Dragon Age Origins Lead Designer speaks out against ME3 Ending

[GiantRaven]

Though, barring some massive rework of the endings we probably will never actually see, I doubt we'll know for sure until ex-Bioware employees start talking about it.

I really hope this happens, as I'd love to see some of the back room explanations for all of this. For example, why exactly did Bioware find it a good idea to take out all of the conversation tree with the catalyst, in a game where the most interesting thing about it is the conversations you have with characters?

3. Why was the Normandy flying away through a relay gate in the middle of a battle, and where the bugger all was Joker going with her?

The only thing I can think of here is that Joker is trying to save EDI, but that only makes sense if you pick the 'destroy' ending. Quite how he knows what the shockwave does, however, or how he manages to outrace it after working out what it does, is beyond me to speculate on though.

 

[Agayek]

I don't agree that the game has to end happily.
But it does have to have a conclusion, a sense of closure, a feeling your activities mattered.

Not just "And it ends. and no you don't get to find out anything about what happened to anyone. This is over. Go home"

To use the obvious ME3 example.

SPOILERS

Spoiler

I played Paragon pretty much the whole series
If ME3 had ended with Shepard and Anderson dying on the citadel as the Catalyst went off and destroyed the Reapers and then a montage of stuff like Fallout games did, saying 'this happened to this person' 'this place had this happen'. Then I'd be overjoyed with the game as a whole and still want to play through to see other endings. Not disappointed and siding with people protesting it even if I don't protest it myself.

Pretty much this. I don't agree with Knowles that games necessarily need a happy ending, but they do need an actual ending, where things are wrapped up and plot threads are brought to a close.

Also, I'd have loved an ending like that. If it just ended where you described it, without that utterly retarded final choice, and gave a montage ala Dragon Age: Origins, I would have been more than content. I can't say I would have loved it, as that would probably take a happy ending, but it would have more than sufficed as a good ending to the series.

 

[Starke]

Urgh. There was so much potential here. I guess I'll just have to go back to ranting about how awesome Alpha Protocol's morphing ending was.

You managed to finish AP?

With all the bugs and broken game mechanics I am surprised anyone could get to the end.

There were 2 things that were good about that game. The character interactions/conversations and the choice system. Everything else was a buggy pile a turd.

The only game I've ever played through inspite of the gameplay.

That's both a testament to how well the story was told and how utterly dire it was trying to progress it.

Frankly I got bored with the game 3-4 hours in because the story and characters seemed terribly bland and unoriginal.

That's your reason? You can say that about 90%+ of all videogames, ever. Heck, you can apply it to most RPGs - you're not going to meet non-boring characters 3-4 hours into a game, they save that until your comfortable with the environment. As for 'bland and unoriginal'... well, everything is unoriginal from some point of view, what matters is whether it is in fact bland; and I didn't think it was. AP has plenty in the way of interesting story and characters. Not that you'll know who I'm talking about, but I felt the character of Steven Heck was both damn interesting and pretty original.

Oh god, Steven... now I'm going to have to go back and fire up a new playthrough just to run into him again.

On the subject of Alpha Protocol, I generally loathe the, "you're not playing/interpreting it right" argument against criticism. In many ways the biggest failing of Alpha Protocol is that it remains really subject to this countercritisism. It repeatedly presents familiar systems, in unfamiliar ways. The dialog system in particular comes to mind. As a straight up, Mass Effect style pick your response it's terrible, but as a kind of verbal combat sequence, it actually makes a lot of sense. That said, the hacking and combat systems were (usually) godawful, the lockpicking minigame was almost unplayable on consoles (and insultingly easy on PC), and weapons were ridiculously situational with no real mid-range weapon choice available.

But, Mass Effect predisposed the player into thinking Mike Thorton was an undefined blank they could shape, when, really, the game preset his personality pretty extensively, and the player had control over the approach he used to manipulate the people around him, not who he was. /soapbox

 

[Agayek]

What over-population???

Did people forget the whole "We can still travel to other systems, it just takes us a bit longer" thing?

I'm saying give it up because people refuse to just accept that intergalactic civilization is not dead. Sure, it is hurt. Sure, there is damage, but there's no reason to believe the whole thing will fall apart.

People try to come up with reasons why everything would be super-bad, but I haven't seen a viable reason yet.

