1896 réponses à ce sujet

[T-Dawg135]

I keep seeing the assumption that budget limitations caused the bad ending to the game; that hadn't given them enough money to finish it properly. It's far more likely, however, that the problem with the game is that EA gave them too MUCH money. The exceedingly large budget resulted in poor asset management and a rushed ending.
It's like those low income people who win the lottery. You read all the time how they won 10's of millions of dollars and yet they're bankrupt within a year. Most people reading that story ask themselves, "How'd they do that? How do you waste that much money that quickly?" The answer is simple. That person wasn't used to having that much money, so when they got it, they spent it like they could do anything.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this forum, the original Mass Effect had a far smaller budget than Mass Effect 3, and yet the story wasn't sacrificed at all. That's because the team recognized the limitations of the budget that they were working with, and they made sure that the scope of the game that they were making could be fit into that budget. Nowhere in Mass Effect was there a "gold plated" anything. They couldn't afford it, and they knew it.

Now when it came time to make Mass Effect 3, the team was given a massive budget, one that far exceeded what the team had to work with before. No doubt, just like our lottery winner before, they thought they could do anything they wanted. So the team came up with all kinds of excellent ideas, became excited to begin work on a project of such massive scope and promised their fans the moon. I don't think that any of the things that were promised were lies; I believe the team genuinely thought that they could deliver on their promises.

Unfortunately for everyone, reality had to set in some time. Doubtless, as the end of production drew near, the team looked around at the myriad things that they were working on and got the sinking realization that they no longer had the time and money to finish them all. That's when they had to start making the painful decisions about what to cut and what to finish.

The team simply wasn't equipped with the understanding of what they were capable with at the beginning because they had never experienced working on a game with such a massive budget. It happens all the time, even to the most well-meaning of people. The best that we can hope for now is that they have learned from this experience, and the next time they are presented with a game of this budget, they are better equipped to handle the limitations involved, and will set more realistic goals for their intentions.

[kimuji]

I believe time limitations were as crucial as budget limitations. If you lack budget you put text and artworks instead of dubbed cinematics. There's not even a text epilogue at the end. I think time limitations mattered.

[goose2989]

Anyone else come back to this thread for hope? I know it's foolish, but I sure want to believe a lot of the things supposedly said by Mr Weekes

[Capeo]

T-Dawg135 wrote...

I keep seeing the assumption that budget limitations caused the bad ending to the game; that hadn't given them enough money to finish it properly. It's far more likely, however, that the problem with the game is that EA gave them too MUCH money. The exceedingly large budget resulted in poor asset management and a rushed ending.
It's like those low income people who win the lottery. You read all the time how they won 10's of millions of dollars and yet they're bankrupt within a year. Most people reading that story ask themselves, "How'd they do that? How do you waste that much money that quickly?" The answer is simple. That person wasn't used to having that much money, so when they got it, they spent it like they could do anything.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this forum, the original Mass Effect had a far smaller budget than Mass Effect 3, and yet the story wasn't sacrificed at all. That's because the team recognized the limitations of the budget that they were working with, and they made sure that the scope of the game that they were making could be fit into that budget. Nowhere in Mass Effect was there a "gold plated" anything. They couldn't afford it, and they knew it.

Now when it came time to make Mass Effect 3, the team was given a massive budget, one that far exceeded what the team had to work with before. No doubt, just like our lottery winner before, they thought they could do anything they wanted. So the team came up with all kinds of excellent ideas, became excited to begin work on a project of such massive scope and promised their fans the moon. I don't think that any of the things that were promised were lies; I believe the team genuinely thought that they could deliver on their promises.

Unfortunately for everyone, reality had to set in some time. Doubtless, as the end of production drew near, the team looked around at the myriad things that they were working on and got the sinking realization that they no longer had the time and money to finish them all. That's when they had to start making the painful decisions about what to cut and what to finish.

The team simply wasn't equipped with the understanding of what they were capable with at the beginning because they had never experienced working on a game with such a massive budget. It happens all the time, even to the most well-meaning of people. The best that we can hope for now is that they have learned from this experience, and the next time they are presented with a game of this budget, they are better equipped to handle the limitations involved, and will set more realistic goals for their intentions.

