Rather than getting swept up in the controversy and cupcake-baking of the most devoted and vocal Mass Effect 3 fans, allow us to offer a level-headed, calm explanation for why a much better ending to Mass Effect 3 is something that is desperately needed. A new (extended) ending is coming, but the need for it is still being debated, online and elsewhere.
Don’t expect personal attacks or outrage, since there are few corners of the Mass Effect universe that I have not plunged into and examined head-first. Having played through Mass Effect more than half a dozen times, read every novel in the series – except that one – to gather the most out of Drew Karpyshyn’s fiction, and powered through every batch of DLC for Mass Effect 2, my hopes for ME3 were justifiably high. Having spent well over 300 hours with Commander Shepard places me in the camp of those demanding the most from the end of the trilogy. And most disappointed.
BioWare began by delivering what felt, at the moment, like a slap in the face – and still does – when thousands of fans sat down with their copies after midnight on launch day to find that: “Whoops, we’re not supporting the ability to import your Shepard’s face. Make a new one.” The mind-boggling error should have sent a clear message that satisfying the most devoted of Mass Effect fans wasn’t the team’s top priority wherever possible. But instead of being heartbreaking and disappointing, the majority of the game’s campaign delivered on the highest of promises.
It’s important to explain that the exact plotting of events that the ending revolves around is not the issue. Facing the player with a bittersweet climax was the developer’s intent, and while many wished for a happy ending for Commander Shepard, an ultimate sacrifice is not a problem in itself. The issue is with the way that ending was relayed to the player, and just how many incredibly obvious questions were never addressed. Instead of saying “here’s how what you did changed the universe,” the writers of the game simply said “we’re done showing you how you impacted events.”
In my playthrough, distrust of all Reaper technology led Commander Shepard to decide that the universe would only be safer if they were destroyed. A large explosion ensued, turning the invading forces into hulking scrap heaps, and destroying the network of Mass Relays. This is where the game, as has been claimed elsewhere, falls apart.
In my particular playthrough, the characters I had selected to accompany Shepard into the final assault on the Reapers were magically transported from Earth – presumably dead – to stepping off the Normandy stranded on an unnamed Jungle planet. Before anyone attempts to defend the possible variables at play, the fact remains: two deceased characters came back to life, because a scripted cut-scene was completely detached from the player decisions that led to it. Considering the fact that said cut-scene was the final image of a three-game series, this blunderous error is simply unforgivable.
Then the questions begin to arise. It seemed the decision to wipe out the Reapers, as the hologram-child explained, also meant wiping out Shepard and the similarly sentient Geth. Were they actually eradicated? Was EDI? Where did that impact begin and end? Did the decision to wipe out The Geth helping the Quarians rebuild a new civilization destroy those chances? Would the Quarians be able to survive without help?
Then it became clear that a vast array of alien militaries were now in orbit around Earth, with no way of returning home. How could this twist of fate change the future of these civilizations? How could Rannoch be formed without what seemed to be a majority of the remaining Quarian ships? Are these aliens doomed to starvation and death? These questions may be interesting to ponder, but the player’s attention is never drawn to them by the storytellers themselves. Mass Effect 3‘s only concern is showing the exact results of Shepard’s defense of Earth, in the broadest and vaguest of terms. The fans needed an ending, and the story ended – or rather, stopped being told.
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Completely agree, and not just on the aspect that it’s inconclusive, but even without delving into details, the original ending makes no sense. In Arrival, it’s shown that blowing up a Mass Effect Relay destroys the majority of the system which the relay resides in. So by blowing up each relay, you just…caused a universal apocalypse, apparently. Even if the Sol System remained intact, the majority of species stranded there – like the turian fleet, for instance – couldn’t even eat the food native to the system, and would all die. It’s a really large issue which is never touched on, or even acknowledged, by the traditional RGB ending.
Exactly! How are any species alive? How did the normandy survive the relay jump?
I agree with this article. Too many questions left unanswered, and then they throw more questions on top of it. Why do my decisions make no impact like they always have? Wasn’t that the entire POINT of Mass Effect? The way this game “ended” they have to make a WHOLE separate game! I don’t want ME4! This was supposed to be the end, where Shepard and the fate of the galaxy lived or died by your choices!
Complete and epic fail.
okay let me say this.
in the last stand on earth when you can have a character interaction with all your crewmates why on earth (see what i did there?) would you not have a moment with Wrex who’ve you known for 3 games sure you had the moment on their homeworld but i mean come on it’s the final battle
also when i saved sidonus (after killing him for like every game with no consequence either might i add) he makes no cameo whatsoever so by justifying that all side characters already had their moment of limelight is justifiable tell me who dropped the ball there?
