@nERVEcenter said:

Is Patrick really assuming everyone wants a happy ending? I thought that was just the hardest of hardcore Bioware fans -- the ones who wish they could marry Garrus in real life and goofy stuff like that.

I want a quality ending. The Illusive Man's dialogue on Thessia and in the Crucible was atrocious; nay, so was Shepard's and Anderson's. Cringe-worthy lines, that I did indeed cringe at and wish I could have paused just to shake my head in embarrassment. Nevertheless, Martin Sheen always shines with his delivery.

And don't get me started on the god child. He is a storytelling nightmare -- a literal AND figurative deus ex machina designed to explain everything at the last possible minute, taking the entire Reaper threat and completely dispelling the enigma while attempting to drop that threat into a body, a character that's onscreen only so long as the player is still confused as hell. It's the work of a novice. Then POOF, gone, and suddenly even more plot holes appear left and right as Shepard chooses his favorite color.

It wasn't a good ending. By "good," I'm referring to contemporary standards of narrative quality in media, and standards of narrative quality among Bioware's own works.

Should they fix it? Hell no. They live with their mistakes, and they learn that people demand better of the studio responsible for Baldur's Gate and those first two Mass Effect games. Screwing up an ending is nowhere near as bad as apologizing for somebody else's mistakes.

This pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter as well. It seems like most people aren't really taking the time to even try and understand why most people are upset. Hell, I think everyone was expecting a depressing ending with a lot of sacrifices made. They weren't expecting an ending that was so flat-out badly done.

@heat said:

@strangematter said:

I find it somewhat ironic that Patrick praised the ending to Lost because of its focus on the characters, when the ending of Mass Effect 3 eschews basically all of the character development you had done over the past five years in favor of a wedged in artistic statement. ME2 got it right-- while the ending was the culmination of that game's story, the device used to conclude that story was firmly centered on your crew. It balanced plot with character in a way that resonated with most of their fanbase. And by its very nature it could be either triumphant or tragic. You can clear the mission with your entire team intact, returning to the Normandy like McArthur to the Philipines, or you can suffer losses, and finish your mission at the expense of the characters you've grown close to for the preceeding 40 hours. And all of that is based on your choices. It works.

There's nothing like that in ME3. All of the character development, all of your emotional attachment to the cast is suddenly superceded by this whole new conflict that you have to make a snap judgment on. It betrays not only a lack of concern for player agency, but a failure on the part of the writer to understand what his game is even about.

Everyone should read this post.

I second that

I find it downright bizzare how far so many bloggers and journalists are going to try and "figure out" why so many people are disappointed with the ending. It has nothing to do with demanding a "good guys win everything yay" ending, or player agency or choice or anything like that. It's that the whole thing came down to a goddamn MAGIC GHOST BOY saving the day. How the hell is that element not front and center of every article about this?

Said it in the first article, but I'll say it again.

ENDINGS ARE NOT HARD.

There are so many stories told every year in form of books, movies, tv shows, games etc etc that manage to pull off completely capable endings. I mean, this is stuff you learn in high school. The whole "endings are hard" notion just comes from bad writers. It's a clear sign that your story never had any direction and then when you suddenly have to finish it you realize you have no idea what you're actually writing about. Wrapping up a story is an extremely methodical exercise where you don't really have to be creative at all, it's just all about following your storylines to a logical conclusion.

There are many directions they could've easily taken the ME3 ending that would've made sense, both happy and sad ones. But instead they decided they wanted to be creative and speical and just ended up making a mess of it. Pulling off an "Unusual Suspects" or "Sixth Sense" only works if you actually had the idea from the very beginning and really work the entire story around it. It won't work if 2/3 of the story was written years ago without taking it into consideration. And even those illustrate very clearly how it's all tied together.

The Prothean knew about the Reaper threat long before they came. That's why they enslaved other species to build up a strong force able to fight them. They lasted 100 years.

And the races during Shepards cycle didn't prepare. No one belived Shepard that the Reapers were coming. After the first game the Council just said that Saren was behind the attack on the citadel and didn't listen to Shepard that the Reapers are coming. And the events of the second game are focused on the Collectors who only attack human colonies so the other Races aren't all that bothered. Not until the third game when the Reapers actually attack do they start taking the threat seriously.

And the fleet at the end of Mass Effect that defeated Soveraign was a huge fleet composed of many races and the flagships of the humans, turian and Asari. That was one Reaper with no attackships for support. In the third game, there are millions spread around the galaxy.

Thresher maw was several times bigger then a Reaper and could attack it from below. Again, that was ONE Reaper.

