DAMN YOU CHICK

For me, it's because rewrite endings in other media, especially based on audience response, has a fairly terrible track record. Classic example being the ending of Blade Runner, which was made dramatically shittier because test audiences wanted a happier, less ambiguous ending. I don't want to get into the ME3 stuff again specifically, but the whole idea of people rewriting fiction to suit the preferences of a mass audience really rubs me the wrong way. To the extent that this stuff is art, I feel we should respect the role of the artist vis-a-vis the audience. I also didn't mind the ending and didn't think the ME story was any great shakes to begin with, so that impacts my opinion too.

Narrative patching has a long and illustrious history, for an example see the revisions Tolkien made to The Hobbit between the first, second and third editions.

Tom's drawing that distinction, for sure, that the normally-accepted "art components" of a video game, as artistic expressions, are fixed at the moment of their creation and our role is to consume and then react - this seems to be the convention of classical art appreciation. However, as I suggest, the modern flexibility of editing allows for continual updates and adaptations, and we are seeing that within what we might class "accepted art form" already - e.g., film and TV. There are still plenty of creators who react with indignation at the suggestion that their endeavours are at all flawed, and in a sense they are right: they created what they created. If they accede to a request for change, it's no longer their creation. But I still want to draw in the possibility of a mistake, an error that the creator did not want and might not even have perceived, and further I want to class that as being essentially the same as a "bug" or defect as we understand it from the world of computer programming, and address it in the same way, with a patch.

Well, yeah. :)

Interesting, hadn't really thought of it from that perspective.

For myself, the ending wasn't as terrible as I thought the general outcry seemed to make it. I agree that the ending wasn't the best, but I think people who got so wrapped up in that 20 minute sequence that it somehow invalidated the previous 100+ hours spread across the previous three games may have gotten themselves a little too worked up. It is nice to see that Bioware made an attempt to correct the issue with the extended cut and then even moreso with the Leviathan DLC.

Isn't that War Z?

That would say "YOU'RE SUCKER!"

I think defects, ambiguities and unintended subtexts are really part of art and what makes art interesting. What is the difference between patching Mass Effect to "fix" the ending, and George Lucas retconning Star Wars to have Greedo shot at Han first? I don't think there is any difference at all. Patching is actually the worse possible solution in some respects, because unlike releasing a new edition or a "director's cut", a patch literally and semantically overwrites the original version. Patching also implies that the subject of the patch is broken, where as I would argue that the original ending to Mass Effect was not broken or defective, just unsatisfying to much of the audience for various reasons.

I agree with this, but would argue that the problem with changing Star Wars to have Greedo shoot first isn't that Lucas changed his work but rather that he did so in a way that made it worse.

And sure, you could expose the choice to the player / viewer, but that's kind of throwing your hands up and admitting defeat -- "here, these are the different experiences we thought of, you pick one". It's no better than the common engineering problem of putting nine bajillion preference knobs in a program because nobody can decide on a way the damn thing should just work to start with.

Basically, there's middle ground between the positions of "the work is the work as it was originally released, warts and all" and "let the audience decide", and I think that's a fine place for Bioware to try to inhabit.

You all are thinking way too much about the author's intent vs. audience appreciation thing. I'll out-cynic all of you: If they patch it are they going to make more money, or just spend money to appease a part of their already-paid audience?

If you change your mind about spoilers I can link you to several excellent articles and videos breaking down why the ending is a failure.

The arguing about not changing the ending was silly since it was clear from the behind-the-scenes stuff that this wasn't the ending Bioware wanted so much as the best the project and writing lead could do in a a weekend (after other endings fell through), right down to one of the other writer's publicly expressing disappointment with it on the PA boards.

I don't think it's surprising Tom liked an ending that had nothing to do with the strengths of the series, since he hated the rest of the series.

Yes, another important point I forgot to make (I even asterisked "writers" so I could add it as a footnote then got sidetracked by something shiny). It's very clear they stumbled badly when doing the final sequence and failed to recover.

Now this is something I honestly didn't know about. If that's the case, then yeah I can totally see the devs wanting to re-do it via the extended cut and Leviathan DLC.

I don't really think the process that led to the ending matters. Whatever the medium, the narrative stands on its own, and the process that created the narrative isn't that important. Nor is the intent of the author or authors. If they want to do an extended cut or a new edition, that's fine, but they shouldn't patch or overwrite the original ending. I'm not sure what the "new" ending is or will be, but I did like the original ending, and I think it would be a shame if that ending was overwritten. I also had no interest at all in a lot of the changes that some of the fans requested. I would at least like to be able to go back and revisit the ME3 that I played and enjoyed, and that includes the ending.

I hated -- HATED -- the ME3 ending, but the lack of a sunshine and lollipops happy ending was not my problem. In fact, based on all the sacrifices your team had to make, I was fully expecting Shepard to die in the end...and I was fine with that, even though I had always gotten the best possible outcome every time in the ME series up until that point. I don't think an ending where Shepard and his/her love interest retire to a beach and live happily ever after would have been appropriate, but even that would have been better than the actual ending.

