Following up on the comments of BioWare CEO Ray Muzyka a
couple of weeks ago, the beleaguered RPG developer has now more
formally announced plans to placate fans who were disappointed with Mass Effect 3's controversial ending that has been criticised as being both lacking in variety and detached and inconsistent with the rest of the game (thanks Midda).
BioWare's hopeful solution will be new Extended Cut DLC -- a free (perculiarly with a two year expiry clause) downloadable content pack that will provide "additional cinematic scenes and epilogue scenes" and make the ambigious promise of "more closure with even more context and clarity".
"We are all incredibly proud of Mass Effect 3 and the work done by Casey Hudson and team," said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Co-Founder of BioWare and General Manager of EA's BioWare Label. "Since launch, we have had time to listen to the feedback from our most passionate fans and we are responding. With the Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut we think we have struck a good balance in delivering the answers players are looking for while maintaining the team's artistic vision for the end of this story arc in the Mass Effect universe."
A specific release date for the Extended Cut has yet to be revealed.
Posted 12:45pm 06/4/12
Spoilers in this wall of text.
I don't think that's what people are debating about. From everything I've heard, nobody disliked the game itself, in fact, pretty much everyone loved it. It surpassed my expectations, I really enjoyed it, and you're right, the whole game did feel like it was wrapping up the trilogy. It's that last 5 minutes that everyone complains about, and with good reason. It was s***. I actually bought the game after the outrage, fully intending to view the ending with an optimistic outlook, but even then, that last 5 minutes was a disappointment. All of that stuff you were talking about, like curing the genophage, brokering peace between the Quarians and the Geth, between the Turians and the Krogan, it all counted toward nothing in the end.
For any other game, I would have just thought "hmm, well that was a s*** ending. Oh well," but BioWare have spent the last 5+ years touting about how the choices you make and the relationships you build will ultimately decide the fate of the galaxy. That's why people spent 100+ hours building relationships, building their reputation and listening to all of that awesomely detailed information in the Codex. And it all felt worth it, until that last 5 minutes. Then it felt like a lot of it was a waste of time.
I'm a bit pessimistic about this DLC pack, I'm not really expecting it to address what I disliked about the ending. I think it's because all 3 of the "different" endings pretty much left the universe they'd created in a worthless pile of rubble. No Mass Relays means no more travel around the galaxy. What's the Mass Effect universe without travelling around the galaxy? And why did synthetics like the Geth and EDI have to be destroyed? They proved Starkid wrong in that they never rebelled against their creators, and were completely willing to work together with organics. The whole premise of the story has been about organics vs. synthetics, so working with the Geth and helping EDI to build her own life and free will really felt like it was playing directly into a solution to the story's big issue.
I'm rambling a bit now, so I'll stop. Hopefully they prove me wrong and the extended cut makes it all come together. All in all, it was still a fun game, and I want to play more of it.
Posted 12:51pm 06/4/12
Posted 01:02pm 06/4/12
EDIT: Omg, Dan stole my thread!
Posted 01:08pm 06/4/12
it raises 5 pretty distinct and reasonable points but I think number 2 is the one that cheesed me the most.
Like Midda, I also reached the end well after the rest of the Internet exploded about it and I was also in the "oh, they're just being silly, it can't be that disappointing" camp, but was moderately converted after experiencing it myself.
I'm going to speculate that there is some internal conflict between the developers happening too that is the real driving force behind this update. If it was purely for the audience, it's hard to understand why they would cave on it, so I reckon there's probably some truth to the rumours of other staff being as unfulfilled with Hudson's ending as we were. Yep, sorry dude. Wanted to news it and it's unfortunately the most elegant way to do that. Gave you an achievement though :)
Posted 01:33pm 06/4/12
Posted 01:37pm 06/4/12
Posted 01:44pm 06/4/12
Bingo! The Reaper explination is rushbish and stupid. The game builds up to an epic climax and pulls that s*** out. Not to mention playing through it is painfully boring it should have just been one long cutscene with dialog choices not that the choices matter. It's worse than Deus Ex:HR's ending at least if I want to see a different one I can just reload to right before it. The Fallout 3 games had better endings and they were just still pictures with narations. The rest of the game was far better, one of the best moments was when my actions accidentally killed all the Quarians.
