BioWare co-founder on Mass Effect 3's ending disappointing fans: I can understand completely

BioWare co-founder “can understand completely” why fans were disappointed with Mass Effect 3′s ending

[Godmars290]

Still sounds like they didn't get it. Too much evidence that they were lazy with the game. Put too much emphasis on getting it out at a certain time rather then doing it right. Which means that the mistakes made with this game and others will only happen again.

[ApolloTheBoss]

Don't ever plan on buying a Bioware again because of it.

[OhMyGandhi]

really? because of the ending?

[SuicidalTendencies]

Agree. Between the ME3 ending and Dragon Age 2 they lost a loyal customer. I wasn't really surprised that it happened though. Once they went to EA I knew it was only a matter of time.

[ApolloTheBoss]

@RustedMan I hate EA for eternity. That ending ruined my perception of what it means to play a video game. I'll never view videogames the same way again for as long as I live because of it. Call me dramatic, but that's just how it is.

[EVILDEAD360]

Huge ME fan and LOVED Mass Effect 3's ending and thought they expanding ending were cool as well.

The best part about the ending debacle was that EVERY critic that played it had zero issues with how it ended.

Just because they empathize with the few that hated the ending doesn't mean they the ending was bad for everyone who played.

Will be there day one for the next gen ME and DA3 as well.

Evil

[FrightfulActions]

@EvilDead

I seriously and sincerely believe that anyone who was a 'huge fan' of Mass Effect would not had loved the ending of Mass Effect 3.

Also, every critic had zero issues with the ending? You mean those few that were paid off by EA to give them near-perfect scores? Sure. Lets not look at the literally hundreds of other critics and reviews that flooded N4G for MONTHS talking about how piss-poor the endings were. They so don't count, because they're not being sponsored and paid off by EA, their opinions do not matter.

Anyone who just plays the game likely wont have an issue. Those who invested 5 years into the series and have been following and playing it since the start and were genuine fans however were the ones who really got shafted in the end. Newcomers wouldn't give a shit.

Who cares about fans when you can get more money by targeting a larger audience.

[EVILDEAD360]

@ frightful

'I seriously and sincerely believe that anyone who was a 'huge fan' of Mass Effect would not had loved the ending of Mass Effect 3.'

93% on Metacritic destroys your theory.

Your seriously mistaken if you believe that ALL true ME fans were the ones whining about the ending.

It's always interesting that when people can't accept that there is a game that they hate gets good reviews then EVERY reviewer has been paid off.

Then that must mean that every review on Metacritic that is good for any game is because the reviewers were paid.

But since they aren't ALL paid by EA let's take a look at a very important stat

74 reviews on Metacritic..ZERO negative reviews.

LOL @ pretending that anyone cares about a Fan review on N4G, Amazon, Metacritic or anywhere else.

Own EVERY Mass Effect at launch on the 360, loved every one of em', 3 was no exception.

Loved the game, loved the ending, loved the Multiplayer.

Evil

[Pozzle]

It's a bit late for them to admit it.

[Skate-AK]

He must have been drunk when they asked him. Since he finally admitted it.

[NYC_Gamer]

It's not only the ending that screwed up Mass Effect 2&3.

[Grap]

the take back earth mission was just boring actually the game was alright and i have no problem with ending but srsly how can u miss the mission that the game plot was all about. that mission was like gears of war horde mode "kill the next wave and don't die!!"

[mrdeli]

RAGE TIME !

It's not "solve every scenario" !
It's not "we can’t get the choice they want because we're so intimate [with ME3]"

It's because the entire ending of the game after the point you get hit with the beam seems to ABSOLUTELY IMPLY that Shepard has been INDOCTRINATED and yet the game and Bioware have played it straight saying "this is the end, there's no more" again and again. The entire trilogy revolved around the Reapers and the menace of Sovereign and then Harbinger FFS Harbinger was the main antagonist of Mass Effect 2 !!!