FTL Travel still viable? Yes.
Quantum Comms available and produceable? Yes.
Lots of people who can work together? Yes.

Hope lost? No.

First off, let's make sure we're all aware of two facts established as canon:

1) The destruction of a mass relay is sufficient to destroy the entire system. For proof, see Arrival.

2) The wave of space magic is sufficient to effectively destroy the Normandy, one of, if not the, most advanced warships in the galaxy. Even moreso if you got the plating upgrade in ME2.

These two facts give us two inescapable conclusions:

1) Every system with a mass relay (most prominently the ones containing Earth, Thessia, Palaven, Tuchanka, Rannoch, and Surkesh) are now devoid of life. The explosion of the relay network will almost certainly kill the vast majority of the organic population of the galaxy. Not everything, certainly, but a very significant majority.

2) Everything that is not up to spec with the Normandy's protections (read: everything up to and possibly including survival bunkers) in the entire galaxy is, at best, damaged heavily. Every building, spaceship, and other structure not designed to take a nuke (most likely, but there's a bit of hyperbole here) has ceased to function.

From this, we can conclude that galactic society as we knew it cannot possibly continue to exist. People will be far too concerned with simply surviving to even think about rebuilding the mass relays any time soon. It will take, at minimum, decades for society to progress far enough in the rebuilding process to even begin making scientific progress, let alone rebuilding the relay network, if they even do by that point.

Beyond that, by the time galactic civilization is formed again, it won't be in any fashion we could recognize. Most likely, it would be a pseudo-feudal style thing, with "city-states" of individual systems (or at least, the ones that survived the space magic of death AND the ensuing waves of rampant starvation as supply lines collapse) competing with each other for resources. Eventually it might reform into something vaguely resembling the current Council system, but far more likely it would be imperial, in a similar vein to how Javik explained the Prothean ruled.

I find that to be rather bleak, since there's far more to hope than "there's survivors!". The endings are depressing/sad/bleak/whatever not because Shepard dies, but because everything we know dies: society, culture, etc. The only thing that we saved was a relatively small collection of people, scattered among isolated pockets throughout the galaxy. With no way to communicate or interact with each other.

 

[Starke]

What over-population???

Did people forget the whole "We can still travel to other systems, it just takes us a bit longer" thing?

I'm saying give it up because people refuse to just accept that intergalactic civilization is not dead. Sure, it is hurt. Sure, there is damage, but there's no reason to believe the whole thing will fall apart.

People try to come up with reasons why everything would be super-bad, but I haven't seen a viable reason yet.

FTL Travel still viable? Yes.
Quantum Comms available and produceable? Yes.
Lots of people who can work together? Yes.

Hope lost? No.

First off, let's make sure we're all aware of two facts established as canon:

1) The destruction of a mass relay is sufficient to destroy the entire system. For proof, see Arrival.

2) The wave of space magic is sufficient to effectively destroy the Normandy, one of, if not the, most advanced warships in the galaxy. Even moreso if you got the plating upgrade in ME2.

These two facts give us two inescapable conclusions:

1) Every system with a mass relay (most prominently the ones containing Earth, Thessia, Palaven, Tuchanka, Rannoch, and Surkesh) are now devoid of life. The explosion of the relay network will almost certainly kill the vast majority of the organic population of the galaxy. Not everything, certainly, but a very significant majority.

2) Everything that is not up to spec with the Normandy's protections (read: everything up to and possibly including survival bunkers) in the entire galaxy is, at best, damaged heavily. Every building, spaceship, and other structure not designed to take a nuke (most likely, but there's a bit of hyperbole here) has ceased to function.

From this, we can conclude that galactic society as we knew it cannot possibly continue to exist. People will be far too concerned with simply surviving to even think about rebuilding the mass relays any time soon. It will take, at minimum, decades for society to progress far enough in the rebuilding process to even begin making scientific progress, let alone rebuilding the relay network, if they even do by that point.

Beyond that, by the time galactic civilization is formed again, it won't be in any fashion we could recognize. Most likely, it would be a pseudo-feudal style thing, with "city-states" of individual systems (or at least, the ones that survived the space magic of death AND the ensuing waves of rampant starvation as supply lines collapse) competing with each other for resources. Eventually it would likely reform into something vaguely resembling the current Council system, but far more likely it would be empirical, in a similar vein to how Javik explained the Prothean ruled.

