From the Article:
The stuff with the Catalyst just... You have to understand. Casey is really smart and really analytical. And the problem is that when he's not checked, he will assume that other people are like him, and will really appreciate an almost completely unemotional intellectual ending. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it.
Ladies and gentlemen, it seems that the ending to
Mass Effect 3 could be a textbook case of "Viewers Are Geniuses [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ViewersAreGeniuses]"; especially when you consider that they were also deliberately going for a divisive and thought-provoking conclusion. They did just that, quite successfully I would say.
... Unfortunately, it seems someone forgot to mention that
an ending which is too sophisticated is even worse than one which isn't sophisticated enough in the eyes of the average person.
Ergo, the many of the fans got angry because they locked themselves out of the loop by not paying attention to the multitude of genius bonuses [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GeniusBonus] littered throughtout the series. In all of the games of the trilogy, there's constant allusion to the value of information and the patterns which lie beneath; but nevertheless, that doesn't mean the majority of players are paying attention to them, probably only a very small minority. They are the key to "getting" the meaning behind the ending to
Mass Effect, along with the willingness to accept an ending which lacks closure (as it does make it more thought-provoking).
Of course, one could easily argue that they shouldn't of bothered to go for this sort of ending at all; it's just asking for trouble. Even if that was not negotiable, the ending still could have been executed much better. But no matter how you slice it, averting this issue means having it dumb it down a bit; not to the point of painfully obvious, just to the point most players could actually see it coming.
And just to say, this sort of problem is actually
very common among intellectuals. Lost within our own minds, considering the intricate relations of many different things at once; we end up forgetting that most people aren't even aware of such things, let alone interested. And then trying to break it down into more digestible segments for the average person,
we still end up going over their heads; it takes a few tries to get it right, and it may be a case-by-case basis as well.
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And to go on a brief tangent,
Dragon Age II has a very similar problem with it's narrative; heck,
the exact same problem. The issues with level and encounter design didn't help the matter either, as those were undeniable and rather serious issues.
Mass Effect 3 didn't have the gameplay problems of DA2, and the vast majority of the narrative was done in a way that most could enjoy on the basic level.
This could be a growing problem for Bioware, at least if they want to continue making mainstream games. All of their games have a very heavy intellectual angle to them, and lately it starting to get a bit too dominant in their narratives; they don't have to sink to the lowest common denominator [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LowestCommonDenominator], but they're very quickly moving into the niche appeal market unless they can strike the right balance between smart writing and accessible writing.