I'm not sure where you are getting your budget numbers.  Most game companies won't release their budgets and as far as I know BW never has for ME games.  Doing some research I found estimates around 25-40 mil for ME2.  In comparison Uncharted 2 was around 20 mil, God of War 3 was 40 mil and GTA4 was over 100 mil.  I doubt ME 3 was much over 40-50 mil and with that they still had to do MP.

[Daniel_N7]

Hi all. I haven't read this thread entirely and I'm sure some of these questions have been pointed out before. Still, here are some thoughts.

I'm paraphrasing but it was said on the PAX panel - I don't have a link, sorry - that they didn't have an ending DLC planned because they didn't thought it would be necessary.

Now, we have someone from BioWare acknowledging that «Joker would never abandon Shep without a good reason. Hopefully this will be clear in the Expanded Cut».

This is a clear affirmation that they know the ending was poorly delivered. And this is a relevant issue because (1) the Normandy escape is highly problematic (abandoning Shepard in the field of battle; loyalty, etc), and (2) BioWare has not acknowledged any deficiencies in the ending.

The situation with the Citadel is even more ridiculous. In the «Destroy» and «Synthesis» endings we clearly see the Citadel exploding. Now we are given some half-baked explanation to contradict all evidence we see in the ending - supposedly the Citadel has «emergency shelters and kinetic barriers». And after the massive shockwave we witness - at least in the Destroy ending - we're supposed to believe that the Citadel's life-support systems are still operational?

These are just two points - from the many available for discussion. Still, they are blatant evidence that the ending is poorly presented - to say the least.

BioWare's refusal to acknowledge the deficiencies of the ending is disturbing. It's hard to believe you can fix a problem if you don't even recognize there is one in the first place. And judging from the miserable PR statements we've been getting, one would assume BW's strategy at this point to be «take the money and run». Please BW, show us it isn't so.

[tjc2]

Allan Schumacher wrote...
As for the results of synthesis, I agree.  It's a tough concept to wrap my head around.

I think this is the ending that caused most of the problems. Especially with no real knowledge of what the Crucible was, why it worked in the way it did...

...I think the ending DLC needs to give us something on the Crucibles origin story. Is it really something designed by the Reapers as an ultimate last case scenario...

[T-Dawg135]

Capeo wrote...

T-Dawg135 wrote...

I keep seeing the assumption that budget limitations caused the bad ending to the game; that hadn't given them enough money to finish it properly. It's far more likely, however, that the problem with the game is that EA gave them too MUCH money. The exceedingly large budget resulted in poor asset management and a rushed ending.
It's like those low income people who win the lottery. You read all the time how they won 10's of millions of dollars and yet they're bankrupt within a year. Most people reading that story ask themselves, "How'd they do that? How do you waste that much money that quickly?" The answer is simple. That person wasn't used to having that much money, so when they got it, they spent it like they could do anything.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this forum, the original Mass Effect had a far smaller budget than Mass Effect 3, and yet the story wasn't sacrificed at all. That's because the team recognized the limitations of the budget that they were working with, and they made sure that the scope of the game that they were making could be fit into that budget. Nowhere in Mass Effect was there a "gold plated" anything. They couldn't afford it, and they knew it.

Now when it came time to make Mass Effect 3, the team was given a massive budget, one that far exceeded what the team had to work with before. No doubt, just like our lottery winner before, they thought they could do anything they wanted. So the team came up with all kinds of excellent ideas, became excited to begin work on a project of such massive scope and promised their fans the moon. I don't think that any of the things that were promised were lies; I believe the team genuinely thought that they could deliver on their promises.

Unfortunately for everyone, reality had to set in some time. Doubtless, as the end of production drew near, the team looked around at the myriad things that they were working on and got the sinking realization that they no longer had the time and money to finish them all. That's when they had to start making the painful decisions about what to cut and what to finish.

The team simply wasn't equipped with the understanding of what they were capable with at the beginning because they had never experienced working on a game with such a massive budget. It happens all the time, even to the most well-meaning of people. The best that we can hope for now is that they have learned from this experience, and the next time they are presented with a game of this budget, they are better equipped to handle the limitations involved, and will set more realistic goals for their intentions.

I'm not sure where you are getting your budget numbers.  Most game companies won't release their budgets and as far as I know BW never has for ME games.  Doing some research I found estimates around 25-40 mil for ME2.  In comparison Uncharted 2 was around 20 mil, God of War 3 was 40 mil and GTA4 was over 100 mil.  I doubt ME 3 was much over 40-50 mil and with that they still had to do MP.

