What if the original ME 3 ending had been the true one?

[Comocat]

I don't think most of the endings flaws are a result of it's concept, I think they stem from execution. The main problem Bioware faced was that they decided at some point(Presumably after the first game) that they wanted to add greater philosophical depth to the story by giving the Reapers a logical motivation that the player would have to resolve fighting against on an ethical level as well as the already present physical one.

However, they failed to sufficiently foreshadow that motivation, thus they had to either cut it out entirely, or try to deliver all of it at once. As a result, it comes out as an exposition dump at the very end that (With no prior evidence to support it) we're forced to accept based on conjecture.

I think either concept could have worked, if they were thematically and logically foreshadowed from the start of at least the second game. That way, when the Catalyst shows up, it doesn't have to explain the whole thing, just put the pieces together.

What I think sucks is that this problem, and the biggest problem with the rest of the game, could have been resolved the same way.

The Crucible is a Deus Ex Machina, no way around it. As much as I adore the Mass Effect series, the presence of the Crucible makes no sense and is completely unnecessary; It's just a plot device Bioware jammed in so the story could move forwards, it has no thematic or logical reason to exist.

So why not scrap the whole thing and replace it with something way more interesting?

It's a real shame Bioware didn't come up with the Leviathan earlier, because it's an idea that could have fixed the entire game.

[spoiler/]"We need a way to stop the Reapers, and we also want the player to discover their origins and motivations"

"The plot of the third game will be about Shepard searching for a creature that can supposedly kill Reapers, but then it turns out that it's the creature that created them?"

Not only would this allow Shepard to search for ways to defeat the Reapers at the same time as he learns about them, thus allowing Bioware all the time they need to explain the motivations of the Reapers in a more methodical and thorough fashion, it gives TIM something to actively pursue, find out about the Reapers before Shepard does to prevent him from destroying them.

This would also make the search for the Leviathan more convincing, (Two people managed to track it down within days by cross referencing data?) it takes multiple species records to uncover it's hiding place.

Almost every dangling plot thread could be tied up by the Leviathan; What were things like before the Reapers? why do they want to destroy us? where did they come from? what is the Catalyst and who made it? How does *insert plan to destroy the Reapers* work?

Everything we need to know about the Reapers and their motivation could have been introduced gradually, and made for much more interesting plot developments than a whole lot of nothing and a bunch ridiculous shit at the end.[/spoiler]

The nail in the coffin for the ending of Mass Effect 3 was that they clearly waited until the last minute to decide what it was. If Bioware wanted their ending to be this complex they should have planned it from the start, the last five minutes of a multi-part epic isn't the place to introduce concepts that change the nature the story.

The Reapers motivations were an afterthought; for most of the story they're paid little mind, so it should come as no surprise that basing the ending of the entire game on them makes you look like you're pulling things out of your ass.

This pretty much sums of my view much better than I could have stated it. IMO either ending basically pull a brand new theme out of the air and expect the player to run with it. I call this the "Matrix Effect." You have an original movie which has some pretty awesome action sequences, but then to justify a 2nd a 3rd movie the directors pulled in some pretty crazy religious themes which detracted from the "omg bullet time" awesomeness.

 

[wintercoat]

Someone please explain to me just why everyone says that none of the choices matter. Just because you die. Even if the entire universe dies at the end of the game. That would not invalidate the choices made during the series.

We all eventually die and all our world turns to dust.

But that does not invalidate the things we do and the people we care for today.

For me the resolutions with the characters, the tieing up of plot threads throughout the series made the game worth it. That was the ending not a little cutscene.


My ME3 turned out completely different from so many other peoples I had different people alive, different friends different quests and adventures. Even if I took the same choice as another Escapist here at the Catalyst I can bet that my ME Universe would be a completely different place than his.

Nobody is making that claim. The argument is that, because you can get the same three endings no matter which combination of choices you make throughout the series, as long as you hit the appropriate EMS score, you're choices mean nothing.

A Shepard who kills Wrex on Virmire, kills the Rachni queen, lets the council die, sacrifices Kaiden, hands over legion to Cerberus, get's his entire team killed in the suicide mission, gives Cerberus the Collector base, doesn't cure the Genophage, and has the Quariians kill the Geth will be able to get the same endings as a Shepard who doesn't kill Wrex, saves the Rachni queen, saves the council, sacrifices Ashley, activates Legion, leaves no man behind on the suicide mission, destroys the Collector base, cures the genophage, and brokers peace between the Quarians and Geth.

Your choices literally have no bearing on the ending other than adding to an aggregate score that determines how many of the three endings you get to choose from. No matter your choices, the ending plays out the same.

