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

[UrinalDook]

It would have made even less sense than the one we got. As far as I can tell, that's... pretty much why it got changed. Because people pointed out it made no sense.

The idea being that the mass effect was, via the medium of the sci-fi writer's current generic hand-wave substance - dark energy, destroying the galaxy so to stop that... the Reapers built the absolute largest mass effect engines in the galaxy (the mass relays, and to a lesser but more hilariously hypocritical extent, themselves) and then spent millions of years making sure every species in the galaxy evolves to make use of it. Seriously, Sovereign says this pretty much word for word on Virmire. "We built the relays... you evolve along the paths we desire" or something.

If the Reapers wanted to stop everyone discovering the mass effect, all they had to was not make long distance space travel ridiculously easy with a device that uses the masss effect. In other words, they could have not built the friggin' relays!

Argh, it's so much idiotic, recursive logic it makes my brain hurt. The ending we got may have provided the apparent self-contradiction that the synthetic Reapers wipe out all life to prevent synthetics wiping out all life, but at least it has the 'out' that being made into a Reaper preserves those species as a collective. Yeah, it's dumb but all artificial intelligence enemies have relied on a logic break like that as motivation since Asimov. It's part of the genre.

EDIT: As an addition, does anyone remember that episode of The Next Generation where it turned out the warp drives were ripping holes in space time. You know, the one that was so painfully a shallow metaphor for the ozone layer? Do you remember how awful it was? How subsequent writers completely ignored it because it made writing for TNG less fun?

Yeah, now imagine Mass Effect essentially doing the same with this ending. Would you really want to kill off a franchise by making the thing so important to the franchise that it's the name of the franchise a 'bad thing'? I mean, it would be like saying the Force eventually gave Jedi AIDs. Kind of a buzz kill.

 

[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. At this point Shepard would be presented with 2 options (1 less than 3, I might add, which is marginally worse than what we did get). In one, Shepard is greatly increasing the likelihood that in a million years (or however long) the entire universe would fly apart and nothing would exist ever again. Pretty bad. In the other, Shepard is ending the human race, handing the entire species over to space monsters to be indoctrinated, liquified while still alive, and fed into a single brain in the hope, I repeat, hope that when it is finished they will have a possible solution to the inevitable death of the universe.

So basically, Shepard has to decide either to murder his entire race on the off chance that it will help everybody else out in the very, very, very long term, or wipe out those squidy bastards once and for all and accept that eventually, all good things must come to an end.

That would be the HEIGHT of a bullshit ending. It's no choice at all, you are either a genocidal fuck for no adequate reason, or you realize that these self-proclaimed saviors of the universe are doing far more harm than good and drop them like a batarian terrorist asteroid. The former option would require your version of Shepard to be completely emotionally neutral, like a reaper himself. No person could spend the better part of their life serving humanity, doing everything in their power to save people and get rid of the bad guys, and then turn around and give up his entire race to be sacrificed by the very monsters he has been trying so desperately to stop, in the vague hope of a solution to an ill-defined and immeasurably distant problem. Human emotion does not allow for that response. It is a ridiculous choice to put at the end of a story where your MAIN PURPOSE is to make friends, unite people against evil, and connect with your fellows on an emotional level.

After hearing what was originally planned, I am damn glad it got leaked. I will take our current ending, flaws and all, over that idiocy any day.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

The only thing I would prefer in this leaked ending is that it would have explained that mission in Mass Effect 2 where you recruit Tali. The subject of what's happening to that star is NEVER touched on again, and that has always bothered me. It still sounds like NONE of your choices matter though. How big you made your fleets, who you recruited, galaxy readiness--none of that sounds like it would matter if it all came down to "Do you destroy humanity, or don't you?"

Why was that so hard to write? Why did BioWare feel that they had to turn the war against the Reapers into something else entirely? I wanted a Mass Effect 2 style ending, but on massive scale. Why is that so hard?

