To preface: I am so happy that this discussion is even a possibility. I am already more enthusiastic about the game itself, and about BioWare as a company. I already commented in the review thread to express what I loved most about the game (there was a lot of it), so here I will focus on what I think needs to be changed.
My main complaint with ME3 has always been, and remains, the lack of closure and catharsis after the climax. Mass Effect is not just one story, it encompasses many smaller stories, and the game did such a good job of resolving them. I lost Mordin, Thane, and Legion, and I was so sad each time, but I was okay with it, I felt like their deaths were meaningful. In London, I got to say goodbye to my crew, and even though the situation was tense, I knew what was coming, and I was ready for it.
If the game had ended with Shepard and Anderson on the Citadel, sitting together -- especially with the dialogue that was cut -- while the fleet finished the battle outside, that would have been a spectacular ending. Picture this: Anderson dies, Shepard looks outside to see the fleet losing badly, and then succumbs to his/her injuries, at which point we see the Crucible activate, and the fleet turns the battle around; later, the rescue team shows up, but it's too late; the epilogue shows the funeral(s), details what happens to the other species, and what happens to any surviving crew members. That ending would have been bittersweet, and I would have sobbed later, but it would have been something worth remembering.
But it didn't end there. Instead, we got dragged into a nonsensical lecture by Star Child, railroaded into an out-of-character choice, and left in the lurch, with a multitude of questions and no hope for answers.
1) Star Child / Guardian / Catalyst
I do not oppose Star Child's inclusion in the game. However, its presence raises a lot of questions, none of which are satisfactorily answered:
- What is Star Child? Is it an AI? VI? Spirit? Deity? Hallucination? Is it beneficent, malevolent, or truly neutral?
- Who created Star Child, and why? Is it the first Reaper, or are the Reapers completely unrelated in origin, created only as the "solution"?
- Why is it Star Child's task to find, as it says, a solution to chaos? (I'm not sure if this was meant to be profound, but it sounds like mad scientist reasoning and I cannot take it seriously.)
- Why does Star Child care so much about organics, even when it is completely incapable of seeing what it is that is wonderful about life (clue: being turned into genetic goop and uploaded into an enslaved machine is the antithesis of life)? What exactly is bad about synthetics wiping out organic life? This seems to imply that organic life has some intrinsic value that makes it more important than synthetic life, but this idea is negated by the Synthesis ending.
- What happened to convince Star Child that organic/synthetic conflict is inevitable? This is probably related to the reason for its creation, but since Star Child is adamant that this is the ultimate truth, why does it think that?
- Why is Star Child's thinking so limited? It says that it couldn't see other possibilities until the Citadel merged with the Crucible -- is this a design flaw, or intentional in its programming? Doesn't this limitation prove that Star Child might be wrong in the assertion that conflict is inevitable?
No one likes a smug god-child, and when Star Child talks down to Shepard, it is like the writers are talking down to the audience. If Star Child remains in the game, we have questions. We need to be able to ask them, and to get serious answers, so that when we make our final choice, it feels like an informed decision.
1a) Space Magic
Related to the issue of Star Child is the question of the Crucible, and what it does.
Please, please, please fix this plot hole.
As far as I can tell, when Shepard activates the Crucible, it uses his/her "energy" -- and what does that mean, anyway? -- to send some sort of signal though the relays, which then overload, and this energy also destroys Reapers/Reaper tech (but not necessarily anything else), exerts psychic control over the Reapers, or -- and this is the worst offender -- somehow rewrites the laws of biology and restructures matter on at least a molecular level in order to turn all life into synthetic hybrids.
This does not make any sense. In a game where we willing accept eezo, relays, biotics, infinite ammo, genocidal space machines, mind control, cybernetic resurrection, and Elcor Hamlet, the line is drawn at space magic.
I've said, and seen others say, that what the Crucible does for most of the game is bring people together. And maybe that is its ultimate purpose: to help Shepard assemble the largest fleet in galactic history. Maybe it can do something else cool, like disable Star Child, or disrupt Reaper communication/ shields/ weaponry, which allows the fleet to finish the job. If you want a more philosophical ending, maybe the Crucible is just a test, to get people to work together long enough to complete it -- cliche, yes, but at least it's not space magic.
2) Railroaded Choices
Mass Effect is billed as a game about choices, and for the most part, it fulfills that promise. Big choices, like saving or abandoning the Council in ME1 have a big impact. Small choices, like saving Shiala, have a small impact. I love that even seemingly inconsequential choices and interactions can pay off in the form of dialogue, in-game mail, and war assets.
That's why it hurts to get to the end of the game and feel like none of it mattered.