 

[teebeeohh]

ok i was not aware the source of the dark energy was supposed to be using mass effect technology. because that makes that ending terrible, since they actively spread the tech.

i have made my peace with the control ending, it doesn't kill the geth, it fundamentally doesn't change a whole lot in the universe(because my shepard would not get his reapers involved in politics, except maybe to stop genocide and such) and allows more things et in the universe, which i support, despite fearing what may come(hey, hire Relic to make a fleet combat RTS)

 

[Souplex]

The cut ending was better than the used ending, and the extended cut, but still kind of stupid.

Spoiler: Luckily, I have the ideal solution that will never be used!

1. Cut everything involving that damn kid.
2. Everything else is the same up until you get to the Crucible.
3. At the crucible you speak to Harbinger instead of the StarChild.
4. He explains that the goal of the Reapers is the overall preservation and archiving of life. (Take life, preserve/archive it in reaper form so that it can last forever, and wipe the slate clean so there's room for new life to flourish)
5. There is no synthesis ending because synthesis is stupid. The destroy ending only targets organic/synthetic hybrids. (The Geth, EDI, and every single machine in the galaxy is safe, because how would it distinguish between synthetic life and machines that aren't synthetic life?) Control ending remains unchanged. With a high enough EMS it is possible to defeat the reapers. (If you read the codex, the war seems quite winnable. There's a major disconnect between what you're presented in the game and in the codex.)

 

[floppylobster]

What did you play the game for, then? Because the only things I can really think of going for the franchise were player agency, something they shat on entirely, and story, something they also shat on entirely.

I really liked exploring in the Mako in the first one (trying to get up those hills). I liked the aesthetic design of the second one (and the reload animation). And I enjoyed exploring the planets for minerals (it had a very simple retro game feel to it). And the third one was pretty much the same as the second in terms of gameplay so I didn't really like it as much (plus the Mako and mineral mining were gone). But the AI responded to fighting with Biotics better, so I had enough fun with that to get me through the turgid story.

 

[BrotherRool]

The leaked ending was way worse even than the one they went with. All that utter BS about the 'inevitable conflict' and the synergy stuff and the complete misunderstanding of what an AI is and how you can't just splice human and robot bits together, was all present in the dark energy ending. It was a confused mess that hadn't been explored at all in any of the games except for one mention at the end of one quest.

A good ending that doesnt make

 

[Frotality]

quoted for maximum propagation into the dome-sponges of the escapist commune.

yeah, the real killer of the ending is that it tries to introduce and resolve new elements that are irrelevant to every theme present in the series in the last ten minutes. the leaked ending had one reference in ME2 over the one we got, so really bioware didnt plan this trilogy very well at all. really, i blame ME2 for having nothing to do with anything and making it nigh impossible for the finale to be satisfactory: in the end shepard starts ME3 no closer to stopping the reapers than at the end of ME1, but thanks to ME2 there were a bunch more side characters and save file permutations to account for that really contributed nothing to the reaper plot.

so i dont hate bioware for fucking up ME3, i hate them for fucking up ME2 and shooting themselves in the foot plotwise. dont get me wrong, it was a great game, but you have to admit the plot was more appropriate as a spinoff than as a sequel.

captcha: 'propane accessories'. why cant all forum security measures reference king of the hill?

 

[Macgyvercas]

I don't actually know anything about the leaked ending. I heard it had something to do with dark energy?

Anyone know the exact details of it? Or is it all hearsay...

The reapers were building more of them to stop dark energy from causing the universe to expand more and more rapidly (like it probably is IRL XD). Supposedly a human reaper could be used to solve the problem once and for all... For some reason. The final decision at the end was supposed to be choosing to sacrifice humanity to save the others, or destroying the reapers and finding your own way to solve the problem.

That's what I've heard anyway.

Here's the story as I understand it.

- The existence and subsequent use of Element Zero generates dark energy, increasing the rate of expansion of the universe leading to its early demise
- The Reapers are giant supercomputers created from entire species to find a way of reversing the spread of dark energy increasing the life-span of the universe . Each Reaper is able to view the problem from the perspective of that species, and it's ability to think of solutions within that perspective is tied to the genetic diversity of that species.
- The Reapers periodically harvest life in order to add to their work on the problem, and allow new unique species to develop.
- The Reapers believe that even though forcing life to develop Element Zero based civilisations will accelerate the death of the universe it is necessary in order to collect enough build a Reaper capable of determining a solution before it is too late.
- Humans are the most genetically diverse species in any cycle, and the Reapers believe that a Human Reaper is their best chance of solving the problem.

The final choice was: Do you defy the Reapers and rally together to attempt to solve the problem yourself. Or do you hand humanity to the Reapers to ensure the greatest chance of the universe's survival.

