Mass Effect 3 SPOILER THREAD: LOTS OF SPECULATION FROM EVERYONE

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Usually I'm not one to speak bad of people but I can only hope Walters is never lead writer on a series ever again. He's probably a nice man, but he clearly made some awful decisions with the franchise as a whole and appears out of his depth.

I was so close to buying PAX tickets now I really wish I had just to see it in person.

Sure hope someone records it as it should be glorious. Also hope someone tries to steal Walter's hat, it's a human hat probably made by a child so no doubt he would be distraught.

Lol at this tweet.

tumblr_m0xv0pUuOa1r9s8cbo1_500.jpg

The colour blind tweet was superb, don't have the image at hand though.
 
Take this for what you think it's worth, but a friend of mine submitted an article to the site I work for where he stated that several Bioware writers were against this ending, but Walters stormed ahead with it and insisted on no input from anyone other than Hudson.

He's someone who would be working with other writers and is a gushingly enormous Bioware fan (to the point where we almost stopped talking over Dragon Age 2 of all things), so I don't really see it as unlikely.

God dammit, I really feel for the other writers. There is some genuily amazing stuff in ME3. Garrus is great, Tali is as cute as ever and Liara is just amazing. To have that kind of content attached to a, at best, soap opera ending is just baffling. I mean, this is a videogame. a Bunch of pixels with a voice on top. But, I actually cared about some of the characters. This was my space soap opera, one I could interact with. I mean, one of the most amazing moment I can remember was the "Time Box" that Liara gives to Shepard. That was what I wanted. My own Shepard shaping my story.

Fuck that, I'm just sad for the entire team now.
 
I just love the following thread title over on the Bioware boards:

"What else, if anything, ended this badly?"

I can think of many things.

It's funny that he mentioned Brave New World as a source of inspiration because despite it being one of my favorite novels of all time, the ending is one of the most ridiculous nonsensical unrelated pieces of shit that I've ever read.

Regardless, the book has too many important themes and ideas to let it bother me enough.
 
Take this for what you think it's worth, but a friend of mine submitted an article to the site I work for where he stated that several Bioware writers were against this ending, but Walters stormed ahead with it and insisted on no input from anyone other than Hudson.

He's someone who would be working with other writers and is a gushingly enormous Bioware fan (to the point where we almost stopped talking over Dragon Age 2 of all things), so I don't really see it as unlikely.

Ha ha ha oh wow.
 
Actually, it would have given the player a greater sense of urgency and trauma. It would have really let you peek into Shep's mind. Not only that, but it would have given you a bleakness that would probably send you to really pick destroy or synthesis. If everyone you care about is taken, then it's not much to ask to sacrifice yourself for anything that's left. Something that's greater than you or the ones you love.

Evangelion spoilers:
If Asuka was your favorite character in this show, you know what I mean. It's fucked up, it's horrible, it's tragic; but it also makes it even more effective from the writer's standpoint. Her Eva was literally eaten alive as she was still in sync. When Shinji ascends he sees the remains and is traumatized.

But this is the kind of stuff I personally love, I know some people would have killed themselves though -- Tali-style.

I know what you mean. Tali died in my playthrough (which also made me feel crappy) and I rewrote the geth, so peace between with the Quarians was impossible for me. Forced into choosing between 2 genocides, I defended the geth, and I felt absolutely horrible as all the quarians died. It made me depressed for the entire day.

That is not what happens with the ending though.
 
If the Guild Wars 2 panel at PAX East last year was any indication...you're going to have to line up 2-3 hours early in order to get in. It was about 2 hours for GW2 and this one's going to have a LOT of attention. I'll certainly be planning to attend it, though, although I wouldn't be surprised if the writers skip out on this one, specifically Mac. He'd be way too much of a target.
 
God dammit, I really feel for the other writers. There is some genuily amazing stuff in ME3. Garrus is great, Tali is as cute as ever and Liara is just amazing. To have that kind of content attached to a, at best, soap opera ending is just baffling.

