Sorry guys, this is really long. I don't usually post on message boards and forums, but after playing this game, I just need to vent. And since Bioware vows they are listening to fans and poring over message boards, I thought this is the best place to be heard. I wrote an essay to express my thoughts about the whole ending debacle and why I support it. I also offer counter-arguments to those who want to leave the ending be:
First and foremost, I would like to offer my congratulations and profound praise to Bioware for a job well done on Mass Effect 3. I thoroughly enjoyed the game and found it to be an engaging, engrossing, and immersive experience. Never in my life have I been as emotionally moved with a game and brought close to tears so many times as I did playing their masterpiece. As such, objectively, I cannot find too much fault in the game, but subjectively, as a fan of Bioware since Knights of the Old Republic, I simply cannot stomach the ending to this powerful series. I suppose Bioware’s aim for crafting such an ending was to stir some discussion and thought and leave the world of Mass Effect open to future projects. What they drew, however, was a lot of ire and anger from thousands of fans of the series. And from a purely visceral, subjective standpoint, I can understand these fans' frustrations and rage. I do not support their negative comments about Bioware destroying the series or "sucking" at writing the ending or that they have become a pure money making machine helmed by a bunch of liars who made empty promises about a satisfying ending. Call me an optimist, maybe even naive, but I believed that they thought they were giving the series its proper conclusion. Perhaps this ending was what they had planned all along when they started the series 8 years ago. So before I go on, I would like to express my support to you, Bioware, and say I still believe in you, I will still buy your future games, and I am still a fan...but please listen to us fans and hear us out about Mass Effect 3's ending. It may have been the finale you envisioned for 8 years, but your game, thanks in part to doing such an excellent job at making it, has taken a life of its own, and us fans are emotionally and personally invested in the story like we have never been with any other game. Like I said, I loved the game, and objectively, it was outstanding from start to finish. But, subjectively, as a fan who has spent many hours playing this game and shaping my own Commander Shepard, I cannot play this game again. As it stands, it is like one of those great movies that you see, that you acknowledge is excellent, best picture material, but you simply cannot bring yourself to watch it again because it disheartens you too much. And it's all because of that ending--or endings (they were all disheartening). So please bear with me as I write this essay in an attempt to put into words what many of us fans feel and what most fans can probably relate to. I will do so by explaining my own thoughts about why I play video games, why Mass Effect 3 is a form of art, but one we players created for ourselves, and then I will end with basic ideas about how to adjust the game's ending without straying too far from the conclusion as it is now. As a big proponent for doing something about that ending , I hope that my thoughts will help Bioware in brainstorming ideas for how to address the ending to the game that would have been my favorite game of all time had it not been for that conclusion.
I play video games as a stress reliever. As a means to escape. I don't drink, smoke, or do drugs, and my only comfort in a bad day can be found in chocolates, movies, or video games. I play GTA and Saints Row to keep myroad rage in check by doing to crazy drivers in those games what I cannot do to crazy drivers in real life. I play Mass Effect because it gives me hope. It gives me a sense of control. When Mass Effect 1 came out, it appealed to me even more than other video games because of the premise of absolute control, of being able to make a choice and shape your own person, your own actions, your own choices and then go save the world in your own style. Mass Effect 1, exclusive to Xbox 360, was the reason I bought an Xbox 360 5 years ago, back when I was still an idealistic medical student trying to make ends meet. And I have been a fan in love with the series ever since. Through Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 1 and 2, I felt a sense of control and a sense of hope. That no matter how horrible or impossible or daunting a situation can be, if you make the right choices, the right actions, there is always a solution or an answer. And yes, there will be sacrifice, heartbreak, and loss, but at the end, there is triumph.That is important to me especially at the job I do now. I'm a female surgical