Article written by Peter Chapman.
Published on 19/03/2012 at 09:35 AM.
I haven’t been able to make time to finish Mass Effect 3 yet. In fact, I’m still in the “wander around space scanning planets” phase of my gameplay but it’s a holiday here today so I’m going to spoil myself and play for an hour or two later when I’ve done some work. I have seen some chatter around the internet about the ending.
Nothing specific (I will fight you if you spoil it) but I get the impression that many people are a little bit nonplussed by it and a certain section of people are whining like little babies about it.
Multiplayer is a great addition to the series.
It’s not yours to change, you shower of numpties, it’s BioWare’s creative work. By all means, complain if you don’t like it but to assume you have the right to demand it be changed is incredibly self-important.
Anyway, BioWare is obviously a bit more patient than I am as they’ve admitted, via a statement on their Facebook page, that they are considering changing the ending to appease the entitled moaners. Their statement reads:
We would like to clarify that we are actively and seriously taking all player feedback into consideration and have ruled nothing out. At this time we are still collecting and considering your feedback and have not made a decision regarding requests to change the ending.
So there you go, soon, all of you that have already finished the game might have your experience expunged from the records and have to go back and re-do it to see the “true” ending. That’d be weird.
Please, no comments that reveal the ending to those of us who are yet to get there.
Source: Mass Effect Facebook
They better not change anything. Elaborating on it, or adding DLC which goes around the current ending would be great. But changing it and adding the ‘real’ ending with DLC.. No. Just no.
What, like The Arrival being the canon ending for ME2 so if you haven’t played (and in the process paid for) it then the start of ME3 doesn’t really make much sense?
Arrival doesn’t change the ending though?
It doesn’t change the final cut-scene of on-disk ME2 however it is the act that leads into the opening of ME3 and is thus the “real” ending of ME2.
The beginning of ME3 flows from the end of The Arrival, not the final cut-scenes of ME2 the disk based content, thus making The Arrivel the “actual” ending of ME2 (as in it’s required for continuity into the next game)
I think you’re missing a point there a bit. Arrival is not meant to be after the ending, if you remember in the end of Arrival it is said that the conclusions for Shepard are delayed, they only play out before ME3, but not immediately after Arrival so there’s time to finish the game
It is as much “required into continuity” as any other DLC (Bring Down the Sky for example), it doesn’t have “an edge” on any of the parts of the game, they all find their continuity in ME3
Well, i’m 22 hours in and i’ve no expectations about the ending but i’ll see when i get there.
The one thing that’s upsetting me a little is the “wander around space scanning planets”, or should i say the way that’s changed. I can understand why it has changed due to the pressing issue of war , but i really miss the way it was.. i used to find that part relaxing in between missions..
There’s just no time. No time for filling your ship with people (there are empty rooms) or modify it, no time for wandering around in space, no time for anything; the setting really breaks the pace of an actual Mass Effect game.
I don’t see the last 10 minutes as the ending at all, the entire game is a sequence of endings, big and small, to things from ME1 and ME2. After a long time considering the ‘ending’, I’m of the opinion that it’s more of a ‘jumpstart’ to the franchise, an opportunity to allow the ME universe to grow anew, to move forward in different, divergent ways, keeping a lot of the universe, but also being able to reinvent things without resorting to the dreaded ‘reboot’
There’s no to be continued unless you pick one ending as canon, and that would be a betrayal to the whole thing; there was no “canon” ending in ME1 or 2, any of your choices would form a suitable one.
So you’re under the illusion that this will be the last game set in the Mass Effect universe, certainly after the events of the Reaper invasion? Each of the endings has opportunities for further development, some of them reach directly into the core of the game mechanics. Whilst I might not be happy with the endings being short-sighted and wanting Bioware to explain every little thing to you is silly, there is plenty of room for interpretation, for taking the initiative with each of the endings and exploring it for yourself – Not all things were answered and some new questions were asked – and I’m honestly fine with that – Shepard’s story might be your story, but it’s still only one in the ocean of stories that could be written about the Mass Effect universe.