I don't mind forced choices, but the problem with the choices that Star Child gives Shepard is exactly that: they are Star Child's choices, not Shepard's. The ending is barely interactive; there are no interrupts, no options to argue, or to fight, and that essentially turns Shepard into a passive observer. Shepard, who has an opinion on everything, from whether or not Refund Guy deserves a refund, to whether or not it's okay to kill an entire species for the sake of galactic peace, barely says anything during the entire finale.
What makes this so egregiously out of character is the fact that Shepard spent the last 2.9 games defying all the odds, generally being stubborn and refusing to give in to inevitable or the impossible, and -- most importantly -- spitting in the Reapers' faces. Yet when Shepard finally meets the thing controlling the Reapers, instead of the curbstomp battle we were expecting, Shepard meekly accepts everything Star Child says as absolute truth. What happened to "tell your friends we're coming for them"?
Along with the option to interrogate Star Child for answers, there should be the option to refuse. The paragon option would be to persuade Star Child that it is wrong, maybe even convince it to destroy the Reapers -- or turn the Reapers to our side. The renegade option would be to fight, and destroy Star Child and the Reapers, but not through the Crucible's space magic.
I would love to see a renegade option in which Shepard tells Star Child to take its toys and go to hell, then orders the fleet to destroy the Citadel, with Shepard still inside. Shepard would die, but the sacrifice would allow the fleet to take out the Reaper master control program, and because the decision would not occur in a vacuum, it would be meaningful for the other characters; it would have the emotional impact of Virmire, with all the fallout that entailed.
As per usual, paragon/renegade dialogue should have to be unlocked with reputation.
3) Genuinely Diverse Endings
There are only three endings in ME3, and they are really all variations on a theme: Control (blue), Destroy (red), Synthesis (green). There are small differences, such as who lives or dies in each playthrough, influenced by EMS, and therefore player choices, but this is like saying that you prefer hunter green to emerald green.
As the final game in the trilogy, ME3 should not be constrained by the plot of the next game. We don't have to accomplish a specific goal in order for the story to continue, because the story is over. I'd like to see several options available for story completion, ranging from complete success (relays intact, galaxy safe), to bittersweet victory (relays gone, Shepard dead, everyone else safe), to Pyrrhic victory (relays gone, Earth destroyed, fleet decimated, small colonies safe), to abject failure at extremely low EMS (Shepard dead, fleet destroyed or forced to flee, Reapers harvest galaxy, cycle continues). Failure, of course, would be non-canonical, the way that Shepard dying at the end of ME2 is non-canonical. Options for success would still depend on EMS, as they do already, but how each of these outcomes plays out in the epilogue would be based on how you interact with Star Child, and how prepared you were for the battle. For example:
- Persuade, high EMS: The fleet survives mostly intact, galaxy rebuilds easily because relays and tech are intact.
- Persuade, low EMS: The fleet survives mostly intact, but has difficulty recovering from the losses because everyone is concerned with protecting their own species/planets instead of working together.
- Fight, high EMS: The fleet sustains massive losses, but is able to work together to rebuild quickly.
- Fight, low EMS: The fleet sustatins massive losses, and open conflict between other species breaks out soon after the war, making rebuilding difficult or impossible.
I'll also say flat out that we should have the option for a happy ending, the same way there was the option for a happy ending in DA:O, which overall was much darker than ME has ever been. It shouldn't be the default ending; it should be difficult to obtain, and require some sacrifice (Remember Virmire? Did you save your LI? Harsh....), but the option should be there. It doesn't have to be a fairy tale ending -- although, fairy tale endings are popular for a reason -- but I would love to see Shepard's crew regrouping and storming the Citadel, arriving just in time, then have a final scene with the LI as they all escape. Something more hopeful than Shepard is dead and your LI is going to die alone on some random planet.
4) Catharsis / Closure / Epilogue
These concepts are all related, but I think they require slightly different solutions.
All the action in London builds up to a critical mass; players get pumped up for the final battle with Harbinger, and when Shepard starts limping toward the Conduit, we know that it's about to be over, one way or another. It feels like the climactic moment, and when we have the final confrontation with the Illusive Man, it's satisfying. When Shepard sits down with Anderson, all that tension that was build up in London starts to drain away -- but it's not the end. When Hackett calls, and Shepard gets on the elevator, we know there's more, and we start getting worked up for the real final battle: Anderson just died, it's time for revenge! Harbinger is going down! Time to kill some Reapers!
But this time, there's no chance to release that tension. We don't get revenge, we don't get the chance to plant a flag in Harbinger's carapace -- we don't get catharsis. Shepard dies, and that's pretty much it.
I'm... not sure how I feel about the decision not to include a Final Boss. I think it would feel anticlimactic to fight Harbinger or Star Child just for the sake of a boss fight, but there is also something innately satisfying about a boss fight, especially one that you know you're going to win. However, in a game that focuses so much on role playing and dialogue, I think this same catharsis could be achieved through verbal sparring -- we just never get it because there is no chance for dialogue at the end.
