EatChildren,
Since you seem to be well connected with Bioware what is your personal opinion about what went wrong with the ME3 ending? I am curious to hear your thoughts.
Do you mean well connected as "I'm a fan" or "I know people"? Because the latter isn't necessarily true. Just got lucky in a few places, don't really know much more than I've already made public.
Based on what we've been told, what I've been told (very, very little), combined with my personal opinion, I think the Mass Effect 3 ending clusterfuck resulted from a combination of terrible management and bad writing. A one two punch. I think the former had BioWare pressured for time and resources that not enough emphasis was given to how important the trilogy's end is was given early on. EA probably pressured the idea that ME3 was to be an "entry point" into the series (which is fucking maddening for obvious reasons) which further skewered development towards the main story arc, missions, companions, etc. I believe Weekes stated the original intention was for ME3's final mission to play out kinda like ME2, designating objectives and whatnot, and none of that happened.
What I figure happened is that development was going along and the ending wasn't getting half the attention it required, but conceptually as a narrative and also as a functional scenario. Somewhere towards the tail end of development the team leads had an "oh fuck" moment where they realised it needed to get done and there just wasn't any time to do it the way they'd been building everything else about the project so far, that is communally with all team members contributing and critiquing in some capacity. Walters/Hudson felt it necessary to board themselves off from the rest of the team so the ending could be conceptualised and finished faster.
This resulted in two big issues:
a) Ending scope, simply in content, was downsized. Hudson has said that much of the Extended Cut content was intended for the retail release. Simple things such as extra scenes showing your squadmates during the escape sequence, post war story boards, and the overall epilogue never made it into the game. Just a really simple, textbook example of "to make stuff we need time and people, and we don't have time and people".
b) The actual content sucked balls. Walters has writing strengths, and also a ton of weaknesses. People argue that BioWare's narrative fuck-ups still make it through regardless of team critique, but the issue here is that the team was never given that option. At no point were other experienced, talented writers at BioWare given the chance to say "Okay, this works, this doesn't, so lets change it maybe?". What Walters/Hudson conceptualised went through, stamped and finished, as is. And since they had a poor grasp of contextually relevant expectations from what the entire trilogy had established, this just resulted in disaster.
Extended Cut free DLC was Solution #1. I suspect the huge ending backlash had the team very, very quickly put to work on that content to pad out what is objectively an oddly sparse, empty ending sequence. Much of that content, regardless of personal opinion in writing, should have been in the game and I think BioWare very quickly realised this.
Citadel DLC was Solution #2. Forging relationships with your virtual pals was arguably the strongest trope of the entire trilogy, and the ending fucked it up. I disagree with the "it needs a happy ending!" motif some fans like to throw around, but Citadel aimed to give some catharsis to the lack of a proper send-off. Fans love it for this reason: it's a way to say "goodbye" to the Shepard trilogy, even with the ending as we know it.
So yeah, that's how I
think the ending debacle all played out. What actually went on at BioWare, and how they responded internally, I don't know. My gut says that they knew the ending lacked
substance in the form of content and Extended Cut ideas were probably thrown around quite early. I don't think they expected the backlash to the
context to be as a great as was, and said backlash pushed them to get the Extended Cut out much faster than maybe planned and for free, as well as played an important role (along with the lingering aftermath) in getting Citadel DLC greenlit.
Based on what I was told about the scrapped First Contact War shooter, among other things, as well as BioWare's very public "THE SHEPARD TRILOGY IS OVER FOREVER OKAY?!" mantra backing the next game, I feel both BioWare and especially Montreal want to distance themselves from the ending catastrophe and do as much as they can to start with a clean slate. Like it doesn't even matter if some people at BioWare or EA fucking love the ending and think fans are big poo poo heads for disliking it. I'm under the impression that they're very well aware this negative stigma exists and is potent among a lot of fans, and no contending opinion will change that. This is also why I believe the next game is set post-trilogy: no need to dance around the Shepard arc and all the plot threads that tie into it, instead just pick or make a basis for a new series and move forward.