Posted 01:54pm 06/4/12
I feel that they should scrap the current endings or make them make a lot more sense. Adding more endings would also be good. Since this is the last Mass Effect game with Shepard in it, they might as well make it the best one.
Posted 10:36pm 06/4/12
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/04/there-will-be-no-new-mass-effect-3-endings-just-a-tweaked-one/
My faith in bioware will be lost unless this tweaking is massive and fills holes and tries to make sense of what they have done. I doubt it will but we can only hope.
Posted 10:39pm 06/4/12
just sayin'
Posted 10:51pm 06/4/12
Good, thats the best way to do it imo. New endings or changing the ending would just muddy the waters at this point, and do more damage than good to Bioware's artistic integrity. I'd be happy enough with the current ending if they just explain what the hell is going on with the Normandy
Yeah, I don't care if people want to hate it, its just annoying when its baseless, crazy fanboy hate. That link Dan posted hates on it, but it was still a really good read and raised a lot of good points. Doesn't mean I'm going to stop defending it though :)
Posted 10:58pm 06/4/12
I'm not going to hold my breath.
Posted 11:09pm 06/4/12
But yeah, the control one was pretty whack, that didn't make any sense to me.
Posted 11:19pm 06/4/12
Posted 11:51pm 06/4/12
Synth one does not.....how...does...it work. Do Geth and reapers magically fuse with all organic life? How will reproduction of organic things work? Will all living cells have biomechanical parts?
Control, why would Shep be given control of the reapers? Give that much power to someone would be crazy.
What would make sense.
Destruction of the reapers, reapers only. Still massive causalities for everyone. Countless worlds and colonies burned to the ground. decades of rebuilding and cleaning up. [this would be canon ending. Leaves options open for video games after the reapers are destroyed. Relays/Citadel still intact.]
Let the 50,000 year cycle continue. All sentient beings harvested/killed so that the next cycle can start. True reaper ending.[reminds me of the matrix movies. Relays/Citadel still intact.]
All sentient beings, Geth included, destroyed as are the reapers. [non-sentient creatures can evolve as they would with out interference from the now destroyed sentients. Humans, Asari etc. Any creatures that evolve don't have to worry about reapers.]
Geth survive, everyone else dies. [Relays/Citadel still intact]
Posted 12:03am 07/4/12
As to exactly *how* it works, who knows, its super advanced technology nobody understands. How do mass relays work? How do prothean beacons work? How does any reaper tech work? All through the series that technology has been portrayed as so advanced it may as well be magic, so I don't think its really fair to start looking for scientific explanations in the last 10 minutes of the trilogy.
As for what is happening, the way I understood it, its rewriting the base genetic code of everything and creating a new type of lifeform that is synthetic and organic all in one. So not synthetics with organic parts or organics with synthetic parts, just a new type of life that all shares the same base genetic makeup which is an amalgamation of the two. Essentially the same theme they played out in BSG with the baby that Helo had with the Cylon chick, its just the Mass Effect version involved a magical starchild and a "Change the galaxy" button instead of organics and synthetics f*****g to make babies.
It was done in a bit of a hamfisted and rushed way, but thats what I took away from it anyway, thats what I figured it was going for. I mean, all up, it seemed like the "best" ending to me, it seems to be the one that kills the fewest people, and leaves things in the best situation (relative to the other endings). The "destroy" ending seems to often be referred to as the "good" ending or "perfect" ending, but it doesn't seem very perfect to me, all sorts of s*** gets f***ed up in that ending. I guess the only thing that makes people claim its the "good" ending is cos theres a brief split second cutscene implying Shepherd didn't die, but that in itself makes absolutely no sense anyway. Hopefully thats another thing that flesh out in this DLC.
Posted 12:09am 07/4/12
I mean, Mass Effect is hugely popular, so I'm sure they'll find some way to keep making Mass Effect games, but my bet would be they'll set them before the current Mass Effect series, cos theres still lots of s*** that happened in the past that they could make games about. The Rachni war and Krogan Rebellion spring to mind, and theres been all sorts of wars and stuff with the Batarians as well. I'm sure theres more they could do, or more backstory they could make up.
Posted 02:09am 07/4/12
1. organics and synthetics dont get along.
