User blog comment:Phantomdasilva/Fan Entitlement and the sanctity of artistic vision/@comment-1388547-20120327173016

My thoughts on the subject are that endings like we got would be legitimate if the Mass Effect series had not embraced player choice to such a degree. In a game with a single storyline that cannot vary (most video games, really), artistic control is essentially all in the hands of the developers. The whole experience is analogous to a movie, or a book, or a piece of music -- you're appreciating something that somebody else created, and that's clear to all concerned. In Mass Effect, we were so often shown that our choices mattered, that we were shaping the story, and had broad freedom within the framework of the game. In that sense, the Mass Effect series is a collaborative work between BioWare and each individual player, and the endings we got more or less amount to our colleague, BioWare, declaring that our input in the work is ultimately unimportant.