Watch this cut in which I have replaced the Mass Effect 3 ending music with the triumphant music from Mass Effect 2.
I always found it interesting how music affects the way we interpret images. During the ending sequence, "An End Once and For All," composed by Clint Mansell and Sam Hulick plays. Depending on your tastes, you might find it schmaltzy, somber, or deeply sentimental.
I think this piece of music deeply plays into how we interpret the ending. If the music had instead been a heroic, triumphant, or bombastic piece, like the endings off Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2, like From the Wreckage or The End Run, I think the emotional response to the ending would be very different. Non-diegetic music has many purposes, and during the ending sequences in these games, it is forging an emotional link between the game's narrative and the viewer. It tells us what we have accomplished. It plays triumphant music at the conclusion of the first two games (with a variation on Mass Effect 2) because we have triumphed (or failed, if you let Shepard die at the end of Mass Effect 2).
But in Mass Effect 3, the music is a variation on the Shepard motif presented in Mass Effect 1. Rather than telling us we have triumphed, or to use the words of Bioware marketing, "taken Earth back," the music tells we have paid a heavy and steep emotional price. And thus, we are inclined to feel that. Consider watching the "best" ending, in which Shepard lives, with "The End Run" from Mass Effect 2 playing and see how this changes your emotional response. Granted, there would have to be some variations to account with the different "grimdark" endings, but here I have synced the "best" Mass Effect 3 ending, in which Shepard lives, with "The End Run," from Mass Effect 2.
http://www.youtubedo...effect3musicend
In this, Shepard's the heroic amplitude of Shepard's sacrifice and the defeat of the Reapers is greatly amplified by the music. Tell me what you think.
Modifié par TheKillerAngel, 10 mars 2012 - 09:17 .
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