Mass Effect 3

So it's basically fans trying to deny the ending.

If you think the ending sucks, then it sucks. Accept it and move on. Don't try to make up some convoluted theory to cling to whatever idea you have of what it should be, that's just kind of pathetic, really.

And the extended cut removes most of that "proof" anyway.

edited 26th Jun '12 3:25:44 PM by Mukora

It should be pointed out, though, that two of the bigger sequences that were targeted as "proof" of the indoctrination theory are removed when the EC is installed...

That said, it's pretty bad when the Indoctrination Theory still makes more sense than the any of the EC additions...

Edit: It was never about denying the ending. It was about trying to make that whole 10 minute sequence, after Harbinger shoots you, make any semblance of sense...

edited 26th Jun '12 3:26:13 PM by Swish

The theory uses the pre-EC plotholes as part of the "proof". There were other things, like Shepard's eyes, etc. Not important now since the EC does away with it.

The IC theory was good. It explained away the plotholes and some other things.

Anyways here's a nice video showing things added by the EC.

edited 26th Jun '12 3:31:51 PM by Anfauglith

As Swish says, it's not about denying an ending, it was about trying to make sense of it after the actual endings were so full of shit and had so much ridiculous and nonsensical 'logic'.

I still think it's a stupid justification but, hey, people were upset and just wanted to make sense of things...they were in the bargaining stage if you will.

They didn't think Bioware would screw up the ending so much, so they were convinced that this wasn't the true ending and they were finding "foreshadowing" that pointed to that. Plus the ending did have a different feel than the rest of the game. I actually believed in the IT for a few days.

edited 26th Jun '12 3:33:42 PM by Anfauglith

The OP sounds a lot like denial to me, but whatever. It's stupid either way.

For all my opinion's worth, I like the Extended Cut. And I think Refuse is a fitting end if you decide that you're not going to bother putting to use the weapon that the entire galaxy poured just about everything it had, put all of its effort into, in the hopes that the Reapers would be stopped once and for all. Well, at least the next generation doesn't get screwed over.

I still think it's hilarious that they bothered to put in ending slides and yet didn't understand why people actually like ending slides i.e. that they actually change based on your actions and the narrator actually goes into details about the consequences of your actions instead of talking in non-specifics & generalities.

By and large I'm pleased with the DLC, it resolves some of the most grievous complaints, there are some things added/not added which I know people will complain about but this is good enough for me.

edited 26th Jun '12 3:38:57 PM by Jeorg

Meh another hydra head. I thought we had cut down enough of them.

Yes, I don't understand why they didn't do that. 'Tis quite easy to create those epilogue slides.

edited 26th Jun '12 3:50:58 PM by Anfauglith

What's weird is that, a few years ago, Bethesda had this exact same problem with Fallout 3. Except their "extended cut," cost ten bucks. And yet prety much everyone but a small group of people who are generally disregarded didn't care, and think Bethesda are amazing.

Maybe it's Bio Ware's attitude about the whole thing, or maybe they're held to a higher standard, and I do think everyone is entitled to whatever opinion they may have on ME 3's endings, but I just thought this was odd.

You would think that by having some people on their team who either worked on or are familiar with Fallout, they would realize what the issue was and how to do the slides right.

Anyhow, haven't actually gotten around to the new ending yet. On the one hand, I'm happy that there is a refuse ending. On the other hand, I'm kind of pissed off that there's no way to have the EMS to actually win the refuse ending and kill the reapers conventionally, what with my 7000 EMS or what have you.

There are several key differences.Fallout 3 is not a story-driven game like the Mass Effect franchise. 'Tis the same kind of game as Oblivion or Skyrim. The character writing in those Bethesda games is laughable, so people didn't care as much about the characters. The ending contained some plotholes, but it was more of the same. There wasn't a huge rift in quality between the rest of the game and the Fallout 3 ending. Bioware is expected to have good writing, unlike Bethesda.