Yes but you can’t make a fourth game not sacrificing two of the choices, that would just be “lame”
Also it’s not all bad that people are complaining have you seen this http://retakemasseffect.chipin.com/retake-mass-effect-childs-play
$66,000 has been raised to Child’s Play by people protesting against the ending.
Only playing Devil’s Advocate here, but would that money have been donated if the endings had been good?….
Although, yes, the charity has gained $66,000 dollars, and that is a marvellous thing for the charity and the causes it supports, it’s not been donated out of a sense of altruism or a persons desire to be charitable, instead, they’ve donated because they want something, they’ve donated for a very selfish reason, and this then ends up being about trying to earn gravitas for the protest and issue at hand.
How is that children’s fault that people are selfish
I didn’t say that it’s the children’s fault that people are selfish, I said that the motivation, in this particular instance, to be charitable is a selfish one, and all the hand waving and saying look we’ve raised $66,000 in protest at the ME2 ending (read: in support of our desire to get Bioware to change the endings) – It doesn’t matter what the charity is be it sick kids, cancer research or comic relief, something is lost when your ‘charitable donation’ comes with an agenda.
Children won’t mind i’m sure
I’ve been avoiding all this ending talk for fear of spoilers, so am not sure of the specifics of the moaning, but I hear people have played as Renegade, but had what felt like Paragon decisions forced on them, which goes completely against how they’ve played their character for three games.
If that’s the case, then I’m not surprised people are spitting the dummy out a little bit.
On the other hand, you *are* trying to save the galaxy, so surely that’s a bit “paragon-y” in itself.
That’s not true, i wouldn’t say that.
Paragon & Renegade aren’t Good & Evil, so no, I wouldn’t agree with those parts.
In regards to the ending, there isn’t a set paragon or renegade choice, all the endings have a paragon and renegade consequence to them.
The problem with the ending is that its a dues ex machina that does nothing to send off any of the characters properly, and NONE of your choices in 1, 2, or 3 amounted to much of anything.
I played ALL of the sidequests from EVERY game, and all that changed for me against someone who picked it up fresh out of the box, is that there was a different 10 second video then normal.
Really? All that time I spent, believing my choices mattered…
THAT is why people are upset. We were promised something (your choices affect the outcome majorly), and we were LIED to.
I think a number of people, including the article author, are missing the point of a lot of these complaints and thinking it’s because people didn’t get the ending they wanted. So effectively you’re bitching about people bitching
I haven’t played ME3 yet (waiting to pick it up second hand, EA can go to hell for the trick they pulled with the Prothean team member) however the most common complaints I’m finding is not the ending itself but what surrounds the ending, namely 2 things (no spoilers):
1 – Your supposed ever so important choices make absolutely no difference at all. Saved/killed the Rachni? Who cares. Saved/destroyed the collector base? Big deal. Big decisions, romances, choices, paragon/renegade, all of it doesn’t matter one bit. And when Bioware has been pushing the whole “your decisions have a huge impact on how the game pans out, even back to ME1 decisions” for the past number of years, to have an ending where suddenly none of it matters in the slightest is a pretty shitty move. Since the first game Bioware has been pushing the “your choices matter” line when they should have been saying “Do whatever you want, none of it changes how the game pans out anyway”.
2 – The endings themselves don’t really make sense, the “good” ending is apparently more renegade and the “bad” ending more paragon, which is nonsense.
They effectively trolled the entire fanbase.
So yeah, I think that’s the source of most of the complaints I’ve seen. Not people bitching that they’ve got a shitty ending, but the fact that after 3 games, 100+ hours and a constant feed of “choose your decisions wisely” it all comes down to an ending where your decisions don’t matter in the slightest. And that’s something I can understand people being pissed off about.
