Mass Effect 3 Ending Controversy

[tredien]

I've to agree, the game is a great game. The ending is lazy and has more plot holes than the comics.
That's sad but changing the ending won't really solve the fact that they failed/didn't bother to do it right in the first place. And this "real ending" will always be present as the real one. -_-

 

[Joccaren]

At this point I think Bioware wanted to go with the indoctrination, but changed their mind half way through/changed the ending after the leaks happened a year or so back, but were too lazy to remove the hints. Theres just so much evidence, its impossible that its all just incidental.

'Evidence' is speculation by fans. Its like saying there is evidence for God existing and creationism by the fact that the Earth and everyone on it exists. Bioware have stated they stand by there endings, and if there was an ending that was dropped due to spoilers it was the Dark Energy ending that was hinted towards throughout ME2.
Indoctrination is a nice headcanon theory fans came up with that Bioware had nothing to do with. Hell, there's even development spreadsheets from Bioware's storyboards in some app I've forgotten the name of that outline this being their plan all along. I believe 'Crucible results in Galactic Dark Age' were the words, or something very similar. The only mention of Dream was in the LI section, where they talk to you after your nightmare.

 

[Little Duck]

I never expected to come out of this game happy. I fully expected that a decision I made somewhere in my past coming back to haunt me and destroy me, like saving the rachni, seeing them destroy fleets with indoctrination or having to lose many allies in order to make the "perfect" decision.I doubt many other people saw the ending this way, but it's how I saw it.

 

[survivor686]

Well said Shamus

 

[Daft Ghosty]

You didn't read the second page did you?

Of course I read the second page. I assume you are referring to the FCC filing part? Because the rest of his article is pretty well balanced. In other words a fair report that covers both sides, without being condescending. If anything he is being critical of Bioware poor choice of story telling. Not the fans because they are upset.

Maybe you refer to the last part where he tells them to stick to their guns? You have to take that in with the whole article, and not take it out of context. By saying that he is telling them if this bad ending is the one they wanted, being as piss poor as it is, then keep it. With the under tone that its your bed, you lay in it now. He is trying to touch on the core of the problem. What I believe he is trying to say is they have a problem, they need it fixed before they go off writing another game, and fall into the same problem again. Because in the end he is right. If Bioware has a problem with how they write their games, it is a much larger problem then the ending to ME3. And I agree. They have a hell of a mess to fix with ME3, and as it stands a fix isn't likely coming.

I absolutely hate the ending of ME3. As it stands right now I've lost all interests of ever playing it again. I've spent about 400 hours, in play through of all three games. I wont be buying any ME3 DLC, and find the "Be sure to drink your OVALTINE" at the end of the credit insulting, after the plot hole ridden ending. Just like in a Christmas Story I find out the hero is nothing more then a marketing machine trying sell as much as they can to the sheep listening. Yeah I know that's a bit dramatic =)

 

[BanZeus]

It's a very nice mix of denial, wishfull thinking and self-reinforcement.

I'm not entirely sure what evidence you're basing this on.

You can't disprove the "indoctrination theory" using evidence because the "indoctrination theory" isn't based on evidence: I believe that's the literal point of Nimcha's statement.

Indoctrination theory is fan-fiction that some people cling to religiously because they would rather believe the game lies to you for 30 hours than accept that the ending just blows.

How is Indoctrination theory not based on evidence?

It explains how everything Shepard experiences after Harbinger's attack on the Hammer Forces almost fits a textbook definition of indoctrination according to the Codex, and explains a great deal of the physical in-game evidence that points to the ending being fake or a lie being fed to Shepard to indoctrinate him and stop his resistance.

The other option is that the ending is so bad and so badly written the only way to make sense of it is to explain it through indoctrination theory.

I chose to be slightly more optimistic.

So what you're saying is that you'd rather believe the game lies to you than accept the ending just blows...?

That's simply not true though, as a healthy number of pro indoctrination hypothesis vids really do try to use evidence to support their claim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZOyeFvnhiI This vid as good as any.

I agree that this video offers as much solid evidence in favor of indoctrination as anything else out there. That amount is 0.

"Nobody sees the kid." There's no proof of this. The game never shows any other ships docking with the citadel, that isn't evidence that no other ship can dock with the citadel.

