Who wins when Mass Effect 3's ending changes?

Gamespot chose their side in this war when they reviewed Mass Effect 3. They approved the ending and they continue sucking Bioware's balls. Sometimes paid media is too transparent to not see it.

I cannot believe some of the crap the people of GameSpot are saying in the article! Seriously, these are some of the most foul-mouthed, unprofessional responses I have ever seen on any game site! If you expect us not to swear, you need to practice what you preach and act like the professionals you should be instead of insulting us users!

@fiendling - "How does "artistic integrity" apply to a collaborative creation?" this is how! http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/arts/design/01underbelly.html?pagewanted=all

Dear Gamespot, on the 2/29/12 Hotspot Casey Hudson (ME executive producer) did in fact promise an ending that long term fans will be satisfied with. FACT OF LIFE = if you purchase an item that has a promise of satisfaction, and then you were not satisfied with that product, then you have the right as a paying consumer to make a complaint about it !

Congratulations Gamespot, you are as out of touch with gamers as Bioware is. I am also getting really tired of all this "artistic integrity" BS. Mass Effect 3 was developed by a team consisting of hundreds of individuals (just watch the end credits for confirmation). How does "artistic integrity" apply to a collaborative creation? If you can even justify the use of "artistic integrity", please explain how our demands on a change then violates said "artistic integrity"? Isn't incorporating our ideas into the new DLC just expanding the scope of the original collaboration?

The ending is awful (for the impossibilities and glaring plot holes better people than me have described and addressed) and no clarification will improve or satisfy the fans. You can't clarify such awful writing and deus ex machina crutches at the climax of your masterpiece. You just can't..... Indoctrination Theory was their saving grace and it made perfect sense. It hurts that it isn't true and all the coincidences this theory puts forth is in actuality, horrible writing.

I don't want to retype the whole things again, the ending is "HORRIBLE" we as gamers invested 100 hrs (exclude replay hrs) & this is what we got? 3 Different color? promised 16 ending but now only 3? Instead of 3 ending actually is 1 basic ending. from 16 to 1...MASS DISAPPOINTMENT. I don't know who is the 1 start the rumor of Indoctrination to persuade players to accept this & let Bioware have some free room (pressure from gamers) to make another ending. But i will not accept this indoctrination no matter how make sense is it, because if we gamers accept it which imply that we agree Bioware to give us UNFINISHED PRODUCT now and in the future. Consider ME 3 is my final support toward Bioware. Dragon Awakening, Dragon Age 2 & Mass Effect 3 same disappointment. Dragon Age 3? My confident shake like hell for DA 3, why? because we only enjoy the fruit of the events from previous series but not the fruit of the character (because main character keep changing, everything start from zero). Come think about this, if ME series start with Non-Shepard character...imagine what gamers reaction?

Gamespot editors, if we're going to compare Mass Effect to Beethoven, then let's imagine that Beethoven had wrapped up his ninth symphony with five minutes of developmentally-challenged howler monkeys banging on trash cans with baseball bats. If he had, I think it would be fair for the audience to point out that this segment of the work does not match either the style or quality of the rest, and that his artistic vision would, in fact, be best served by significant revision. Although the ending of ME3 isn't quite that bad, it has serious flaws, and I don't buy the argument that it's a violation of "artistic integrity" or whatever to call it out. Most art is iterative, and ideally the iteration is completed before it's released to the audience, but in this case the writers messed up and released a bad ending. And it IS bad - opinions can differ over the substance of it (I'd argue that it's arbitrary and disconnected from the rest of the work), but there's no question that it was poorly executed. We're left wondering: who's still alive? What planet is that? How'd that person get on that ship? Is this a dream sequence? This kind of ambiguity proceeds from poor storytelling, not artistic vision.

The current situation with everyone bashing Bioware for the way they ended ME, reminds me of the movie "Misery" (1990) which was based on Stephen King's novel: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100157/

@The_GooBear You're right I didn't talk to Edi much. I guess I just assumed that during the whole Reaper fight on Earth, the AI of the most advanced ship in the Alliance fleet wouldn't be turning tail and running with the most important figures in the war (your crew). By your account all I can see is the entire crew saying "WTF bring us back EDI! Shepard did so much for our people the least we can do is fight until the death in his HONOR!"

@Daemoroth I agree.

@GreySeven, it's a pretty interesting idea, I wouldn't be surprised if BioWare at least ran with it for a bit. Will have to wait and see, but if that's the case, it sets a dangerous precedent where a developer can hold off the punchline to their story and release it as a DLC later.

@Daemoroth Have you seen this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ythY_GkEBck Maybe it's a good moment to take a pause and wait to see the BioWare reply.

