Update: Fan "Fixes" Mass Effect 3 Ending With A 539-Page Rewrite

[novem]

Anyone else find it just a tad disrespectful to just scribble out what was essentially the last pages of a book and write your own garbage into it and then go "yup, better."

Not really. Big budget games are made by committee to appeal to the largest number of people possible. You can talk about art and integrity all you want but games also have to encourage the viewer to seek out more ?art? by the developer. If the game does the opposite then its bad art.

 

[MSTJedi]

I've followed Mass Effect since the beginning, and consider myself a huge fan of the franchise, and I just found the original ending underwhelming at worst. It wasn't good, but it's not even close to as bad as the majority claims. So does that mean I'm just better at managing my expectations than most of the vocal Internet?

Sounds more like you never listened to any press about Mass Effect at all.

I think this is why I never had such a problem with the ending. I didn't listen to any of the hype going into the game (either from the press or Bioware/EA itself) other than my own anticipation for the conclusion of the series. Add to that my experience with other science-fiction stories and games with WTF endings and I was very pleased with the game overall. The original ending was far too brief and unsatisfying, but I feel that was all fixed with the extended ending DLC. Sure, I think they should have put more thought into it before releasing it, but I think they made good on it by releasing that free DLC.

 

[Rattja]

All I wanted from the series was to have one final fight with everyone I saved by my side. I can't be the only one that wanted this?

He seems to include your entire team, which is something I guess, but what about all the others?

Charging earth without being surrounded by geth, krogans, rachni, quarians, asari, turians(ok there were 1 or 2 of those) or salarians made me so sad.

 

[Sandernista]

I've followed Mass Effect since the beginning, and consider myself a huge fan of the franchise, and I just found the original ending underwhelming at worst. It wasn't good, but it's not even close to as bad as the majority claims. So does that mean I'm just better at managing my expectations than most of the vocal Internet?

Sounds more like you never listened to any press about Mass Effect at all.

Don't confuse the press with the audience. The press gave Mass Effect 3 very good scores, with a metascore of 89-93, so apparently they weren't exactly disappointed overall. The users however...

I wasn't talking about the uproar about the ending, I was talking about how before even the second title came out Bioware promised that all our actions throughout the series would matter and this would be a groundbreaking series. They lied.

 

[CloudAtlas]

I've followed Mass Effect since the beginning, and consider myself a huge fan of the franchise, and I just found the original ending underwhelming at worst. It wasn't good, but it's not even close to as bad as the majority claims. So does that mean I'm just better at managing my expectations than most of the vocal Internet?

Sounds more like you never listened to any press about Mass Effect at all.

Don't confuse the press with the audience. The press gave Mass Effect 3 very good scores, with a metascore of 89-93, so apparently they weren't exactly disappointed overall. The users however...

I wasn't talking about the uproar about the ending, I was talking about how before even the second title came out Bioware promised that all our actions throughout the series would matter and this would be a groundbreaking series. They lied.

All in all not being interested in Mass Effect when it came out and not playing until... ME3 with all DLC except Citadel was already out seems to have been one of the best things that could have happen to me in my gamer life. No particular expectations one way or the other, not influenced by marketing, unaffected by the ending controversy... only blissful ignorance.

 

[CloudAtlas]

And some had incentive to give ME3 good scores because one of their employees was in the game *cough.... IGN cough*.Then you take into consideration most have never even completed the game and that most game review sites "glossed" over certain issues and how they attacked people who did'nt like the original ending....sorry but proffesional gaming journalists came across as being shills during that time and they will forever be on my shit list because of it.

Now I only trust reviewers such as Angry Joe and Jim Sterling because atleast they don't try to BS anybody like most of the gaming media has been doing recentlt.

To each his own, I guess, but I'll stick with the explanation that it got high scores because, all in all, it was a pretty good game.
Oh, and Angry Joe gave it 8/10 as well, and given how he praised the Extended Cut, might have given it a 9/10, so he is pretty much in line here I'd say.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

I see, apologies, Eva just kind of makes me and probably a lot of others get a bit tense but you bring up a good point about closure. That probably was the big issue of the ending (though the star child sure was stupid beyond hell). I guess the guy behind vindication took the idea of closure too far and made it so that everyone, even the minor characters get an ending.

"Too far"? Do you honestly believe the fans would've complained about going too far if it was BioWare that released this ending?

no but i'm not really a big fan. I only played two and three and while enjoying it, they aren't the greatest games ever. Besides, hours of epilogue on people like adams or the engineers who I barely remember seems a bit much to me. The meat is based on the companions and more iconic figures like Joker and Anderson.

Look, some may like having all that much but I'm not exactly in the mood to find out what happened to the engineers after the game.

 

[CloudAtlas]

To each his own, I guess, but I'll stick with the explanation that it got high scores because, all in all, it was a pretty good game.
Oh, and Angry Joe gave it 8/10 as well, and given how he praised the Extended Cut, might have given it a 9/10, so he is pretty much in line here I'd say.

True,but Joe also pointed out several of the game's flaws including the ending.The rest of the gaming media?Not a peep.

And so would I. I could fill quite a few pages just talking about what I saw as problems and how I think this or that could have been done better (not 500 pages though), but at the end of the day I mustn't forget what a good time I had with Mass Effect 3, that it is in fact one of my favourite games with one of my favourite stories. How much that tells you about my tastes, about the quality of the writing in Mass Effect, or the quality of the writing in games in general, well, I leave that up to you.
On the other hand, arguing in defense of Mass Effect too much can feel a bit unreal at times, because, as I said, there is a lot of stuff that I didn't like myself as well. My gripes aren't exactly congruent with like the most popular complaints you see, but I still have them. But you don't have many options really when you have to engage very fundamentlist positions... except just staying away, arguably the wisest choice here.

 

[viranimus]

So its a fan fiction that makes its version of the ending both wrong and inferior. I really wish people would get over their own self importance as it relates to ME3 that tells them that the ending is "Wrong" and what they think SHOULD happen somehow make it better. In fact it is that very aspect that is at the heart of why so many people took exception to the ending. If they could only see beyond their own internalized visions of the ending of the trilogy, perhaps they could see that the ending was far far better than anyone gives it credit for.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Another site reporting on the this fanfic:

http://badassdigest.com/2014/01/20/super-fan-believes-hes-better-than-the-entire-mass-effect-3-writing-staff/

Not quite as positive as some other articles out there.