2. make synthetics to destroy organics
3. ????
4. end
Posted 08:35am 07/4/12
space magic!
Posted 09:52am 07/4/12
My expectations were never high because I was never honestly invested in the sci-fi of Mass Effect to begin with. The idea that Synthetics will attack their creators is one of the oldest and heavily flawed sci-fi mechanism out there but it didn't stop me from enjoying Terminator or The Matrix. Mysterious technology that no one understands yet we are able to understand parts of it so we can utilise or replicate it is another heavily flawed mechanism yet I still liked Star Gate.
Every race only had one gender until the last game and then they still shared the same model didn't help with my investment in the Mass Effect universe. But to me the story was about Shepard and the people in your crew and that was done pretty well IMO.
I admit there is some wtf at the end but other than dead people getting off the Normandy (seriously, beam me up Garus?), as a sci-fi ending I didn't think it was really out of place or anything.
Posted 10:46am 07/4/12
But the Synthesis ending still showed Joker and your crew getting off the Normandy and EDI in her synthetic body, all seemingly unchanged. It seems pretty ambiguous to me. This is one of the provided conclusions to a huge trilogy, it doesn't seem like something that should be damn well explained, not left open to interpretation.
"Here, press this button to change the galaxy, although we won't actually explain what it does. Thanks for playing, and be sure to buy our upcoming DLC!"
Posted 10:52am 07/4/12
I only did the whole merge ending but I assumed EDI was going to die if you destroy all Reapers as they implied that all synthetic stuff would stop working, was that not the case?
Posted 11:01am 07/4/12
the destroy ending only showed the reapers dying. you don't see the geth or edi die.
the destroy ending is considered the best ending because it's the only ending where shep can survive.
Posted 12:03pm 07/4/12
Just watched the video again on YouTube, I didn't even notice that initially.
Posted 12:07pm 07/4/12
Posted 12:40pm 07/4/12
Posted 01:13pm 07/4/12
Posted 01:25pm 07/4/12
Yeah, it was pretty rushed, it was like they went "Oh s***, we only have 10 minutes left and still haven't explained everything. Quick! Introduce an all-knowing god type character that can explain everything to the player."
I still think it would have been better without that explanation jammed in, but as I understood it its more like "Well if we just let organics and synthetics run rampant, synthetics are going to completely wipe out organics, so every so often we'll come and prune back the organics so they pose less of a threat and the synthetics don't feel the need to go and wipe out all organics everywhere." Cos the reapers only harvest the advanced races, not all the races, they leave the other less advanced races to evolve (like the race of dudes the old Shadow Broker comes from).
Its pretty flimsy though and theres too many holes in it that bug me, so I wish they'd just left the explanation out altogether and left the reapers as big, evil, ancient f*****s with unknowable motives. I mean, every 50,000 years the Reapers prune the organics right? They don't prune synthetics though, so what happened to all the synthetic races from the previous cycles? I mean, the Prothean dude says there was a race of synthetics like the Geth in his cycle, and that each cycle essentially repeats the same pattern so its safe to assume there would be a similar synthetic race in every cycle. Reapers harvest the advanced organic races to stop them wiping out the synthetics (or to stop the synthetics saying "F*** this s***" and wiping out all the oganics), but wheres all the synthetic races from previous cycles? Or even signs they ever existed?
Posted 01:34pm 07/4/12
It's a shame anyone who has watched Babylon 5 had much of the game spoiled from near the beginning:
Main character is a human male commander: John Shepard | John Sheridan
Game/show centres around a diplomatic space station: The Citadel | Babylon 5
Long-distance transport by: Mass Relays | Jumpgates
Unknown 'ancient' enemy from the edge of space: The Reapers | The Shadow
Ancient ally who fought the enemy: Protheans | Vorlons
Purpose of enemy: cyclic killing (every 50K years) | cyclic killing (every 1K years)
Main weapon against enemy: energy from the Crucible | telepathic blockage
Main character has a custom-built ship using 'ancient' technology: Normandy | White-star
Main character dies and is resurrected? Yes | Yes
There are some differences, but the similarities are overwhelming.
