic at work, and in the first five minutes you knew it'd be some crazy psychological acid-trip.Monster_user said:
Still, Alien-Cyborgs from the future fighting the main character DBZ style was so fucking nuts and whacky I couldn't help but enjoy it. But again, the game set itself up as being crazy from the beginning.