User blog comment:Damous/Why Bioware has NOT betrayed us/@comment-4237253-20120505212333/@comment-174.0.96.172-20130703022007

The information to explain the ending is in the game. Just read the codex entry "indoctrination". Shepard is suffering every single symptom of indoctrination during the ending sequence. Finally once he makes his choice, Shepard becomes fully indoctrinated, or he doesn't (destroy).

As for the ending having more than ABC or three choices, you have to stop looking at the last 5 minutes as the ending.

You were told before the game launched that Mass Effect 3's story would be shaped by over 1000 variables. Not the ending of Mass Effect 3, but the game as a whole.

[]

[] The whole game is the ending.

[] Mass Effect 3 will react to each decision you make as you play through a truly unique experience of your own creation.

Not the ending of Mass Effect 3, but the game as a whole. The way the Mass Effect series works and has always worked, is that choices affect the journey, not the destination. Many paths to the same end. Illusion of choice. RPGs are all about illusion of choice.

Just like they said in the Matrix Reloaded. Choice is an illusion between those with power (Bioware, who created Mass Effect), and those without (you, the gamer).

Another thing to remember is the way the series works with choices carrying over, there wasn't going to be a carry over into the next game, because Shepard's story is over with Mass Effect 3.

Choices in Mass Effect 1 affect how Mass Effect 2 plays out Choices in Mass Effect 1 & 2 affect how Mass Effect 3 plays out Choices in Mass Effect 1, 2, 3 affect how Mass Effect 4 plays out

And so on and so forth. So to break this, they basically made the whole game littered with all your different choices throughout three games. If you were expecting an ending made just for you that no one else would get, well, you expect too much. This game sold 4.5 million copies. If they made one ending cinematic every minute, it would take roughly 10 years to make 4.5 million cinematics for every person in the game. So that it would feel like a unique experience. It's not technically feasible to do that.

Not going to happen. Even the slideshows weren't enough for some people. They wanted full cinematic cutscenes for everything.

TLDR: People who don't understand how the ending works want everything spoon fed to them, even though they were told before the game launched that you would have to gather clues to solve a puzzle. If the ending doesn't make sense, you didn't find all the clues.

Bioware did not betray us. They made an ending that made us think and use our imaginations. Instead of creating and ending which panders to the lowest common denominator of intellect, where people are just spoon fed all the answers.

Bioware successfully indoctrinated their own customers with an indoctrination ending and will be hailed as one of the greatest endings in video game history and one of the greatest video game series of all time. Even though they spoon fed them an indoctrinated Shepard clone with Citadel, people still didn't get it. Like I said, they didn't pander to the lowest common denominator of intellect.

When someone writes a story, it is not the writer's job to make sure that all 4.5 million people who bought this game could understand what was going on.

They weren't going to fix anything, unless people exhausted all the information in the game first. So if some people understood the ending and others didn't, then it's not a problem with the game, but a problem with the user.

Some software errors are actually user related. They are not all caused by the developers or people making the game.

The fact that Bioware didn't spell out everything is not bad writing. It's a lazy user unable to think for themselves or use their imagination in what happened.