Mass Effect 3 ending
Oh dear god the spoilers...
So. Um. Yeah. Wow.
I've got to hand it to you Bioware, the only other time I've ever seen a series completely and utterly gutted in one fell swoop is that remake of The Last Airbender, and you've even beaten that.
I'm pretty sure that I have to chalk this up as the absolute worst ending of any game that I've ever played.
I was really enjoying the game right up until that final rush to the teleport beam. Bioware had managed a complex, involved, deeply engaging game that at one point brought me to the verge of tears. They'd managed fantastic character growth and some really awesome character/player interaction (Garrus anyone?) that really showed what the writers were capable of.
Then the ending just.. threw it all away. Player choice? Pfft, we don't need that. Closure? That's where you keep wild animals right? Series wrap-up? Oh, the shipping guys are doing that downstairs.
I mean, the ending is basically one long humiliation conga tied to the end of a Deus Ex Machina the size of the Death Star, with a dash of continuity breakage. Lets break it down to point form shall we?
* Your entire crew is wiped out. Off screen. And never referenced. "Nobody made it through" is literally all there is for the summary execution of your loyal team. Shep doesn't even comment about the loss of her team
* TIM appears out of nowhere and you get yet another long-winded speech with him over the same old ground, nothing knew. Oh, except he can control you. And your choices for dealing with him are "Talk. Talk more. Talk again. Talk something different. He dies".
* You kill your mentor. It's visual media of some kind, we knew Anderson was going to die, it's what mentors do. Making the player do the killing? And not even commenting on it? Was that really necessary?
* Random nobody-ever-heard-of pops up and declares that they're the cause of everything, control everything, created everything and am in charge of everything. And can read minds. And lives in the heart of galactic civilisation in a massive, window-facing secret room that nobody's every seen or heard of. Err. Ok. Bioware, you are aware that completely unforshadowed arse pulls are basically the definition of bad writing, right?
* Three choices about how to proceed. Written in such a way as to all but scream "The lead writer walked in one day and screamed 'Hey guys! I finished Deus Ex 1 & 2 last night, we're totally doing that at the end of Mass Effect 3! Yeah I know it's a totally different game and none of the choices make sense for the characters, but it'll be awesome!!"
- Option 1: Kill the reapers. And the Geth, that you (maybe) have just ten minutes ago got to co-exist with organics *and* raised to true Living Being status. Oh, and EDI too, your loyal Ship AI. This is the only ending you might survive
- Option 2: Control the Reapers. Prove that almighty TIM was right! Commit suicide and take control of the almighty Reaper army! All that stuff you've done about choice, and free will, and hope? And how an oppressed species will eventually rise up against their masters? Nah fuck that, slavery is the only way to save the Galaxy!
- Option 3: Synthesis. "Hey guyz! Wouldn't it be cool if we like, made living and synthetic beings merge together? It's like, the very definition of compromise! We'll say that their DNA is now a mix of synthetic and organic!". Um. Yeah. See above comments about the writers having just finished Deus Ex. Oh, and did I mention you commit suicide again to do it? Just like Legion did to make the Geth living?
* The end of Civilisation. You destroy the Mass Relays. You know, the only thing allowing interstellar travel? Thus leaving all worlds isolated and unable to trade? Way to leave billions of people without supplies to slowly die of starvation. What do you think's going to happen when the entire Glactic military force goes "Well guys, we're all stuck here. On a charred world. That can't support half of us due to being the wrong class of lifeform. With big guns." How long before cannibalism and another war break out?
* Your loyal, trusty mate Joker has somehow run off with the Normandy and is racing ahead through a relay before it blows up. No idea how he got to the relay from Earth but sure, it's Joker, he can do that. And he's crash landing on a planet, well ok, sure, he's lucky. And now my crew is getting out of the ship. The ones that just got blown up on the planet... err... WTF?
* Hang on, wait a minute, did you *seriously* just all but outright state that my love interest and Joker repopulate their new planet? You fucking arseholes!
* Oh, and remember how I said above that in one option, Shep lives? Yeah. By "Lives" I mean there's a one-frame shot of a blackened chest taking a single breath. It's less conclusive or informative than whether or not Magneto moved the chess piece at the end of X-Men 3
And that's just the fuckups that I can think of off the top of my head.
The ending of ME3 is of an entirely different genre to the rest of the series, and makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever. We all knew that the ending was going to be rough, it's just the way things roll when Armageddon hits, but give us an actual ending that actually wraps up the series and actually makes our choices and options matter. If you want to make a quasi-metaphysical ending stating that everything in the universe is preordained, choice doesn't matter and there is a godlike AI (somehow exempt from it's own assertion of "Synthetics will always wipe out Organics") controlling the Universe, tack it onto a game that makes sense.
The ME3 ending is about as out of place as replacing the last three episodes of Nadesco with the last three episodes of Neon Genesis and swapping the names over.
Fuck you Bioware. I wish I'd just abandoned the game one quicksave from the ending, that way at least I could rely on my imagination to give me a good story.