Note that this isn't inherently better explained, nor does it necessarily fix the lack of previous actions making a difference.

Well damn...I would have liked to see that ending.

 

[AD-Stu]

Yeah I thought all that human genetic superiority was just a bit stupid and egotistical mumbo jumbo used in order to keep audiences interested and i had no idea that related to further plot development

I have a suspicion that even Drew Karpyshyn was keeping a foot in both camps with regard to this ending - in interviews since he's said that it was just one possible version, and I'm inclined to believe him with the way he planted the seeds for it, but in such a way that it doesn't really matter if they're not expanded on further.

I immediately disliked the dark energy ending right when I heard about it. I had already finished ME3 and done some thinking on how to make sense of the ending, and it's a whole lot better than how the original ending would have gone.

Let's say that everything in ME3 was the same as it is now, all the way up until the ending sequence when the Catalyst appears and flips the galaxy upside down.

There's nothing to suggest that's how they would have done it though - it's reasonable to assume there would have been some other foreshadowing and development of the plot rather than just a straight switch for the red-green-blue death beams in the last five minutes.

Sure, they could have done it that badly, but the foreshadowing in ME2 suggests they probably would have handled it a little better...

 

[floppylobster]

What did you play the game for, then? Because the only things I can really think of going for the franchise were player agency, something they shat on entirely, and story, something they also shat on entirely.

I really liked exploring in the Mako in the first one (trying to get up those hills). I liked the aesthetic design of the second one (and the reload animation). And I enjoyed exploring the planets for minerals (it had a very simple retro game feel to it). And the third one was pretty much the same as the second in terms of gameplay so I didn't really like it as much (plus the Mako and mineral mining were gone). But the AI responded to fighting with Biotics better, so I had enough fun with that to get me through the turgid story.

Eh, to each his own I guess, but I find all of that to be completely peripheral to what the game was about.

The upside of my experience is that the ending that so many people were up in arms about didn't bother me at all. In fact I was rushing through the end dialogue because I was late to work. As soon as the credits rolled I turned it off and never gave it another thought.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

...that would've been awesome.

Why? Just... why, BioWare?

Because the dark energy ending makes no goddamn sense when you remember that the mass effect relays are Reaper technology, deliberately left there for newly evolved races to discover and use.

If element zero and the mass relays are increasing dark energy to a galactically lethal point, and the Reapers are trying to stop dark energy to save the galaxy, their tactic of leaving a whole bunch of mass relays and eezo around for races to find and use in 50,000 year cycles looks really freaking stupid. It's a huge plot hole - Sovereign stated that the relays only existed to trap sentient races so that they could be more easily reaped. How does that work if the reason you're doing the reaping in the first place is because the mass relays are causing the galaxy to explode? It's like fighting global warming by finding a tribe of primitive natives, then giving them the combustion engine and a shitload of oil.

I've heard some people go on about how they needed to assimilate genetically diverse races to calculate a "solution" to the dark energy problem, but to be honest the obvious solution seems to be "don't use the mass relays that are causing the problem in the first place."

And the human reaper thing makes no sense - humans are the most genetically diverse race in the galaxy? Not the race of asari who literally absorb the DNA of the species they mate with so that the most desirable genetic traits are retained in the offspring? It's the humans, who have been breeding on the same planet with the same environment for basically all of their existence until about a hundred years before the series started? That doesn't make sense.

It's even stupider than the ending they went with.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

I immediately disliked the dark energy ending right when I heard about it. I had already finished ME3 and done some thinking on how to make sense of the ending, and it's a whole lot better than how the original ending would have gone.

Let's say that everything in ME3 was the same as it is now, all the way up until the ending sequence when the Catalyst appears and flips the galaxy upside down.

There's nothing to suggest that's how they would have done it though - it's reasonable to assume there would have been some other foreshadowing and development of the plot rather than just a straight switch for the red-green-blue death beams in the last five minutes.

Sure, they could have done it that badly, but the foreshadowing in ME2 suggests they probably would have handled it a little better...

They probably would have done more to foreshadow it, and maybe they would have thought it out better, but that doesn't change the fact that they were planning to give us that balls-awful binary choice in the end, where only one of those choices makes any freaking sense. That would have been a more broken ending than the one we got (which, I would still argue, wasn't all that broken in any case).

The reason I made that assumption you quoted was because nothing they could have done would make any difference once you got to the end.

 

[UrinalDook]

And the human reaper thing makes no sense - humans are the most genetically diverse race in the galaxy? Not the race of asari who literally absorb the DNA of the species they mate with so that the most desirable genetic traits are retained in the offspring?

