I posted this in another thread, but they are directing discussion here, so :
This is directed to Ray Muzyka, Casey Hudson, Mike Gamble, Mac Walters and anyone else in a position to make creative decisions regarding the ME3 ending.
First, I want to be clear. You guys made a fantastic game, and a fantastic sequel to two other fantastic games. The improvement in game play quality as you go from Mass Effect, to Mass Effect 2 to Mass Effect 3 is simply amazing.
Second, the writing in all three games is easily the best I've ever seen in video games, and better than a lot of writing in almost any media you care to name. ME3, particularly, is exceptionally well written.
Third, what's going on right now, wouldn't be happening if fans didn't care so passionately about the games, the characters and the setting you've created.
Put another way, we love everything you guys have done so much, that when it breaks down in the last five or ten minutes of an experience that has, at a mininute, lasted 50 hours, and for some of us (including myself) given us *thousands* of hours of enjoyment, not just from the games, but from other, associated media, that we were left upset, confused, frustrated, and in many cases hurt.
The thing is, most of us still love your games, or at the very least, we want to be able to love your games *again*, even if we can't find it in ourselves to love them right now.
Then you start talking about "maintaining the artistic integrity of the game." I can't speak for anyone but myself here, but I am going to speak for myself, because no one else will.
I'm an artist. Specifically, I'm a writer. As an artist, as a writer, when I look at the ME series as a whole, I can't help but feel that you've already broken the artistic integrity of the series. You guys are blazing a new trail here. You're creating something with your games that hasn't really existed before. You're creating a piece of art where the viewer of that art has unprecidented agency in the creation of that artwork's final form, where no two people will ever experience the artwork in the same way, and where no two viewings of the art will ever be exactly the same. You've spent anywhere from tens to hundreds of hours building an expectation with the audience for your art, that the viewer of your art would, at the conclusion of the piece, have agency in determining the final state of that art.
But you violate that expectation. That's why I'm upset. That's why I don't like the ending of the game.
If you spend anywhere from fifty to several hundred hours experiencing a story in which your character is working towards saving the galaxy from destruction, working towards the chance to settle down and have a life with the person he or she cares about, and achieve victory against impossible odds, it's a violation of the agreement you, as an artist, have with the viewer, the audience of your art, to meet the expectations you yourself have set forward in the work. If the ending of your work fails to follow the rules present within the body of the work, that is a similar violation of the agreement between artist and audience.
You can talk about "maintaining the artistic integrity of the game" all you like, but the problem is, you have already violated that integrity, not by delivering a disappointing ending, but by delivering an ending that fails to meet the promises that were made *within* the narrative of the game.
We, as the audience, spend three games as Shepard fighting to preserve galactic society, but at the end, every single option we are given requires the destruction of that society. We, as the audience, spend three games as Shepard, fighting to preserve the freedom and free will of the galaxy, yet the supposed *best* ending, the one that is the most difficult to get, involves robbing all life in the galaxy of the freedom to chose whether or not they remain as they are, or became partially synthetic. We, as the audience, spend three games as Shepard, being told that each Repear is "a nation, indepentant, free of all weakness," only to be told in the last five minutes that they're the playthings of an entirely new character, who's actions make no sense within the story, and who's motivations are *demonstribly false* within the narrative of the story, and yet, we, as Shepard, are given no opportunity to point out the errors in his thinking, and are forced to except one of three options which, as I pointed out before, involve the destruction of the very society we have been fighting to save.
I'm not upset because I didn't get the ending promised in some random interview. I'm not upset because the ending isn't exactly how I pictured it. I'm upset because the ending does not deliver on the promises made *within the narrative* and is not consistant with the rules established *within the narrative*.
I'll restate this one more time, just so I'm perfectly clear. If mass effect were a novel, and Shepard and Liara started talking about a future with marriage, old age, and lots of little blue children, it would be perfectly exceptable to use that as a way to emphisise the tragedy of Shepard's death. However, in a game where Shepard can, simply by making the right choices, rescue his/her entire crew from certain death, and bring his/her entire crew through a suicide mission, you, as an artist, are making a promise that, with the right decisions, Shepard can have that future. And in a novel, it would be perfectly acceptable to have the Reapers simply fail to destroy all advanced civilizations, but in a game where, through making the wrong decisions, Shepard can get his entire crew killed, you as the artist have made a promise that there will be an ending where, if all the wrong decisions are made, the Reapers win. Both of these promises, along with many others, go unfulfilled in the ending of the game. That's why I'm upset.
And the thing is, I know you can do better, because right up until the elevator carries Shepard up to the Crucible, you were fulfilling nearly ever promise the narrative made.
So, please, if you care about your fans, if you really do care about artistic integrity of the game, restore it. Fix the ending, so that it fulfills the promises made within the narrative.
Sincerely, someone who loves Mass Effect.
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