@Degringolade said:

@JasonR86 said:

It's shitty they have to do this. Regardless of what people think about the ending, it was the ending they decided to create for their franchise. As someone who wants as much artistic and creative freedom as possible, I'm all for them making the ending to their creative work however they want. But they have been strong-armed by fans to change their creation and I find that to be as bad as if they had to change something due to censorship concerns.

The video I'm going to post is nearly all spoilers, so don't click it if you haven't finished the game.

I agree with you in principle, Jason. And I find a lot of complainers (and complainers about complainers for that matter) obnoxious and far too rabid. While a lot of this video is rife with this kind of bitching, it's a good crystallization of the complaints about inconsistencies and plotholes left in the ending, as well as guarantees made by the creators of what the audience could expect: http://tinyurl.com/6w2o8gq

I was disappointed. I'm not a freak about it. But I see the point here.

I'm at the end of the game now so I'll check that link later. However, I don't think anything said on the site you provided will change my mind. Bioware created a product that no one was forced to buy. We all made the conscious decision to purchase the product. Fans have no real say in the matter because they didn't create the product and they weren't forced to buy it. Fans have every right to complain about whatever they want. But I just don't like it when those complaints lead to a change in a product that has already been created. It's a way to force limits on artistic freedom and, if I were on the team, I would be pissed.

@TheHT said:

I hope it's just additional scenes and cutscenes that fill in the blanks and extend the whole ending instead of coming up with something new to replace the whole thing.

That's all people want, really. Some outright hate the ending, but most of us just want closure with our crew and want to know how all the species end up without the Relay Network. I am personally excited for this.

Fucking ridiculous. All this does is prove that Roger Ebert is right. Art doesn't change because of an internet nerd circle jerk. Art is the work of the creator and the creator only. And this proves that video games are most certainly not that. This industry just got set back further than it already was so grats, internet?

@Napalm said:

@Sooty said:

@Napalm said:

Also, I'm kind of sick of the press shitting on the fans about this. Yes, some are taking it too far, but it's still a legitimate complaint to those who have a hefty investment in the series and want to see it end on a less-than-shitty note.

If the fans pay money to fix the ending then I fully endorse the press shitting on 'us' more.

Let's show EA we're willing to pay for endings to our games!

It's a shit ending and not the actual ending that was envisioned, so you're whole sentiment of "fixing" an already broken ending doesn't have a leg to stand on.

When I say fix I'm talking about fixing the experience, so whether it's tweaking the ending or changing it entirely it's the same.

Like I say, if this costs money and people buy it then you all automatically veto your right to complain when publishers start making 'ending DLC' in the future. That will happen if EA notice a lot of people paying money for this.

@wardcleaver said:

I will lose respect for them if they change the ending due to a small, but vocal, minority who are complaining. If they want to add DLC to "clarify" the ending, I am fine with that, although I think it is unnecessary.

Please prove that it's a small minority. Every poll I've ever seen puts it at the vast, vast majority disliking the ending.

Heck, I'll eat up anything Mass Effect related. More content is fine with me.

I AM a little worried about how much "fan feeback" they'll try addressing. As I stated in one of the plethora of ME ending threads, it wasn't the ending I would have dreamed of, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. (Well, I enjoyed MY ending. I can't speak to other people's)

The whole "indoctronation theory" floating around is a bit too much of a downer for me, so I'd hope that wouldn't be the direction they'd go. At least not in the way it's been presented on the internet, anyway. The folks at Bioware haven't let me down yet (yes, I'm one of those weirdos who actually liked Dragon Age 2), so they still have my trust to put out some good stuff.

Though, just as a side-note, we DO all know that any change to the ending won't satisfy ANYBODY, right? No matter what they do, the complaining will continue. Any new ending will just divide the two factions into four. Those that liked the first endings and are fine with the changes; those that liked the first endings and feel the changes ruined it; those that didn't like the endings and DO like the changes; and those who didn't like the endings and also don't like the changes.

Not that it matters to me. I'm happy with the game I got and anything else is just frosting. I'm just checking to see if everyone else is acknowledging this.

@Sooty said:

People that pay for DLC to fix the ending are fucking idiotic. It will be opening the flood gates for publishers to release unfinished games.

I cannot see them charging for it because the backlash would probably be even bigger than the original ending. I hope it will be at least.

You mean the massive floodgates that were opened with Broken Steel? Or what about the floodgates that opened with Prince of Persia sold the real ending as DLC?

@Sooty: people can complain all they want about they ending but the fact that bioware caved into this pressure is crazy. It makes them look shallow and fans immature. I rather them stick to their idea of the game rather than some armchair game designer.