I find that to be rather bleak, since there's far more to hope than "there's survivors!". The endings are depressing/sad/bleak/whatever not because Shepard dies, but because everything we know dies: society, culture, etc. The only thing that we saved was a relatively small collection of people.

The word you're looking for is "imperial", as in "an imperial government". "Empirical" is "with solid/scientific proof", for example "empirical evidence".

Anyway, am I the only one who gets a serious 40k vibe off the state of the setting you're describing?

 

[Agayek]

The word you're looking for is "imperial", as in "an imperial government". "Empirical" is "with solid/scientific proof", for example "empirical evidence".

Anyway, am I the only one who gets a serious 40k vibe off the state of the setting you're describing?

Fair, I couldn't remember what the proper word was and went with the one that more closely resembles "empire".

The comparison to 40k is actually surprisingly valid for the most likely outcome of that, to be perfectly honest. A civilization built on the ruins of a "golden age", focused solely on maintaining the status quo because they couldn't survive the effort to return to their former glory. Possibly beset on all sides by enemies seeking nothing more than their destruction.

Depending on Shepard's choices, we have analogues for the Orks in the Krogan and Vorcha, Tyrannid (well, a non-omnicidal version) in the Rachni, Chaos and the Traitor Legions in the remnants of Cerberus, and possibly even the Necron if any Reaper forces somehow survived the space magic.

Edit: Damnit, now I want to see/play Mass Effect: 40,000

 

[Starke]

The word you're looking for is "imperial", as in "an imperial government". "Empirical" is "with solid/scientific proof", for example "empirical evidence".

Anyway, am I the only one who gets a serious 40k vibe off the state of the setting you're describing?

Fair, I couldn't remember what the proper word was and went with the one that more closely resembles "empire".

The comparison to 40k is actually surprisingly valid for the most likely outcome of that, to be perfectly honest. A civilization built on the ruins of a "golden age", focused solely on maintaining the status quo because they couldn't survive the effort to return to their former glory. Possibly beset on all sides by enemies seeking nothing more than their destruction.

Depending on Shepard's choices, we have analogues for the Orks in the Krogan and Vorcha, Tyrannid (well, a non-omnicidal version) in the Rachni, Chaos and the Traitor Legions in the remnants of Cerberus, and possibly even the Necron if any Reaper forces somehow survived the space magic.

Edit: Damnit, now I want to see/play Mass Effect: 40,000

I'd settle for Space Marine 2 or another DoW title. Though an RTS entry into the Mass Effect setting would be particularly neat.

Ironically, when it comes to Bioware and Games Workshop, Dragon Age syncs up more with Warhammer Fantasy than ME does with 40k. The Fade/The Warp, Templars/Inquisition, Darkspawn/(Greenskins and or Chaos)... the list goes on.

 

[Agayek]

I'd settle for Space Marine 2 or another DoW title. Though an RTS entry into the Mass Effect setting would be particularly neat.

Ironically, when it comes to Bioware and Games Workshop, Dragon Age syncs up more with Warhammer Fantasy than ME does with 40k. The Fade/The Warp, Templars/Inquisition, Darkspawn/(Greenskins and or Chaos)... the list goes on.

That's definitely a better comparison, I've just always preferred 40k over Fantasy. It's the dystopian future nut in me.

That said, I still want to see something like I described above. Something in the same vein gameplay wise as ME3, but set like 4-5,000 years in the future, after a new galactic civilization has risen and settled. You could be running around as the equivalent of a Spectre or whatever, with the story being about putting down a rebellion on some Galactic Alliance-controlled world. The enemies you run into depend on your choices in ME3, but the general storyline would remain the same. Seems like it'd be fun.

Hell, if I find the time, I may try to write a fanfic around that idea.

 

[angry_flashlight]

In my opinion, the 'best' ending would have been the Earth near levelled, the fleets battered, and maybe part of your squad dead, but the Reapers are gone for good and perhaps Shepard survived if you lucked out or sacrificed a squadmate (a la ME1). A pyrrhic victory, but one that would have some small hope, not just the crap "choices" we got.
The fact that the final choice came right the fuck out of nowhere makes it 1000x worse.