He doens't do anything in Mass Effect 3 besides hit Sheapard with a beam that completely implies all the efforts of foreshadowing about indoctrination ! He "ASSUMED DIRECT CONTROL" etc ---- but no, Bioware has to keep saying that fans didn't get to have their particular choice. Bioware is kicking every single Mass Effect fan in the balls. Anybody who took time to enjoy the story knows that
being indoctrinated was the big evil thing and that Harbinger wanted to indoctrinate Shepard the most of all ! Why whould Shepard keep having these dreams with indoctrination oily visuals and sound effects. Why would the ending have this in it and be a total "Red Herring" of the most epic order ?!

Bioware these stupid comments make me rage again years later !!!!

[Parasyte]

Exactly. I can't even go back and play ME1 or 2 because ultimately, your choices don't matter.

[aLucidMind]

It's very probable that Shepard wasn't indoctrinated, but merely had the symptoms of it as s/he is clearly in the early onset stages in ME3. They've gotten far enough to have an effect, but not anywhere near enough to be able to begin influencing, much less take control, of Shepard. BioWare could have easily said that while still saying "the endings are literal", but instead decided to go "NO! You came up with something BETTER than our idea! F-U!" even though they flat out said Shepard being indoctrinated was an idea they were throwing around throughout development and stated themselves they cut that thread out due to it being "too complex".

I hated the ending, but I know a few canon-friendly theories and such that make BioWare's vision more palatable without sacrificing the (obvious) indoctrination attempts on Shepard, but I'm sure you've read them all yourself already lol.

Btw, its only been one year XD

[mrdeli]

STILL RAGING
I will never buy a Bioware game until this INDOCTRINATION THEORY gets cleared up to my gamer satisfaction. I invested well over 200 hours playing these games and I am still butt hurt over the ending !

[yourgodisdead]

I enjoyed it =]

[HonestDragon]

Man, reading this again and seeing the ending over again just brings back so many bad memories of how terribly handled those last moments were. Even then, we now know that it was Casey Hudson and lead writer Mac Walters who did a "closed doors" session with the ending and did so without the input of the of rest of the team. So the "Star/God child" is something we have to thank them for.

Got the collector's edition and for what? A dumbed down roster compared to the number we had in Mass Effect 2, RPG elements that were completely mishandled and nonexistent, a terrible quest system log, and a group of endings that practically break continuity and characterization. I'll admit that I was really sore about it, but I wasn't angered as much.

The DLC that "clarified" everything (for me) made it worse in some aspects. Sure, it cleaned up a lot of plot holes in the final moments, but they still kept the kid and the choice endings which still harbored many unanswered questions. Mass Effect 3 truly was my most disappointing game of 2012.

[Roccetarius]

I still think they made too many compromises with both ME2 and 3, not just the ending itself. They screwed over fans who started from the first game. Next time they're making a game, they should just not advertise choices as a core feature.

[TheCagyDies]

Blue explosion, red explosion, green explosion. What would you choose?

[Tultras]

Can't people just let this go?

20 hours of Awesome gameplay being overlooked by 5 minutes of a bad cutscenes, Sad.

[Double_O_Revan]

First, if you only played ME3 for 20 hours, you shorted yourself.

Second, it wasn't just a bad ending to one game, it was a bad ending to an entire series to which people invested 200+ hours. And that's just on a single play through.

Kudos to the people that played these games more then once by the way. I plan on going through a second time in the next couple of months.

[Tultras]

Exactly, 5 minutes of a cutscenes compared to 200+ hours of awesome gameplay? And then hating it ? that's unfair, at least to me.

I have mass effect 3 but never got down to playing the single player past the 2 hour mark. T_T, I made the mistake of trying the multiplayer, loving it, and burning myself out on that till I got tired of the game as a whole.

[00]

compare it to any other AAA game like uncharted, halo, killzone, GOW, gears, etc, you start to see to many cut corners.

I mean they had 2d sprites in the game.

[DarthJay]

How was it rushed? There was the same period of time between 2 and 3 as there was between 1 and 2. The ending was bad. That doesn't mean it was rushed. It means they made a poor decision in their writing.

[00]

broken journal
eavesdropping side quest
broken face import.
broken multiplayer glitches(that still have not been fixed)
falling through levels and getting stuck.
2d sprites.
getting stuck in objects.
Terrible animations.
and they were still writing the ending like two months before the game went gold.
there's a lot more I can't remember

I know no game is perfect but one with such a high budget it doesn't feel like it was put to good use.

