The One and Only Poldaran wrote:
Actually, there are 4 endings now.
Yeah, but the fourth is likely BW trolling the people who requested a 'shoot the god child' ending.
Eske Esquire wrote:
I could totally see the ME3 ending failing for other reasons, but I just don't see how there not being a rainbows and sunshine ending is a detriment.
Because the entire game, from beginning to end, is supposed to be about choices and how they affect the outcome of a chain of events. The canonical ending to Mass Effect is that Shepard manages to stop the Reapers. Unless you try to shoot the god child. Everything else in the story depends on the player's choices. The player writes the story through his or her actions.
If you allow the reader of your story to dictate how it develops then you need to give the reader the ending he/she wants. I spent all my time in the games doing my best to get the happy ending, but it was all for naught. I don't care if the writer or developer wanted a cathartic sad ending. I wanted a happy ending. It's how my version of the story ends. If they're not willing to give me the ending I want then they shouldn't have allowed me to write the story in the first place.
That's why it's a sh*tty ending. Your previous choices, everything you wrote yourself about the story, none of it matters in the end. The writers want you to choose between three shades of the same ending. What's the point in giving us the ability to choose the direction of the story if it ends up in the same place anyway? If you create a story based on choices then those choices should matter in the end. And it's not like they didn't know how to do it. They did it in the second game. The second game can end with everyone dying, everyone living and varying degrees of both in between, depending on the choices you make in the two first games. The third game has you choosing between three color-coded endings that end with a) Shepard dying or b) synthetic life dying. If you've played the games, you'll know why the latter one isn't a happy ending.
There's no doubt they ran out of time (and money) before they could finish this game. There are enough cases of blatant copy-paste from Google and poor Photoshop editing to prove that. And the ending is as far from an epic conclusion as you can get. I mean, the phrase "Still a better ending than Mass Effect 3" is a freakin' meme these days.
Edit: Damn spoilers. People ought to know how it all ended by now. And being slightly drunk makes it hard to hit the right keys.
Edited, Jul 1st 2012 2:24am by Mazra