Mass Effect 3‘s ending caused a firestorm, with a vocal chunk of the Mass Effect community expressing their disappointment in the game’s conclusion. Some even complained to the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about the game not delivering on what was marketed, though the ASA has ruled that the game was not falsely advertised.
The ASA was contacted by a group that felt Mass Effect 3′s ending was neither reflective of their choices throughout the game or the entire series. In addition, Mass Effect fans thought up a multitude of ways to show their disappointment – including sending BioWare 400 cupcakes (that came in three colors).
While players can debate for hours whether or not the ending of Commander Shepard’s story was a good conclusion, the ASA disagrees with the claims of misleading advertising. The say the endings were “thematically quite different,” and that the player’s ”Effective Military Strength” could determine how the final scenes played out. The ASA understands gamers are upset over how little their actions influence the game’s outcome. However there is still enough choice present that they cannot deem it as false advertising.
Gamers may not have the support of the ASA, but BioWare has heard the complaints – and are releasing an extended cut ending to help shed more light on the game’s conclusion. As well, the ending will also feature characters like Admiral Hackett and EDI. We’ve talked about the ending multiple times through our Game Ranter Banter - which we know you all love – so at this point even talking about the validity of the ending would just be redundant, especially considering how much it’s been beaten to death.
While gamers do have a right to complain, going to the ASA seems like a bit of an extreme. The controversy has led to some very interesting discussion though, opening up debate on games as a product vs. art, and of course, there’s the Indoctrination Theory which may or may not provide the answers we all seek. We’ll just have to wait until the release of the Extended Cut DLC to see if BioWare delivers and ending that will make disgruntled fans happy.
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Source: Gamasutra
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I think they rushed the ending because they were behind schedule and lacked money. They knew money would start to flow once the product reached shelves and they could address the rushed ending at a later date. This isn’t the first game to change its ending based on player reaction.
Fallout 3 people flipped out when your character originally died in the end. Half a year later they released a patch which made your character pass out and wake up instead of dissolve into radioactive dust.
I dont know if this is right (im to lazy to look it up myself) but I vaugely remember that like 6 weeks before the game was supposed to be shipped, the ending was leaked, and bioware had to make a new one. Don’t quote me on that. Either way, while i dont LOVE the ending itself, the whole no-matter-your-choices-its-the-same-3-endings thing really doesn’t bother me. Now I can eperiance all the endings, with out having to play the game like 50 times.
I saw the leaked ending. It was the same thing, they were lying. If anything, the current ending is just the same thing with fewer lines and less continuity. Sure, the leaked endings weren’t great, but they weren’t nearly as bad as what was shipped.
Except that they are owned by EA and therefore have an expansive budget and the game came out two years after the second, the fastest dev cycle for a Mass Effect game so far. The game was delayed once, but this was cited as to “address a larger market opportunity.”
So, not very likely is what I’m getting at.
again with this s*** !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mass Effect 3 was proof that you should NEVER change the writer in the middle of a series. The writer of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 had the entire series all figured out. And letting someone else take their spin on it not only made the game (while fairly amazing) not FEEL like Mass Effect anymore, but also probably resulted in the vastly different ending.
They did the same thing to Halo, Halo 3 wasn’t written by Joseph Staten.
That’s not really accurate. Drew Karpyshyn didn’t have the series planned. On his blog he says that even halfway into ME2′s development cycle they were toying with several theories. This IS proof, though, that EA should keep it’s filthy hands off quality developers. The things I would do to the man responsible for the early release…
Whatever… I know that ruling affirmatively in this case creates a slippery slope, but that doesn’t justify a bad call in this particular appeal. We should judge cases on their own merit and, if I can read between the lines, that wasn’t done here. If avoiding said slippery slope was actually their rationale, it was simply a corrupt ruling.