Maybe the galaxy does "win" in Refuse by killing enough Reapers. We know that by the next Cycle the Reaper threat is no more, and there was no war.

edited 26th Jun '12 3:49:24 PM by Anfauglith

It also helps that Fallout 3 ending was a more run of the mill kind of dumb, rather than throwing out an entire series over the course of 5-10 minutes and that Bethesda's Extended Cut added some additional missions.

Bioware is definitely held to a higher standard. We've all played endings that are terrible, even endings that are far worse than the one Mass Effect 3 gave us. The problem is that for those games we didn't care because we didn't buy those games for the story.

I wasn't around for the Fallout 3...fallout...but I think you hit the nail on the head. Bioware's attitude about this whole situation has been pretty ugly, and in addition you had a lot of gaming journalists slamming the people who didn't like the ending. That's bound to create some hard feeling towards the company.

That, and the criticisms of Mass Effect's endings are a little bit more abstract than Fallout 3's, in my opinion. I mean, it's "the ending contradicted key themes and had annoying plot holes" vs "I have someone on my team who is immune to radiation." Much easier to rally around and point to as something that needed to be fixed.

edited 26th Jun '12 3:51:30 PM by CorrTerek

@Mukora: It's both of those things, but also Fallout 3's ending wasn't as retarded.

But yeah, after the ending debacle for FO 3 Bethesda didn't claim "whiny entitled fans" and mock everyone but also because no one plays a Bethesda game for the story.

It's interesting that you draw the parallel. One of the main fan requests for Fallout 3 was that the companion could easily do the job without taking a scratch. And of course in the epilogue Ron Perlman chews you out for it by saying that the companion was the "true hero" and the Lone Wanderer shirked his responsibilities which is fucking stupid.

Similarly Bioware has taken a major fan request into the ending choices and mocked the players (even mores) for it.

edited 26th Jun '12 3:52:07 PM by ShadowScythe

Honestly, while the overall response seems to be along the lines of "thank you for the EC, but it's content is 'meh' and barely worth the money paid for it", I'm curious as to how this will affect future DLC.

I mean, we know there's going to be some DLC, that costs money, for ME3 in the future... And while it's obvious it won't sell as much as whatever Bioware expects, due to the time since the release of the game, I'm curious as to how much will be because of the whole ending debacle in general(not to mention any perceived slights the EC presents)...

I'm curious because, while it may be ultimately unimportant, extraordinarily low DLC sales for ME 3 could become a precursor to any hindrance of pre-order and first week sales for DA 3(due to concern, from the core base, about the quality of the game)...

I think there are several people who genuinely liked the post-EC endings or at least found them average (or they simply moved on) as opposed to thinking the endings are now at "meh" quality, like me. But I also think that people will be more wary about DA 3, and Bioware already lost a ton of customers over the debacle: the ones that disliked the EC and the ones that were already too far gone.

edited 26th Jun '12 3:56:16 PM by Anfauglith

I haven't seen the EC. My opinion of the EC will definitely affect whether I buy DLC or not. If I find it acceptable, I'll buy their DLC — it's not fair to punish the other devs for a writing gaffe — but either way this is the last Bioware game I'm buying. New, anyway.

I don't know how many people feel the way I do, though.

edited 26th Jun '12 3:55:23 PM by CorrTerek

Yeah, the future of ME DLC and Bioware's future DLC strategy is really precarious right now. I know i'm not planning on grabbing any more DLC, even if it is free. I'm not playing Mass Effect again for awhile now. I'm... Burned out.

edited 26th Jun '12 3:56:36 PM by ShirowShirow

I still don't get how the Refuse ending mocks fans. At worst it's Reality Ensues.

As for future DLC, there might not be any, aside from whatever multiplayer stuff they think of.

As much as Bio Ware don't seem to get how bad the fan reaction is on the outside, I'm sure somewhere they're aware of it.