resident, which is a physician training to become a surgeon. And I plan on becoming a trauma surgeon. So for me, control of a situation is everything. Today, in the OR, I watched a 22 year old kid's heart stop within the chest we opened up as he bled to death from massive blood vessel injuries he sustained from a gunshot wound to his abdomen. His injuries were so severe we couldn't control the bleeding. There is nothing more heartbreaking than watching someone die before your eyes because you couldn't control something. It was impossible to stop the bleeding as his wounds were so severe, but we still tried, and in the end our efforts were futile. There are many more situations like these that I have encountered in my 3 years of surgical training, and each time I have felt so helpless. So I go home, catch some sleep, and play video games to escape, to regain a sense of control of every situation, and to reclaim some hope. So today, disheartened over the death of the 22 year old kid, I was itching to finish my game of Mass Effect 3 and reclaim some feel good sense of hope. And then my five year old Xbox decides to give me the ring of death. Yet anothersituation beyond my control. I don't even hesitate. I go to the electronic store and buy a new Xbox so I can finish my game. Everything is building up dramatically in the game, complete with bittersweet, touching, tear-jerkingcutscenes that make you root for Shepard and all his friends even more. And then I get the endings, boiled down to 3 choices, where all three led to Shepard and Earth and the galaxy being screwed or screwed up one way or the
other. I watched helplessly as my Shepard chose "destroy" and Shepard's face that I had so painstakingly designed get burned and blown up while the mass relays get destroyed and Shepard’s crewmembers get stranded on some unknown planet. The game had been all about control...but the last five minutes subjected the player to watching helplessly as everything they knew and loved about Mass Effect get pulverized like the mass relays. I was left disheartened, dazed, and confused. My patient died, my old reliable Xbox360 Elite died, and now Commander Shepard, after 5 years of good times, sort of died..maybe. You can imagine this is not one of my better days. At any rate, after some frantic googling on my part, I find that I actually got the "best ending." In a way, my old reliable Xbox 360 dying with a ring of death is symbolic. It was there at the beginning when Mass effect 1 first started full of hope and promise and fresh ideas. And for all of those hours spent nurturing the story, the hope, the characters...it ended like this--with a bang followed by the frustrated whimpers of thousands of fans who didn't want to say good-bye to their respective Shepards and galaxies in this morbid, heartbreaking, disssatisfying fashion. All those hours my Xbox spent churning away to give me a good gameplay experience and feel good hope were for naught, as the hope we had envisioned was decimated within 10 minutes with an ending that, in my opinion and subjective persepective, did not seem to fit the rest of the series or gave it its proper conclusion.
So what is the proper conclusion? As Bioware seems sincere in its efforts to listen to their fans and their ideas, I am certain that this is the question that is most pressing and perhaps puzzling in their minds. Casey Hudson in his statement has said that the endings were designed to depict an imagery "offering victory and hope in the context of sacrifice and reflection." But I found neither victory nor hope in the three options and their apparently sixteen total different potential endings (thanks google for summarizing them for me. I would have played each ending only to find that none of them were all that hopeful). The other two options other than destroy bears little mentioning because to me these are the defeatist options and certainly offered no victory or hope when you are under reaper control one way or another. Shepard is a fighter, Shepard believes in free will, and the game was inundated with characters urging Shepard to "kick the Reapers' ass," and all of a sudden, Shepard is supposed to just eithertry to control them or merge with them? It seems unreasonable and again betrays the rest of the concepts and principles of the game I spent hours playing. So I could not stomach choosing those two options. The "bestending," the one that I chose, is just as, if not the most, disheartening: I watched my entire efforts in the 3 games trivialized in a mere 10 minutes. For example: I worked so hard to cure the genophage. But now, with the massrelays destroyed, the Krogan soldiers, the males, are stuck on earth and how are they supposed to mate with the female krogans or rebuild Tuchanka? Or consider the poignant reclamation of their home world by the Quarians.