 

[J Tyran]

EDIT: As an addition, does anyone remember that episode of The Next Generation where it turned out the warp drives were ripping holes in space time. You know, the one that was so painfully a shallow metaphor for the ozone layer? Do you remember how awful it was? How subsequent writers completely ignored it because it made writing for TNG less fun?

They actually kept that going for quite a while, in TNG they could only break the warp speed limits with permission or in emergencies. In DS9 it never really mattered much for a while because the runabouts couldn't go fast enough anyway and the Defiant "couldn't go that fast cloaked" which went on for awhile and finally in Voyager the ship was actually designed around that with its variable geometry warp nacelles. Not long after that they explained that warp engines had been redesigned to prevent it.

 

[Lucid_Camel]

I cant help but think of that robot built in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galexy. You know the one built to come up with the answer to the meaning of life? I figure thats what the Reapers must have been doing for 50,000 odd years in dark space, trying to solve the Dark energy problem. If thats the case and they are far above us but needed our help in understanding then they arnt that all mighty.

 

[sanquin]

the old ending was even more far fetched than the new new one in my opinion

basically it said that Dark Energy was going to destroy the universe, it didn't say why or how, just that it was and that the Reapers were trying to stop it, you could let the Reapers win, but stop Dark Energy, or destroy the Reapers and wing it on your own

so basically it's the choice between ending the story there or teasing a sequal

i, for one actually thought the endings, although horrible, made sense, so i actually prefer how things turned out

Thing is, this is actually a scientific theory. Dark Energy is real, and it IS speeding up the expansion of the universe, or so the theory goes. So at least that part would be partially grounded in science.

Problem is, that leaves several major problems/plotholes. 1: It still means none of your choices throughout all three games actually matter. 2: Humans are not even close to the most genetically diverse. Asari would be the main candidate since they would have DNA from all species in that cycle within them through their ability to mate with any race. 3: wouldn't it be easier to just destroy all element zero / eezo in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of years that it took them to reap all those cycles, and find a new solution for faster than light travel and such?

 

[Hatchetman]

Both endings are basically the same with different details. In both versions BioWare has you fighting what amounts to the Borg from Star Trek for 2.9 games, but with a twist. Right at the last second before you destroy them their motivation is revealed to you and you find out that they are actually trying to save the universe. It was a brilliant idea. The problem this is that no matter what everything comes down to that choice at the end. It is impossable to factor in all of your decisions in all three games as long as you have that twist, as that ending will always lead to that one choice.

 

[afroebob]

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.

Or (and yes, crazy idea here) maybe Bioware felt like they dropped the ball and decided they wanted to fix it? I mean it makes since because the original ending was shit and they fixed it. All the pieces fall right in place.

 

[redmoretrout]

Where is this original ending you are all going on about? Where can I find it?

 

[Josh123914]

The dark energy plot seemed to be better, I mean both options could have taken your choices into account (for instance with human sacrifice maybe if you did everything to help scientific advancement not all of humanity would need harvesting?) plus it ties up more loose plot threads than the other one.

On the other hand the reject option does seem like sequel fodder to me (life goes on, and the ending there wouldn't necessarily have to be an ending) which may be why Casey & Walters changed it.
Hear me out.

The ending we got was so contradictory to what was promised in PR statements and had so little time to prepare that they probably expected some backlash for it- Albeit not the firestorm they got but backlash nonetheless.
Many of the old heads at Bioware were dropping like flies and those that remained didn't want to continue the series anymore and/or were afraid it'd be given sequels and spin-offs they wouldn't be part of, so they basically performed a torch and burn.
If you dare brave TVTropes they have something on it.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TorchTheFranchiseAndRun

I've more or less chalked the endings up to this ever since the announcement of the Extended Cut.
I dunno, I'm probably giving those 2 too much credit here and in all likelihood they could have just genuinely effed up without taking into account earlier themes in the series :/

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I don't know, they'd have to do a really good job of explaining how human DNA helps stop dark energy. Because that seems like a bit of an arsepull to me. That said...there are a great many things that would have been better than the ending.