Fuck that, I'm just sad for the entire team now.

Seriously. It would explain a lot if Walters tackled the main story arc while the other writers did the various missions and characters. That right there would explain the amazing 99% of the game and terrible 1%.
 
God dammit, I really feel for the other writers. There is some genuily amazing stuff in ME3. Garrus is great, Tali is as cute as ever and Liara is just amazing. To have that kind of content attached to a, at best, soap opera ending is just baffling.

Fuck that, I'm just sad for the entire team now.

I like basically ever bit of writing in ME3 with the exception of the intro (which I got over) and the ghost child ending. I loved the story arcs for all the characters. I loved the individual dialogue. I loved the set pieces. I loved the themes. I loved how it wrapped most things up but also left room to speculate about the future. They wrapped up so many character arts in convincing, enjoyable ways. The final set pieces on Earth, where you talk to all your crew for the last time, was incredible and showed how invested I was.

Then suddenly, a wild Walters appeared.
 
I think it would have been a nice touch to have flashbacks of prior moments in the series and possible outcomes as you walk toward your choice. Adds some weight and emotional investment to the decision. I say this because the short shot of Liara's half smile as my Shepard was absorbed to power the synthesis got me good.
 
Take this for what you think it's worth, but a friend of mine submitted an article to the site I work for where he stated that several Bioware writers were against this ending, but Walters stormed ahead with it and insisted on no input from anyone other than Hudson.

He's someone who would be working with other writers and is a gushingly enormous Bioware fan (to the point where we almost stopped talking over Dragon Age 2 of all things), so I don't really see it as unlikely.

I just noticed this post. If you know this friend, ask him to get the other writers to write up on how they would have ended it and post it somewhere. That will be my personal canon.
 
Actually, it would have given the player a greater sense of urgency and trauma. It would have really let you peek into Shep's mind. Not only that, but it would have given you a bleakness that would probably send you to really pick destroy or synthesis. If everyone you care about is taken, then it's not much to ask to sacrifice yourself for anything that's left. Something that's greater than you or the ones you love.

Evangelion spoilers:
If Asuka was your favorite character in this show, you know what I mean. It's fucked up, it's horrible, it's tragic; but it also makes it even more effective from the writer's standpoint. Her Eva was literally eaten alive as she was still in sync. When Shinji ascends he sees the remains and is traumatized.

But this is the kind of stuff I personally love, I know some people would have killed themselves though -- Tali-style.

I've seen a few episodes of Evangelion, I think that was it, but it was a good while ago now so i can't really remember anything.

And I didn't mean so much that they shouldn't have killed anyone off, I went in thinking Shepard would have to sacrifice himself anyway, it's the combination of not only killing off your favourite characters but to then give a really shitty ending.

I can deal with killing people off if the ending isn't terrible, and I don't mean terrible to mean not a happy ending, it can be a sad ending etc., but the ending we got wasn't a good ending for the series as a whole even in the slightest.
 
What a fucking asshole. Not funny in the slightest.
Eh. It's pretty much what Bioware did to us?

OH CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME LAUNCH TRAILER. LOOK AT ALL THOSE MARINES BEHIND YOU KICKING ASS. OH, AND THE FLEET'S GOING TO ENTER THE ATMOSPHERE AND NORMANDY'S GOING TO LEADING FRIGATE BOMBING RUNS AGAINST REAPER GROUND FORCES AND IT'S GOING TO BE AMAZING.

*game comes out*

Yeah, about what we said in our launch trailer... We were just kidding.
 
I like basically ever bit of writing in ME3 with the exception of the intro (which I got over) and the ghost child ending. I loved the story arcs for all the characters. I loved the individual dialogue. I loved the set pieces. I loved the themes. I loved how it wrapped most things up but also left room to speculate about the future. They wrapped up so many character arts in convincing, enjoyable ways. The final set pieces on Earth, where you talk to all your crew for the last time, was incredible and showed how invested I was.