The orbital strike that defeated the Reaper was comprised of the Quarian fleet and the Normandy. It took four direct hits to it's weak point. One Reaper.

And Garrus said during the game that the Reapers are using their own(turian) tactics against them, overwhelming force.

And it's clearly shown in the game that force to force, the Reapers are clearly superior. Their only option for victory is shutting them down/destroying them with the Crucible. And space magic is a HUGE part of Mass Effect. The relays, biotics, engines, guns, element zero, well everything is based on space magic. If you thought Mass Effect is some kind of realistic sci-fi then you have been playing a completely different game from me.

Let's pretend that audience entitlement is part of the issue. We have to pretend because if you look at the issue it's not there.

I'm guessing the reason they don't address people's argument head on is because it's a subjective one. People seem to think the ending is objectively bad which I don't think they want to get into a debate about. Also I don't understand why so many people seem to be personally offended by this article. They're simply offering this up for consideration. I

@EndrzGame: Ambiguity is the absence of art? Seriously? Ambiguity is still a message, I don't understand why you would think otherwise.

@Skooky: The entitlement comes from the people demanding that the ending be changed. Whether it's because you think that the ending was inconsistent, incoherent and abrupt, or that you're mad that the ending didn't take place at your wedding with Tali, the ending should absolutely not change. Bioware put that ending in the game because they thought it was a fitting end to their game, and the idea that they might change that just to make more people happy is absolutely fucking bananas.

I just wanted to mention that On the Media (NPR) did a story on this. It for realsies now http://wny.cc/HuIiMm

Also it seems like the entitlement thing could come from those wanting a new ending's lack of consideration for people who liked it the way it is. Unless all they want is just another choice?

I don't really understand how we can have so many articles about this god damn ending that don't even address what actually sucks about it, mostly trying to couch things in a "I don't know what they were saying, but I haven't played it, and I'm still thinking about it" middling terribleness. Looking at the actual ending - Player agency? Gone. Character development? Gone. Interspecies cooperation? Gone. Coherent universe? Gone. Really anything that made the game significant or fun was tossed out in the last half hour.

Trying to address that with some "I didn't play it but here's what I think based on other unsatisfying endings" is pretty shitty. It's not that it's unhappy. It's not that it's ambiguous. It's that it's FUCKING AWFUL AND DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. It's like twelve year olds tried to write an ending with some rudimentary understanding of the plot.

Imagine if the ending of Lost or the Sopranos introduced an entirely new incomprehensible character, an entirely new conflict that went against the plot of that very game, forced the protagonist into a dialogue that was out of character and didn't make sense, and then forced the protagonist to make a choice that didn't make sense and undermined the entire plot to that point. That's what happened. It wasn't just bad. It was undermining the entire series and character you'd come to love.

Patrick still misrepresenting why people are mad about mass effect's ending. Willful dishonesty or just lazy reporting? Who knows.
There's a really good game front article about why the ending is horrible.
 
 
 
 
*for the record, I'm not a Retakemasseffecter, even if they dlc'd in a good ending, in my head I will always know how ME3 ended and it will still be ruined from a story point of view. Still a fun game though.

@Vasari said:

@Skooky: The entitlement comes from the people demanding that the ending be changed. Whether it's because you think that the ending was inconsistent, incoherent and abrupt, or that you're mad that the ending didn't take place at your wedding with Tali, the ending should absolutely not change. Bioware put that ending in the game because they thought it was a fitting end to their game, and the idea that they might change that just to make more people happy is absolutely fucking bananas.

If a game is released with broke gameplay mechanics and the developer patches them, then it is a good thing.

If a game is released with a broken story and the developer patches it, then they are compromising their artistic integrity.

What makes the story sacrosanct and immutable? Because that's the way it is in other mediums? That perspective imposes limitations on video games that do not need to be there and, and infact weakens the form by forcing adherence to restrictive conventions imported from other mediums.

Wow. There are still people out there who liked the Lost and Sopranos endings. Fascinating.

Hey Patrick, remember when the lost creators said it wasn't just purgatory to the conspiracy fans?

Casey Hudson also said it wasn't just A,B,C. We can be upset without being entitled.

@gladspooky said:

Wow. There are still people out there who liked the Lost and Sopranos endings. Fascinating.

That's because elements of those endings, while controversial, nonetheless are in line with themes presented by their shows. Objections raised against them revolve around their failure to address viewer expectations in a satisfying way, which is certainly a problem but doesn't mean they are without merit.

The ending of Mass Effect 3 is not only a narrative disaster but fails at connecting with anything even resembling the theme of the franchise, in addition to being 100% contradictory to what the developer had told us a month before the game came out. Its failure is on a much more fundamental level than the complaints raised against The Sopranos, Lost, or hell throw Battlestar Galactica in there as well.