One of my favorite moments of the game was to have Tali land back on her home world and take off her mask. But now, she and a bunch of Quarians are stuck in the Sol system unable to return to their home world, and oh, yes, finally the Geth and Quarians have peace, working symbiotically with each other--but oops...I chose destroy and decimated all synthetics, including the entire Geth race that I worked hard to get on my side. And EDI, the awesome AI I helped feel alive? Now dead. And let us not forget that Commander Shepard accomplished something unprecedented--he united a whole galaxy. Only to decide to destroy the Reapers, thereby destroying the mass relays, thereby forever physically separating different systems and races from each other and creating chaos on earth by having different alien races try to sustain life in an overpopulated and let's not mention more than half destroyed earth. Casey Hudson, in his official statement, wrote that the ending was always designed to be bittersweet, for "any other ending would betray the agonizing decisions Shepard had to make along the way". But all of the consequences of Shepard's decisions in all three games were erased, reversed, BETRAYED in one way shape or form with the bitter and definitely not sweet ending. For in the end, where was the victory and the hope when, as noted from examples above, every major plotline Shepard helped resolved was reversed, nullified, or trivialized with the decision for the "best ending"? This is why I cannot play this game again. What in the world am I playing and fighting for if it all ends like this? The only victory was that earth and all the alien races were preserved. But there is no hope in the chaos and destruction that lie in the wake of my decision. Many people arguing for keeping this ending usually resort to used phrases such as "it's the journey that counts, not the destination," so I should take heart and just enjoy my game with that in mind. But to me, because every plotline was reversed or trivialized in the end, my journey started and then came back around in a big circle and I went nowhere. Meanwhile, the only thing my journey's end brought about was more chaos due to my decision to destroy the Reapers.
Perhaps this is the artistic, philosphical lesson that Bioware wanted to create. That to have free will, individuals will always strive for self-preservation, and as such, their actions will always lead to conflict with others possessing the same intent. Hence, there is chaos, there is destruction, there is turmoil. And only by giving up yourself, a piece of your identity, can you gain control, order, and true peace. Or maybe, through seeing how Shepard's accomplishments ended up not mattering much due to the consequences of his or her final decision, we are supposed to learn that no matter what you do in life, no matter how big, or noble, or momentous, in the end, it might all mean nothing. In a blink of eye, it can all be reversed or forgotten or be beyond your own control. There is no free will. We are all just stuck in a maze, free to choose whichever direction to turn, but in the end, there is only one destination and we are confined to that one destination regardless of the choices that we make. Great concepts to think about, and one that can certainly stir a lot of philosophical debate. I am sure that this is partly the reason why a lot of people support keeping the ending. They contend that Bioware was trying to make a statement through their game, and that ultimately, the art belongs to the artist, and the work, no matter how many people may or may not like it, belongs to the artist alone, who can choose to portray the story however he or she likes. And Bioware, the artist, chose this ending to convey a message, and we should all just live with it, suck it up, and leave the ending be. It was supposed to be thought provoking, and it certainly provoked that. And much, much more.
Again, objectively, I can agree with this line of thinking. Mass Effect is Bioware's baby. It belongs to them. They can choose to make whatever philosophical statement they want to make out of their game. And they certainly did that. Impressively, the game's ending stirred something in all of us. If Bioware's goal was to make Mass Effect 3 more human, to make us feel what Shepard was feeling, as they had claimed they wanted to do, they certainly accomplished that feat. And that is why I sing praises for them. But as a fan, I cannot find myself supporting their endings no matter how attractive the philosophical discussions they may stir up might be. There is something fundamental about Mass Effect that pro-current ending supporters and maybe even Bioware are forgetting. Mass Effect is unlike any other video game or art genre. Movies are movies. We watch them, we're moved, but in the end we know the director had a vision, the director owned the characters and made us feel for the characters by making them perform the actions the director and the writer made them perform. If we didn't like it, there was nothing we could do. It was beyond our control. Same for all other video games. Second to Mass Effect, my favorite game series of all time is Uncharted. I love Nathan Drake. But Nathan Drake is Naughty Dog's creation: his personality, his history, his decisions in the game were shaped by Naughty Dog and I was along for the enjoyable ride. I happened to really like their portrayal of Drake. But if by some whim they decided that one day Drake was going to give up treasure hunting and turn into some pancake juggling, unicycle riding clown wearing a tutu, I would
question their sanity, curse Naughty Dog, and wonder wtf their thinking, but at the end of the day, despite my displeasure, I could live with it. They created Nathan Drake, his story, and never in the game do I control him or his decisions. So if Naughty Dog felt that this is the direction they wanted Drake to take, then by all means, Nate, juggle those pancakes on your unicycle with fervor. Your fate, your character, your decisions were never mine to decide, and I respect that.