[Baka-akaB]

You act as if any of the previous games werent full of bugs . ME1 and me2 had notirous bugs and gamebreaking stuff too .

I'm not saying it's ok , but suddenly on 1/3 of the tale realizing that it is too bugged is rich .

Game doesnt feel rushed , it is just inferior in some aspect for those that disliked it , just as seen with ME2.

[aLucidMind]

Try playing the game, and do it without the Extended Cut dlc. It wasn't a bad cutscene, it was bad writing as a whole. Any competent writer knows that the ending is your final chance to leave a lasting impression and make the protagonist's journey feel worth it. You screw the ending up, and it leaves the entire story wanting; screw it up bad enough, and it royally fucks up the entire story (pardon the language). ME3's ending made it feel entirely pointless, with the original ending making it clear you stopping the Reapers is a reset button (you basically wind up nuking every cluster with a relay in it due to the relays exploding, which literally destroys the worlds within the nuked cluster). Walters even stated it led to a "galactic dark age" (his words).

That, on top of a very badly presented theme, badly presented leading antagonist, lack of foreshadowing of any of the choices beyond Destroy, AND how it came to a literal abrupt halt before being thrown with a "continue the story with DLC!" screen shows it's far more than just a bad cutscene.

[aliengmr]

Hear, hear.

Few really remember Walters' early statements about the ending before Bioware realized that destroying the universe was a bad idea and decided to... un-destroy it.

[SageHonor]

The entire game made me facepalm. Not just the ending

[barakus7]

Only way I can let EA know that it was a massive mistake is to never purchase another EA game again, and I buy a lot. (12 consoles, 4 plasma tv's & around 500 games in one room)

[PooEgg]

Don't even get me started, since I just replayed it again and reopened old wounds...

The entire Earth mission, a shallow run and gun, fighting off all the same baddies that I already fought on earlier missions, while being rushed along a linear map by the voices of faceless strangers. Such rubbish.

The really sad part is that the Earth mission could have been easily improved by replacing the voices of strangers with voices of my mates. If it was Wrex or Grunt telling me to hurry it up because the missile caravan had been swarmed it might have inspired me to move my ass, and perhaps if I took too long bringing down that pack of brutes then Grunt and Wrex would decide to charge the Hades Cannon on foot, resulting in their deaths... yeah, something like that might have been exciting, and Mass Effect worthy, but as it was I simply ignored the radio chatter by random strangers and took my time, because I could and it wouldn't make any difference... ah such a boring way to kill a good series.

And yet, still have to admit that I have spent enough time replaying the game to make it worth my investment... strangely, that doesn't make me feel any better.

[04soldier]

Agreed just comparing Mass effect 2 final level vs Me3 final level felt pale in comparison.. In Me2 your whole team was with you including nameless shipmates and each decision you made could result in someone (Big or small) death.

[AndrewLB]

I find it amusing that they continue to lie to consumers with the hope we'll forget all about them utterly destroying one of the best video game franchises ever made and making every player who spent dozens of hours over three games and 5 years so all that hard work would be rewarded with an appropriate and fitting conclusion... and Bioware, under the gun because of EA setting a mandatory release date to make their Q1 profits look good to investors, screwed everyone.
The only person who has actually gone public with the truth is Mass Effect writer Patrick Weekes who said Casey Hudson told the writers to go home while he in all his brilliance wrote the final part of ME3. http://i.imgur.com/W2gwS.jp...
A good friend of mine also works for Bioware, whom I will not name, and has repeated the exact same story. EA put quarterly profits ahead of making a quality product and everyone at Bioware who spent years of their lives creating the mass effect series hate the ending just as much as the hardcore fans do. They just can't voice their opinions because they don't want to lose their jobs.

[bunny1285]

My 10 year old knows they screwed up,he looked up to bioware but he has changed him mind.We worked hard to keep him alive and all we get a breath scene.So angry that they don't care anything about fixing it,and telling fans to get over it.Another good one from twitter she wont listen to negativity wow !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!