All the bomb-squad is complaining about the decision on twitter, which I have a bit of a problem with. It's totally fine that they didn't want the ending change, but why were they so quiet about that opinion? I think anyone complaining about this decision should've tried to strive to be as vocal as the fans were. I'm not pinning this on just Giant Bomb, but other media outlets who're mad at the decision.

Well, guess we'll still be talking about ME3 in a couple of months from now. Wait, was that their plan all along?

@Pinworm45 said:

@Sooty said:

People that pay for DLC to fix the ending are fucking idiotic. It will be opening the flood gates for publishers to release unfinished games.

I cannot see them charging for it because the backlash would probably be even bigger than the original ending. I hope it will be at least.

You mean the massive floodgates that were opened with Broken Steel? Or what about the floodgates that opened with Prince of Persia sold the real ending as DLC?

Fallout 3 did have a definitive ending. I'm talking about publishers pulling "To be continued" shit which is what Final Fantasy XIII-2 already did, if that and this Mass Effect 3 DLC (if charged for) takes off then I forsee a seriously shitty situation for us consumers.

Like I say, if this costs money and people buy it then you all automatically veto your right to complain when publishers start making 'ending DLC' in the future. That will happen if EA notice a lot of people paying money for this.

No matter who wins, we lose.

@JasonR86: And I could agree with you completely if the artistic endeavor in question was completely unfettered by anything else: time and budget concerns, being leaned on by the parent company to fit their own models for DLC and sales to a wider audience, etc.

Having just emerged from my protective, spoiler-free cocoon yesterday, I look forward to your thoughts on how it all plays out for you.

@Sooty said:

@Pinworm45 said:

@Sooty said:

People that pay for DLC to fix the ending are fucking idiotic. It will be opening the flood gates for publishers to release unfinished games.

I cannot see them charging for it because the backlash would probably be even bigger than the original ending. I hope it will be at least.

You mean the massive floodgates that were opened with Broken Steel? Or what about the floodgates that opened with Prince of Persia sold the real ending as DLC?

Fallout 3 did have a definitive ending. I'm talking about publishers pulling "To be continued" shit which is what Final Fantasy XIII-2 already did, if that and this Mass Effect 3 DLC (if charged for) takes off then I forsee a seriously shitty situation for us consumers.

This game still has an ending too. It's just a terrible one. It's no different than the fallout 3 / broken steel situation. You didn't address Prince of Persia, either.

@Napalm said:

@Sooty said:

Like I say, if this costs money and people buy it then you all automatically veto your right to complain when publishers start making 'ending DLC' in the future. That will happen if EA notice a lot of people paying money for this.

Well, let me shut your bullshit down now right now and say that Mass Effect is the only universe where I would pay for a new ending if it didn't offer proper closure or satisfaction. Any other game, if there was a shit ending, well, it's a shit ending. The ending to Mass Effect as a series should have been more than the sum of its parts. Instead it makes no sense. I have a serious emotional investment in this series and to see it all gone to shit at the end put such a bad taste in my mouth.

So, does this honestly make you feel better? Really?

terrible that they are going to change it

now consumers think they are entitled to everything

Stick to the ending and everyone bitches about Bioware ruining the Mass Effect series and being a terrible studio.

Change the ending and everyone bitches about them being a studio that caves into internet pressure and doesn't respect or stand by its developers creative vision.

What a mess.

So Bioware caved-in to a bunch of whiny crybabies?

Wow...

Congratulations Bioware, now you've set a precedent for whiny Internet baby minorities getting what they want.

This is infinitely worse than any ending for ME3 could ever be. Shame on them for caving to some idiot's childish whims.

Bioware's in a shitty position: they piss people off no matter what they do about the "controversy." I encourage them to take whichever path they think will make them the most money. The more money they make, the better new Mass Effect games will be. And don't be fooled by the bitching and whining: I still bet that most of the whiners will be lining up to buy a future Mass Effect game, no matter what they say about Bioware. I think Bioware probably understands that.

@Napalm said:

@Sooty said:

Like I say, if this costs money and people buy it then you all automatically veto your right to complain when publishers start making 'ending DLC' in the future. That will happen if EA notice a lot of people paying money for this.

Well, let me shut your bullshit down now right now

So I'm spouting bullshit because I am thinking about other people than just myself? Your logic is flawed, just because you're happy to pay for a new ending doesn't mean everybody else is, what about the guy that gets The Witcher 3 then has to pay $15 to get the true ending? (bad example I know, CDP would never do that)

I have already stated my feelings on that terrible ending and how it has killed my desire to touch any of that fiction again. A new ending won't fix that for me, this controversy still happened, that bad ending was still the conclusion I originally got.