@Distrato said:

This entire debacle has just caused me to stop taking gaming journalism seriously.

Here are two reasons why I'm upset.

1. Reviewers are blind to the fact that the game is riddled with horrid dialog, forced drama, and ridiculous plot. If you honestly wanted the medium to be considered "art" you would raise your standards. To even compare Mass Effect to truly masterful works is just insulting. I hate to say but I don't view that as an opinion. Mass Effect is on par with the Mona Lisa? No, its not and to say something like shows the people who you want to convince so much that we are all still immature and uncultured.

2. This whole thing has made me see that developers and reviewers are far too close to each other. As David Jaffe said, "you get paid by the advertisers, you get paid by actual salary, you don't get to be a fan. You are a journalist first." No one is critical in this industry. Gaming sites appear to be nothing more than a catalog for gamers to browse through. Its just unfortunate that no one but Erik Kain seems to understand the fundamental problems with the practices Bioware and EA are doing. I applaud actual journalist like Patrick Klepek who uncovered things like the Infinity Ward/Activision incident. Now it seems as though integrity is dead and nobody wants to question or call out any developers for their bullshit. No one speaks for the gamers.

http://www.forbes.com/games/

Do you see that? That is far more journalistic than anything I've seen since I've started going to video game websites. If you are a real journalist then find stories and be critical of the industry.

So true. This entire incident has outed the gaming press as a PR echo chamber.

The ME3 ending sucked for a lot of reasons, none of of which (for myself, personally) were because it was dark. If anyone wants to talk "artistic" integrity, the ME3 ending is shit slung against a canvas of worn-out muddy grass. If this kind of crap can ignite a wealthy "artistic" career, I should be selling my turds for capital gain instead of flushing out to sea.

Aside that, fuck this bullshit about artistic integrity. The very thing that defines video games as an art form is their interactivity, which by logic would dictate user influence. Unlike other "artistic" media. The quality and direction of the ME3 ending has little in common with anything else in all three games. Why shouldn't people feel cheated? It's not an ending, period. Regardless of whether it is liked or not, it is not an ending. That ending would have earned whoever wrote it a failure in any class because it's a total slack-job. A stoner panicking to get a story complete in 100 level English literature would have come up with something more enticing.

The way I see it all this talk about how ME 3's ending sucked because it disregarded your choices is a moot point, because the ending we did get feels rushed and poorly written. People are caught up in the logistical reasons as to why fans hate the ending, and there are some, but above all it's flat out a poor quality ending. It really stands out considering how well executed the rest of the game was. If they kept this ending but put the same effort into it as they did the rest of the game, there would still be some outcry, but it would be far less destructive and widespread.

It's really annoying reading things like this from you Patrick:

"Some of them, Shepard dies, some of them, Shepard lives, but as far as I can tell, none of the endings I saw, and none of the endings I've read about, involve you saving the day in every capacity."

In none of the endings does Shepard survive. Not one. This is not an issue as I expected Shepard to sacrifice herself for the galaxy to have a chance to survive. But I will get to that. In every ending but two (there are six total) every mass relay in the galaxy is destroyed, which has been shown (in these games, not the books, not from a forum thread, in the actual games themselves) to wipe out every life in the solar system the relay explodes in, meaning not only did Shepard (and Bioware) cut off interstellar travel but he in fact wiped out billions of lives when the relays exploded. He killed more humans and aliens than the Reapers would have, and more quickly and effectively too! The reason Shepard is grounded at the start of Mass Effect 3, is that he destroyed a mass relay in Batarian space without giving people the chance to evacuate. He was unable to warn anyone and hundreds of thousands of Batarians were killed. This takes place in the Arrival DLC for ME2.

So Shepard is provided with 3 choices at the end of the game. Choices that are totally arbitrary and have nothing to do with the rest of the games you played over the past 150 hours, nothing to do with the choices MY Shepard would have made if given the chance. The ending of ME3 is insulting, not because its a "sad" ending or because we didn't get to rescue the princess in the end like you seem to imply here, its because its filled with gaping plot holes and contrivances that almost deflate everything that was great about the entire game as well as the previous two games.

I am tired of reading articles (like this one) where the writer mischaracterizes the reasons people dislike the final 15 minutes of this otherwise excellent game. You picked the most childish reason you could imagine for people to feel let down, instead of better ones: It's poorly written and full of holes and in the end you are less heroic than the Reapers in your collateral damage. In the best possible endings, some important friends and allies are casually discarded without any thought and that's unacceptable. You spend the whole game recruiting this massive force and you see almost none of them in the final battle, they make no contribution to your effort and are apparently killed by the millions by either the Reapers or by Shepard herself.