I can't remember if it was here or on the QT3 boards, but someone suggested that ME3 should have followed one of the following ending formulas:

1. The "Saving Private Ryan" ending: our heroes accomplish their mission, but the protagonist and most (or all) of the squad die in the process of saving the galaxy from the Reapers. The number of squad member deaths would be linked to your effective military strength score, but at a minimum Shepard will always die.

2. The "Serenity" or "Wrath of Khan" ending: our heroes accomplish their mission, but at a heavy cost. The main protagonist survives, but a few popular characters had to did to ensure the success of the mission (say Garrus and Joker, for example).

Instead, what the ME3 writers gave us was the 2001: A Space Odyssey ending, and it literally came out of nowhere in the last twenty minutes of a ~100 hour series. It didn't fit at all with the tone of the rest of the series. Not only was it a bad idea, but it was (at least prior to the Extended Cut) terribly implemented and just left players with even more questions and uncertainty rather than providing closure to the trilogy.

Worst of all, every decision you had made prior to that point was completely irrelevant to the story's final outcome. There were only three possible endings, but even those differed only very slightly. Did you save or kill the Rachni queen? DOESN'T MATTER. Did you destroy or preserve the Collector base? DOESN'T MATTER. Did you cure the genophage or side with the Salarian Dalatress? DOESN'T MATTER. How did you resolve the Geth-Quarian conflict on Rannoch? DOESN'T MATTER.

Good lord this is lazy. Also, spoilers coming for ME3 further down.

Only if you think that the final three-minute cutscene constitutes the one place in which there is any meaning. Because:

Except that, if you save the Rachni queen, then, at the end of the story, the Rachni still exist, whether or not these events and the ramifications thereof are shown in the final cutscene.

Except that, if you destroy the Collector base, it is gone and the moral quandary over possible usefulness is resolved in the way you chose, whether or not these events and the ramifications thereof are shown in the final cutscene.

Except that, if you cure the genophage, the Krogan have a much brighter future, one that may or may not have deleterious effects on the galaxy, depending on who you believe, whether or not these events and the ramifications thereof are shown in the final cutscene.

Except that, depending on how you resolve this conflict, either the Geth or Quarians no longer exist, or both exist, except that, depending on the actual ending you choose, the Geth will cease to exist anyway, whether or not these events and the ramifications thereof are shown in the final cutscene.

In short, your choices don't matter only if you literally have zero imagination.

Honestly, I never understood what everyone saw in Mass Effect. I played number 1 for about 5 hours and threw it the fuck away. Everything about it made me want to hate it. Like all Bioware games, it's about big empty boxes instead of cities or locations. Every location felt like an empty box with one dood standing way over in the corner who had a quest. Maybe there was a store as well. Combat was a fucking joke. Like all Bioware games, they make a big deal about combat being strategic with lots of action, so you spend your time thinking strategically and positioning your troops properly. Then, every boss battle just sticks you in a room where yer facing the bad guy, strategy be damned. And don't get me started on the driving sections that suddenly end when you drive behind a building or some stupid out of bounds area.

I keep hearing that ME2 fixed all these things. But fuck that, Bioware has been clinging to the KOTOR model of RPGs for too long. I miss the Baldurs style where combat and the world weren't two seperate things, and where the cities and locations actually felt like places instead of empty rooms with one dood standing in the corner with a quest marker over his head.

Yeah? Well that "dood" was Mordin*, so you are objectively wrong.

*or Wrex**

**or Garrus

What I meant was that all players receive the exact same RGB ending irrespective of any decisions they have made up until that point. You might be ok with that, but many players were not.

Mass Effect was about the characters and how your connection to them gave you a lens through which to view the conflicts you faced, and shaped the decisions you made. You cared not about the galaxy and its conflicts, but rather how those impacted the cast of characters you came to care about over the course of the series.

To save my needing to participate in rehashing the arguments of nine months ago, let me just link to what I think are the best articles and videos on the subject. Obviously these are all spoiler heavy.

http://doycetesterman.com/index.php/2012/03/mass-effect-tolkein-and-your-bullshit-artistic-process/
http://jmstevenson.me/2012/03/22/all-that-matters-is-the-ending-part-2-mass-effect-3/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs
http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/

And an article with an insider view from one of the writers:

http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/...-writer-allegedly-slams-controversial-ending/

I'd also ask that people in this thread be more cautious around spoilers. This isn't a Mass Effect thread, there's no reason for people to expect them here so either take it to the Mass Effect thread or start spoiler tagging.

I understand the character development stuff. It's never changed: your teammates stand around in a cluster, or on the ship, and you can keep talking to them to unlock character quests and stuff and things and what not. Meh. The method by which the story is uncovered for teammates is another rote same-old-mechanic thing Bioware's been hanging on.

Really, aside from the actual aiming of the guns, the ME series felt, to me, like KOTOR without any significant changes.

I've previously read all your other links about the ME3 ending, but this one was new to me. That's an excellent piece.

It's good, but I have trouble taking someone seriously who thinks Mass Effect is the most important science fiction of our generation.

