Mass Effect 3 Gets An Ending

[Diana Kingston-Gabai]

In general, I agree that writers should be free to determine how their stories end, regardless of reader reaction - of course, this comes with the caveat that readers are just as free to criticize perceived failures.

The problem with the Mass Effect 3 ending _specifically_ is that, of the three choices given to the player, two have already been invalidated by the games themselves, because they're associated with antagonists you've already defeated. If you choose Control, you're basically proving the Illusive Man right (this after spending a good five minutes arguing with him), whereas if you choose Synthesis, you're justifying everything Saren did in the first game, since that's what _he_ wanted too.

It's not the linearity of the ending that's frustrating people, it's that the ending itself offers no closure, no resolution, no specific details of the sort you'd expect from a BioWare game. Were there still millions of people on the Citadel when it exploded? The Council? All those refugees? Your former squadmates? How do characters in one location suddenly end up in another? How does that "magical space laser" do what it does? Granted, these are all relatively minor elements in the overall narrative, but for a series which has prided itself on attention to plot details, their omission here _is_ glaringly obvious.

 

[Static Jak]

(Wrong comment section)

 

[Falcon123]

Point. Missing it. Thanks for not understanding, Yahtzee.

Holding the Line.

I'm surprised that Yahtzee is both missing the point and isn't up in arms over the ending. For someone that has emphasized in the past how games should have good writing and that BioWare was one of the few developers that understood this, he really seems to not get it.

You guys are sure it's Yahtzee (and MovieBob, and Devin Faraci, and Ben Kuchera from PA Report and every other journalist that has said similar things recently) that's missing the point, and not yourselves?

Saying that games should have good writing doesn't mean we should pressure a company to change a game's ending that is perceived as bad. Even excellent writers do write bad books sometimes. But there's a certain level of respect for what the author has done, even if it's bad, that no one starts demanding they change something. Demanding changes is not respecting the writing, good or bad.

Thank you. You get it. Authors make mistakes and execute things poorly sometimes. It doesn't mean the ending was "wrong" or that people should be this upset. Shit happens. Writers screw up. But turning things over to the audience sets an awful precedent far worse than this ending

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Why is it that every video game journalist is missing the fact that Bioware ended the game like that because they didn't have the time to actually finish it? And that's before we go into the plot holes introduced in the last 10 minutes. They fucked us over. Simple as that.

 

[the7ofswords]

Nearly all of my teammates survived. Also, your choices were limited at the end based on what you did (and readiness level) during the rest of the game. So the idea that nothing you did up to that point mattered is nonsense - it mattered as much as the actions of an individual or small group could matter. I think a big part of the ending was to get the point across that some things are simply TOO BIG for your actions to make any real difference:

It's a big wide universe out there, and you aren't even a blip on its radar. There is no god, no purpose, no reason for any of it. Life is an accident of chemistry. What is just is. If we want to survive, we have to find a way - we might even have to evolve beyond our dearly-held paradigms regarding what life is. And if we don't survive? Doesn't ultimately matter.

This is the message I took away. (You don't have to agree with it, but that's the point I got from the ending.)

As far as endings coming out of left field ? I wonder ... has anyone else ever read any hard science fiction? Or watched any science fiction not related to Star Wars, or Star Trek? Science fiction stories very often end on a "Wait ... WTF?" kind of note. Anyone ever see 2001: A Space Odyssey? Or read any Asimov? Bradbury?

Sure, there were a few minor things that irked me about the ending, but it certainly didn't come as some kind of devastating shock. And I most certainly don't think BioWare should go all "Neville Chamberlain" on their fan base.

 

[GoddyofAus]

Some good points there.

None of which will matter one iota since at this point everybody's so buried in their trenches nothing can get them out of it. It's just angry fanboys yelling at each other.

I hope it'll pass soon. Maybe then we can get back to discussing how many amazing things are in this game.

I have to agree, Nimcha. While I appreciate the "polarization" as Casey Hudson put it this ending has brought upon the gaming community, that polarization being venomous debate bordering on cyber rioting, I think it is about time we all got the hell over it.

As a matter of fact, I would say that as soon as the next big release arrives at our doorsteps, presumably Diablo 3, everyone will suddenly stop giving a shit because they are no longer bored and uninvested in something.

The hardcore fanbase will continue to stew over it, because that's essentially all they know how to do since Dragon Age 2, but they better not insult my intelligence by saying they won't be buying Biowares next game on day one.

 

[walsfeo]

I think I'm much more into Mass Effect than Yahtzee, but I still don't think the ending is a heinous crime against humanity.

The general idea of the ending makes sense in the setting, although it was badly executed. It's another game/trilogy with a kinda-bad, rushed ending, not the end of the world.

I agree. The ending built and built from the beginning of the the game, each mission re-opening or closing doors presented earlier in the series, but the last "choose red, green, or blue," and then what happened afterwords felt kinda rushed. The rest felt like it was stylistic story-telling. I found pretty much everything that happened up until that point previously telegraphed.

The crime was not that the ending was bad. (Giving an alien intelligence motivations that don't really make sense to us works for me.) The problem was that it broke conventions established in the rest of the game. The last scenes involve running and dodging for your live and then listening to an alien AI, and then chatting with our nemesis for a bit. I don't have a problem with that, but generally in video games people expect a challenge, like a boss fight, to help bring about final conflict resolution.

 

[Darklord008]

I find it ironic that Yahtzee, famous for his utter hatred of fans and fandom, produced one of the more calm, less insulting pieces on this subject than the more "traditional" journalists. Or maybe that's just me that thinks this. Either way, I disagree, but i thank him for not pulling a full MovieBob on us.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

So EA gets to fuck with the writer's (btw, the head writer for ME1 was gone for ME3) story, but the fans don't?