 

[Rack]

It's marginally less stupid than the ending we got. It relies on the worst kind of ridiculously contrived space magic but then so did the one we got. At least it didn't have a gun you fire by shooting at internal components. That are explosive. And for some reason will only activate if you shoot them at point blank range. It's like finding an antique IKEA cabinet where the instructions to fit the hinges is to jump under a bus.

 

[Tom Waits' hat]

I think it has, at the very least, more potential than the worst shitfest of an ending I can think of. It was foreshadowed by ME2 and it's far less of an asspull than what we were subjected to, so it wins by default.

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.

Yes, how absolutely horrible of them to make a rushed and lazy piece of shit product a little bit less rushed and lazy. They should have embraced how much of a non-effort the original ending was and told everybody to expect the same for the next game they're putting out.

Never mind that I find it hilarious you think there's any "artistic integrity" within a developer owned by EA in the first place, and that you place corporate standards above consumer standards.

I find it offensive and sad that you think people aren't allowed to have any artistic integrity if they're owned by EA. Do you really hate them that much you lose your ability to make any rational thought?

 

[TheRussian]

Really? Really? This again? Have we not discussed this topic? The leaked ending, the actual ending, the DLC ending. There is nothing else that needs to be said about Mass Effect 3's ending. Every possible response has already been said.
It's been an entire year. It's time to move on.

 

[sumanoskae]

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.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

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...

Wait... so in the original ending, the Reapers were Kyubey? ／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼

Spoiler: Spoilers for Puella Magi Madoka Magica

In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, a race of aliens called Incubators (Kyubey for short), that look like talking cat/rabbit hybrids, are harvesting energy from human emotions to reverse the expansion and eventual heat-death of the universe. They do so by granting teenaged human girls magical powers and waiting for them to melt down, go insane, and start killing people.

They are aware that they will likely cause the destruction of Earth and all human life. They don't care because if destroying one planet will save the universe, then they feel that sacrifice is worth it.

This, by the way, is why Puella Magi Madoka Magica is an awesome and amazingly fucked up anime. Great times.

So yeah, basically the same thing, right? Wow. I really like that ending. I wish they'd stuck with it rather than the fairly lame AI war stuff.

Hey. They could have replaced the Star Child with Kyubey and made the cross-over official!

 

[JediMB]

2: Humans are not even close to the most genetically diverse. Asari would be the main candidate since they would have DNA from all species in that cycle within them through their ability to mate with any race.

That's actually not how Asari reproduction works. The notion that an Asari offspring receives any amount of DNA from its "father" is purely superstition. Every Asari born is basically a slightly mutated version of her mother.

3: wouldn't it be easier to just destroy all element zero / eezo in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of years that it took them to reap all those cycles, and find a new solution for faster than light travel and such?

Not if the dark energy that has already been generated will inevitably destroy the galaxy anyway.

 

[sanquin]

Really? Really? This again? Have we not discussed this topic? The leaked ending, the actual ending, the DLC ending. There is nothing else that needs to be said about Mass Effect 3's ending. Every possible response has already been said.
It's been an entire year. It's time to move on.

Bull. Shit. Moving on means forgetting about what happened. We as gamers should not forget about what happened. BiowEAre needs to learn that things like what they did with ME3 are NOT okay. And us moving on means they will only keep on doing things worse as we're apparently 'okay' with it in the end.

What, should we forget about governments trying to sneak in the SOPA/ACTA bills as well? That's been over a year ago as well, you know. Know what? It's like most people actually have forgotten about those already. Why? They're trying to put SOPA in again and I don't hear that many people talking about it any more.

 

[Ham Blitz]

Man, hearing all these people say what the original leaked ending was, even though I didn't really get angry at the ending as is, I think the leaked ending was a lot better than what they went with. Hurrah for people leaking endings I guess...