Ha! I just read it and had exactly the opposite conclusion. Not to say that he's wrong; but the things he liked in Mass Effect are not at all the same things I liked in Mass Effect.

For example:

No, it does not matter. I am not playing this game to save all the computer people. I am playing it because the game-play is fun, the world is (sometimes) interesting, and I like sci-fi. I do not care if the universe ends badly and all or most of the people die, as long as it ends in an interesting way. It's no different from a book or a movie: I don't care if the ending is bad for the people involved in the narrative, as long as it is interesting for me. Another of the writer's chief complaint is that the ending gives him no emotional release. But I had no emotion towards this game at all, and so I did not want or expect emotional release. Moreover, when games attempt emotionality I find it usually falls totally flat. Certainly it did in the other Mass Effect games, for me at least.

I'm not saying that his experience of the game is wrong, just that it's not right for him to project his own experience onto other people as if his way of experiencing the game is the only way the game could be experienced. I have no problem with people not liking the ending; I don't agree with people not liking the ending and therefore feeling entitled to change the ending for everyone else. This is why a "directors cut" or something would make a lot more sense to me than "patching" the story outright.

Anyway, I respect that other people feel differently, and I too may have felt differently if I had liked the rest of the ME story more or if I had felt attached to the characters.

e: What is the deal with the extended ending? Is it out? Is it DLC? I don't actually know.

I guess it makes sense that if you didn't give a fuck about the story or its characters you wouldn't have given a shit when Bioware managed to fuck the whole thing in the ear the way they did.

The extended ending DLC came out months ago.

I liked parts of the story quite a bit. I really liked the Quarian/Geth and Krogan/Solarian stories, for example. I thought there were well conceived and pretty well executed, and I felt satisfied by the resolution of those stories. Other parts of the story I found annoying or maudlin. The "stop the reapers" stuff never really made any sense to me in the first place, beyond being an excuse to traipse around the galaxy, which I did with great abandon.

Ahem, this is the thread for the damming of the Chick, NOT the tread for rehashing endings of ME3. There are clearly enough of those out there.

This has been a PSA from your friendly neighbourhood Icehole*.

*who hasn't played any of the ME games yet but just picked them up on steam and so far has avoided spoilerz.

That is the worst ME3 argument I've seen. I don't have strong feelings about the ending because the third game lost me with the way it handled the transition from ME2 in terms of the story and the illusion of choice, so there was really not much to do except experience the stronger subplots in their own right. But the "you can't use unsourced arguments ad populum because I'm going to use unsourced arguments ad populum to disprove them" back and forth along with the usual bullshit about blaming people for feeling like they got insulted when someone insults them is out of control; that there's tremendous overall damage being done by dumb people saying dumb things doesn't change who is primarily responsible for making that a terrible thread.

Are you trying to say you liked the ME3 ending? :)

No, this was the ending I was thinking of:

I love that it just drops you out to the C prompt.

Yes, that was the joke.

They didn't patch the ending, the Extended Cut is an optional DLC you need to opt-in to. The original ending still exists and is the default ending still. It is primarily a DLC about clarification and closure with some revisions, rather than some huge change. The "extended" part of the name is pretty accurate.

Arkanoid on the Amstrad did the same thing. It took my dad years to beat it, and that's what awaited him. He's still bitter about it now. For me it was the Syndicate ending, you win, credits roll, that's it. I reinstalled and replayed the entire game because I thought it was a mistake. Nope.

I had to look this one up for context. It appears his statement in the article regarding his tweet isn't quite accurate. His tweet was actually a link to the following article. I assume what he means is that he agrees with it. Or the article is posted under an alias he uses.

http://www.popbioethics.com/2012/02...t-science-fiction-universe-of-our-generation/

Wow, that article is even worse. I dont have time to break this down right now, but the only thing that ME brings to the table there is in the first line, IE "blockbuster", and the fact that its a blockbuster game already isolates it more than a blockbuster movie or blockbuster book or blockbuster tv show.

I think even more than that, it might be due to the point Penny Arcade made awhile ago that videogame reviewers don't play games the way normal people do. So you, as a person playing one game as intensively as you want and have time for will get invested in the story, identify with the characters and feel personally responsible for the choices you made. Not to mention that you will have physically spent more time in the world and with the characters doing the side missions and what-not.

Tom, as a reviewer, isn't necessarily "playing" the game in the sense of doing what he wants with the characters so much as he's exploring the game as little as necessary in order to write his summary. And so regardless of whether you're a knight in shining armour or a morally relative pragmatist, you are playing the game in a consistent way because you are treating the character as a character. Tom, I suspect, didn't do that. He picked all of the different choices at some point to see how they impact the game, he only did side missions to get a feel for the different types, and when he got to the end he was evaluating it based on how interesting and clever it was rather than how it affected him emotionally, because he had very little emotional investment in the game.

This is all supposition, obviously, and is kind of beside the point for how he's behaving in the thread. Because regardless of how he arrived at his own opinion, he's being a dick for no reason.