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[spacefiddle]

I realize this will be buried in the flood, but I hope somemod at BW gets to read it before it floats away.  I beg of you, hear me out for a minute.

I saw the expanded endings and experienced the exact reverse of my reaction to the original ME3 ending: after all the statements about no new gameplay and the adamant inclusion of Godboi,  I'd written the whole thing off.  And then there's Rejection... i went from angry and disgusted, to confused, to thoughtful.  Precisely the reverse from March.

Rejection, at first, seems like a slap and a taunt.  You start to watch it, and before you know that it leads to You Lose, it seems like everything Indoc predicted and Shep fans hoped for: I reject your choices.  I am not meekly following your monologue.  You seem to have Harby's voice after all....

then, Doom.

Wow, kind of a shock.  How can anyone -not- wonder if that's all a deliberate insult?  There's no way y'all couldn't see that coming, is there?  Are we really failing -that- hard at communicating with each other?  Can you really be that far off predicting human emotional reaction to stimuli...?

But for all that, and for all the "we stand by the endings as they are, no changes, only explanations!" ...you DID change them!

The destruction of the Relays and the Citadel, so explicitly spelled out in the original.... gone.  Bish- er, Hackett even says it several times to make sure you hear it.  Even minor, silly stuff, like Joker looking out the "rear window" as the frantically tries to escape the shockwave.... gone.  And even his working the controls is steadier, less frantic. (but Synthborg Joker still hobbles around like he has brittle bones!  Oh well...).

Let me try to resist the urge to itemize details.  What's important, to me, is: standing back and trying to see it objectively - trying to place it in my mind's eye as if I had seen this, the first time, when finishing the game - what would my reaction have been?  Would I have been just as upset, just as confused and then angered?

And the honest answer is: no.  No, I wouldn't have been.  I would have had questions;  I would have been VERY annoyed at the walking plagarization that is the Godboi.  Come on, guys, please just admit it's a tired old trope that could have been done different (with a major asterisk....).  In fact, I think that the "lots of speculation!" might really, honestly have been achieved.  Not with 100% satisfaction, but more than a little over the line into positive discussion, not the "WTF??!" we saw in March.

And if Harby-voice from Godboi is canon, so to speak, then... the Indocs are right.

And all the holes you fixed with not destroying Galaxy-wide infrastructure... all the scenes of people making it to their homeworlds (never mind that you sorta gloss over how they do so or what the "extensive damage" to the relays really means)... the clear shots of the Citadel having now -NOT - been totally vaporised... means you agreed with most of what they said, too.

What I don't understand is this:

Why did you tell us "we just didn't get it" when, in fact, you fixed the most glaring logical failures of the ending?
Why did you tell us you "stood by your vision," but then agree with the legions of us who felt that stranding everyone to die was unsatisfying and fix it?

This wasn't a simple expansion, this wasn't explanation.  The destruction of the Citadel and the Relays was -key- in the original endings, and a MAJOR point of contention among us.  And you retconned it completely away.  So you clearly saw the merits in those arguments.

Why didn't you say so?

Why didn't you tell us, hey look, the core points we stand by and are proud of, but you're right, some of this doesn't make sense and is FAR more bleak than we intended; we're going to change it a bit.  We're going to alter the end so it isn't so dark, isn't so pyrrhic.

It's the communication that has driven many of us nuts, long after we'd written off the idea of the ending to the game.  And even now, when you've given us more than you said you would, it's the dissonance between what you said and what you did that feels weird.  And it's this trust in your communication that needs to be fixed to get us back, more so than any game ending.

Please, please come clean.  Please tell the PR guys to take the day off and go swimming and just come out and tell us, clearly and honestly, how it all went down.  Be sincere, and passionate, and open.  Tell us why you thought it worked well the first time; tell us how you came to choose what to change and what to keep.  Tell us the Harby-voice from Godboi isn't just a cruel barb (even if you don't elaborate now).  TELL us something honest, and heartfelt, and clear, and without fear or ego.

I'll go first:

I think I might have been wrong about how you chose to handle the endings.  The communication was atrocious, and I can tell you I would not have walked away angrily if you had just TOLD me you were going to actually make changes to fix the plot holes.  You said you'd "explain" them.  Even after seeing how we took that, you let it stand.  We're not telepaths!

Further, I am willing to come back and get the game again.  Not some shady on-sale way, but full original price.  If you really meant this, if Refusal isn't just a slap, if you really are, after all, up to something... and IF you might consider being a little more open and honest... i would really, really love to be a Bioware customer again.  And i think a lot of other people would be too.

Please.  Tell us how you really feel.  Tell us how it really all went down.  Tell us some of what you're planning next.  I'd been preparing for disappointment; I didn't want to hope for anything.  You surprised me.

Come clean with us and maybe we'll surprise you.

[spacefiddle]

...damn, I *did* forget about Destroy being "kill all synthetics."  gawd, what a mental block 6 months can induce...  This still sucks, after saving the Geth and EDI and generally proving the Godboi wrong and all.  I hope you have a plan for this.  Until today I would assume you do not.  Now I'm not so sure.