There are plenty of reasons the ending sucks, stop picking the bad ones to make gamers sound entitled. We're not entitled to the ending we want or a happy ending, we're entitled to an ending that is as good as the other endings already included with the game (the Krogan Genophage and the Geth/Quarian conflict) both of which were handled with emotion and weight and felt like they belonged after being setup and paid off across three incredible games. But then the Reaper storyline is concluded with a set of scenes that feel slapped together and hastily thought through. It's garbage and its a good sign that Dragon Age 2 was not an anomaly from Bioware/EA.

@dmann05 said:

It's really annoying reading things like this from you Patrick:

"Some of them, Shepard dies, some of them, Shepard lives, but as far as I can tell, none of the endings I saw, and none of the endings I've read about, involve you saving the day in every capacity."

In none of the endings does Shepard survive. Not one.

With a high enough readiness rating, there is a short fmv of shepard waking up and gasping for air in a pile of rubble if you choose the destroy ending, That aside, I agree with everything you say. Most of the press about this is offensively dismissive of these fans. Above all, this is about an ending that's just not well executed, let alone "not what fans wanted:". I don't know what's so hard to understand about that.

@pyrodactyl, thanks for the video, 39 minutes well spent. You spend so much of your time online in flame wars its easy to lose perspective, props to this guy for not doing that.

@XNaphryz: Exactly! I think people, especially critics need to understand that it's not about the happy ending, or to "save the princess". I prefer sad and more realist endings. What a lot of people in the entertainment industry need to understand about fans is that what will really want in a game and story like this is closure and to know that what we did, even if we die in the game. We need to know what companions lived and died. We need to have an epilogue and mass effect 3 had no epilogue. No closure. That's the problem here, not the sad ending but the lack of a true ending that tells us what happens next.

I've read all this before. I just can't tell where. I'd have to be Giant Bomb, right? Major Deja Vu.

EDIT: Ah, you know what? It had to be one of the Bomb Casts.

Why do people read the happy ending thing and then get crazy tunnel vision and can't talk about anything else. There's a lot more said in the article than that.

@dmann05: If you choose destroy and have over 5k galactic duders, the cutscene you get suggests Shepard survives. This is further supported by the last scene where the girl asks the old dude to tell her more stories of the Shepard.

I have heard a few people complain about not getting a happy ending, maybe 1 in 3 or 4. While not the main reason, its like the 2nd most popular reason to why people disliked the ending. Weird cause they tell you the whole time that your very very likely going to die, along with the majority of everybody - but still this is a very common complaint.

I agree that a lot more people need to realise the entire game is full of endings - the last 15 minutes maybe deals with one of the biggest plots. A lot of the player effected stuff concludes before the final battle - Mordin and the Genophage, The Geth and Quarian war, etc.

@strangematter What's funny is the last Mass Effect book got a similar reaction to ME3, and Bioware committed to having adjustments made to satisfy the fans well before the release of the game. Funny how none of these journalists (including all the giant bomb guys unfortunately) even noticed any 'artistic integrity' being lost then, even though the books are cannon in the universe, and books generally have a better argument than games for being art. Bioware haven't even confirmed with how they are going to 'fix' the game ending. It could be a couple extra scenes added in (the ones that the voice work was even done for), or it could just be through dlc that shows some after effects.

Adding extra scenes in from the original release has happened with thousands of books and movies. My copy of Raymond E Feist's Magician is revised and has a couple small corrections and a thousand + more words. My DVD of Aliens is the directors cut and is like 3 hours long. They are both amazing pieces of art, and the work done on them post release improved the experience and did not destroy any of the 'integrity' for me.

@gladspooky: I FUCKING LOVED the ending to LOST...

In retrospective, I've should have seen it coming.

This was in Season 4, and it foreshadows the sideways flashes. In the same episode, Island Jack needs to have surgery around the same place he was stabbed. I believe that if he didn't have this surgery, he would have died sooner.

@patrickklepek said:

@2HeadedNinja said:

A lot of people play these games to be the good guy that accomplishes everything, and video game endings, as a whole, the trope is that you’re the hero that’s unbeatable and everything turns out alright in the end. They went for something a little more mixed: things are out of your control. Bad things are going to happen no matter what you do, what choice you make. People have some real trouble processing that. Some wanted this “you saved the princess” ending that games have always have. Personally, as a player, it’s really important that they’re having this reaction. You don’t see that very often with a video game.

