Something which I posted in the thread last night before going to bed which got lost immediately in the shuffle, but which still bears mentioning, I feel (modified to taste):
"The only easy day...was yesterday." —U.S. Navy SEAL/CRT motto
The past ten days have been an emotional roller coaster ride, to say the least. From the highest mountains of ecstacy to the deepest cesspits of despair and hopelessness, I have had what is perhaps the most meaningful mental conversations and emotional experiences thus far in my 32.5 years of life on this planet. The most cathartic moment came from perhaps the least likely source: my psychiatrist, whom I meet on a tri-monthly basis and saw on Wednesday. I respect the man, he's a professional with a nice disposition, but when I attempted to explain to him why the ending caused such a reaction within my psyche, he had nothing useful to offer.
For all his fancy degrees, he didn't get it at all. He even admonished me for becoming emotionally invested in a video game. And I respectfully disagreed with him, both as a human being and as a writer, citing the fact that video games can be and in some cases are just as meaningful as the best literature out there. It wasn't until that evening that the true impact of our discussion came about: I started playing ME3 again.
Yes, it was an NG+ of the first Shepard I'd imported, for two reasons: the face code glitch and the fact that I wasn't yet ready to cave completely. I'm still not budging from this collective line in the sand that we have drawn, but I will be damned before I let some bollocks'd up dream-child farce ruin the rest of an otherwise absolutely stellar experience for me. I know for an ironclad fact that BioWare can do better, so I'm going to continue to play this game, though at a much slower pace.
Do I feel that there still needs to be a 'real' ending made by Bioware and published by EA? Yes. Will I continue to hold the line and support others who agree with and understand our cause? Absolutely. But I will not let my emotions dictate my life, because the hard and harsh reality of this world is that a life led at the whims of one's passions will forever be chaotic and uncoordinated. Each of us are capable of rational reason as well as runaway ruminations, and to let one dominate at the expense of the other is seldom healthy.
I still feel the pain I felt upon first completing the game, but it is diminished, diffused. It no longer rules me, for I have mastered it. Eventually, hopefully, we all will do the same.
And then the fight will start to get really interesting.