Babble: All things Mass Effect 3 Part 4 – the Extended Ending Wrap up

The whole Mass Effect 3 Babble:
Part 1: Look, Gamplay and such
Part 2: #Solcomms
Part 3: Plots, Subplots and related commentary pt1, pt2, pt3

Firstly, some of you may have noted that my blog has become littered with black squares instead of pretty images in some places. I will slowly but surely amend this. It involved me, my phone and a folder I removed because I couldn’t understand why it was there…. Teehee.

Part of me wanted to run through the missions and just give a ‘what I liked vs what I didn’t like’ through some of them. As tempting as that sounds, I’ve decided against it. The most pertinent things have already been mentioned before. I haven’t whined about everything I could have, but that’s not important. I’ve gushed about how amazing the scenery is, I’ve oohed and aahed and WTF-ed over some story stuffs. I think the only thing I really left out is how AMAZING the sound track for this game is. Really, it is extraordinary. And I’m going to share two of my favs

Grunt's Last Stand

An End Once and for All - Original Version (I just like it a lot more)

  

So instead of going the route I was planning on, I will end this off with briefly talking about the extended ending and just a final wrap up. I once again want to plug ‘Where Mass Effect 3 went wrong'.

The guy helped solidify a lot of thoughts in my own mind and did inspire some others. He only spends twenty odd minutes on the subject (as opposed to certain people).

The Extended Ending

I have some mixed feelings about the ending but it wasn’t about how it played itself out. I disliked the idea that we would have to sacrifice data (I’m from South Africa, it is a sacrifice if you can manage it at all) to download something that would have been logical to put in the game to begin with. I was also somewhat unimpressed by Bioware telling gamers that the changes in the game start from the Cerberus base when no one I’ve talked to who actually played the extended ending saw any change up until the last goodbyes.

The DLC also brought in a lot of odd moments too. You now see whether your squad makes it or not. If they do, you have them evacuated by bringing in the Normandy to land at your location and helping the two onto its loading ramp. You can have a real touching moment with your love interest – that part I liked – before you run and the evil red beam hits you.

So here’s the problem I have with this sequence: You have a big-ass reaper shooting at cars and people running (very tiny little things in comparison to the massive ships they could be battling) and then Normandy flies in, lands and takes back off – flying past the reaper – and never having to dodge so much as a single ill-aimed shot. If it were that easy to pick people up, why couldn’t the Normandy have dropped people off? Then you wouldn’t have had to run your ass off to begin with and it would have avoided the countless, and seemingly unnecessary, casualties. Hm. You also have a group of at least four main npc’s that are on the ship that don’t bother coming to the fight. What are they doing? Sipping turian brandy, sitting in front of a screen watching Shepard duck and run, betting on how fast it’ll take her to get to the target?

All that aside, the ending itself… it definitely did bring some ‘closure’ to the endings that they had previously presented. Note how I state that. To the endings they had before, an epilogue has been added each ending giving you an idea of what will happen very broadly with regard to civilization and whatnot. You also get to glimpse some still pictures (the entire epilogue is in stills) of some squad mates. And then there’s the really moving scene at the end where Shepard’s crew gathers around the memorial wall and sticks her name to it as well – right under Anderson’s. It’s not perfect. It doesn’t sort out any issues with the endings offered, but at least it ties the chords of the endings you were presented with.

For that I will say “Aww, thanks Bioware!” I didn’t, however, appreciate the fourth ending they stuck in. This would be where you either shoot at the little space twerp or tell it to go shove off and refuse to decide one of the three options presented. This choice causes the game to end immediately with no extra cutscenes of the battle. All you get to see is a time capsule with Liara telling the listener how they'd lost and expressing her hope that the next cycle will be able to defeat the reapers. Nice. It felt like an calculated insult, I have to say. At least they didn’t take it that step too far by also assigning it a colour.

Wrap up

Back in January I wrote a post called A Mass Addiction. It basically explained what got me hooked on Mass Effect. In it I listed the three main drugs Bioware pumped into my system that got me hooked.

1. Story
2. Choice & Consequence
3. A woman in the lead

Somewhere in the middle of writing these posts, I realised that what upset me the most was that the drugs that had got me hooked was either no longer present or tainted in some way. I love that Femshep got some real acknowledgement. I really truly adore that. I will always feel that they should give her more in the DLCs and whatever other promotional stuff they throw our way. I would also have loved to see a Femshep motion picture which isn’t going to happen. Maybe it’s just to avoid the whole slash part because, come on! How could Liara not be the romantic interest in the movie?  In any case, #3 I was happy with in ME3. Very happy actually. But the first two just… *shrugs*

I love the Mass Effect series. I really and truly do. I adore it. I have a lot of reasons and I know how powerfully it has affected the lives of other people. The stories are numerous. It truly is the Star Wars of our time in many ways. And ME3 has some crazy powerful moments. I cannot remember when last I had cried as hard through any book, game or movie as I did in this game. I was broken by the end. I had rooted for my Shepard every step of the way and I knew even before playing the game that she would need to be taken off of the board permanently for any chance that anyone else would be turned to for help in the future. I knew that and was waiting for it. I was enraptured by Tuchunka and Mordin, by Tali’s moment of ‘home’ on Rannoch, I cried through Grunt’s sacrifice and Thane’s last prayer. I was emotionally invested. These were my guys stuck in struggles which were beyond them but they fought on anyway.

I was highly impacted by the idea of playing a strong female character who doesn’t have to show her breasts to get attention from those around her. Guys have very little idea of how hard it can be to have to play a female character who is essentially designed solely for a male gamer’s pleasure (or leave him yearning for it). I loved the fact that FemShep was judged by who she was, what she could do and what she strove for. Not what she wore, how well she could flirt and how helpless she could look so that a man can run to her aid. I found a hero in FemShep and a home on the Normandy and I think a great number of female gamers feel exactly the same way.

From a writing perspective, Mass Effect is a goldmine. I think it has really taught me a lot of things about characters and perspectives; about actions, choices and consequences. It has made me ask story-type questions I haven’t had to ask before. It has shown me how possible it is to have three-dimensional characters within your story – even when they’re not the hero of your story. I admire that.

I don’t know why the last installment turned out the way it did. Though I can’t say “never again!” to Bioware (I really want to, I won’t lie), I think I will only end up saying “not yet”. I think they’ve gotten as much of a knock as they’ve given. Maybe we’re all going to be a little careful around each other for a bit.