I'm sorry, but I stopped reading there ... with all due respect Patrick, that is not at all the point ... that the ending is not unicorns and ice cream is NOT why people are upset. If, after all the controversy, you did not understand that you should probably stay away from writing about the subject.

Stick with the story, that's not my only observation. I know that.

While I typically think we see people react negatively to endings that aren't "you saved the princess" in films and games I think the audience that has been with Mass Effect all along are the same type of people that appreciate endings that are contrary to hero play. That being said, I think all the entitlement stuff is gross and I didn't react as negatively to the ending as a lot of people. I think I might've even enjoyed it more if I had beat it without hearing for weeks how bad it is. The plot holes and confusion about what the choice I was making were more my problems.

@Stealthmaster86 said:

@gladspooky: I FUCKING LOVED the ending to LOST...

In retrospective, I've should have seen it coming.

This was in Season 4, and it foreshadows the sideways flashes. In the same episode, Island Jack needs to have surgery around the same place he was stabbed. I believe that if he didn't have this surgery, he would have died sooner.

Yeah, but I remember seeing the ending and being like, "Oh, so they're not going to explain anything. Okay. That's cool, I guess. Seems like sort of a cop-out, but whatever." And then I remembered most of the talk around the first season and, you know, most of the popularity about the show in the beginning was about the mystery of them being on the island. Even a bad writer would be like, "Let's throw in a couple of lines about that."

It was still better than the Battlestar Gallactica ending.

@Distrato said:

This entire debacle has just caused me to stop taking gaming journalism seriously.

Here are two reasons why I'm upset.

1. Reviewers are blind to the fact that the game is riddled with horrid dialog, forced drama, and ridiculous plot. If you honestly wanted the medium to be considered "art" you would raise your standards. To even compare Mass Effect to truly masterful works is just insulting. I hate to say but I don't view that as an opinion. Mass Effect is on par with the Mona Lisa? No, its not and to say something like shows the people who you want to convince so much that we are all still immature and uncultured.

2. This whole thing has made me see that developers and reviewers are far too close to each other. As David Jaffe said, "you get paid by the advertisers, you get paid by actual salary, you don't get to be a fan. You are a journalist first." No one is critical in this industry. Gaming sites appear to be nothing more than a catalog for gamers to browse through. Its just unfortunate that no one but Erik Kain seems to understand the fundamental problems with the practices Bioware and EA are doing. I applaud actual journalist like Patrick Klepek who uncovered things like the Infinity Ward/Activision incident. Now it seems as though integrity is dead and nobody wants to question or call out any developers for their bullshit. No one speaks for the gamers.

http://www.forbes.com/games/

Do you see that? That is far more journalistic than anything I've seen since I've started going to video game websites. If you are a real journalist then find stories and be critical of the industry.

"...catalog for gamers" - sums it up perfectly.

That is why I only really browse Giant Bomb and forums now, the developer/publisher/editorial symbiotic relationship is fucked on so many levels it's just one massive joke. It's not even as simple as journalistic integrity, writers are just not even trying to be journalists anymore so integrity never comes into play - and when the odd bit of real journalism happens, 100's or even 1000's of 'reflection' articles are written debating whether or not it was the right thing to do - as if somebody just pissed off the teacher and now the entire class has to write lines as punishment. Randy Pitchford's reaction to the leak announcement of Borderlands 2 just illustrated the problem perfectly - he wasn't pissed that their careful PR strategy was ruined, he was pissed that a site would dare do such a thing, after all, aren't they the ones buying the advertisement space which pays the journalist's salaries?

And we're back to the entitled thing.

And the "happy ending" stuff. The entire coverage of this has been truly one of the lowest point of the press.

You guys should be ashamed.

@mrpandaman: I agree that the relays aren't technically 'exploding' but instead are converting the energy of the explosion into whatever kind of energy you chose to end the game with. I think it's obvious that bioware didn't expect people to think that way when a lot of the game is spent talking about what happened to the Batarians, though they could have thrown in a line at the beginning of the game explaining why you were relieved of duty.

@cavemantom: the galaxy only goes into the 'dark ages' if you choose the option to destroy all synthetics. And, really? you're worried about life in other GALAXIES? The game has a fairly 'realistic' depiction of FTL travel, covering around a dozen light years over the course of a day. Andromeda, the closest major galaxy to us is over 2 MILLION light years away, so unless someone set up enormously powerful mass relays in both galaxies, there's no practical way to get from one to the other, and you'd have to get there without a relay to begin with.

stop trying to make up plot holes that don't exist.

how much control over their storytelling do these artists really want to seed to the player?

'Seed' should be 'cede' here.

...sorry, it jumped out at me.

Wow alot of sucking up to developers recently. When did giantbomb become the Fox News of gaming journalism.

