The Mass Effect 3 Ending

On March 2012 Mass Effect 3 was released with very high expectations, however within days after release the game became the center of the greatest debacle in the history of videogames. All because of the ending which left many fans (myself included) unsatisfied.

A lot has been written about the ending, it reignited the debate of "Games as Art", and there are already YouTube videos that explain very well what is wrong with it. So this will be my take.

This post contains *SPOILERS*.

The Mass Effect series is one of the most successful Science Fiction franchise in videogames, Bioware succeeded admirably in creating a working and detailed universe on par with Star Wars or Star Trek.

For those unfamiliar with the franchise a quick recap: In the 22th century humanity discovered ruins of an ancient extinct space-faring civilization called "the Protheans" on Mars, a cache of alien technology was also discovered which contained the key for a form of Faster-Than-Light-Travel which uses the eponymous "Mass Effect" field, with this new technology humanity began exploring and colonizing the Milky Way galaxy eventually making contact with other alien races which also discovered Prothean ruins on their planets; so in the year 2183 humanity has been welcomed to the galactic community. In the games you play as Commander Shepard an elite soldier who has discovered a terrible secret: The reason the Protheans became extinct was because they were exterminated by a race of hyper-advanced machines called "the Reapers", these machines remain dormant for thousands of years until they awake and exterminate all space-faring civilizations, and the time for their return has come. The 3 games revolve on Shepard and his/her friends' struggle against the Reapers.

As thousands of gamers, I got hooked by Bioware's Mass Effect franchise, I played the first game on the PC on 2009, and I thought it was an outstanding game, in the last part I felt the urgency of rushing my Mako to the Conduit to prevent the Reaper invasion and save the galaxy, and the ending did not disappoint:

On January 2010 came Mass Effect 2 which was one of the best games I have played; Yes, it was more action-oriented and had a much simpler story than the first one (gather a team, earn their loyalty and launch a suicide mission against the Collectors, who work for the Reapers) but the characterization of your team members was brilliant, the possibility of them or you actually dying permanently on the last mission added to the thrill of the ride, and also the ending could vary wildly depending on who lived or who died. As such Mass Effect 2 has one of the greatest and most rewarding endings a game could have:

And then the last part of the saga, Mass Effect 3, was released in March 2012, in this installment the Reapers have finally arrived to the Milky Way galaxy and have started their extermination of advanced life; While the game itself had many fantastic moments (curing the Genophage, ending the Geth / Quarian war) the last ten minutes went against everything the franchise was setting up us for. A shocking swerve with a God-like figure appearing out of nowhere in the last minutes, contradicting all the established lore and canon, no big boss battle, no final triumph, no closure, and worst of all: A very bleak scenario that resulted in an Inferred Holocaust:

Truly I was half-expecting the Normandy while trying to outrun the red/green/blue explosion to be sucked into another universe...

Mass Effect 3 feels like a rushed game, it's shorter than the other two and it feels like Bioware was planning to fill the gaps with Downloadable Content (DLC); originally the official stance from Bioware was that the ending was intentionally left vague so that people could speculate about the fate of the galaxy, and some of the few people who have defended the ending have said that the audience has grown lazy and always demands exposition.

Well, in my opinion ambiguity, vagueness, little or no exposition are the resources (or shall I say Cop-Outs) of a lazy writer. Especially when the elements given to audience led them to believe a downer outcome. To defend a bad ending with the pretext of "Artistic Integrity" is also a cop-out.

And even if the Mass Effect 3 ending was "artistic", then there's also one fact about art we can't ignore: You either like it or you don't; and if you don't, you can voice your displeasure and you are entitled (oh no, I used "e" word! :b) to your opinion. That is why I think the Retake Mass Effect movement is right.

Some people have pointed to the Final Fantasy VII ending which was also controversial in the fact that it had an Inferred Holocaust, except than in this case Square Enix gave us sequels like Advent Children which showed the actual state of things after the ending.

Fallout 3 also suffered from a similar (albeit of lesser scale) debacle relative to the ending, except that Bethesda changed it with the DLC Broken Steel.

So, in March 21st, 2012, Bioware announced a free DLC which will "expand and clarify" the ending, I can only say "Good luck with that" since in my opinion the ending is so convoluted it will be a tall order to make it make sense, and if it's done poorly then it will make Bioware look worse; however if it's done right, Bioware may redeem itself in the eyes of its fans.

EDIT: It has been announced that the DLC epilogue will be released on June 26. So I will replay Mass Effect 3 with my third Shepard to see the changes and write about them.

The Mass Effect 3 Ending Debacle will always be remembered, hopefully, as a lesson for game developers to pay attention to the endings of the games they made, while it is true that most gamers don't finish the games they buy, in this case we were talking about an established franchise with fans carrying over their 5-year-old imported saves from the first game and who certainly had lined up to know how the saga ended. And to serve them poorly was a tremendous disrespect.