And therein lies the fundamental difference between Mass Effect and any of those other forms of art. Mass Effect made us choose. It gave us control. It gave us the power of the artist. It gave us the power to create a Commander Shepard of our own imagination. Yes, there were standard, linear templates, but we fleshed out these skeleton templates with our imagination of the ideal Shepard derived from our own experiences, our own fantasies, our own hopes and dreams (or if we're the renegade type, our naughtiest and meanest urges). It made Shepard OUR creation. OUR art. Mass Effect may be Bioware’s baby, but to fans, Commander Shepard was OUR baby. And he or she is the centerpiece of the whole Mass Effect series. And that is why there are so many passionate fans demanding a change to the ending that Bioware created. Because unlike those other games, movies, or TV shows whose endings we didn't like and with characters and stories beyond our control, Mass Effect had a Shepard that belonged to US. That WE created. We could easily part with these other games, movies or shows that we ended up not liking because never in them do we feel that we were in control, that we created the stories and characters. But Shepard is shaped by OUR decisions, OUR actions. And it is harder and more heartbreaking to part with that character. Because we don't want to leave him/her. We don't want to boycott him/her or show our displeasure of Bioware by never playing Mass Effect again. We want to stay with Commander Shepard. Because he/she is a part of us. It thus makes it extremely difficult to simply part with the game or "live with it" if the ending that we got did not satisfy our view of Commander Shepard. And, in some ways, again, we must give credit to Bioware for making each gamer emotionally attached and invested in a character that we each truly feel is our own creation. Bioware made us believe, in their skillful presentation of their games, that we were in control, that our choices matter. But because of this sentiment, we are all now feeling entitled to have a say in our creation's ending. Objectively, perhaps Shepard's ending was poignant, bittersweet, and thought-provoking. It is perhaps Bioware's vision of the appropriate ending for their Commander Shepard. But it wasn't the ending that I envisioned for MY Commander Shepard. And it appears it wasn't the ending many fans envisioned for their Commander Shepards. From the very beginning, I chose how my Commander Shepard looked. I spent hours making him perfect. MY Commander Shepard was a survivor who fought against all odds, who somehow managed to survive with sanity and faith in humanity intact despite losing his parents in Mindoir. When people said something was impossible, that there was no way, he found a way, just like how he found a way to survive and win in the Skyllian Blitz. He had a sense of honor, loyalty, responsibility, duty, and an honest, good heart. Commander Shepard was the man of my dreams and Ashley Williams, the tough woman trying to prove herself in a man's profession in the Alliance Navy, the big sister, the responsible, driven by duty, cynical of people and aliens but would still die for them if it was asked of her, was the woman I could relate to who was the love of Shepard's life. This was the story, the art, I was creating. And there are countless other varieties of stories from a multitude of fans who let their imaginations fly, who made Shepard their own with the stories written in their heads and made to come to life in little pieces in the game. And so it was very difficult to have all these Shepards with their own stories experience the sad same bitter end. Ah, yes, perhaps we are back to the rats in a maze, no free will philosophical debate. That no matter how many alternate versions of yourself you can make, no matter how many choices lead you from one path to another, there is only one fate and one destination. One end. Or in this case, three options and 15 or 16 different endings that all leave the players with a disheartened mood. And again, perhaps this is what Bioware intended. This unforgettable ending that they describe. Except that many fans did not expect and did not want this type of ending at all. Because Bioware adeptly presented the games in a way that allowed the players' imaginations to run wild with their own creations/variations of Shepard, they attracted a wide range of different individuals: from the pessimistic/bad-ass-I-was-born- to-die fanbase to the sunshine-and-rainbows-and-all-is good-and-great-in-the-world-if-you-help-others fanbase, each with a set of expectations as their games came to a conclusion. The problem is that such a range of super-sad to super-happy endings were not available. Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3 (until the final minutes) were presented in such a way that made it seem that the conclusion was wide open to all these possibilities, thus attracting a diverse group of fans with different outlooks of life and taste in video games (The Mass Effect series, I am guessing, probably attracted the action, shooter fans, the RPG fans, and the Sims fans because of how the games presented themselves). But the ending did not offer the same variety as the body of the work and thus neglected to offer the proper endings for each of these different fan populations. If Bioware had set up the 3 games as bleak, as hopeless, as fatalist in its concept and delivery, then the ending would not have been such a surprise. It also may not have attracted the sunshine-and-rainbows people. But up until the ending, Bioware had made us believe we were in total control of our creation. There was no hint of a bleak, fatalistic ending we cannot choose to avoid or skip or disagree with. So it comes as a surprise that we have no power to choose if we want this philosophically stimulating but incredibly bleak ending or not. Come on, Bioware, for two excellent games, you programmed us into believing that if you made the tough decisions, if you made the sacrifices, if you fight hard enough, you will triumph. For God's sake, for two games you had Shepard rise out of a bunch of rubble to dramatic music. How could we have expected otherwise on the third? The truth is, you let the gamers create their own art: you skillfully, for 2.95 games, succeeded in making a rousing, wonderful story that was completely crafted by the players. And boy, did we enjoy it. But then you took the paint brush away. I was happily finishing my Da Vinci's Mona Lisa and you yanked the paint brush from my hand and turned my work into Picasso's Guernica. It is an equally impressive work of art...but it was not what I, as the artist, envisioned. Or, to make a more simple, movie analogy, it was like I was making Star Wars the second trilogy and then at the last minute you took the director chair away from me and put Black Swan's ending as the end of my film. Both good movies in their own way...but again, different from what I originally envisioned. Or like I was writing The Odyssey and all of a sudden you took the pen away from me and wrote the ending to Brave New World to my story--okay, I think you get the picture.
So now, finally, I have dissected and diagnosed the fundamental problem and why, to your surprise, you found so many enraged fans clamoring for your crucifixion. You made us all artists, and just like any artist, we defend our work of art with a passion that can sometimes seem unreasonably brutal, harsh, or unnecessarily mean-spirited. So...disease diagnosed. What's the treatment? Well, that's hard to say, because I want a certain ending for my Shepard. As do others. I remember reading in some article or another that Bioware had said that Shepard's ending wasn't going to be happy. We all understood that possibility. But not to the degree of bleakness we were subjected to in the game. By sad we thought you meant Anderson died. By sad we thought you meant a lot of people andShepard's friends and loved ones died. By sad we thought you meant Shepard died. By sad we thought you meant maybe the galaxy survived, but fractured, divided, and barely alive. We didn't know you meant all of the above. And
we certainly did not think, just to reiterate my contentions outlined above, that everything that Shepard accomplished in the past 2.95 games, would get reversed or not matter. And then there were all these talks of drinks at the bar...how sad that Shepard wouldn't get all the plethora of free drinks offered to him. In all seriousness, though, it just boils down to this: throughout the game, there was talk of hope, of doing this and that, of Shepard being born to do this, of Shepard uniting the galaxy, and in the end, it was all for naught. It rang hollow because all his accomplishments ended up not mattering in one way, shape or form with any of the "best ending" choose destroy scenarios. And for reasons described above, the other 2 choices weren't even close to being reasonable options consistent with the games overarching theme. I'm not sure how others had envisioned an ending to their Mass Effect, and I don't pretend to know what the true best ending would look or be like, but perhaps what would help issharing my thoughts on some of my favorite movies that I think Mass Effect, in its delivery, may have been trying to emulate. Perhaps their stories, paralleling or resembling the themes of Mass Effect, contain the endings that many fans may have anticipated. In my mind, Mass Effect is an epic tale about a hero's journey amidst the grand scale of a larger than life war that can save or destroy the world or the galaxy. It is a tale of how one person can make a difference over victory or defeat. The movies that come to mind are of course, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Both movies have sad moments with lots of loss, devastation, deaths, but in the end, all the main characters survive, are reunited with their love interests, and there's lots of celebrations involved. Lots of ewoks and dwarves dancing the night away. We all knew, at least from as far as Bioware had said previously, that a happy, happy ending was out of the picture. Fair enough. It would suffice to just show Shepard alive, but wounded, reunited with a wounded and now one armed love interest (mangled by a Brute) on top of a pile of rubble surrounded with bloodied corpses. And some dancing voluses in the background. But seriously, Bioware, something of a closure ending