I never listed any numbers at all, so I don't know why you're asking about them. All that I said was that the team that did the original Mass Effect had a smaller budget than the team that did Mass Effect 3, at a company that was used to doing smaller budget games. Several developer interviews cited the larger budget of Mass Effect 3 versus the first 2 games as a reason that they could do even more awesome things than they had in those.

My point was that the team at Bioware was not accustomed to dealing with budgets of that size, and therefore did not have the experience to guage their promises. I don't have any idea what the budgets of other companies are for their games, nor how those budgets compare with other games in the series that they deal with. Nor is it relevant.

[zakaryzb]

T-Dawg135 wrote...

Capeo wrote...

T-Dawg135 wrote...

I keep seeing the assumption that budget limitations caused the bad ending to the game; that hadn't given them enough money to finish it properly. It's far more likely, however, that the problem with the game is that EA gave them too MUCH money. The exceedingly large budget resulted in poor asset management and a rushed ending.
It's like those low income people who win the lottery. You read all the time how they won 10's of millions of dollars and yet they're bankrupt within a year. Most people reading that story ask themselves, "How'd they do that? How do you waste that much money that quickly?" The answer is simple. That person wasn't used to having that much money, so when they got it, they spent it like they could do anything.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this forum, the original Mass Effect had a far smaller budget than Mass Effect 3, and yet the story wasn't sacrificed at all. That's because the team recognized the limitations of the budget that they were working with, and they made sure that the scope of the game that they were making could be fit into that budget. Nowhere in Mass Effect was there a "gold plated" anything. They couldn't afford it, and they knew it.

Now when it came time to make Mass Effect 3, the team was given a massive budget, one that far exceeded what the team had to work with before. No doubt, just like our lottery winner before, they thought they could do anything they wanted. So the team came up with all kinds of excellent ideas, became excited to begin work on a project of such massive scope and promised their fans the moon. I don't think that any of the things that were promised were lies; I believe the team genuinely thought that they could deliver on their promises.

Unfortunately for everyone, reality had to set in some time. Doubtless, as the end of production drew near, the team looked around at the myriad things that they were working on and got the sinking realization that they no longer had the time and money to finish them all. That's when they had to start making the painful decisions about what to cut and what to finish.

The team simply wasn't equipped with the understanding of what they were capable with at the beginning because they had never experienced working on a game with such a massive budget. It happens all the time, even to the most well-meaning of people. The best that we can hope for now is that they have learned from this experience, and the next time they are presented with a game of this budget, they are better equipped to handle the limitations involved, and will set more realistic goals for their intentions.

I'm not sure where you are getting your budget numbers.  Most game companies won't release their budgets and as far as I know BW never has for ME games.  Doing some research I found estimates around 25-40 mil for ME2.  In comparison Uncharted 2 was around 20 mil, God of War 3 was 40 mil and GTA4 was over 100 mil.  I doubt ME 3 was much over 40-50 mil and with that they still had to do MP.

I never listed any numbers at all, so I don't know why you're asking about them. All that I said was that the team that did the original Mass Effect had a smaller budget than the team that did Mass Effect 3, at a company that was used to doing smaller budget games. Several developer interviews cited the larger budget of Mass Effect 3 versus the first 2 games as a reason that they could do even more awesome things than they had in those.

My point was that the team at Bioware was not accustomed to dealing with budgets of that size, and therefore did not have the experience to guage their promises. I don't have any idea what the budgets of other companies are for their games, nor how those budgets compare with other games in the series that they deal with. Nor is it relevant.

Microsoft bank-rolled ME1 so they probably had a pretty substantial budget.  Also, their other great work, KOTOR, was bank-rolled by Micrsoft AND Lucas Arts...

[T-Dawg135]

zakaryzb wrote...

T-Dawg135 wrote...

Capeo wrote...

T-Dawg135 wrote...

I keep seeing the assumption that budget limitations caused the bad ending to the game; that hadn't given them enough money to finish it properly. It's far more likely, however, that the problem with the game is that EA gave them too MUCH money. The exceedingly large budget resulted in poor asset management and a rushed ending.
It's like those low income people who win the lottery. You read all the time how they won 10's of millions of dollars and yet they're bankrupt within a year. Most people reading that story ask themselves, "How'd they do that? How do you waste that much money that quickly?" The answer is simple. That person wasn't used to having that much money, so when they got it, they spent it like they could do anything.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this forum, the original Mass Effect had a far smaller budget than Mass Effect 3, and yet the story wasn't sacrificed at all. That's because the team recognized the limitations of the budget that they were working with, and they made sure that the scope of the game that they were making could be fit into that budget. Nowhere in Mass Effect was there a "gold plated" anything. They couldn't afford it, and they knew it.