@SeriouslyNow: How could he not hate his audience after all this bullshit? It's an embarrassment for all involved.

@Brodehouse: Haha. he seems weird because he -is- weird.

@Enigma777 said:

So Bioware caved-in to a bunch of whiny crybabies?

Wow...

So Bioware is listening to their large fanbase and maybe improving their product? Who the fuck would have thought.

I don't think they are going to change t, hell, we don't even know of this thing is DLC, or just some video. All they could have is a short video that plays with still photos and some voice actor reading off something. They can literally do 100x different things but I do not believe they will touch anything they have in the game

Fucking ridiculous. All this does is prove that Roger Ebert is right. Art doesn't change because of an internet nerd circle jerk. Art is the work of the creator and the creator only. And this proves that video games are most certainly not that. This industry just got set back further than it already was so grats, internet?

I'm just going to go ahead and say that I really love how Casey Hudson said this exact same thing a week ago, and was met by "Eh, that doesn't explain anything".
 
But now them saying they're listening to fan feedback and will be clarifying the ending is "EA STEPPING UP IN FULL FORCE WTF"
 
Nope. It was cool to either hate the ending or love it a week ago, even when no one understood it. But now is the time that having it make sense is just going toooo far. Even when the finished ending DLC rumor was going around. Funny enough, that "DLC rumor" was supposed to come out in April too.

Well, I'm glad I didn't buy this game yet.

@Pinworm45 said:

@Enigma777 said:

So Bioware caved-in to a bunch of whiny crybabies?

Wow...

So Bioware is listening to their large fanbase and maybe improving their product? Who the fuck would have thought.

So Bioware didn't stick to their vision and bend over backwards for a few trolls? Who the fuck would have thought.

I just want a dragon age 1 slideshow style ending. i love these characters and want to know what happens to them ,a static picture and a few sentences did wonders in DA 1. I feel like they just didnt matter at all for the end.

People are overreacting to the news that something is in the pipeline just as much as the whiners overreacted to the ending in the first place.

I doubt they'll actually change the ending, just expand on it, and that's the way it should be. Changing the ending at this point will just feel shallow and cheapen the games story as a whole. The only way they can do it is to just expand on it. Missions post-ending where you play as some other characters to see the ramification of your choices and closing of character arcs is the only way to do it in my opinion, and would satisfy both the people okay with the ending and the people angry at it.

Get ready to pay extra for the ending! That brings the price of the full game up to what? £60?

Mass Effect 4 will be the first single-player game with a monthly subscription. You'll pay £40 for the base game (Chapter 1) and then £15 a month for a new chapter a month after that. And you idiots will eat that shit up and declare Bioware to be visionaries.

@Milkman said:

@SeriouslyNow: How could he not hate his audience after all this bullshit? It's an embarrassment for all involved.

How is it an embarrassment? People raised money for a charity to help show how much the series meant to them, and to express their opinion on the ending. How is that in any way embarrassing?

@Pinworm45 said:

@Sooty said:

@Pinworm45 said:

@Sooty said:

People that pay for DLC to fix the ending are fucking idiotic. It will be opening the flood gates for publishers to release unfinished games.

I cannot see them charging for it because the backlash would probably be even bigger than the original ending. I hope it will be at least.

You mean the massive floodgates that were opened with Broken Steel? Or what about the floodgates that opened with Prince of Persia sold the real ending as DLC?

Fallout 3 did have a definitive ending. I'm talking about publishers pulling "To be continued" shit which is what Final Fantasy XIII-2 already did, if that and this Mass Effect 3 DLC (if charged for) takes off then I forsee a seriously shitty situation for us consumers.

This game still has an ending too. It's just a terrible one. It's no different than the fallout 3 / broken steel situation. You didn't address Prince of Persia, either.

I don't know about the Prince of Persia situation, I didn't play that game.

As for Broken Steel then that doesn't strike me as the same situation. It's an expansion, not just a device to change the ending due to fan pressure.

Edit: I guess I should clarify, I'm not saying ME3 originally set out to have this ending DLC, but if people pay for this (if it's not free) then games in the future will probably do this with ending DLC planned ahead of time.

Fallout 3 had a bad ending, but it still had a definitive ending which was then later adjusted to lead into Broken Steel.

@Enigma777 said:

So Bioware caved-in to a bunch of whiny crybabies?

Wow...

So Bioware is listening to their large fanbase and maybe improving their product? Who the fuck would have thought.