Bad ending ==> People not complaining
Ending where supposedly “important” decisions and paragon/renegade choices all end up irrelevant ==> People complaining
Essentially if you’re currently playing ME3 (or ME2 or ME1) don’t put any thought into any choice you’re given, they have zero importance or impact on how the game ends. If you see a choice just randomly press left or right with your eyes closed, flip a coin, anything except thinking about the impact, because they don’t matter either way.
And yes, I can see why a lot of people are pissed off over that after what Bioware has been feeding them since day 1.
not missing the point – my issue isn’t with people not liking the ending, I totally get that, it’s with people thinking they have any right whatsoever to demand that someone else change their creative work. If you don’t like it, for whatever reason, that’s okay. If you think BioWare has seriously dropped the ball with what they were trying to do with the whole series, fair enough, call them idiots for that. But demanding that they change it is really, really dumb.
Well it’s like saying the government shouldn’t improve people’s lives because it’s their cities and not ours
Lol, me talking about missing points I then miss the critical sentence of:
“By all means, complain if you don’t like it but to assume you have the right to demand it be changed is incredibly self-important.”
Yeah I can see the justification in that. And in that context a lot of people seem to have gone “Misery” on Biowares ass. If they wanted Shepard to evolve into a machine-gun toting banana wearing a mankini then that’s their perogative. Ridiculous but their choice nonetheless (sorry, should Ihave included *SPOILERS* before writing that? Didn’t mean to ruin the ending). I can totally agree with the sentiment behind that.
Thing is I wonder just what will meet these peoples demands? I imagine they want a paragon “eveyone lives happily ever after” and a renegade “everyone dies” textbook ending. However I wonder if that will solve the base case for the majority of the complaints i.e. the fact that your choices are meaningless. I somehow doubt it.
As an aside, in the case of this game, the overwhelming impression I get after Bioware had been crowing about the impact your decisions have is that they ended up creating too many different decision strings to account for so decided to just ignore ALL of them and *insert random ending x*. Particularly frustrating after they were saying thinks like:
http://www.thegameraccess.com/interviews/360/bioware-mass-effect-3-will-track-1000-decisions
Notably:
” the development team was able to track 700 choices from Mass Effect and incorporate them into Mass Effect 2. And, you plan to have more than 1,000 decisions tracked for Mass Effect 3″
and
“the third is really the fruition of all the choices you made. So in a way, Mass Effect 2 was the most difficult to make because we had to not only bring in things you’ve done before but think about what’s coming for the future. Now it’s really about how things come to a conclusion.”
That comment was particularly ironic as they were talking aboud how difficult it was to track your decisions and build them in … so it seems their decision to deal with those difficulties were to just ignore them all. Good one Bioware!
If I might put a couple of thoughts down…. the whole game is filled with a set of endings from very big things that concern civilisations down to small things like acquaintances or even just a short email in a terminal. All these things made me realise that in all the choices and decisions I made in ME1 and ME2 there are tangible consequences within the series, including within ME3, and that these consequences can have huge impacts on the characters that they affect, not necessarily Shepard. ME3 was the first game that I finished, turned off the game and actually honestly considered my actions through the series, not because I felt that the endings rendered them irrelevant or that I thought they had suddenly become worthless, but that the act of making a decision itself bore a considerable amount of weight; for me it wasn’t a game about the decisions I had made and making sure I got the right ending for my character (sure it’d be nice, but hey) – it was a game about making choices, not achieving outcomes.
You had to make choices, and that you see that the consequences of those choices play out, multiple times throughout the series, and those themselves may be based on consequences of other decisions you made – It’s as much about the burden of having to be the one to make the choices, as it is about the choices themselves.
I’m sorry but the “render worthless” bit actually exists, in the end you realise no matter who or what you were you get a choice to waste it, to waste it; or to waste it all.