P.S i also agree with this article and fully support that it needs a new/alternate ending. Also i think it shold have a marrage scene if you wanted one with your lover if you did anyone at all man women alien w/e (regardless of who you romanced (not getting into that argument online lol) but still a wedding would be the perfect way to end shepards story then let shepard have a baby with whoever he chose to be with (obviously not if he did a man but thats not the point) then maybe have that be your imported character for the next mass effect game just to show that our choices actually mattered
Another scene with the love interest would have gone a long way. I appreciated the extra scene (with Ashley in my case) before battle, but felt like that took way too long to go anywhere.
I like the idea of having a child to continue on the legacy in one war or another (a la Dragon Age Origins) but that would, sadly, discount those who played through as FemShep. Unless in the future men can carry children.
Well women do have babies so there’s that lol so why couldn’t femshep have the baby?
Haha I just assumed you meant so there’d be a legacy whether Shepard lived or died.
they need a new ending the last moments of the game were just poorly made
I agree completely, the ending was a slap in all of our faces, I’ve played ME from day one and have grown up with the series, and to have it end like this is disgusting.
I didn’t have a problem with the ending, except that it seemed like it ended a little abruptly. They were clearly going to a “sopranos” ending which left some questions. It will be nice to see the aftermath after the reapers were destroyed.
But as far as the existing ending, people need to accept the fact that Shepard was indoctrinated. All the evidence is there, non-believers just don’t want to accept it. If you don’t believe it, it is on you to dis-prove it. I have not heard one good arguement against it yet.
Except that Bioware commented on the indoctrination thing and said that it’s not real, and they never had that in mind. Sorry. Not true.
haha, they never made any comments saying its not real. They did the opposite actually, when asked about the indoctrination theory they hinted that it was true but werent allowed to say because of the upcoming dlc.
I definitely didn’t take their comments as a hint, but you might have. I personally think the Indoctrination Theory was the one good thing in the discussion of the game’s ending so they didn’t want to admit it was smarter than they had thought of.
The evidence is there for something, maybe, but I don’t think it’s on the fans who took the ending as it was shown to disprove it. You’ll have a hard time making that case, especially since the dlc, in all likelihood, isn’t going to confirm the Theory.
Andrew, you stated you played through Mass Effect half dozen times and spent 300 hours with the series, so I would expect you more than anyone to have picked up on the clues that the reapers were trying to indoctrinate Shepard. I think you need to play through ME3 again and pay close attention to the details. Shepard being indoctrinated is the one and ONLY way to explain the events at the end of the game. Do you really believe that the writers at Bioware would create a lazy, poorly made ending to a series they spent the last 8 years of their lives working on and was such a high quality throughout the entirety of the 3 games, until the very end as you say. It just doesn’t work that way. The ending was genious storytelling, a massive plot twist that admittedly went straight over most people’s heads. But when you look back, I.T. is the only thing that works. And Bioware doesn’t deserve the abuse it’s gotten from all their fans since March.
I’m up on all the Theory’s evidence, but clearly I wrote this article because I think the ending is not an ending in any way, which is what they promised.
If BioWare had planned to put a terrible ending that only made sense for those who sought out online forums and discussion rather than be disappointed, that’s a horrible move considering how many passionate fans felt betrayed. That’s never a good thing, even if it’s because ‘the real ending is genius.’
Besides, if the Indoctrination Theory is what is happening, which I don’t believe was their intent, then their claims that this game would end Shepard’s story is still false. If anything, it means this game was just setting up a sequel even more than it seems, instead of offering satisfying conclusion.
They say they’re ignoring it. Which means their not USING it, making it therefore false. Stop being stubborn. Why do so many people want Shepard taken over by Reapers? It’s a worse rape than the ending already is.
If Bioware were going with the indoctrination theory it would have been clearer that that is what they were going for, they wouldn’t have hinted at it. I personally don’t like the indoctrination theory. The reason shepard and Anderson were in the crucible was to kill the reapers, that hologram gave him other options, to end the cycle or to continue on the path. I did feel that from getting on that crucible it was rushed and not explained properly, why was the hologram looking like that kid. The dreams I didn’t see as Shephard fighting the indoctrination but of him feeling guilty for the people lost and he literally had the galaxies problems on his shoulders, and I felt the boy was his symbol for that coz that was the first child that he watched die and felt he could have done more to save. Thats my opinion anyway.
Bioware mess up and thay no it that was one of the ending to a game i see in some time just a bad as Deus Ex: Human Revolution ending
Were not getting a new ending. So i will put it this way. GIVE ME AN OPTION TO TELL THE GOD CHILD TO GO SCREW IT’S SELF AND I WILL ALLOW IT TO SLIDE!
