Bioware’s magnum opus and one of the most awaited games of the year Mass Effect 3 finally hit the shelves on 6th March. Initially the critics were raving about the tweaked up game mechanics and graphics that is until they came to the ending. As is norm with most action RPG’s, the game has multiple ending scenarios which are dependent on player’s actions during specific missions.
Users who have played till the end claim the “best ending” is only achievable if a multiplayer campaign named “Galactic Readiness” is played. Bioware has released an official statement negating the fact stating, “You do NOT have to play multiplayer to get the best single-player endings.”
There’s also a campaign underway in which gamers have banded together to compel Bioware to change the ending. The campaigners are using social mediums such as Twitter, Facebook and the traditional petition and are demanding that the ending should be altered using a path or by releasing a downloadable content.
Come on really? Bioware said in the beginning that 3 would be the end of the series and if you really listen to what the story is suggesting you’ll see that shepard never really had a chance of survival regardless! They said they’d close certain questions with future dlc but to petition for a new ending is just pathetic. The story says it all: true heroes show sacrifice and its the best way for bioware to end mass effect cause if he lived fans would just want more. Great job Bioware don’t change a thing!
Just saying to the editor, Got it wrong, We’re not arguing that the best ending is only obtainable via galactic readiness, We’re complaining that all the endings are the same and required absolutely no effort, We just want the endings to be, Shepard Victory, Reaper Victory.
Ect.
“Bioware said in the beginning that 3 would be the end of the series”
They said it would be the end of Shepard’s story, not the end of the entire Mass Effect universe. Most people are not complaining that Shepard dies, they’re complaining that the ending negates everything they worked for as well as destroys galactic civilization, making any ME games set after 3 either impossible or so completely changed from the original setting that it isn’t really the same.
The issue most gamers I have talked to about the ending is that you work so dam hard to achieve an ending that shows a positive outlook, but instead every ending scenario is just downright sad and pointless. Yes you CAN save earth, but to what point?
My issue was the lack of closure and the feeling of complete poinlessness having played through all three games I wanted a big satisfying ending whether I die or not, whether the reapers win or not. I dont see any point in playing again as the endings all result in virtually the same thing; me feeling depressed. The endings are short and leave you with so many questions, like what happened to the differet races and the people you knew? and if you did survive do you actually get together with your love interest? without these answers i’ve been left feeling disappointed. I would have actually loved to be able to achieve a happy ending but we didnt even get the option of one.
This pretty well explains everything.
By Tartilus of the Bioware forums (Not me)
I think it’s important for us to consider that, at some point, a community manager is going to have to explain our thoughts to any number of developers, and accordingly it’s important that a succinct list of our concerns with the ending is available. Those concerns are numerous, and here are the ones I’m familiar with so far:
1. The endings are extremely sad. This is a much-maligned criticism by individuals who associate depth with the perceived darkness of the endings, and that may or may not be a fair point. Regardless, it stands as obvious that many people were hoping for an ending which proffered some hope beyond that available in even the ‘happiest’ of endings.
2. The endings contain plotholes. The escape of the Normandy and the teleportation of her crew (including the formerly deceased) are the most obvious, but the lack of sufficient explanation regarding the Catalyst’s efforts and origin also makes many of his/its motivations bizarre and unsatisfying.
3. The endings fail to fit in with the broadest themes of the series. Slightly different from 1, this criticism notes that the story of Commander Shepherd has always been a story of achieving the impossible with the help of a close crew and rigorous preparation. The endings as offered do not incorporate the crew, do not change significantly in response to your preparation, and while perhaps technically constitute doing the impossible, fail to meet even that low bar which is a solution that does not have an inevitable cross-racial holocaust and galactic dark age as its result.
4. The endings lack variety. This criticism can be directed at both the artistic and story aspects of the ending – the results of the ending decision not only vary little (at least, and this is important, on a scale which is important to our experiences in the game), but the resulting cinematics have only minor differences, and the various sub-endings result in changes so small as to be entirely unnoticeable. Consider that some way could’ve been contrived to make the Synthetic option differ from the Control option in a fashion greater than a change in the color of the ‘light’ and a different Texture for Joker in the games final seconds.
5. The mechanics of the ending are not appropriate. Without repeating the various criticisms as regards the ending closely mirroring Deus Ex’s, the culmination of the story with a game-show-esque approach to saving the world very much fails to be satisfactory, especially when Mass Effect has otherwise been about the integration of choice into the experience
6. The endings lack dependency on the player’s choices prior to the last five minutes. This is important, because the entire rest of Mass Effect 3 was about reacting to previous decisions; consider that, provided one is able to fill the ‘war asset’ bar in a satisfactory manner via some other means, the decisions in the third game serve no purpose to explain, shape, or enhance the endings. This seems contrary to the spirit of the other 95% of the experience.