 

[Zetatrain]

What over-population???

Did people forget the whole "We can still travel to other systems, it just takes us a bit longer" thing?

I'm saying give it up because people refuse to just accept that intergalactic civilization is not dead. Sure, it is hurt. Sure, there is damage, but there's no reason to believe the whole thing will fall apart.

People try to come up with reasons why everything would be super-bad, but I haven't seen a viable reason yet.

FTL Travel still viable? Yes.
Quantum Comms available and produceable? Yes.
Lots of people who can work together? Yes.

Hope lost? No.

First off, let's make sure we're all aware of two facts established as canon:

1) The destruction of a mass relay is sufficient to destroy the entire system. For proof, see Arrival.

2) The wave of space magic is sufficient to effectively destroy the Normandy, one of, if not the, most advanced warships in the galaxy. Even moreso if you got the plating upgrade in ME2.

These two facts give us two inescapable conclusions:

1) Every system with a mass relay (most prominently the ones containing Earth, Thessia, Palaven, Tuchanka, Rannoch, and Surkesh) are now devoid of life. The explosion of the relay network will almost certainly kill the vast majority of the organic population of the galaxy. Not everything, certainly, but a very significant majority.

2) Everything that is not up to spec with the Normandy's protections (read: everything up to and possibly including survival bunkers) in the entire galaxy is, at best, damaged heavily. Every building, spaceship, and other structure not designed to take a nuke (most likely, but there's a bit of hyperbole here) has ceased to function.

Here is one thing I don't get. If the destruction has enough force to destroy an entire system then how was the Normandy not completely destroyed and was only disabled (it was still mostly intact when it crashed on the unknown planet)

The only answers I can think of are

A)It was a different kind of explosion (don't ask how or what kind because I have no idea)
B)Major plot hole, obviously

My point is that if the explosion wasn't enough to completely destroy the Normandy,for what ever reason, then maybe the explosion didn't destroy the systems in which the mass relays blew up.

 

[Mr Companion]

I would agree with you but this is a role playing game where choice matters. If the player tries their damnedest to make things right then it should at least have some Effect, possibly a Mass one, on how optimal the outcome is. The ending of a series which players have spent tons of time and money on is not the place to make an artistic statement about man's ineffectual attempts to improve his surroundings.

I completely disagree.

The fact that the player is under the allusion that their choices actually matter is what makes the stark realisation that they don't all the more poignant.

If the story had been hammering your insignificance since day one then the ending has no impact or merit. It's just a sad ending.

But Shepherd has succeeded in changing things up until the end. Until the last 10 mins his actions have improved or worsened a lot of peoples lives. If the writers were trying to convey this message they failed, nobody got it because they didn't tell it well. A sudden tonal shift like that isn't clever if the audience is given no indication as to why the blazes its happening. Perhaps most of the endings should have had the Reapers destroy Earth and Shepherd dies so that Sovereign's prediction that you cannot stop the inevitable turns out to be true bringing home the realization that as organics we cannot escape our mortality. THAT would be depressing but realistic with only a brief hint as to the outcome earlier and only if you complete all the side quests to maximize defense can you escape it. But that's not what Mass Effect is about in the first place and just watching it does it look like the writer was trying to convey some high art bullshit? Or was it just about the protagonist pressing a Reaper off button and bringing about a dark age?

Ps: Just to clarify From Dust basically does what you said, it teases you right up until the end with learning the ways of your ancestors to make everything better, but in truth everything is as it always was and your ancestors realized the same thing, that you can't escape nature. Early Sci Fi books normally had some sad but amusing messages too, you should check out some short stories (bugger I forgot the author's names, im sure you'll find some).

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

First off, let's make sure we're all aware of two facts established as canon:

1) The destruction of a mass relay is sufficient to destroy the entire system. For proof, see Arrival.

Way I see it, the only way that doesn't happen is if the one-of-three-colours beam(s) 'drains' most of a relay's energy to do it's space magic routine, so that when the relay goes boom it doesn't have the same catastrophic power that an 'undrained' relay's destruction has.

Or Mass Relays are constructed entirely out of Handwavium.