Now when it came time to make Mass Effect 3, the team was given a massive budget, one that far exceeded what the team had to work with before. No doubt, just like our lottery winner before, they thought they could do anything they wanted. So the team came up with all kinds of excellent ideas, became excited to begin work on a project of such massive scope and promised their fans the moon. I don't think that any of the things that were promised were lies; I believe the team genuinely thought that they could deliver on their promises.

Unfortunately for everyone, reality had to set in some time. Doubtless, as the end of production drew near, the team looked around at the myriad things that they were working on and got the sinking realization that they no longer had the time and money to finish them all. That's when they had to start making the painful decisions about what to cut and what to finish.

The team simply wasn't equipped with the understanding of what they were capable with at the beginning because they had never experienced working on a game with such a massive budget. It happens all the time, even to the most well-meaning of people. The best that we can hope for now is that they have learned from this experience, and the next time they are presented with a game of this budget, they are better equipped to handle the limitations involved, and will set more realistic goals for their intentions.

I'm not sure where you are getting your budget numbers.  Most game companies won't release their budgets and as far as I know BW never has for ME games.  Doing some research I found estimates around 25-40 mil for ME2.  In comparison Uncharted 2 was around 20 mil, God of War 3 was 40 mil and GTA4 was over 100 mil.  I doubt ME 3 was much over 40-50 mil and with that they still had to do MP.

I never listed any numbers at all, so I don't know why you're asking about them. All that I said was that the team that did the original Mass Effect had a smaller budget than the team that did Mass Effect 3, at a company that was used to doing smaller budget games. Several developer interviews cited the larger budget of Mass Effect 3 versus the first 2 games as a reason that they could do even more awesome things than they had in those.

My point was that the team at Bioware was not accustomed to dealing with budgets of that size, and therefore did not have the experience to guage their promises. I don't have any idea what the budgets of other companies are for their games, nor how those budgets compare with other games in the series that they deal with. Nor is it relevant.

Microsoft bank-rolled ME1 so they probably had a pretty substantial budget.  Also, their other great work, KOTOR, was bank-rolled by Micrsoft AND Lucas Arts...

I somehow doubt that Microsoft and Lucas Arts poored insane sums of money into brand new IP from a fairly small and relatively unkown company (yes, people knew about them, but they were far from the household name they are today). Now, when you talk about an established franchise that has already made lots of money, has massive hype surrounding it and is being made by a developer that practically every gamer has heard of, you're willing to risk quite a bit more money because you can be fairly certain that your investment will pay off.

Also, as mentioned before, in several interviews Bioware touted how many more things that they were capable of doing now that their budget was LARGER than before. I seem to recall reading somewhere that they claimed their budget for ME3 was larger than ME1 and ME2 combined. That may be incorrect, but the fact that ME3's budget was significantly larger than the first two is quite true.

[zakaryzb]

T-Dawg135 wrote...

I somehow doubt that Microsoft and Lucas Arts poored insane sums of money into brand new IP from a fairly small and relatively unkown company (yes, people knew about them, but they were far from the household name they are today). Now, when you talk about an established franchise that has already made lots of money, has massive hype surrounding it and is being made by a developer that practically every gamer has heard of, you're willing to risk quite a bit more money because you can be fairly certain that your investment will pay off.

Also, as mentioned before, in several interviews Bioware touted how many more things that they were capable of doing now that their budget was LARGER than before. I seem to recall reading somewhere that they claimed their budget for ME3 was larger than ME1 and ME2 combined. That may be incorrect, but the fact that ME3's budget was significantly larger than the first two is quite true.

Im not denying that, I'm just saying that they didn't have WAY much more than they were used to.  I agree with your points though.  I think they spent too much on improving gameplay and making it more appealing to a mass audience and on creating a fun multiplayer (which it is IMHO) and unfortunately let story fall on the wayside but when it came to crunch time, they found they didn't have what they thought they were going to. 

[pro5]

Michael Gamble wrote...