So. Um. Yeah. Wow.
I've got to hand it to you Bioware, the only other time I've ever seen a series completely and utterly gutted in one fell swoop is that remake of The Last Airbender, and you've even beaten that.
I'm pretty sure that I have to chalk this up as the absolute worst ending of any game that I've ever played.
I was really enjoying the game right up until that final rush to the teleport beam. Bioware had managed a complex, involved, deeply engaging game that at one point brought me to the verge of tears. They'd managed fantastic character growth and some really awesome character/player interaction (Garrus anyone?) that really showed what the writers were capable of.
Then the ending just.. threw it all away. Player choice? Pfft, we don't need that. Closure? That's where you keep wild animals right? Series wrap-up? Oh, the shipping guys are doing that downstairs.
I mean, the ending is basically one long humiliation conga tied to the end of a Deus Ex Machina the size of the Death Star, with a dash of continuity breakage. Lets break it down to point form shall we?
* Your entire crew is wiped out. Off screen. And never referenced. "Nobody made it through" is literally all there is for the summary execution of your loyal team. Shep doesn't even comment about the loss of her team
* TIM appears out of nowhere and you get yet another long-winded speech with him over the same old ground, nothing knew. Oh, except he can control you. And your choices for dealing with him are "Talk. Talk more. Talk again. Talk something different. He dies".
* You kill your mentor. It's visual media of some kind, we knew Anderson was going to die, it's what mentors do. Making the player do the killing? And not even commenting on it? Was that really necessary?
* Random nobody-ever-heard-of pops up and declares that they're the cause of everything, control everything, created everything and am in charge of everything. And can read minds. And lives in the heart of galactic civilisation in a massive, window-facing secret room that nobody's every seen or heard of. Err. Ok. Bioware, you are aware that completely unforshadowed arse pulls are basically the definition of bad writing, right?
* Three choices about how to proceed. Written in such a way as to all but scream "The lead writer walked in one day and screamed 'Hey guys! I finished Deus Ex 1 & 2 last night, we're totally doing that at the end of Mass Effect 3! Yeah I know it's a totally different game and none of the choices make sense for the characters, but it'll be awesome!!"
- Option 1: Kill the reapers. And the Geth, that you (maybe) have just ten minutes ago got to co-exist with organics *and* raised to true Living Being status. Oh, and EDI too, your loyal Ship AI. This is the only ending you might survive
- Option 2: Control the Reapers. Prove that almighty TIM was right! Commit suicide and take control of the almighty Reaper army! All that stuff you've done about choice, and free will, and hope? And how an oppressed species will eventually rise up against their masters? Nah fuck that, slavery is the only way to save the Galaxy!
- Option 3: Synthesis. "Hey guyz! Wouldn't it be cool if we like, made living and synthetic beings merge together? It's like, the very definition of compromise! We'll say that their DNA is now a mix of synthetic and organic!". Um. Yeah. See above comments about the writers having just finished Deus Ex. Oh, and did I mention you commit suicide again to do it? Just like Legion did to make the Geth living?
* The end of Civilisation. You destroy the Mass Relays. You know, the only thing allowing interstellar travel? Thus leaving all worlds isolated and unable to trade? Way to leave billions of people without supplies to slowly die of starvation. What do you think's going to happen when the entire Glactic military force goes "Well guys, we're all stuck here. On a charred world. That can't support half of us due to being the wrong class of lifeform. With big guns." How long before cannibalism and another war break out?
* Your loyal, trusty mate Joker has somehow run off with the Normandy and is racing ahead through a relay before it blows up. No idea how he got to the relay from Earth but sure, it's Joker, he can do that. And he's crash landing on a planet, well ok, sure, he's lucky. And now my crew is getting out of the ship. The ones that just got blown up on the planet... err... WTF?
* Hang on, wait a minute, did you *seriously* just all but outright state that my love interest and Joker repopulate their new planet? You fucking arseholes!
* Oh, and remember how I said above that in one option, Shep lives? Yeah. By "Lives" I mean there's a one-frame shot of a blackened chest taking a single breath. It's less conclusive or informative than whether or not Magneto moved the chess piece at the end of X-Men 3
And that's just the fuckups that I can think of off the top of my head.
The ending of ME3 is of an entirely different genre to the rest of the series, and makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever. We all knew that the ending was going to be rough, it's just the way things roll when Armageddon hits, but give us an actual ending that actually wraps up the series and actually makes our choices and options matter. If you want to make a quasi-metaphysical ending stating that everything in the universe is preordained, choice doesn't matter and there is a godlike AI (somehow exempt from it's own assertion of "Synthetics will always wipe out Organics") controlling the Universe, tack it onto a game that makes sense.
The ME3 ending is about as out of place as replacing the last three episodes of Nadesco with the last three episodes of Neon Genesis and swapping the names over.
Fuck you Bioware. I wish I'd just abandoned the game one quicksave from the ending, that way at least I could rely on my imagination to give me a good story.