 

[Rylian]

I was reading another post, and the guy posted an image of the Zorya skybox background, and it was identical to the ending scene skybox everyone was looking up at, same dual planets same sizes and everything, even the fauna represented on the planet is identical to Zorya. They don't say it but...either its another of the MASSIVE botches that the ending has (along with disappearing crew, teleportation, general desertion and abandonment, bad voice acting) or they INTENDED for the Normandy to be crash landed on an industrial mining world dominated by the Blue Suns.

Sounds more like a rushed stock photo than anything else. I'm going to hold out until Bioware gives us some answers (god help them if they try to make you pay for an ending), and hopefully then some things will become clear. For now its just one bit WTF?!?! Gears 3 had a better ending than this!

I tend to agree - I think it's dangerous to read too much into this stuff, because it's impossible to tell when something has been included as a deliberate visual cue, and when assets are just being recycled for convenience.

Much the same goes for the "Shepard must be on Earth in the final surviving scene, because concrete" discussion. Which is more likely - Shepard surviving a fall from orbit (without even a functioning suit, let alone a helmet) or artists getting lazy/taking licence? It's possible these decisions were made deliberately and they do have some meaning, but it's impossible to tell which is which with the current information.

I agree, in fact I am starting to think I am indoctrinated into the indoctrination theory. I am going to give Bioware the benefit of the doubt, as of ME1 and ME2 they always explained their endinging. That and Stargazer dude said there was one more Shepard story. Too many inconsistencies in that ending, even for an RPG company.

Wanna see something that will really blow your mind in all of this? This video went up over a year ago. Coincidence? Hmmm...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm82gjZDIDU

 

[Von Strimmer]

I was reading another post, and the guy posted an image of the Zorya skybox background, and it was identical to the ending scene skybox everyone was looking up at, same dual planets same sizes and everything, even the fauna represented on the planet is identical to Zorya. They don't say it but...either its another of the MASSIVE botches that the ending has (along with disappearing crew, teleportation, general desertion and abandonment, bad voice acting) or they INTENDED for the Normandy to be crash landed on an industrial mining world dominated by the Blue Suns.

Sounds more like a rushed stock photo than anything else. I'm going to hold out until Bioware gives us some answers (god help them if they try to make you pay for an ending), and hopefully then some things will become clear. For now its just one bit WTF?!?! Gears 3 had a better ending than this!

I tend to agree - I think it's dangerous to read too much into this stuff, because it's impossible to tell when something has been included as a deliberate visual cue, and when assets are just being recycled for convenience.

Much the same goes for the "Shepard must be on Earth in the final surviving scene, because concrete" discussion. Which is more likely - Shepard surviving a fall from orbit (without even a functioning suit, let alone a helmet) or artists getting lazy/taking licence? It's possible these decisions were made deliberately and they do have some meaning, but it's impossible to tell which is which with the current information.

I agree, in fact I am starting to think I am indoctrinated into the indoctrination theory. I am going to give Bioware the benefit of the doubt, as of ME1 and ME2 they always explained their endinging. That and Stargazer dude said there was one more Shepard story. Too many inconsistencies in that ending, even for an RPG company.

Wanna see something that will really blow your mind in all of this? This video went up over a year ago. Coincidence? Hmmm...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm82gjZDIDU

Great. More fucking questions. Thanks man

captcha: rinky dink... too fucking right mate.

 

[SajuukKhar]

snip

Except there is a very large diffrence between the Arrival Relay and the relays at the end of ME3

1. the Arrival relay had considerably more power in it
2. the relays at the end of ME3 used ALL THIER POWER to enact Shepard choice.

Why people contiue to try to make the two out to be the same when they are not is beyond me.

 

[Aircross]

It is a game. Not a movie.

SEND IT TO SQUARE ENIX NOW!!!

They've been missing the point too!

 

[SajuukKhar]

Way I see it, the only way that doesn't happen is if the one-of-three-colours beam(s) 'drains' most of a relay's energy to do it's space magic routine, so that when the relay goes boom it doesn't have the same catastrophic power that an 'undrained' relay's destruction has.

Or Mass Relays are constructed entirely out of Handwavium.

But that drained energy has to go somewhere and considering the Arrival relay destroyed an entire system, imagine what a relay with the energy from every single other relay in the Galaxy could do.

.......................the drained energy went to enact the wave thingy that enacted Shepard's choice.