By the way, Patrick, John, Reid myself - we were all ready to answer those kinds of questions in dialogue just like the original OP. It was the whole reason we came to PAX. In fact, a lot of people may have gotten a bit *too* much out of me

Ok, people who interviewed M.Gamble - where are you??? Hello?

Don't leave us hanging, say something.

[BarrelDrago]

pro5 wrote...
Don't leave us hanging, say something.

Something!

[Valorefane Dragonwinter]

I was hoping to come back to more communication from Bioware. *sad face*

[john v rambo]

Everyone needs to see this.

[SaabFAN86]

Well, this is what i had hoped for: "The Galaxy will rebuild and is not blown up" "The Relays "just" overloaded"
+ My Shepard lives  (EMS over 7000->Taking a breath and smell Victory "I like the smell of burnt Reaper in the Morning!" hrhr )

Now I wait for ME4, where maybe I can help rebuild the Galaxy and Aria taking back Omega.
The extended Cut will provide closure for the rest of my questions, i hope.

But why do I have to find this information in a Forum-Thread that mirrors a Thread from another Forum that paraphrases an INOFFICIAL Interview??????????????????
That is the question i want to ask Bioware! Why didn't you guys put this in the Game, beside this "One more Story"-Thing?

Btw. I think, the MP-Part broke their shedule and they had to divert crucial personnel to it to get it working and with the few people left they had to rewrite the Ending so that the Cutscenes could be animated and rendered in time. Its also possible that they ran into problems with the render-times. I very much doubt that they have a big render-computer and from my own experience with rendering HD-CGI-Videos, I have to say: They take VERY LONG to render. 2 to 5 minutes per Picture are not uncommon. And you have at least 24pictures per Second!
But they could have at least put some Text into the Game to provide the above mentioned Answers! They even did that in Mass Effect: When you have this thing from Sha'ira and go to the prothean Artifact, you get two short Texts which DESCRIBE what you see, so "the worlds most powerful graphics-processor" (Dr. Sheldon Cooper XD) could render what you would have otherwise seen on Screen. 
Or they could at least made a Fallout-Like Ending, where an Off-Speaker comments on your Descisions and tells you how they affected the world after your Adventure.

Modifié par SaabFAN86, 11 avril 2012 - 03:31 .

[Gweedotk]

There will not be another game to extend Shepard's story. ME3 is the conclusion of Shepard's tale, and while there may be future games in the Mass Effect universe, they will not feature Shepard as the protagonist.

I would not even want another Shepard game, it would push the ME universe toward tedium. I do hope they do release more games in the ME universe, but with a different protagonist or selection of protagonists. I wouldn't mind more development toward many of the alien species, so games centering around an alien protagonist such as a Salarian or a Turian or hell maybe even a Yahg, would be most welcome. A descendent of Saren Arterius, for example would be interesting.

One of the biggest reasons I want them to continue the ME universe is the fact that it is the only game I know of that includes many modern scientific theories. This game is incredibly progressive considering the time period we live in and I find that very alluring.

By progressive I mean it's portrayal of Artificial Intelligence as "synthetic life", a very open-minded approach considering we haven't even developed AI yet. It could be a very real issue in the near or distant future. It doesn't portray aliens as overtly "alien" but as similar to humans, for example they wear clothes (which is surprisingly uncommon in most fiction) and have many human tendencies, or rather sentient tendencies which I have always thought any extra-terrestrial might have.

There is even a mention in ME3 by EDI that if one were able to travel out far enough, would one experience a completely different reality of physics, maybe so much so that it is unrecognizable. That's a real scientific theory, although I do not know its name. The use of dark energy as a method of faster-than-light travel also makes more sense than any "hyperspace-wormhole" bs that seems to be prevalent, seeing as how dark energy is fueling the accelerating expansion of the known universe.

Modifié par Gweedotk, 11 avril 2012 - 05:34 .

[Ieldra]

Daniel_N7 wrote...
Hi all. I haven't read this thread entirely and I'm sure some of these questions have been pointed out before. Still, here are some thoughts.

I'm paraphrasing but it was said on the PAX panel - I don't have a link, sorry - that they didn't have an ending DLC planned because they didn't thought it would be necessary.

Now, we have someone from BioWare acknowledging that «Joker would never abandon Shep without a good reason. Hopefully this will be clear in the Expanded Cut».

This is a clear affirmation that they know the ending was poorly delivered. And this is a relevant issue because (1) the Normandy escape is highly problematic (abandoning Shepard in the field of battle; loyalty, etc), and (2) BioWare has not acknowledged any deficiencies in the ending.