@joku2002 said:

Wow alot of sucking up to developers recently. When did giantbomb become the Fox News of gaming journalism.

That's a bit harsh. At least Patrick is conceding that one of the major grievances is loss of player agency, even if he seems to be going out of his way to downplay that angle. Judging from the tone of the podcasts they're generally noncommittal as to whether an ending DLC is good or bad. Compare that to, say, IGN, who've basically said that a new ending would be the death of gaming as an artistic medium.

@DTKT said:

And we're back to the entitled thing.

And the "happy ending" stuff. The entire coverage of this has been truly one of the lowest point of the press.

You guys should be ashamed.

Movies: "Wow, people really hated _____'s last movie. The studio spent a lot of money on it, too, and they fell flat on their face. Guess his next one will have to be way better or he'll lose fans."

Books: "Wow, people really hated _____'s last book. He spent a lot of time writing on it, too, and he fell flat on his face. Guess his next one will have to be way better or he'll lose fans."

Video Games: "Wow, people really hated _____'s last game. What's their problem?"

What really gets me is this:

people say the endings are all the same, but the relays and citadel clearly survive the blue ending. The citadel closes up instead of exploding, and the relay does not explode like in the other two endings.

therefor: the blue ending allows galactic civilization to continue.

I hope bioware makes all the endings more elaborate and explores the differences.

in one, galactic peace is restored and the reapers are "tamed" to aide the other races.

in another galactic society is fragmented, the reapers are tamed, and all life is fused with synthetics

in the last, galactic society is fragmented, the reapers and synthetics are destroyed, earth could die, and shepard can live

on paper these seem like radically different endings, in practice we are simply just...missing the chunk that makes an interesting thing out of each of them.

@strangematter said:

@joku2002 said:

Wow alot of sucking up to developers recently. When did giantbomb become the Fox News of gaming journalism.

That's a bit harsh. At least Patrick is conceding that one of the major grievances is loss of player agency, even if he seems to be going out of his way to downplay that angle. Judging from the tone of the podcasts they're generally noncommittal as to whether an ending DLC is good or bad. Compare that to, say, IGN, who've basically said that a new ending would be the death of gaming as an artistic medium.

There seems to be a great deal of downplaying, evasion and deflection.

Isn't that what Bioware pays their PR people for?

@gladspooky said:

@DTKT said:

And we're back to the entitled thing.

And the "happy ending" stuff. The entire coverage of this has been truly one of the lowest point of the press.

You guys should be ashamed.

Movies: "Wow, people really hated _____'s last movie. The studio spent a lot of money on it, too, and they fell flat on their face. Guess his next one will have to be way better or he'll lose fans."

Books: "Wow, people really hated _____'s last book. He spent a lot of time writing on it, too, and he fell flat on his face. Guess his next one will have to be way better or he'll lose fans."

Video Games: "Wow, people really hated _____'s last game. What's their problem?"

People aren't used to analyzing games on any sort of critical level. There's still a level of push-back against "gettin mad about video games", the idea being that because they are "games" they are exempt from critical discourse. Which is of course nonsense, and is one of the major things holding back games from being considered genuine artistic endeavors.

If nothing else good comes out of the Mass Effect 3 shenanigans, at least the general attitude towards critical analysis will have shifted somewhat. When you actually have to sit down and figure out why the ending to ME3 fails for reasons other than "it was sad and I didnt like it" you actually start looking at things like themes and motifs and tone and narrative coherence, and that's very good for the medium.

Patrick this on is tough to read, because you're right, it is chatty. But I'm not that far in and I'm already having trouble:

Some wanted this “you saved the princess” ending that games have always have.

We've been playing different games. The two that come to mind instantly are bastion and COD4, both of which have bitter-sweet conclusions. Browsing through Steam: Dead Space 2, GTA IV, and World in Conflict… most of my favorite games tear at your heart strings with one form of failure or another in the conclusion. Claiming that most games have a "you saved the princess" ending would be stretching it. Even speaking to the huge recent mainstream releases, you don’t get that kind of ending.

I think the whole discussion here misses a couple of important points:

1. Some of what is pissing people off isn't that the ending isn't what they wanted per se, but that so little effort seemed to go into it. The whole premise of the article seems to be "endings are hard to write." That's probably true, and it would probably be impossible for Bioware to write an ending that makes every single player happy.

However, the problem is that rather than getting to the ending and saying "Crap. We've written ourselves into a corner here, how are we getting out of it in as graceful a fashion as possible?" Bioware seemed to get to the ending and say "Crap. We've written ourselves into a corner here. Fuck it." The more you read about how the end of the game was produced, and how the ending was basically written on scratch paper, the more it seems like that rather than trying to make the best of a tough situation, they just didn't care enough to put in the effort at all.