The thing about Bioware it's that they took their foot out of the bear trap that was DA 2, only to put their head instead with the whole ME 3 ending controversy. They just lost a lot of trust from their fanbase after those last 2 games.

I'm basicly the same, but I doubt I will pick any ME 3 dlc unless they remove the Starchild completely and come with an announcement that Casey Hudson and Mac Walters have resigned due to not being able to uphold the standards that EA is known for.

So shooting that stupid kid automatically defaults to Reject ending. That's kinda lame. Now we can't spend 5 minutes shooting him any more. Lame.

So, the Extended Cut unquestionably improved the ending. Unfortunately, as predicted, it was still polishing a turd. The main problems I had with it remain. The introduction of the Catalyst AI remains inherently bad writing. And we still don't get to actually dispute whether organics and synthetics have to go to war. In fact, we have even less opportunity to disagree, since now, when he tells us Destroy won't end the conflict, rather than a non-committal "maybe," we're now stuck with, "There must be another option." Lame.

I didn't have a save before the Cerberus Base, so I actually had to re-do the ending in order to re-do the ending. I chose Reject for that one. Take That! aside, it's actually got some cool parts. The Catalyst switching to a Reaper voice is awesome. Liara's records being shown was also awesome. And then one change I liked about the post-credits scene: Correct me if I'm wrong, but was that Samara's voice actress? It sure sounded like it. Considering Samara's arc throughout the two games she was in had to do with losing her children, I thought it was a nice touch to have her voice actress voicing the Stargazer with a grandchild.

A little disappointed at the fact that literally nothing changes for the Cerberus Base or the assault on Earth. Really weak, Bio Ware. Whatever. Took James and Javik for the final push, in case anyone was going to die. The changes to the run are cool, until the fucking Normandy shows up, out of nowhere, to pick your squadmates up, and escapes without any difficulty. If ships could've gotten that close the whole time, then why the fuck didn't they as soon as the Destroyer was taken down? Seriously, they could've sent down a few ships before Harbinger even got there. Fuck that, they could've sent down a dozen ships to attack Harbinger at the beam. The Codex says that the capital ships have weaker barriers when they land, so just ram a couple cruisers into it. Son of a bitch.

Shepard being flung out of the conduit was amusing to me.

The questions you can ask the Catalyst are nice, but they don't really get to the heart of the matter. It's nice having confirmation that he really is just an AI, since it proves that he's a fucking idiot. He defeats his own argument. His argument is a little less retarded now, but still wholly dissatisfying. Control makes more sense. Synthesis makes more sense, but is still fucking retarded, and I still refuse to go along with anything that shoots science in the head and buries it in a shallow grave. It still doesn't really explain how it merges organics with synthetics. What does that even mean?

I stuck with Destroy. My job was to kill the Reapers, the other options seemed like a greater risk given the information available to Shepard, so I blew them the fuck up, and the Catalyst with them, because fuck that kid. I still don't think the ships had enough time to reach the relay before it fired, but whatever. At least they tried. The scenes of people on Earth, Thessia and Tuchanka cheering were nice.

As for the ending slides, very much meh. Hackett's voice is always cool, so I'm good with that. But the slides themselves were lame. Liara not wanting to put Shepard's name on the memorial wall was sweet, though. The relays clearly being only damaged, not destroyed, was an OK touch, I guess. I'm still not sure how long the pieces of the Citadel can remain in orbit around Earth, so there's still going to be some damage done when they come down, and the bigger pieces are going to be especially bad. But we won, so yay.

And I got the scene of Shepard breathing. About fucking time Bio Ware made that scene available without MP. I'm not even going to thank them for that, because it's something that should've been there in the first place, and which they should've fixed back in March.

So, all in all, the Extended Cut was good, but the ending is still complete and utter shit. Still an example of how not to end a story. At least now we have some closure on the characters, though.

As an aside, for Destroy, I saw images of EDI and Liara. That was a nice change.