Shepard's bad dreams can just as easily be interpreted as him being haunted by the ghosts of those who were killed by the reaper forces, including himself. Trees in London is not especially telling since...

Spoiler

You start the tutorial with infinite ammo right after you and Anderson are the only two people who survive your building being hit by reaper beams. Why is one clearly plot armor and the other "obviously" indoctrination?

If BioWare wants to release DLC for the game or ME4 and in those say that Shepard was indoctrinated or a replicant or a unicorn, that's a retcon. But until and unless they do, the theory remains fanfic.

 

[UltimatheChosen]

Spoiler

No. You're wrong. They only kill the advanced civilizations capable of creating such synthetics. That is a big difference, and it is literally said so by the Catalyst. And yes in the end the Reapers are wrong. This is also what the Catalyst says. Shepard being there proves them wrong. That is why Shepard decides what happens next. Again, all of this is said very clearly and almost literally so by the Catalyst.

EDI and the geth are only a small part of the reason the Reapers are wrong. The Reapers come every 50k years to prevent the AIs from wiping out everyone. They do so because then they give society time to bloom but arrive before the synthetics actually start the extermination. EDI and the geth are on good terms with organics near the end of the game, but there's no way to be sure that will still be the case in, say, 10k years.

As I've said a few times before on this forum, the main reason why the Reapers are proven to be redundant is exactly what the Catalyst says. Shepard is there and has defeated the Reapers. Who are, as shown repeatedly, the apex of synthetic evolution. If the galaxy can defeat them, they are not needed anymore. Since it is now shown any other occurence of synthetic can also be beaten.

So, hang on.

The Reapers are as powerful as it's possible for a synthetic species to become, yes? So... why wouldn't they just kill the synthetic species that the organic species create, rather than killing the organic species before they can create the synthetic species? I mean, I've heard of cutting out the middleman, but this is ridiculous.

 

[T3hSource]

3 weeks,one more and the gaming community might as well go nuts.
I wonder if some people really did spend more time faffing over this than playing the entire trilogy,that's a disturbing thought,even more so to think that it can actually be true.

 

[Frankster]

snippy

Just to make it clear I don't believe most of the "evidence" for indoctrination hypothesis I've seen thus far, or at least don't see it as concrete proof.

Pretty sure I already said in this thread that the only pieces of evidence that has caused me to think "heh maybe it's possible..." was sheperd getting indoctrinated eyes at the end (and it really is indoctrinated eyes, with the distinct double orb around the pupil) and the kid being in that exploding building way before you meet him. But that's hardly enough for me to go totally on board with the hypothesis.

Point was though that people HAVE been showing evidence in support of the theory so to say they haven't is just a lie. Now whether you think the evidence is BS or not is a completely different matter.

 

[Something Amyss]

Ok, that was a cheap shot on my part. I wanted to mention the FTC thing and ended up throwing it in as part of a joke. Bad form.

Well, I can't say I've never had a bad joke go awry, so I can't hold it against you. XD

 

[SoopaSte123]

Spot on as always, Shamus. And great link to how it should have ended! Now I really don't know if I prefer that or the indoctrination theory...

 

[Eppy (Bored)]

My feeling on the matter is that it wasn't Bioware's story to tell. Mass Effect, to an unprecedented level, asks you to BE Commander Shepard, not just play through his or her story. Mass Effect is the PLAYER'S story, and Bioware decided to try and retake it, which was a terrible idea because that was never going to make anybody happy. If this were any other franchise I'd say that no, changing the ending would be a terrible idea and set a bad precedent, but Mass Effect isn't any other franchise - it belongs to the players, not to Bioware.

The ending also strikes me as rushed as hell. The dream sequences? How much of the game world do they actually affect? How frequently are they referenced? It seems to me that they were tacked on at the last minute, a hurried and poorly written conclusion to an otherwise epic franchise. This is why the Valve/Blizzard 'When It's Done' approach to game development works so well - they take however much time they need to make their games well, and Bioware certainly has (had?) the auteur license, if you will, to do that. The fanbase would wait, and they should have realized that and taken their time. At this point Bioware can only do damage control, and no, they will never please everybody, but they should at least try. Mass Effect's fanbase is devoted to this franchise because they are an integral part of it; they ARE Commander Shepard. Mass Effect 3 tried to take away this series' best attribute - the player's integral importance to the story, and did it with a poor Deus Ex Machina to boot. Because the fanbase is so integral to the story the players are much more directly hurt by the way this game ended, which is why we've seen the huge furor we have; if Half Life 2 Episode X ends with Gordon Freeman being squished by a giant space walrus or something people will be upset with Valve, but they certainly won't come out in such numbers with such anger as they have with ME3 and actually demand, en masse, that Valve change the ending. People are invested in Gordon's story, but Mass Effect 3 is the *player's* story, not just some random avatar.