7. The endings do not make sense given the character of Shepherd. As has been state elsewhere, we are playing some heroic badass who has otherwise talked down to, shrugged off, and inevitably defeated everyone who threatened, cajoled, or otherwise tried to force him to do something he didn’t wish to do. In the ending to ME3, this character offers no rigorous questioning, no protests, no counter-arguments, no discussion of any kind save a resigned sort of death-march which could not be more contrary to his character. This is distressing.
8. The endings have implications, perhaps unintended, which seem to ruin the ME Universe. Admittedly, many of these implications could be avoided, but the lack of contrary evidence fosters a suspicion that these matters were either otherwise not considered, or supposed to be generally acceptable. Indeed, they might even be, but only with proper elaboration, of which there is none.
9. The endings fail to provide closure. There is, as a diagram that is floating around illustrates, no falling action. No conclusion. I do not know what happened to my squadmates – I do not, for reasons that may be bug related, even know which of them is alive. I do not know what happens to the universe, or to the people I’ve saved. I do not know how I’m remembered, or if any of the terrible things mentioned above actually happens. There almost could not possibly have been less information provided regarding the ending of the game, and that is incredibly distressing when the intention was to wrap up a series that had otherwise displayed all the signs of excellency and had a fond place in our hearts.
The most frustrating thing is seeing people ignorantly misrepresent the complaints and then dismiss them. Read carefully:
Every single decision you made in previous games ends up having the exact same practical consequence: it increases (or fails to increase) your Effective Military Strength.
Thus, when you go into the final phase, EMS is the only active variable. All those hundreds of previous decisions have no mechanical meaning beyond what they added to your EMS number. This is poor game design.
But even with only one variable, you still might be able to have a variety of outcomes. Unfortunately, though your level of EMS can technically lead to seven different outcomes, they are all functionally the same. The only marked visual difference is Shepard’s physical action and the colour of a visual effect. This is poor game design.
To add insult to injury, it makes no sense from a narrative perspective that the EMS is the variable which affects the outcome. By the time you make your final choice, your EMS is irrelevant to the storyline and to your current situation, yet somehow it still affects what options you are able to choose from. This, too, is poor game design.
Compare and contrast ME2′s Suicide Mission, with its multiple variables, multiple outcomes, and logical narrative relationships between the variables and the outcomes (e.g. if a squad member is loyal to you, he is more likely to survive under your command).
1. 3D models need to learn blocking. That is a term used by actors and actresses in theater. Its an illusion that the audience accepts because if the actor actually talked face to face with the other actor then the audience only sees the back of an actor’s head and never their facial remarks. At times in the game, the heads of the characters were set on a wierd rotation that allowed them to rotate too much, so when a character was behind another character, there would be this weird owl like turn now and then. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I can turn my head that far.
2. Voices didn’t match up with lips sometimes. This was quite irrating, but I managed to train myself never to look at the lips of the 3d models.
3. The game needed an epilogue. This is the problem many people have with the ending. We all want to know what happens 30 min to 1 day to 1 year to 10 years after the actual ending. The ending just ends abruptly.
4. Who is the grandpa and the kid? Where the hell did they come from and I guess Im too stupid to understand the meaning to this.
5. What does the dreams mean? I guess Im too stupid too understand these also.
6. Who lived and who died when the citadel got moved to the sol system? Did Capt Bailey survive? Did the council survive? Was there an evacuation? What happened?
7. What happens to all the characters that weren’t on the normandy? Wrex? Kasumi? Zaeed?
8. Did the Quarians leave any survivors on Rannock or did they’re entire fleet become stranded in the sol system which basically defeated the entire story of getting their planet back?
9. Whomever had a romance with shepard, do they have his baby? In my game, Liara and Sheperd were beyond the sex and they actually loved each other with lots of intimate moments. It would have made the ending that much sweeter if Liara carried his child.
10. The kid was wrong. Why would he make a statement that the created always turn against the creators when they contradicted that with the videos of the Geth being the ones that the quarians turned on first? (from the mission where sheperd is inside a geth virtual world)
11. What the hell was the Illusive Man? Im guessing he’s a synthetic, but then again Im wondering if he turned himself into some kind of husk to try to control the reapers? I have no idea, again, I must be too stupid to figure this out.
Anyway, that just sums up some of my questions, I have more, but Im not willing to play this game again to see the questions. I think i’ll burn the disk for a sec, make sure its good and black, and then I’ll mail it back to Bioware.
It has nothing to do with gay sex scene. Bioware did a good job of giving me the option to avoid that. I gave the game a low score because the end sucked. Seriously, in my opinion, the ending of Mass Effect 3 was like watching Bruce Willis’s Armageddon and then turning the tv off right after the Asteroid blew up. There was no closure, no epilogue, only Joker, Edi or someone else crash landing on some strange planet, an old guy and kid or depending on the perfect ending, sheperd taking one breath.
If this is the end to the trilogy or sheperd’s story, it seriously sucks.
However, if this means there will be a Mass Effect 4, or a DLC, I say great!!!!! Woo HOO