Post by Dan @ 11:00am 22/03/12 | 41 Comments
There's been a ridiculous amount of attention and analysis given to this situation and thankfully it looks like there are now hopes of an amicable end for all, as BioWare co-founder and GM Dr. Ray Muzyka has reached out to fans with a softly-worded and spoiler free letter on their official blog.
While it doesn't explicitly state what they'll be doing, the crux of Muzyka's post is that do have every intention of directly addressing the situation and are currently brainstorming as to the best way to both placate angry fans as well as retain the developer's artistic integrity.
Reading a bit more into it, he distinctly makes reference to "the current ending" which certainly hints that their intention may be to provide a new alternative option or perhaps more, for players to round out the trilogy. Given the player-directed nature of the game's narrative, it seems entirely reasonable that offering some optional alternative outcomes via a patch could achieve both of those goals.
The other key to his message is that the rampant flaming and personal attacks on BioWare staff has not helped the cause, but that they genuinely do appreciate and encourage actual constructive and well-mannered negative feedback.
Head over to bioware.com and read the whole blog for the full effect.
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Posted 11:27am 22/3/12
Posted 11:41am 22/3/12
Bioware would be better off taking one for the developers world wide by not putting their artistic integrity up for sale to the highest whiner.
Posted 11:46am 22/3/12
The game is much more like one of those choose your own adventure books in that it's completely fine for it to have many different endings and it's my personal opinion that adding a one or even several new options to appease a wider variety of your player-basereally doesn't have to compromise artistic integrity. At the end of the day, it's going to be the same writers crafting whatever new endings they might end up coming up with.
Posted 12:17pm 22/3/12
Yes, but not the endings they really want.
While I can respect people wanting ending perfect to their game/story, regardless of what they do, they can never please everyone.
I agree with Grundar, Bioware should not rewrite the ending to keep people happy. If they believe their endings are fine, changing it based on peoples requests makes it look like they had doubts or are unhappy with their own original endings which won't leave much confidence for us in endings for their future games.
Posted 12:27pm 22/3/12
I'm personally more concerned with the broader issue of the vocal crowd suddenly being the decider of what constitutes a "good" ending or in a broader view what is "good" content. If a AAA (I hate that description >_< ) developer decides that - "ok, the masses are unhappy lets flex our artistic integrity" then it will put pressure on "lesser" developers (who need to work very hard to secure an audience) to flex theirs as well.
Satisfying your customers is one thing, if it gets to a point where the quality of games is affected it becomes an overriding issue (look at WoW - Cataclysm a product (expansion) of much player whining, it's a quite unsatisfactory experience for many).
The Mass Effect series does indeed encourage attachment to your character, it seems to have gone to the point where people are so emotionally attached to their Shepard that it has engendered entitlement issues. The depth of people's attachment can be seen in the vitriol you see spewed out about the endings.
That all said, each to their own, I'm generally satisfied with how games, movies and books end. Yes that includes the maligned Dark Tower ending :P It was fitting.
Posted 12:33pm 22/3/12
Posted 12:35pm 22/3/12
Posted 12:38pm 22/3/12
Posted 12:40pm 22/3/12
short answer: Spoiler:
The Mass Effect 3 ending was nothing more but an illusion induced by Harbinger to trick Shepard to give in to indoctrination and become one of their tools in the war.
long answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ythY_GkEBck
Posted 01:03pm 22/3/12
last edited by DM at 13:03:08 22/Mar/12
Posted 01:31pm 22/3/12
Regardless, this whole thing sets a bad precedent on both sides.
You've got big business EA scrooge mcduck sitting on their pile of money that players have given them, calling their clients entitled and to suck it up and bantering on about artistic integrity. "hard for us to predict the range of emotions players would feel when they finished playing through it" (quote) Why, because they didn't play test it or they chose to ignore play testing feedback? How did they not realise how players who have been emotionally invested in a role playing game where they've played an integral part with a large focus on cause and effect decisions would react? Not to mention bad PR decisions with hamburgers and day one DLC. I don't know how they didn't learn anything after the DA2 backlash.
And on the other side you've got the raging neckbeards who are unable to distance themselves from the game enough to get a bit of perspective. All they see is they've 'helped' bioware with me1 and me2, and then the evil overlord EA has come in and ruined me3 and only wants their money because as far as they can tell it's like Tolkien ending LOTR with "... and then frodo woke up in tom bombadil's house and tom was nowhere to be found and the whole thing was a dream and frodo went home turn to page x to choose which road they take the end". They also think they can put enough pressure on EA/Bioware through social media and other outlets to bow to their will and all the attacks just make it seem infantile. I'm not sure what would be worse if EA stuck to their entitlement guns or if they caved.