where people are reunited would have been pleasant enough. Not long, drawn out, or cheesy. It just has to be vaguely and broadly hopeful. It doesn't have to be overly specific. It doesn't even have to have dialogue. It doesn't even have to have dramatic music with Shepard rising out of the rubble and strutting his or her stuff. Just one cutscene where Shepard is still limping, wearing his or her tattered armor, and then running into the arms--or arm, depending on how sad you want this closure ending to be--of his or her LI. And showing surviving mass relays still functioning to embody hope that people can study these mass relays and rebuild somehow. And also EDI or Legion or some other beloved synthetic survived. Just those slivers of hope showing that all of Shepard's work and influence weren't completely undone. The other side to Mass Effect is the warrior's tale. The tale of a fearless, charismatic, wise-beyond-his/her-years soldier and leader that can command and influence men and women and reshape history. Movies like Gladiator, Braveheart, 300 come to mind. In all 3, the heroes died. Perhaps this is more of the ending you had planned for Mass Effect 3. In these movies, the warriors sacrificed their lives for victory. I love all 3 of these movies even though the main characters all died. Would I have preferred this ending for Shepard? Likely not. As I said, I play video games for hope, for control, for a sense that if I do everything right, everything will turn out all right. But would I be satisfied if Shepard got an ending similar to these movies? Yes, absolutely. Because in these movies, in the heroes' deaths, there was a surge of hope. Their deaths led to victories and their actions weren't undone by their deaths. If Shepard died sacrificing himself to destroy the Reapers and the mass relays had remained intact, the Normandy wasn't stranded in the middle of nowhere, synthetic allies weren’t destroyed, and we could see some form of celebration or gathering of all the alien races, united as one, enjoying a moment of peace amidst the chaos and destruction before them, that ending would have been satisfying for me. Because Shepard sacrificed himself, but all his accomplishments weren't undone, he was a legend, he saved the galaxy, rewrote history, and he will be remembered. And then maybe throw in some dancing voluses in the background for good measure.
So now we have what treatment to pursue. But how to pursue it. The simplest answer would be through DLCs. There are lots of thoughts about indoctrination theories and Shepard hallucinating at the end of the game.These ideas are very creative and it is clear us fans have thought a lot about them. My thought about how to introduce these new endings to fill in the holes of the current endings would be a DLC with a specific mission in mind. I see that conveniently after you finish a game, you're brought back to that point before you launch an attack on the Cerberus base. So you can do this mission before deciding to launch the attack. On that, by the way...if I already finished the game and didn't want to replay the launch Cerberus attack mission and London battle again, there should be an option, or perhaps maybe even automatically, that after the DLC is completed you get transported straight to the events after the ending cutscenes to get the extra ending cutscene or mission. My thought on that: have the old man telling the kid the story fill in a summary of the Cerberus attack and the London attack and say something like "like I said in those stories I told you before, Shepard attacked Cerberus and then went to London, blah, blah...then it was thought that he died...but..." fade to black and then new ending cutscene or mission. The mission for the DLC should be like a mission to recover an artifact or device or code that then gets implanted in Shepard's head, etc, to make him able to fight or break indoctrination. But he has to make the right choice. So he still has to have the best ending scenario with the large amount of effective military strength required, choose destroy, thus breaks indoctrination, breathes back to life (so he has to have the best ending with EMS 4000-5000) and then has one final battle with the child-god who turns out to be a --surprise!--lying synthetic bastard. Mass relays won't actually be destroyed, synthetics won't actually all be destroyed. In this battle, Shepard can either live or die depending on other factors perhaps to be determined by the DLC. If people don't have the required EMS but chose to destroy, they could still perhaps play the last battle with the child god, but Shepard is weaker, maybe has only 75% of his health/power etc, and maybe more likely to get the hero's death ending. That's one way to provide endings with closure. As for reunions, the Normandy did end up on some unknown planet, but because mass relays are intact in this version, Shepard finds his crew and reunites with his love interest. And maybe somewhere along the way explain how in the f the Normandy ended up where it did anyway. Or even better, make Normandy being stranded a part of Shepard's hallucination and everyone is still back in the Sol system where they should have been. Option 2 is