User blog:Traditionalfire/Perspective: Mass Effect 3

Hello again community of the Mass Effect wiki. I know you all have missed me so have decided to come back with a brand new blog, much to everyone's appreciation.

This blog is actually not entirely mine, it's an article about ME3's ending (everyone's favorite subject!) that is in a Swedish Game magazine called LEVEL. I just translated it into English. I actually did the same thing on the Halo Nation wiki with a another article that was about Halo 4. Here's the link

I will keep the writer of the article anonymous and it also contains spoilers.

And no, it mentions the IT but it isn't about it.

Article begins under this text.

Perspective

Mass Effect 3

Bioware didn't destroy the ending to the Mass Effect-trilogy once, but twice. Despite the fans giving them an all-time climax

Last time I checked forum poster Spike Murphy's name wasn't in Mass Effect 3's credits. But Murphy came to be one of the central figures in last years most infected debates in the gaming world: Who has the creative and artistic rights to interactive content? Should the players who have invested hundreds of hours into make their story and their hero also have the final word, should flock mentality and crow hate decide over Mass Effect's extended cut? According to Bioware it should.

Not that anyone remembers it, but before the games march premier last year Mass Effect was considered one of this generations most outstanding franchise, a Star Wars for the 2000s, filled with multidimensional characters and thought provoking political and moral issues. And I don't know what Mass Effect's passionate audience had expected, but it wasn't one of the three possible endings. There is of course much to be angry about, especially the fact that whichever ending you choose the consequences where seemingly the same, with minimal variation.

The internet campaign "Retake Mass Effect" formed and collected over one and a half million kronor to the charity organization Child's Play who choose to decline; they didn't want to be associated with other questions then their own. Then the campaign sent over 400 cupcakes to Bioware's office. The cakes came in blue, green and red to correspond with the three endings, but also containing vanilla. And Spike Murphy, provoked and frustrated that the Canadian studio hadn't responded to the criticism, decided to report Bioware to the federal trade commission for false advertising.

I can't decided what I think about this. My inner dialog gets stuck in dualism, in a "on the one hand, on the other hand"-reasoning. One part of me hates this self-righteous and easily offended internet generation who has the audacity to claim their meager existents gives them art participation rights. One can think whatever they want about Mass Effect's ending, but a work has it's author and the player, watcher or reader has besides their own interpretation no power whatsoever over it. How terrible wouldn't it be if David Chase clarified the ending to Sopranos just because an angry fan crowd demanded a new one.

The problem with above argument is that I played Mass Effect 3 and was as annoyed as everyone else. Didn't I even join with the other whiners on Twitter? Isn't it even unreasonable equate the game medium with other older narrative forms with the thinking that the entire point with these eventual artistic merits occurs first when the player act? And haven't the blockbuster part of the industry painted themselves into a corner with their anxious focus groups and constant nagging about how they listen to community feedback?

In addition it's mean and to easy to dismiss an entire generation as easily provoked and self-justifying. In particular this year, when much of the dissuasion about the internet flock is about how crowd funding has revived dead game franchises, financed projects that would never gotten support the traditional way and made both Ouya and Oculus Rift possible. It was also the most passionate and talented of the flock that gave Mass Effect 3 and the entire trilogy the perfect end. Now we walk into the spoiler landscape of this article. When Commander Shepard in ME3's crucial stage stands in front of the trilogy's three possible endings all can appear as illogical and incomprehensible. The final scenes are swept in mystery and filled with paradoxes. Shepard oneself is uncharacteristically degraded and passive.

The fans dived down in the game series mythology in search of clues. Had not Bioware in fact planned this since Shepard's visit to Eden Prime even in the first Mass Effect, when Shepard came in contact with a Reaper? The proof presented via stylish YouTube videos and considerable on the games official forums - grew heavier and heavier. The indoctrination theory, as it came to called.

A gloomy epilog unfortunately follows. EA made sure that Bioware bowed to the most noisy part of the supporters and forced them launch an extended and clarified versions (and on top of it all a new ending) of the trilogys resolution. It would be one thing to imagine that the decision was made on creative grounds, but it's much more likely it was on economical. That Bioware or EA or both decided appease the fans rather then scare then of. It once again raises the hard question over how much influence the audience should have over the interactive medium. And even if the IT wasn't completely shoot in the marshy by the new endings, it was weakened at least a deal.

As for my own I will pretend that the clarified verions never even exsisted.

Article ends here.

Sheesh that took some time! I did cut out some parts of the article where he explained what happens in ME3 and the IT because i think most of you already know that.

As for my own opnion on this, I don't really know what to say. And on that last part about how BW only made the EC for economical reasons, I think sadly is true.

So what do you think? He's right He's wrong I agree and disagree No opinion