I agree completely, I played mass effect 6 times, mass effect 2 12 times and therefore was one of the most disappointed and angry people on earth. I played my way through all the dlc the games had to offer and enjoyed every step of the five year journey to me3, but all my hopes of an epic conclusion to commander Shepards story were crushed in those last five minutes. The decisions I made, the relationships with other characters were utterly destroyed and meant nothing at the end. The star child and his reasons were a joke, ‘synthetics will always destroy organics’ WTF! I united the quarians and geth! There were so many plot holes I could have fallen in one and died. The game was the best thing I ever played until those last minutes. I can barely bring myself to put that disc back into my Xbox tomorrow. If it is not what the fanbase wants then there’ll be hell to pay for bioware. By which I mean millions of angry gamers destroying their reputation and if we have any good hackers among us, destroying them online. And maybe a few of us sueing, one guy did it and it worked.
Haha I forgot about the kid saying it was fate, no way around it after I had just singlehandedly fought the Reapers. It seemed like they were trying to mimic the ‘Architect’ from The Matrix, but none of the conversation was backed up by anything we’d seen in the series before it.
Wait, the theme of the entire series was, and correct me if I’m wrong, “to stand together to overcome impossible odds”. ME3 decided to throw that out the nearest airlock and go with “synthetic vs organic”. That’s my debacle with the ending. I felt all the changes the previous games brought to the game. The theme however was lost. Bioware tried to make it last by giving it some sort of epic or grand ending a la Asimov or Houser but ultimately landed flat or even dull. I don’t care what happens after. I just wished they got it right the first time. Damn, it’s like Matrix Revolutions all over again.
Have you read the forum post by Patrick Weekes that the article links to? If you haven’t it basically contains the ending planned which addresses all your issues – the same ones I had.
In MY opinion, to have a satisfying conclusion, a game (it isn’t a movie, it isn’t a book, it’s a game) should have at least two ending options: “Complete Failure” and “Complete Success”. Depending on the tone you want, you can make one more difficult to achieve than the other, and you can put however may variations and degrees of success, but you need those two at least (Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines had two endings where you failed to survive, and three others where you lived).
ME2, for all the problems I have with it, does this correctly. You can, if you so choose, have everyone die…Shepard included. They made it hard to do, but it can be done. In ME1, for as much as I like it, doesn’t do this, you are locked into winning as the only option. I consider it a mark against the game, since how you win is the only thing up to you. In ME3 neither option is really present. You can’t really win, and you can’t really loose, leaving the player, in general, unsatisfied. No amount of “clarification” can fix this, it’s still a very ‘meh’ ending.
The continuity errors, poor writing, and bad execution are not the problem (ok, they are a problem, just not the main problem), it’s the complete lack of a satisfying resolution, one that the player has a hand in creating, good or bad.
An ending where a sign does not pop up as the last thing I see after thinking I just completed a trilogy telling me to continue shepards journey by buying more dlc.
Haha True.
The ending was the way it was because they always intended to sell more dlc later to fill holes or areas of interest. As evidenced by the ending dlc sign and the many questions left unanswered.
I radically agree with your comment about the damage already being done. Honestly, I still love the whole Mass Effect universe and everything about it, but i will admit when i FINALLY completed Mass Effect 3 after ALL the DLC in ME and ME 2 and well over 100 hours shaping the galaxy, I was filled with questions that were not answered or even hinted at. It left a very sour taste in my mouth. I am glad Bioware is at least attempting to correct this mistake and the closure will be much appreciated, however, that black mark will ALWAYS be there.
Where to start…
If the writers of this story keep telling us this is the ending they wanted, THEN GIVE US THE ENDING! Don’t tell us we were supposed to draw conclussions or use our imaginations! We pay you the money to have a beginning, middle and end that are complete. What happened to Sheppard? What became of the fleets around earth? Why in the everlasting depths of hell was the Normandy LEAVING?? Three games they had never abandoned Sheppard, why now? Were the relays truly destroyed? And if so, wouldn’t they have wiped out every star system they inhabited, including Sol? And in the process the entire fleet, making the entire exercise pointless?
After 3 games, hundreds of hours of game play, countless money on discs, downloads, etc., do more than insult anyone with any sort of intelligence and leave gaping plot holes PLEASE!
I’ve seen some people reference The Matrix and the Architect in the 2nd movie as being similar to the end of Mass Effect 3. Not really, when you consider Neo at least had 2 CONCRETE, DIFFERENT choices to make! That’s one more than the end of ME3 gave us.
And finally, after telling players “your choices count” don’t serve up “RED/BLUE/GREEN”! At least make an effort to alter more than the explosion colors! :p
Have loved 99% of this franchise! But the sour taste of the last 15 minutes ruins the entire experience, and prevents at least this user from trusting future games from BioWare and this staff. Such a shame…