Then suddenly, a wild Walters appeared.

Sums it up perfectly.
 
It's amazing to me how Bioware could fuck up so badly. All they had to show was the reapers blowing up and remove the stupid starchild and everyone would have been happy.
 
Am I reading this wrong? Didn't see it pointed out specifically, might have missed it.

On delaying the game
In march 2011, he also faced a roomful of Mass Effect developers who expressed concern about hitting the promised holiday release date... New release date set for March 2012. After much deliberation, the CAT mission (or rather, the Prothean mission) had to be removed from the set of tasks. The missions would later be completed as post-release content"

They're basically admitting that they cut the Prothean from the main game to put as DLC due to time constraints, aren't they?

I kinda saw the overall "we didn't expect it would be so poorly received", but this.....this is just shittastic decision making by Bioware.
 
It's amazing to me how Bioware could fuck up so badly. All they had to show was the reapers blowing up and remove the stupid starchild and everyone would have been happy.

Hence, the sheer amount of fan endings on YouTube that have been created that simply excise all the Ghost Child out and just shows the beam of energy killing the Reapers.
 
Eh. It's pretty much what Bioware did to us?

OH CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME LAUNCH TRAILER. LOOK AT ALL THOSE MARINES BEHIND YOU KICKING ASS. OH, AND THE FLEET'S GOING TO ENTER THE ATMOSPHERE AND NORMANDY'S GOING TO LEADING FRIGATE BOMBING RUNS AGAINST REAPER GROUND FORCES AND IT'S GOING TO BE AMAZING.

*game comes out*

Yeah, about what we said in our launch trailer... We were just kidding.

No. BioWare didn't deliberately insult us by creating a great game with a bad ending. That "fan" had one purpose for making that Tweet and it was to act like a child.
 
Take this for what you think it's worth, but a friend of mine submitted an article to the site I work for where he stated that several Bioware writers were against this ending, but Walters stormed ahead with it and insisted on no input from anyone other than Hudson.

He's someone who would be working with other writers and is a gushingly enormous Bioware fan (to the point where we almost stopped talking over Dragon Age 2 of all things), so I don't really see it as unlikely.

Yeesh, Mac Walters almost makes me want to hate the game.But the game has a whole is pretty great and it's a fucking shame they let him do this abortion of an ending.


I like basically ever bit of writing in ME3 with the exception of the intro (which I got over) and the ghost child ending. I loved the story arcs for all the characters. I loved the individual dialogue. I loved the set pieces. I loved the themes. I loved how it wrapped most things up but also left room to speculate about the future. They wrapped up so many character arts in convincing, enjoyable ways. The final set pieces on Earth, where you talk to all your crew for the last time, was incredible and showed how invested I was.

Then suddenly, a wild Walters appeared.
I hate Walters so much.
 
Fucking hell. I've never seen anything like it. Forget Mass Effect, people are contemplating Mass Suicide on the BioWare forums.

Shits on fire, yo.
 
I think everyone's missing this as well.



They're basically admitting that they cut the Prothean from the main game to put as DLC due to time constraints, aren't they?

I kinda saw the overall "we didn't expect it would be so poorly received", but this.....this is just shittastic decision making by Bioware.

Pretty much.

Which directly contradicts everything that they said about it in the first place.
 
I just noticed this post. If you know this friend, ask him to get the other writers to write up on how they would have ended it and post it somewhere. That will be my personal canon.

As much as I would like this to happen even if it was done anonymously it would probably expose who they are inside the company and get them in huge trouble.
 
I think everyone's missing this as well.



They're basically admitting that they cut the Prothean from the main game to put as DLC due to time constraints, aren't they?

I kinda saw the overall "we didn't expect it would be so poorly received", but this.....this is just shittastic decision making by Bioware.
Where is this information from?
 