At least with a series like Lost, it was apparent that some thought went into the ending. The creators had a particular goal in mind and went for it. Even if it didn't satisfy some of the audience, the effort was there. By comparison, the ending of ME3 felt like some grade school student who realized he'd forgotten to do half of his assignment, and threw something together at the last minute just so he'd have something to hand in.

2. The entire tone of the ending made it feel like not only did Bioware not respect the universe they had created, they actively hated it. The first word that went through my head when I got done with the game was "petulant." The way the ending went down, with the Mass Relays being destroyed and basically the entire galaxy getting screwed over made me feel like Bioware hated doing Mass Effect so much that they were going to foreclose the possibility of anyone ever doing another game in that universe ever again. I thought that was incredibly disrespectful to the player.

Bioware kind of feels like the person at a party who is miserable and grouchy, and rather than at least trying to act polite, decides they are going to ruin the party for everyone else too. It just felt immature. Rather than making an attempt at a satisfying ending to the game and then saying, "Thanks for playing. Although we're happy you guys enjoyed yourselves, we're kind of sick of doing Mass Effect, so this will be the last one," they instead came off as saying, "It makes us miserable to produce these games, so we're sharing some of our misery with you. Now piss off."

@JasonGeorge said:

@strangematter said:

@joku2002 said:

Wow alot of sucking up to developers recently. When did giantbomb become the Fox News of gaming journalism.

That's a bit harsh. At least Patrick is conceding that one of the major grievances is loss of player agency, even if he seems to be going out of his way to downplay that angle. Judging from the tone of the podcasts they're generally noncommittal as to whether an ending DLC is good or bad. Compare that to, say, IGN, who've basically said that a new ending would be the death of gaming as an artistic medium.

There seems to be a great deal of downplaying, evasion and deflection.

Isn't that what Bioware pays their PR people for?

Downplaying, evasion and deflection, to me, has a subtext of the critics not wanting to contribute to a controversial subject, even if they might share certain sentiments regarding that subject. It's not ideal and is hardly a paragon of journalistic rigor or originality, but it is better than intentionally shilling for an intellectually bankrupt position. Again, there are sites like IGN that are staunchly defending Bioware against the fans who have the temerity to question their immaculate authorship, which I find far more reprehensible.

I am so sick of the word entitlement at this point.

Patrick Klepek, next time please speak with someone who has actually finished the game. This half-played, half-processed dialogue with men unfamiliar with the video game industry is grating and annoying and never particularly insightful.

That all being said, the problem with Mass Effect 3's ending isn't that it is dark. The uncertainty and abstinence of clarity is a storytelling technique I happen to adore, and the idea of Shepard never having a happy ending in this dark and fucked up world is admirable. The auteur theory works. What doesn't work is throwing all previous work, both in the series' themes and and in canon, completely out the window in favor of "SHIT I DON'T KNOW!" I'm not a part of Retake Mass Effect because I cannot demand things without the use of my dollar bill. This is art. It's an okay game with a shitty ending, but that doesn't disqualify it as human creation. Many professional critics seem to have gotten it into their minds that loathing the ending is immediately begging for a redo. It's not. I just won't buy the next BioWare game.

I expect better from Giant Bomb, for as much as I talk it up. Avoid turning the conversation into an Us Vs. Them mentality. The ending was phenomenally lazy and won't be looked back on with understanding awe (if you want further proof of BioWare's sheer laziness, look no further than Mass Effect: Deception). You don't necessarily have to agree or find someone who agrees, but you do have to avoid White Knighting a worthless spinning disc. And you do have to provide perception that isn't judgmental and demeaning.

Sorry, bud, but these articles have all been one big...

(Sure explains Manveer Heir trying to end review scores, though, doesn't it?)

@patrickklepek: This dialogue between you and Jensen is severely off-base. As others have said, the issues that most sane people (i.e.: Not Bioware's most ardent fanboys and girls, the Indoctrination theorists, nor the people that are just demanding a better ending for the sake of it) have with the ending is that it is a huge step down in terms of the general quality of writing and presentation. The game introduces a holographic deus ex machina in the last ten minutes of the game that tells Shepard he needs to pick a color in order to stop the reapers. Oh, and the mass relays will be destroyed in the process. And you're probably going to die, too.