But the worst part, in my opinion, is both sides have some merit and there's probably not much hope of meeting halfway as the damage has basically been done.
Posted 01:39pm 22/3/12
Of course, avoid hovering over that link for spoilers sake and avoid clicking that link for productivity sake...
Posted 02:31pm 22/3/12
Getting close to finishing so I can see what all the fuss is about. I don't think bioware can hide behind "Artistic Integrity", If they did not make good endings. (good as in quality, not omg we all survived, lets get a puppy) Maybe Bioware and EA underestimated people who liked the franchise, underestimated their passion for the game. EA probably think Mass Effect fans are a bunch of Modern Warfare players.
Posted 04:03pm 22/3/12
Posted 05:49pm 22/3/12
I don't believe Bioware would craft an ending though that requires so much introspection and piecing together of far-flung references from previous games. They've made efforts to make sure ME3 can be enjoyed by people who've never played a previous game in the series, so it seems extremely counter-productive to then make an ending which requires so much prior knowledge. Besides, the Mass Effect games have never been that deep, they're only one step away from pulp sci-fi fiction and they wear their stories right out in the open on their sleeve. Nothing in Mass Effect has ever required deep thought and reflection to figure out; the ending is what it is.
Posted 05:46pm 22/3/12
Posted 06:10pm 22/3/12
Posted 06:16pm 22/3/12
I went into ME3 pretty much expecting Shepard to make the ultimate sacrifice. It seemed like the logical conclusion to Armageddon.
Also, I wanted to note that you play as Shepard. You effectively are Shepard. It was seen throughout all of the series from Shepard/Your view. When you went into ME2, you didn't know what happened to your existing crew, YOU had to go talking to people to find out. It's always been this way, from Shephard's/Your view. So why would you know what happened to the Galaxy if you perished and made the ultimate sarcifice.
As for the Catalyst/Crucible being "magic" and "unexplainable". People say that everything in the ME universe is explainable from reading info from the Codex. The Codex entries are information complied from the study of such things really from scientists in-game for centuries, if not millennia of study. The Catalyst/Crucible was only just discovered at the beginning of ME3 so nobody has any real knowledge
of what it really would do and there certainly wasn't enough time to study what the effects might be. If the Protheans didn't exactly know what might happen then how would anybody in the existing cycle know.
Posted 06:19pm 22/3/12
BioWare will release DLC that shows everything past being hit with the Prothean beacon in ME1 was just a delusion and in actual fact Shepard has been in a coma ever since.
Posted 06:28pm 22/3/12
so did i, but i expected there would at least be one ending where it's clear cut that shep survives.
Posted 07:16pm 22/3/12
I'm not really sure how i feel about the idea of changing things now. I've played through the game twice now, and while i was initially disappointed in how the game ended (lack of closure to other characters/universe than anything) i expected Shepard to die- yet my ending suggests he lives in an odd way, and previous games suggest that destroying the mass effect relays would destroy the system they inhabit, suggesting that Shepard just wiped out more people/races than the reapers would have...
All in all, while i felt a lot more questions were asked of the ending than those that were answered, i don't think bioware should cave simply to cater to those that were dissatisfied with the ending.
In terms of game play and play (until the ending) this was by far the best and most involving mass effect. While the ending doesn't fill everything in, or honestly make much sense after what the previous games had set up, it was what the writers had completed for the game, should the consumers really have much say as to how the plot ends?
Posted 07:34pm 22/3/12
hence why i said clear cut
Posted 07:53pm 22/3/12
Posted 08:20pm 22/3/12
The relay you destroyed in ME2 destroyed an entire system..and at the end of ME3 you destroy them all so pretty much everyone is dead anyway, dumb as s*** ending imo
Posted 08:28pm 22/3/12
While in his coma, the characters in ME2 and 3 are parts of his personality and sub-conscious.
Zaeed Massani is apart of Shepards personality, The Mercenary part, where he/she wants to get the job done and is willing to stomp on a few people to get it.
Mordin must be the analytical side of Shepard, reasoning things that happen. Trying to make sense of the protheian data that was forcefully steamed into his brain.
Grunt is Sheps rage and blood lust.
Posted 08:37pm 22/3/12
That's one of the bittersweet things, all those fleets on Earth would be stranded, but if the energy projected from the Citadel stopped the Mass Relays from being destructive then in actuality their civilisations would go on living. The genophage has been cured, the krogans can rebuild their civilisation without the interference of the Salarians "uplifting them. Peace between the Geth and Quarians has been achieved and are working together back on Rannoch.