I wasn't going to pay for ANY DLC for this game anyway. I don't buy DLC anyway as 99% of it is over priced garbage.

Either way Bioware was fucked. This is what you wanted people. I was over this game the moment I sold it.

@Enigma777 said:

@Pinworm45 said:

@Enigma777 said:

So Bioware caved-in to a bunch of whiny crybabies?

Wow...

So Bioware is listening to their large fanbase and maybe improving their product? Who the fuck would have thought.

So Dioware didn't stick to their vision and bend over backwards for a few trolls? Who the fuck would have thought.

A "few trolls"? There's tons, TONS of people who hated the ending. How are they trolling? They're pretty sincere about it. I know I am.

Did they "not stick to their vision" when someone during QA says "hey man, this part here, this isn't really working", and then they changed it? Did they not stick to their vision during any of the rewrites? fixes or balance changes?

They originally didn't envision tali or garrus being romance options. Did they "bend over backwards" and destroy their artistic integrity when they gave in and let people have those options in Mass Effect 2?

Internet plays Mass Effect 3. Internet deems Mass Effect 3's ending unsatisfactory. Internet has tantrum; demands new ending to Mass Effect 3. Internet gets new ending to Mass Effect 3. Internet gets what they wanted. Internet has tantrum. Immature, entitlement-minded rants are shown to work. Video games are fucked.

In all truth though, I think the one outcome of all of this that no one has posited is... what if BioWare doesn't retcon the ending? What if they stick to their original creative vision, tweak it, clarify what needs to be clarified, fill in the plotholes that need to be filled, and simply expand upon what was already on the disc? If this "new ending" is simply BioWare addressing many of the issues people had with the ending, not by rewriting it, but by fleshing out what needed to be fleshed out, and do so in a way that does not ask players to pay money for it, then I do not see how this is some horrific, trendsetting turn of events.

Of course, everything I just posited is an assumption and at best a "what-if?". All the more likely is BioWare actually retconning the whole thing and either creating a new, "happier" ending, or pandering to the "indoctrination theory" side of things. Personally, while I wouldn't be miffed if all they did was go in and add some clarity to the muddled waters of that ending, I wouldn't mind it if they kind of went down the indoctrination rabbit hole either. Perhaps that was intentionally there all along, or perhaps it was just fanboys grasping at straws, trying to make sense of a bad ending. Either way, though, it'd be neat in an obtuse way to see a company respond to a conspiracy theory as canon after the fact.

@SeriouslyNow: How could he not hate his audience after all this bullshit? It's an embarrassment for all involved.

I went onto the gaming subreddit and people were still fucking complaining, stating that its too little too late or some other bullshit, IN THE FUCKING ARTICLE SAYING HE WILL FIX THE ENDING! Fuck everything. Bioware, grow some fucking balls.

I doubt they'll actually change the ending, just expand on it, and that's the way it should be.

Cool, the internet overreacted and cried, so now they're pandering to those who took it too far. Awesome! Maybe I'm overreacting and they're not doing that much, but it still sucks that these guys feel the need to bend to the wym of the worst parts of the internet instead of standing by their product and its quality. I feel like everyone's been saying this, but why should I care about your game if you don't have the confidence to stand by it and up to the internet and its prominent assholes?

Oh well. Hopefully the other not ending related content is good.

@Pinworm45 said:

They originally didn't envision tali or garrus being romance options. Did they "bend over backwards" and destroy their artistic integrity when they gave in and let people have those options in Mass Effect 2?

Ugh, this argument is getting tiresome. There is a huge difference between the ongoing relationship between an audience and an author, and retroactively changing a finished work based on the audience's whim. Sure they added Tali and Garrus as romantic options: In Mass Effect 2. They didn't go back and retroactively patch it into Mass Effect 1. Because that would've been crazy.

Normally I don't like idea of people changing a game. On the other hand, the ending was so bland and unsatisfying I have no problem pretending it didn't happen.

At least they've acknowledged the problems with the ending. I personally would have no problem if they added extra cutscenes to explain what actually happened.

@Napalm said:

@Sooty: No, your logic is flawed because you are speaking in hypotheticals. "Ah, but BioWare could, and then EA might, and then people might, and what if EA does..." I am simply stating my feelings on why I'd be all for a new ending to Mass Effect 3, but wouldn't be for any other game. There is always a precedent for shit to go sideways in an industry such as this.

We know that EA or other publishers would do exactly that though. From Ashes is a cash grab right from the get go.

I'm not arguing with your reasoning for wanting to see a good conclusion to the series, but this could be setting a really bad precedent if people pony up money for it.

A lot of my opinion of this will depend on whether or not I have to pay for it.