Unless the writers at Bioware were planning the ending as an experiment in cognitive dissonance, it's evident that they failed to conceive an ending that could be considered satisfactory by most people in any reasonable context. Casey Hudson and other Bioware representatives made very specific promises regarding how the trilogy would end. Hudson himself said that the ending would not come down to choices A, B, or C. But it does. Either things changed dramatically between the time that Hudson made that statement and the game's release, or Hudson was misleading everyone this entire time.

Look, I'm fine with an experimental ending. I don't mind the metaphysical, existential ending to Neon Genesis Evangelion, but a lot of people did. So much so that Gainax and the show's creator Hideaki Anno were compelled to create a movie that changed the ending. Not necessarily completely, as the movie's ending is much more physical and grounded in reality than the existential strangeness of the original TV ending. But even so, the new ending could almost be seen as Anno's decision to troll the whiners, with violent character deaths left and right, any semblance of rationality being thrown out the door, a staunch refusal to explain itself, and a finale that's just as ambiguous and quixotic as the TV show's comparatively happier ending. To be honest, I don't mind this ending, either. Neither are particularly forthcoming with answers, both are are filled with symbolism to the point of wanking. It's sad that Gainax and Anno felt the need to make a second ending, though this does present the notion that fans should be careful what they wish for.

But that being said, the way that Bioware chose to bring the game to its conclusion is not good in the narrative nor the experimental artistic sense. It is an ending that sweeps the themes and messages that the series stood for for two full games and most of a third under a rug so that Space Child can tell you to pick the flavor of Reaper Defeat you like and prevent the annihilation of organics at the hands of synthetics as a result of some conflict that you've already established thematically isn't an inevitability. There is no basis in logic nor reason for Shepard to be given any of the three choices, nor is there any logical reason for his apparent refusal to argue about how ridiculous the choices are.

Have you seen 2001: A Space Odyssey? It is, in a number of ways, one of the most scientifically accurate science fiction films that has ever been produced, and yet the entire plot is driven the discovery and research behind giant black space rectangles. The events of the earlier parts of the film up to and including the confrontation with and deactivation of HAL are all hard science fiction. And then Dave goes on the Magical Mystery Monolith Tour before turning into the star child at the end of the film. How does any of this make sense? How is this better than Mass Effect 3's Space Child?

Simply put, the monolith was never explicitly explained. No one has any idea what the monoliths truly are, what their purpose is, or who built them. And we shouldn't expect anyone involved in the Jupiter mission to have that knowledge. It's not until Dave has his close encounter with one that he's able to have an understanding, and yet it's still up to us to interpret what happened because of the nature of the way the narrative is presented to us. HAL doesn't suddenly pop up just before the credits to spell everything out for us. But Space Child shows up at the end of Mass Effect 3, explains things away, tells you to do this one other thing, and then expects you to go along with it because he told you to. In 2001, Dave reaches a point where he can't ask questions; there's no one there to answer them for him, even if he could articulate what he wanted to ask. In Mass Effect 3, Shepard has the perfect opportunity to ask questions, and fails to engage in any meaningful dialogue.

I'm over all of this ME3 stuff. Finished the game a week after it came out and was super dissapointed with most of it. 2 is a far superior game. 3 isn't the worst, just dissapointing. I'm not going to whine and complain about endings..I'll always have ME2 to go back to and 3 to pretend doesn't exist.

What I have taken away from this article is in a nutshell (no offense to you patrick) is an official "I'm also disappointed with the ending lets have a drawn out discussion on how this happened thread" which is pretty much the same premise with the multiple, and multiple and I mean MULTIPLE threads that pop up every .000000003210321 milliseconds after another pour soul concludes this franchise.

I think a lot of things in the game itself nuanced me and took away from the enjoyable mindless experience that mass effect 1 and 2 was. I enjoyed the mining, the mako, the firewalker missions, the random banter, side quests, intervening with people in the many different places I visited.

3 just kind of took that out, and Just like Jeff said "hey I heard you needed this and flew out into space risked my life to get it for you even though you didn't ask me to get it" to gain useless war assets and at the end of the day all of that really had nothing to do with a better ending. It was more of an incentive to play the game longer, I'm sure you could steamroll through the game in 8-12 hours with minimal resources and get the same crummy endings you could with 50+ hours of getting 100 percent, spending countless hours of multiplayer and really just the meat and potatoes of this series in whole have been substituted with ration paste.

I mean I hope, and I'm really hoping that the dlc that comes out for this game and some patches to make those encounters a tad more INTERACTIVE and maybe some closure with other characters or storylines get injected into this series to make up for the rushed feeling that we beat a beta version of the game.

To be frankfully honest I could give a shit about that bullcrap ending, it was the rushed encounters with everyone who may or may have not survived that were upsetting.

*OVERREACTING !*

Ending was fine. This subject needs to die.