The situation with the Citadel is even more ridiculous. In the «Destroy» and «Synthesis» endings we clearly see the Citadel exploding. Now we are given some half-baked explanation to contradict all evidence we see in the ending - supposedly the Citadel has «emergency shelters and kinetic barriers». And after the massive shockwave we witness - at least in the Destroy ending - we're supposed to believe that the Citadel's life-support systems are still operational?

These are just two points - from the many available for discussion. Still, they are blatant evidence that the ending is poorly presented - to say the least.

BioWare's refusal to acknowledge the deficiencies of the ending is disturbing. It's hard to believe you can fix a problem if you don't even recognize there is one in the first place. And judging from the miserable PR statements we've been getting, one would assume BW's strategy at this point to be «take the money and run». Please BW, show us it isn't so.

The reinterpretations of the endings are perfectly in line with the presentation. We only see the center of the Citadel exploding, the ward arms just break off and float away into space. Survivors on the Citadel are perfectly possible given its size.

And I think they're trying to change the endings without having to admit they're doing exactly that. While the reinterpretation is in line with what the scenes *show*, it goes completely against what the scenes *suggest*. It is fortunate that the endings are so vague and open to reinterpretation. That way they'll be able to create outcomes that aren't as nihilistic as those suggested by the original and explanations of things that make no sense without having to contradict anything that has come before.

[Zine2]

Gweedotk wrote...

One of the biggest reasons I want them to continue the ME universe is the fact that it is the only game I know of that includes many modern scientific theories. This game is incredibly progressive considering the time period we live in and I find that very alluring.

Ergh, Eezo doesn't exist. The parts they get best is actually how they describe space combat, but that got thrown out the window in favor of Star Wars style battles (not a bad thing though).

[Slashice]

Btw "Artistic integrity" is the new name of "Plagiarism"? Shall I link all the stuff about the ending (especially the stargazer scene) which BioWare simply stole from other authors?

Shame, shame, shame...

Still make Weekes a lead writer for the upcoming ME games. That would save the franchise!

[antony1197]

Weeks for lead writer

[DonYourAviators]

Michael Gamble wrote...

classy. Good to see you appreciate our content. That was the one that made me leave the thread, btw.

The silent treatment? ...That's how you improve relations with your customer.

[Slashice]

Mr.BlazenGlazen wrote...

Valorefane Dragonwinter wrote...

Since I'm something of a Twitter nerd...

The day someone makes this guy the lead writer or producer of any future bioware game, is the day where we will see some of the most epic games bioware has created.

This!

Just realized that the stories which Weekes were involved are far the best in the game! And his really a nice guy. Absolutely a guy who represent everything that once made all of us fall in love with BioWare.

[shadowspecialist]

holy manila paper

[Moogberg]

Slashice wrote...

Mr.BlazenGlazen wrote...

The day someone makes this guy the lead writer or producer of any future bioware game, is the day where we will see some of the most epic games bioware has created.

This!

Just realized that the stories which Weekes were involved are far the best in the game! And his really a nice guy. Absolutely a guy who represent everything that once made all of us fall in love with BioWare.

As I've said before, an even easier solution would be for the writing team to have their priorities in the right order. What does everybody have against Casey Hudson and Mac Walters, apart from a (very) regretable lapse in judgement regarding the ending? They contributed material to everything else, particularly Tuchanka and Rannoch.
I'm not trying to defend them, I'm just amused by the speed at which people jump to conclusion.

[greggm2000]

Ieldra2 wrote...
The reinterpretations of the endings are perfectly in line with the presentation. We only see the center of the Citadel exploding, the ward arms just break off and float away into space. Survivors on the Citadel are perfectly possible given its size.

And I think they're trying to change the endings without having to admit they're doing exactly that. While the reinterpretation is in line with what the scenes *show*, it goes completely against what the scenes *suggest*. It is fortunate that the endings are so vague and open to reinterpretation. That way they'll be able to create outcomes that aren't as nihilistic as those suggested by the original and explanations of things that make no sense without having to contradict anything that has come before.

As far as I'm concerned, they can save face any way they like, as long as the ending is fixed... and I think they will, I'm sure they do NOT want to go through all the mess that would happen if they end up making a new ending that's worse than the current one. They're not stupid. They'll fix this. I think.