similar, but no indoctrination theory involved. Shepard simply wakes up if he got the best ending, and he is in possession of a device or artifact, etc that he procured from the DLC mission that he can use on what is remaining of the citadel to restore the mass relays and revive synthetics (but not the Reapers, obviously). There could be some other parameter to determine whether he lives or dies, and in the end, we again, get the closure endings we want with plot holes explained, without altering or changing the ending as it is. As much as I love the indoctrination theory, I would rather have the second option, because it doesn't changethe ending at all; it simply addends it by providing an epilogue of sorts and then proceeding with the rest of the story with hope and closure now intact. And the game is still complete without the DLC mission. Shepard lives in the best ending with Mass Effect 3, but just unable to restore the mass relays and revive synthetics. If people are happy with that and a live Shepard and that's it, then they don't have to buy the DLC. But for the rest of us fans who want more closure and hope, we can buy the DLC. As far as stories for the DLC goes, it can be a device or artifact or code that a rogue Reaper possesses and gives to Shepard after he completes and passes a series of tests (wisdom, knowledge, strength, integrity--a bunch of things) that makes the rogue Reaper's logical system conclude that because of this organic (Shepard), the whole Reaper argument of chaos and death and restoring order through destruction of organic life is rendered invalid because Shepard proves there can be peace and order despite self-awareness and identity. Or it could be some other hoity-toity philosophical thought process involved. Pick your topic. And that's right. I said a nice, rogue Reaper. You have a nice rogue Geth in Legion, a nice rogue AI in EDI, a not nice but loyal rogue mercenary in Zaeed, and a ****y, rogue but loyal Cerberus agent in Miranda. Why the hell not a nice rogue Reaper? And hell, maybe Shepard can ride this reaper in space, go to the random jungle planet where his love interest is, and reunite with her while they sing and fly away into space like in that Grease movie? Okay, that was a joke. But that would be another ending to stir some controversy, if you're up for it...
I apologize for the length of this essay of sorts, but I have thought a lot about this game, and indeed, it has moved me like no other game has. It is, however, unfortunate that it moved me in a negative way: because I know how it ends now, I simply cannot bring myself to replay the game because of the disheartening mood it wreaks upon me when I play the game and think of that ending. In a way, Bioware, you know exactly how we feel. For 8 years, you toiled to make a game like no other and craft a masterpiece with a unique gameplay experience. You must have envisioned the fans’ positive reception of it, and as Mass Effect 1 and 2 came out with glowing praises, you were encouraged and assured we were going to love the third game. You must have pictured a welcoming, warm, positive laudation of Mass Effect 3 as more and more fans played it. But then, out of nowhere, if we were to believe your statements, you were caught by surprise by all these angry fans who hated the ending. Totally unexpected, and perhaps, in your mind, puzzling and confusing, the number of people who despised your ending to your masterpiece grew to thousands. And they were obnoxiously vocal about it. One even filed a lawsuit against you. And some people were unreasonably rude and mean and unpleasant to you. Who even attacked your character and integrity . These chain of events certainly wasn’t the ending you envisioned when you worked ungodly amounts of hours to create your product. As such, I’m sure hearing these fans’ reaction and reception of the game was incredibly disheartening and painful to you. If you knew that after all your hard work, it was going to end in this discouragingly bleak fashion, would you truly have still been able to work all those grueling hours all over again? It would have proven extremely difficult now that you know the pain that lies in the future for you. It parallels the pain we “passionate” fans feel. For hours upon hours with each game, we toiled to make our gameplay complete, perfect, unique to our own imagination, and we envisioned a certain end to our story and character. Instead, out of left field, we get this incredibly unwelcomed, painful ending that we did not see coming. All the hard work, and all the major plot points we thought we had resolved were reversed, trivialized. Well, we both can relate to each other then, and how much it hurts when things end in an unexpected way that you did not anticipate or see coming. We all are suffering in pain, so let us make a compromise and make a friendly, productive collaboration dedicated to working to address the ending of this groundbreaking game. As I said, I am still a fan of Bioware, and I still have faith in them. I hope that they truly are listening. And if they are, I thank them for their time and hope they consider the thoughts I have outlined above.
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