Posted 01:34pm 07/4/12
Posted 01:44pm 07/4/12
Difference is the reveal on the motivations behind why the Shadows would come and kill everything (I think it was every 10,000 years wasn't it? Not 1,000) and who they were, was built up to over years of the tv series, and there was plenty of foreshadowing and all that stuff, it wasn't just dumped on the viewer all at the last minute. So I guess while Mass Effect borrowed from Babylon 5 a lot, it probably could have been better served by borrowing even more.
Posted 04:51pm 07/4/12
I would have prefered they didn't explain it either shame they can't un-explain it either.
Posted 02:36pm 07/4/12
Posted 02:52pm 07/4/12
Posted 03:10pm 07/4/12
Posted 09:46pm 07/4/12
Posted 10:19pm 07/4/12
Posted 12:15am 08/4/12
and fanboys still defend the endings, lolol.
Posted 03:30am 08/4/12
Posted 11:15am 08/4/12
Posted 12:30pm 08/4/12
Posted 12:31pm 08/4/12
Posted 12:44pm 08/4/12
The two engineers that worked for Ceberus on the Normandy 2 in ME2.
Posted 01:07pm 08/4/12
Posted 03:16pm 08/4/12
I lost the whole crew in my first playthrough of ME2, but I had already completed everything by the time the Collectors came and kidnapped the crew on my second playthrough, so I went straight there and everyone survived. If you do any missions after they're taken, you start losing crew members.
The fact that the universe can continue to function after the destruction of the Mass Relays is good news to me, I feel less annoyed by the ending now. If the other races (including the Geth) can be saved despite what the stupid glowy kid said, then I'll be happy if this DLC just adds some closure.
Posted 05:26pm 08/4/12
Probably, but either my memory is s*** or they just weren't very memorable (or a bit of both), but I can't really recall them.
Posted 06:20pm 08/4/12
It is also hard to see just how much the things you do in ME3 contribute to the overall war effort. Would be good have a few mission fighting the reapers on earth with the Salarian Special Tasks group if you get them on your side, Also Eclipse and Blue Suns. You did a mission to get them...but you never see them.
Posted 06:56pm 08/4/12
Posted 07:03pm 08/4/12
Posted 07:55pm 08/4/12
Posted 09:13pm 08/4/12
From what I've been able to piece together of the ME3 ending though, is that even though the entree and main were delicious, in the last 10 minutes Shepard eats a cupcake for the dessert but the fanboys didn't get to pick whether the icing was Paragon or Renegade flavour and that made them upset.
Posted 09:19pm 08/4/12
Posted 09:26pm 08/4/12
Would have been nice if the alliances you made and the stuff you did throughout the game mattered more in the lead up to the ending, like Bladerunner was saying, having the Salarian STG guys helping you out on Earth or whatever would have been a nice touch, but I always expected the ending to be told in a very scripted way, cos at its core, thats what Mass Effect is, its always been about Bioware telling a story. Just wish they told it better and it didn't feel so rushed :(
Posted 09:31pm 08/4/12
Posted 07:50am 14/4/12
I planned on replaying ME1/2/3 again as a Renegade Female as opposed to a Paragon Male, but I don't think I will now mainly because the ending will be the same.
Posted 10:59am 14/4/12
Posted 12:10pm 14/4/12
I don't get that mentality though, soooooooooo much of the games will change, and you'll see so much new content, and new choices, and events will go in different ways, but you don't want to do that because the last 10 minutes of the last game will be the same?
Heres another spoiler, no matter what you do, the start of ME2 is the same as well, Shepherd dies and the Normandy is destroyed.
Posted 12:22pm 14/4/12
Posted 12:26pm 14/4/12
Posted 07:44pm 14/4/12
Don't get me wrong Mass Effect is a fantastic series much better than anything I've played in recent times, I just probably won't see the need to play ME 1/2/3 again as quickly as I thought, perhaps I'll just wait for some DLC before I replay ME3.
I wasn't completely let down by the ending, it'll always be hard for any writer to end a TV/Movie/Book/Game series I was a bit funny with how the Eragon series finished up. I just didn't see the point in trying to get my galactic readiness as close to max as I possibly could because I failed to see what difference it made. I would of been happy just to see how the galaxy was in 100 years from after the Reaper invasion so I could see what my choices did in the long term.
My next ME3 play through will just consist of the main quest line.