I’m guessing i’ll put a *minor SPOILER* on here
Yes the journey is important and if you haven’t walked any of the paths to this you just wouldn’t be able to be to achieve the ending itself, but it doesn’t matter which path you chose, it is especially silly when you work for the minor guys to join you in the fight, or ships or fleets; you could’ve just as well not done any of the side stuff, it won’t matter anyway it’s like in that Linkin Park song “no matter how hard you try”, you can even choose Paragon ending if you were a Renegade all along, which kind of adds to it. It’s like you play a game, and then suddenly it’s taken from you in a rather brutal way. If choices mattered just _a little bit_, if _any_ of the work was not wasted in the end, it would have been much more comfortable.
I gotta say i’m not a hater and it is indeed a decent ending with the explanation and all, i expected it to be something immature and childish but it’s all-serious and the SCALE, the MASS EFFECT of it, is, of course, immense. The final choice is also done with a classic ME2 choice, but without a wheel which also was a nice touch. I think i’ve quite figured for myself the theory behind this and in my conclusion only one ending is valid in the end. That softens the similarity and lack of scenes inbetween those. But i absolutely understand the feeling of wasted efforts, and it _exists_.
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Enjoy what exactly?
The spoilers removed tag?
It’s looks a bit rubbish and lacks any content. 0/10.
Agreed. I demand a rewrite, and that ‘saddos’ bit was just tacked-on.
We should donate a trillion quid to charity in the vain attempt to get it rewritten! Also, report it to Trading Standards!
I know I’m late to the party surrounding this, but I can give people some insight into all this palava.
I’ve been shadowing the official bioware forums for several weeks, the endings to the game were leaked onto it about a week BEFORE the game was released in the US. Since then it’s just been a mess. Hardcore fans of the series who were chomping at the bits for the game have been furious about it since then, especially when it turned out the leaked endings were real. From my observations on the forums since it was leaked, the overall opinion on the endings has been overwhelmingly negative. There was even one poll that was (supposedly) taken by around 60000 people about their opinion on the ending; 90%+ of them believed the endinds were botched. It has actually gotton to the point that some people at bioware have set up a forum topic, which I’m viewing right now, that’s asking them for supposed changes to be made to the endings in future DLC. I must stress however that it was set up by two of the moderators on the forums, not by anyone offically linked to bioware. If anyone’s interested, here’s the forum link. (WARNING: SPOILERS!) http://social.bioware.com/forum/Mass-Effect-3/Mass-Effect-3-Story-and-Campaign-Discussion-Spoilers-Allowed/ME3-Suggested-Changes-Feedback-Thread—Spoilers-Allowed-10098213-1.html
Also, just to clarify on that Forum page, from what I’ve gathered, it appears to be a consultation-elsque on giving the team behind Mass Effect 3 ideas on future DLC to better explain the ending.
of all the things to complain about, on disc dlc, shoehorned multiplayer, online passes.
and they chose the ending as the big issue?
mind you i haven’t played the game yet, and won’t till i can get a cheap preowned copy, so i can’t say anything about the endings.
but criticising somebody else’s work of fiction because you didn’t like the way they ended it doesn’t seem right to me.
actually, criticising it is one thing, but the lengths some people seem to have gone to, they’re a bit much.
unless of course, it’s just a tacky “to be continued” so you have to buy yet another game to finish the story that they promised would end with this game.
For the final time, unless people have played it, don’t shoot down the multiplayer. Most people who have actually tried it actually think it’s really good for the most part, not tacked on at all. I went in expecting to completely hate it but it’s actually really fun and just fits.
The endings were bound to be picked up on due to the nature of them and it being mainly a single player game, and it being the end of the trilogy so everything led up to it.
Don’t agree with Day one DLC for any game though, and online passes for anything except very heavily focused online games either. I’m with you on those :)
Well there’s people who are just multiplayer haters _in general_
You’d really have to either play the game or watch the endings to understand why their angry.