The game actually tells you, I can't remember through characters or the codex, that that's an 'urban myth'. The asari don't actually 'take' any DNA from their alien partners and impart it to the offspring. For one thing, I'm pretty sure one species using the DNA of another, completely alien species, to reproduce is biologically impossible. All the asari do is use others to 'randomise' their own DNA so their kids aren't genetically identical. It just became social convention to perceive adopted traits from the 'father' (asari from krogan fathers tending to be more violent, etc.), and stigma for asari to breed within the species. I'm pretty sure Liara flat out tells you there's no scientific basis for the perception, though.

Just a nerdy bit of trivia. I totally agree that the 'genetic diversity' they went for with the humans was bullshit.

Sorry, no. Nothing can be stupider than synthetics destroying organics to prevent synthetics destroying organics.

That's an oversimplification, and it irks me every time I see it. The Reapers are destroying some organics, and in their eyes preserving the majority of them so that synthetics don't destroy all organics. The idea being that uncontrolled synthetics will eventually spread across the entire galaxy, wiping out all organics including the ones that are 'primitive' in our time, that we haven't encountered yet. The Reapers believe their cycle of destruction at least gives every race in the galaxy a fair chance to reach their apex, get out and see the galaxy and generally 'have their turn' before the Reapers come along and do the equivalent of recording their memoirs, pickling their bodies and putting them in a tank where they can be 'preserved' without inflicting themselves upon the galaxy.

Argue all you want that it's broken logic borne of a false hypothesis. You'd be right, no one is saying what the Reapers do makes to us organics. It's broken machine logic of the most classic form, but AI breaking to satisfy conflicting instructions has been a them of sci-fi for generations. At least with the ending we got, you can appreciate how a machine might break and reach the fucked up conclusion required to create galaxy ending bad guys.

And the motherfucking star kid.

Eh, I do wish it had been Harbinger you hammered out the dialogue with. Or someone bigger and badder. I still have no idea how the Catalyst plucked that kid out of Shepard's thoughts. And kid voice actors... yeesh.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Sorry, no. Nothing can be stupider than synthetics destroying organics to prevent synthetics destroying organics. And the motherfucking star kid.

You think preventing mass relays from exploding the galaxy with dark energy by giving everyone mass relays and making sure they used them for literally everything is any smarter?

As for the tech - Reapers left all the tech intact so the galaxy would have all the technology at the exact levels they need and so the tech would go the way they want. If they haven't, they would've been left with a disjointed galaxy, that either uses eezo in ways they did not predict or doesn't use it at all.

1. Throw the mass relays into a sun
2. Throw the eezo into a sun
3. Watch Salarian cavemen slap each other with sticks, giggle to self

I just solved the dark energy problem! Man, the reapers better assimilate me fast.

Asari's and other races' genetic diversity has been called a thing of the past for a quite long time. It was said that humans are starting to go the same way.

I don't know what this means.

The point was that Asari biology makes them the ideal candidate for "most genetically diverse species" because they literally absorb the genes of the other species they mate with in a way that humans never could, and their culture encourages this kind of diversification by stigmatising asari/asari relationships. You can breed an asari and a krogan; you cannot breed a human and a krogan.

Saying that humans are the most "genetically diverse" is just a technobabble way of saying that humans are special. [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumansAreSpecial] It's just that in this particular setting, it makes no sense.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Even if the ending shat gold the rest of Mass Effect 3 still sucked.

I would much rather have them change the beginning of the game to make it seem like playing ME 1 or 2 had even the slightest effect on the events of ME 3.

Like maybe a game opening where Anderson Was a councilor
Or some indication that killing the council made any difference whatsoever
or maybe some positive consequence to siding with Cerberus at the end of ME 2

The ending was so out of the blue that it's really impossible to take seriously but the beginning and middle were calculated bullshit to make the game "Accessible" to people who didn't play the first 2 games at the expense of everyone who cared about what went on in the universe.

Besides in the leaked end Garrus and Liara died.
Or wait, the way their characters were butchered in the third game I probably would have been happier to see them die in a fire.

So yeah, I would have preferred the leaked ending.

 

[SushiJaguar]

I'm more disgusted at BioWare's decision to change the ME3 ending to make internet cry babies happy. I mean, how about show some self-respect and grow some backbones for your product. Just thinking about it making me sick.

Also, I don't know anything about the leaked ending.

They work for EA, self-respect and backbone are irrelevant.

 

[floppylobster]

Sorry, no. Nothing can be stupider than synthetics destroying organics to prevent synthetics destroying organics.

I barely paid attention to the ending but even I got that it was more like pruning back a tree rather than cutting it down. It made sense to me.

But bastardofmelbourne is explaining it better. He obviously paid full attention.