 

[TsunamiWombat]

If the internet had existed back in the 60s, the ending to 2001 wouldn't have lasted more than a month. Back then, loads of people were confused, annoyed, or even downright angry with the way the film ended. But because making films back then required very little input from the audience, there was nothing they could do to alter it. If the internet had been around, you can damn well bet that millions of sci-fi fans would have used it to petition Kubrick to make a less crappy, pretentious ending, and to end the film in a real way. And one of the greatest legacies of one of the most important works of science-fiction would have been chucked out in the rubbish, simply to serve the needs of an irate fanbase.

Slightly different, that film was based on a book, which also ended in a stupid and pretentious way if i'm not mistaken.

 

[PingoBlack]

Good one there Yahtzee.
You managed to make a point why BioWare shouldn't change their terrible writing, but without falling into MovieBob hole of yelling: "Ending-O-Tron is ART!"

Still, lets be honest here ... It shouldn't be changed, but then again, people feel the need for someone to pay. I hope that payback comes when fans avoid BioWare's next PR hyped piece of crap and NOT by the same people paying even more money for DLC.

But lets also make one more point here.

End as it is would have worked MUCH better if there was no choice at all. RGB 'splosions were so pathetic that even photo-chop Tali suddenly became "ART!".

 

[Nx]

The theme of inescapable cycles can be seen elsewhere in the series, such as the implication that ending the Krogan genophage will cause the Krogan wars to happen again

Except if you do everything right in all three games (save Wrex in ME1, save Maelon's data in ME2 so that Eve survives), there is hope that it won't happen again. The game shows you that the krogans are not just mindless brutes, and did have art and culture before the genophage, and there is a chance for them to become a peaceful member of the galactic community.

And then the mass relays blow up, Wrex is left stranded on Earth or that planet in the end, and that's it.

The endings of the genophage arc and the quarian/geth arc were both done well, with multiple different outcomes and a chance to get a good, satisfying ending if you work hard enough for it. That's how the whole game should've ended, not with three buttons that let you choose what color explosion you want.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

I can't believe for a moment that the game writers/developers intended to create an ending that would make it hard for fans to replay their products. I can't agree that this is some brilliant artistic commentary on the futility of actions against endless cycles - because playing video games is one of those activities and it would be ridiculously bad policy to demean your own medium by pointing out it's futility/pointlessness.

It's a bad ending. It's not the end of life as we know it, but it's bad. It should be repaired if a repair is possible. If only because it obviously isn't serving the purpose of the creation - which is to get people to play the game. I want to replay ME3, I can't. I've tried. I can't do it. I know what is coming at the end and every time I get to a plot point it just hits me and I have to turn the system off and go do something else. That isn't something that should be happening.

Why has this become such a divisive hate-filled discussion when some people are actually suffering from sadness and truly upset at something they love being taken away from them? Is there no sympathy, no empathy in this community? Are we really all just a bunch of individualists who think we are right all the time and don't care how anyone feels around us? I am saddened by this whole thing. I grow more distant from the community with every passing day this drags on.

 

[JediMB]

Because if it's established that the creators of a story can be pressured by constant browbeating by the audience, then the sanctity of the creator's original intention is made meaningless.

Except there is no such thing as the sanctity of the creator's original intention.

The ending we got is what we got because of publisher meddling, and a new lead writer who was wholly uninterested in actually crafting an ending that was consistent with the rest of the series.

When the original ending got cut the development team was left with a lot of already completed content (and the whole "Take Earth Back!" marketing thing), such as the London scenario and the sequences with the Citadel in orbit around Earth. Since they couldn't justify abandoning these things, a new ending was crafted around them... and it just happened to not make any sense whatsoever.

The original ending, the one about dark energy rapidly aging the Milky Way's suns, had an explanation for how the Citadel ended up in the Sol system. The ending we got just pretended that it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

The original ending explained that harvesting humanity might be the key to finding a solution to the dark energy problem, as foreshadowed in Mass Effect 2, and would let the player choose to either sacrifice humanity or destroy the Reapers while hoping that the galaxy could be salvaged without them. Not a lot of choice, but a hell of a lot less nonsensical than the Star Child contradicting everything Sovereign and Harbinger ever said, and space magic "fixing" the galaxy in three utterly unsatisfactory ways.

 

[Realitycrash]

Yeah, I feel like most journalists / critcs are on a completely different wave length then us gamers.

Sorry, are you implying that Moviebob and Yahtzee are not gamers, and you are?
Because if so, I feel a full-blown facepalm coming.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

an epilogue appendix style thing just to square away the subplots.

Which is exactly what was missing.

I mean, let's put aside the fact that we were told there'd be multiple endings up until about a month before release; this one thing would've made the current endings slightly more bearable.

Agreed, at least Yahtzee has experienced what the fans had to go through & has consequently understood why people all over the 'net are whining.

Unlike MovieBob.

 

[samaugsch]

I won't be playing ME3. The Mass Effect series has always felt bland to me. And now, knowing how ti all ends, I have no reason to continue.

I think what is most disappointing though is that the ending isn't even original. Maybe some of you have heard of FreeSpace? In the last mission you and a squad of bombers go on a suicide mission and fight through hyperspace to stop the massive death-ship from reaching Earth and culminating in the destruction of said death-ship AND the jump nodes that link back to Earth. It ends and you're more of less certain the explosion kills everyone and the epilogue states how Earth is now unreachable - which strands both humans and Vasudans (and probably a few Shivans too) there with no way to return back home.

So, yeah. Too bad about that 'epic' ending.

At least that game HAD an epilogue.