That's my theory, but it just does not explain that whole bleeding Normandy thing.
Posted 10:02pm 22/3/12
You crashed a big rock into the relay in the DLC for ME2 and ripped it apart. At the end of ME3 you use Reaper tech (or pre-reaper tech, really ancient tech anyway), namely the Crucible, to interact with more ancient/reaper tech, namely the Mass Relays. They get destroyed in the process, but its an entirely different process, for all we know they were designed with that goal in mind, maybe thats their real purpose or final purpose? Granted, its just an educated guess on my part, but then most other theories people have posited are just guesses as well, so I spose I'm in good company there.
Also, I'm assuming by the fact you listed it as happening at the end of ME2 and not the DLC that you're regurgitating stuff you've read on the interwebs? If you're not, then I apologise, but this is what annoys me the most about this whole thing, people who don't even know all the facts just read some rant on 4chan or some website b****ing about all the things wrong with the ending and take it on board as their own personal crusade. At the very least, think for yourself and make up your own opinions about it, don't just parrot back someone else's opinions.
Posted 11:11pm 22/3/12
Posted 12:03am 23/3/12
Posted 03:25am 23/3/12
Posted 01:45pm 24/3/12
I've been reading up a bit about the Indoctrination theory today. While it isn't perfect, it does explain a fair bit, and there seems to be more to it than just coincidence. But even if it is what Bioware were going for, I still think it's, at best, incomplete. Through the entirety of the series, Bioware have touted the relationships you can build with the other characters, importing saves from the previous games which have far-reaching consequences and benefits. The fact that the ending gives absolutely zero closure to the stories of the characters you care for makes the time you spent building the relationships feel worthless.
So, if the whole end sequence from staggering into the beam onwards was actually in Shepherd's head (the fact that Shepherd can be seen waking up in the rubble back in London certainly works strongly in favour of this), we're still left without an answer to what actually occurs next. It means that the fight is still going, the Crucible is still up there, waiting to be used for whatever its actual purpose is. The part at the end with the old man saying "okay, one more story about the Shepherd" suggests that there's still more to tell as well.
But, if what we see through the whole last chapter is actually what happened in the story, then it looks like it has even more inconsistencies than the Indoctrination theory.
And also, given that they've already stated that there will be more games in the Mass Effect Universe, how could that happen if what the ghost boy thing said about the Renegade option (destroying all synthetics and all of the technology they rely on) is true? That means no Mass Relays, no biotic implants and probably no space travel. Sounds like a completely different game, which probably couldn't live up to the physical scale of the existing Mass Effect story.
Posted 02:44pm 24/3/12
Posted 02:59pm 24/3/12
I remember the talk about the finale of Lost. People were disappointed (but not terribly surprised) that they didn't answer all of the questions about the island, but they wrapped up the story of the characters, and that was enough to make the story feel somewhat final. Mass Effect 3 hasn't even done that. You just see Joker trying to outrun a collapsing Mass Relay field (which doesn't even make sense, since he was at Earth with the rest of the fleet), and then he climbs out of the wreckage on some unknown planet with what seems to be two random squad mates. For me it was Liara and Javik, I've read others saying they had different characters. That doesn't wrap up anything for me.
Posted 03:48pm 24/3/12
Found this to be a pretty interesting read, I saw it posted on Facebook last night care of Typodemon
http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/5695/article/mass-effect-3-writer-allegedly-slams-controversial-ending/
Its being denied of course, but it sounds like it could quite likely be true to me
Posted 05:55pm 24/3/12
Posted 06:10pm 24/3/12
Thirding the wtf was happening with the normandy, were they in subspace? where did they crash? Was that final planet Joker and EDI's descendants?
Posted 08:50pm 24/3/12
I'm pretty sure you only see Joker and EDI at the end if you choose the "synthesis" ending, where organic and synthetic life are merged. It seems to be generally accepted that the Renegade option (destroy the Reapers) is the "preferred" ending, as that's the only way you can see the extra scene of Shepherd waking up in the rubble back on Earth.
As for the old man and the boy talking at the end, I have no idea what that is. It could purely just be a wink-wink-nudge-nudge that there's more of Shepherd's story yet to be heard.
Posted 01:39am 25/3/12
Posted 02:34am 25/3/12
Posted 12:38pm 25/3/12
Posted 01:03pm 25/3/12
last edited by DM at 13:03:43 25/Mar/12