Just got caught up on the last couple of pages and the entire "Lots of speculation" stuff. I... wow. Pulling something like this intentionally is probably one of the biggest dick moves I have ever seen in any work of fiction.

It sucks for BioWare because it's pretty much like a football team being at the Super Bowl, being the very last chance that team could play, be within spitting distance of the winning touchdown, but fumbles at 99 yards, costing them the game. The team might have been adored by most and had a spectacular performance, but that one moment will be the albatross hanging around their neck throughout history.

I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking I am entitled to a better ending; it is their story and they can do with it as they wish. With a trilogy or any series of fiction, bad endings are just an inherent, unavoidable risk. But personally, if BioWare is going to pull something like this for the sake of speculation alone, why even get anywhere near as invested in any other game with similar writers? Why even give them the benefit of the doubt? At the moment, my thought is "If they are going to sweep the rug from under the players' feet with this much glee, I'll just spare myself the headache in the future entirely by not playing their games."
 
It's amazing to me how Bioware could fuck up so badly. All they had to show was the reapers blowing up and remove the stupid starchild and everyone would have been happy.

Any number of relatively simple endings would have worked.

HAPPY ending: you get your EMS up, you get the galactic readiness up, you storm Earth, you fuck up the Reapers something nasty, you win. Garrus and Shep kick it in Rio with mai tais.

SAD ending: you get your EMS up to minimums, you get the galactic readiness up to minimums, you storm Earth, you fuck up the Reapers something nasty, you win, but Shepard dies in the battle. Big ol' galactic funeral for the dead savior.

DARK ending: you don't get EMS and readiness up enough, you storm Earth, the Reapers fuck up your shit, you flash-forward 50K years and see a new species (or two) uncovering one of Liara's data collection artifacts.

So simple. So easy. So much better than godchild. None of those above endings have to be any GOOD to be better than what we got. That's the worst part.
 
God dammit, I really feel for the other writers. There is some genuily amazing stuff in ME3. Garrus is great, Tali is as cute as ever and Liara is just amazing. To have that kind of content attached to a, at best, soap opera ending is just baffling.

Fuck that, I'm just sad for the entire team now.

I know what you mean there is some really good stuff in the game, I even ended up really liking James, and I was determined to hate him during the run up to the games release. Tali committed suicide in my first playthrough, and I actually felt real guilt that my actions had led to the death of a character in a videogame.
 
What I'm interested in now is whether this has any tangible impact on subscriptions to The Old Republic (which I enjoy very much!)

I hope so. That way the damage will come full circle. After all ToR is a huge reason why the ME franchise suffered after 1 when they moved their lead writer to that game.
 
Just got caught up on the last couple of pages and the entire "Lots of speculation" stuff. I... wow. Pulling something like this intentionally is probably one of the biggest dick moves I have ever seen in any work of fiction.

It sucks for BioWare because it's pretty much like a football team being at the Super Bowl, being the very last chance that team could play, be within spitting distance of the winning touchdown, but fumbles at 99 yards, costing them the game. The team might have been adored by most and had a spectacular performance, but that one moment will be the albatross hanging around their neck throughout history.

I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking I am entitled to a better ending; it is their story and they can do with it as they wish. With a trilogy or any series of fiction, bad endings are just an inherent, unavoidable risk. But personally, if BioWare is going to pull something like this for the sake of speculation alone, why even get anywhere near as invested in any other game with similar writers? Why even give them the benefit of the doubt? At the moment, my thought is "If they are going to sweep the rug from under the players' feet with this much glee, I'll just spare myself the headache in the future entirely by not playing their games."

No, the proper football metaphor is that it's the end of the game, time has run out, a Hail Mary is thrown, Mac Walters catches it, rushes to the 99-yard, then suddenly turns left, runs out of the stadium into the parking lot and proceeds to do an interpretive dance on the importance of diversity.

Metaphor courtesy of EmCee
 
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