 

[Emiscary]

You've got some fine points. But I'd argue that the fundamental difference between altering a book's plot to suit the audience's expectations and altering a game's is that the reader had *no* part in determining the outcome of the book's story. They were quite simply just along for the ride. A gamer playing a game like Mass Effect has not only been placed *into* the story, but they've been told to expect that their choices would impact the course of the story and it's ultimate conclusion.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

Thank you for writing this. Now that the dust has settled, it nice to see that the more rational voices criticizing the ME ending can be heard.

That fan fiction you linked seems to be cropping up in every forum. I think its on its way to becoming the new canon. Its not like Bioware is opposed to using material from deviantart.

 

[luckshot]

i agree with shamus completely on this.


what gets on my nerves the most is that they most likely did not have a plan for ending the series.

oh they had a plan. drew kapyrshri-lanka or however you fucking spell it had the whole series written from the start like any good trilogy should be, but they abandoned his plan, apparently because a vague outline of it was leaked. on a completely unrelated note, drew recently quit.

and now we see what happens when two assholes try to hijack the ending of someone else's story. if your interested in the original ending (or at least what we know of it):

Spoiler

remember haestrom from ME2? that planet whose sun was expanding much faster than it should be? remember how it was proposed to be caused by dark energy? apparently, dark energy was going to fuck up the whole galaxy in a similar way if left unchecked.

but, an ancient race caught wind of this a very, very long time ago. time was running out, so in an act of desperation, they did the only thing they could. they could suppress the dark energy for a time (im going to take a wild leap and say it was about 50k years), but it meant something horrible had to be done. they had to utilize a very dark technology, taking their whole race, and turning it into harbinger, the first reaper.

SOMETHING about being a reaper or making a reaper held off dark energy for a awhile longer, at that was the reason for the cycle. the reapers would come by when the races of the galaxy had developed enough and harvest them into a new reaper, because they were unable to find a more permanent solution. that is what all of harbinger's racial comments in ME2 were about: he had singled out humans as the only suitable race to be a new reaper.

apparently, a human reaper was what they needed to stop the dark energy permanently, so the final choice of the game was going to be: subject your own race to the horrible fate of being a reaper for the good of the galaxy, or kill them all and say "we'll figure it out on our own, thanks."

i think that the reapers ended up killing all intelligent life as opposed to just harvesting the race they wanted as part of a "breeding" program to actually try and direct galactic evolution to make humans, like we were planned from the start as their final solution, but thats just my guess.

exactly that abandoned ending is the abandoned flotation device while we got tied to the anchor because the captain thought we would like it better

and now that they got called on it they are trying to dredge us up from the bottom, with the end result being a bunch of drowned and bloated bodies...or upset fans who have had their faith in the company and game series shaken, but i prefer my analogy

 

[Ken Sapp]

I can understand some of the outrage over the ending of ME3. Twist ending with no closure. I don't have a problem with the twist, but the lack of closure after all of the major choices made throughout the series makes all of those choices meaningless.
Assuming that not everyone has finished ME3:

Spoiler

I can live with the destruction of the Mass Relay network and the Citadel. But there should be some mention of how the major racial conflicts were resolved. Leave the Destruction/Control/Synthesis ending up in the air but make our choices mean something more than numbers on a screen that affect nothing other than who we can talk to before we charge the hill. Is it reasonable that the hero gives up there life to save the universe? Sure. No problem.

Here is one suggestion I would make. In that scene after the credits where descendants of the current generation are shown, add a short bit showing new mass relays being built or the old ones being repaired. And maybe some short vignettes to give us a sense that our decisions had consequences, even if it is just text cards such as they used in Dragon Age Origins

Finally, I know I will probably be flamed for it but: I enjoyed the series and the ending as it stands. Could it be done better? Of course. I never expected sunshine, rainbows and ponies but a little bit of closure would have been nice.