Closure is much simpler. As it stands, the ending leaves too much to speculation, and, unfortunately, this opens the door to inferred holocausts. I feel like the ending wasn't thought through. We need answers to these questions:
- What happens when the relays are destroyed? Do they destroy home systems, like in Arrival? Did we just destroy large parts of the galaxy in order to save it?
- How do our squad mates get back on the Normandy, if they survive? How long was Shepard out? If Shepard was out, but the team was up, why are they on the ship? Why didn't they make a run for the Conduit, like Anderson did?
- We've just stranded our crew on Gilligan's Planet. How do they survive without food, clean water, shelter, medical supplies, etc.? Do they get rescued, or are they stuck forever? Do they try to rebuild and repopulate, or do they die off slowly?
- What happens to the rest of the galaxy without the relays? The galactic economy is destroyed, communications are reduced to a handful of working QECs, governments and urban infrastructures are in ruins. Will civil war break out over scarce resources? After we spent all that time building unity, does it all collapse as species try to protect themselves?
- What happens to the fleet stuck in Sol? Sol's natural resources have been drained for decades, and Earth is hardly in any shape to support them all, besides which, the turians and quarians can't eat Earth food. Do they starve? Even if some people try to make it home at FTL speed, it will take years, and without food and fuel, won't they die in space anyway?
This could be easily resolved without changing anything else by the addition of a true epilogue. Again, I will use DA:O as an example -- in fact, I think it is an excellent example of how to do a downer ending that still feels satisfying. In my first DA:O playthrough, my character got her heart broken and died at the end, but I felt pretty good about that, because the epilogue made me feel like what I had done actually mattered. The funeral scene was touching, and the text epilogues let me know how all my actions played out. In ME, I want to feel like Shepard's sacrifice was worth it, I want to know that everything I did pays off in the end, not just in war assets, but in the galaxy's ability to rebuild, and as it stands, I don't. I feel like Shepard died, and everything is still in such bad shape that the Reapers might as well have wiped it out and started clean. Mass Effect is all about the story; that's what pulls us in and makes us care about the game. Such a beautiful, well-crafted story deserves a real ending, not a lot of speculation on what really happened.
On that note, the Stargazer Epilogue is... bizarre. It provides no closure, and the feel of the whole thing is a little creepy. Plus, it presents us with the "legend" of Shepard, implying that the whole game might not have been true, because it's a legend, after which the game itself tells us that the story has become a legend but that we can keep building it, which implies that it was true... and to what end? We already know it's a game and that it didn't really happen, so why reinforce the point that it's a story? It ruins immersion.
5) Indoctrination Theory
I don't have a stance on indoctrination theory. I can see its merits, and its drawbacks. On the one hand, the inclusion of indoctrination theory at this point would feel somewhat cheap if it wasn't originally intended, and it would likely upset people who like the endings as they are. On the other hand, it would be an acceptable way to retcon what I hated most about the game, and releasing a DLC ending with indoctrination theory would allow people who like the endings to keep them (by not getting DLC), and people who hate them to have additional options.
6) Implementation and Cost
Bearing in mind that rewriting the ending is probably an expensive process, these are some ideas for what kind of fixes I would be interested in, and their monetary value.
- $3: Simple text epilogues, with short cinematics, to provide closure. This would be the bare minimum I would consider necessary to fix the ending. I would pay for it, but I would not be happy about it, because I bought the CE and I think that a real ending should have been included in the price.
- $5: Full cinematic epilogues, with the return of all major voice actors. I would love to see this, because it would fit the style of the game and provide the closure that I want, but I would still be unsatisfied with Star Child and space magic.
- $10-15: Full rewrite of the ending, including all major voice actors and full cinematic epilogues. I would consider this a good value for the money.
- $20: Post-ending mission pack, for the inclusion of indoctrination theory, rescue missions, or anything else. This would have to include all major voice actors and a real epilogue.
- $30: Post-ending expansion pack. Kind of the platinum version of a post-ending mission DLC. I will be honest: if the ending is rewritten, major content is added, voice actors return, there is some resolution with our LIs, we have more choices at the end, and some real closure -- even if nothing else about the game is patched, such as the journal -- I would buy what amounts to a new game from BioWare. But I would have to be assured that I was getting what we were promised.
7) Summary
- get rid of Star Child OR provide sufficient opportunity to interrogate Star Child, and get real answers
- get rid of space magic
- provide the opportunity for Shepard to be Shepard and do something meaningful, through paragon/renegade dialogue and/or interrupts
- provide a sense of catharsis by including a final showdown, physical or verbal, through which players can release tension
- provide a sense of closure by including a real epilogue that shows the effect our choices have on the galaxy, and the characters we care about
- include more choices for the ending, including a happy ending, no matter how hard it is to obtain
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