**ENDING SPOILER** don't read if you haven't beaten the game please. I think 2 of the 3 endings were fine.... shep dies (he did in mine, i chose synthesis).... player's choice...kinda perfect actually...if you die, you're not supposed to know what happens... but the issue is the ending showing the "breath" of an N7 in concrete rubble... .that is the ending that is BS and what everyone is pissed off at... if you fought through "god child reaper" or "indoctrination" or whatever the hell the end was, it doesnt matter, you choose the option that lets you live so the player should be able to continue the game from that point and see the "Real ending"... but then again... i have a feeling that bioware/EA might have planned this all from the beginning.... just check their twitter feed and there are some pretty suspect tweets about "Not the whole story, "cant keep it in much longer" and so on.... fishy..... i just have a feeling they planned this whole charade. Drama = interest. this game got even MORE publicity from all of this. I mean the marketing people launched games into SPACE.... whats not to stop them from withhold the ending, for o lets say, a month.... just to keep people on the edge of their seats waiting for it.... people don't want a changed ending....just a finished one.

Carolyn Petit; As I said before, S____ thrown on a wall isn't art no matter how much may try to call it that. This is no more art than godzilla vs mothra, and less so than the game of poker. Try and get a grip on reality.

Judeuduarte, all you have are assumptions. You are simply assuming this cause you dont want to believe otherwise. Believe me, I own every game bioware has made. I dont like it either, but unlike you I dont get a sense of wondering. Actually thats not true. I'm wondering where the real end is and why it isn't in the game. I'm wondering why they screwed up so bad. These are the things the games ending has me wondering. There last couple of games have left me with the same feeling. DA2. Old Republic. And this has me wondering if I even want to buy anymore bioware games. They seem to be on a downward spiral and I dont want to be there for the crash. Personally DA O was much better then this ( in my opinion). Bioware has turned all there games into corridor shooters. They've taken out the wandering and put set paths with little branches, and taken out any of the rpg elements. No, if bioware can think to use the same cave for every cave in the game (DA2) and get away with it, then yes I believe they can make a giant faux pas like this and think they can as well. It's been said that the original ending was leaked early. I personally think is the rush job to change it and they didn't think it all the way through. This was by far my least favorite of the mass effects.

Who wins of BW changes ME3 endings ? I think that BW and players, the public wins ... however the journalists, so called "senior reviewers" and other VIP loose, because with all the acid they throw on public, they ridiculise their profession. They show publically what is said in forums for a long time: that they are not objective, they are in the picket of "majors" and they do not deserve to be read and followed.

@isahunt and @wallydog63 i think the final scene of the normandy is a metaphor. i mean i could believe it if my squad didn't appea, but since they do that makes no sense and i don't believe bioware would make such a mistake. and about the endings, it's not the ending by itself that matters, is your choice and what that might mean for the future of the galaxy. oh yes the could make an ending like dragon age origins where they explain every possible outcome in text, but this it leave us wondering if we made the right choice. personally i like it

i think the fans in general win -if people like the ending as is then they don't have to worry about it. If people don't like the endings they have shown we can affect change with corporate entities who frequently ignore them. Also i do feel the ending wasn't done well -i feel it was just rushed which surprises me as this game series. Plus i was expecting different endings-real different not just different colors -plus the previous game had a couple of endings that were different enough -plus as its established that its not the end of the game series its more understandable that they don't have a big epilog which might also be part of the issue. This is the ending for 3 games worth of time -it should be good.

to the_goobear: the original Duex ex had three endings. The second Duex ex had multiple endings. It happens. This isn't original. As for your multi endings, they were almost identical with slight differences. You can watch all the ending together on one particular video and they are so much alike it's not funny. There's not enough of a difference to feel any kind of sense of awe or wonder. You should find and watch all the ending together to actually see how small a difference there actually is. It really is sad. Isahunt, it's exceptable that EDI and Joker could do that, but how did she get the rest of the crew, that was on earth, aboard as well? Even Edi's not that good.

@Kurtis Seid "Bioware needs to add scenes explaining Joker on the Normandy. Why did he leave Earth? When did he pickup the crew? Why is he using a relay?" Joker is not using the relay. He is using the FTL. Jumping through the relay is almost instant (example: jumping through Omega 4), and you cannot control the ship. We see Joker hitting the controls - presumably he is trying to make the Normandy go faster while using the faster-than-light drive, and therefore not using the relay. Why are they leaving Earth? I presume EDI has notified Joker that if the shockwave will hit Normandy, it will have unknown or devastating (EDI "dying") consequences and Joker is doing everything to prevent that.

Adding some endings means it's gonna be DLC right? Just hearing DLC these days leaves a bad taste behind lately to majority of us.

Just read somewhere that BioWare promised 16 possible endings. Guess that explains why I went into the ending open-minded, didn't hear about that prior to playing. Woulda pissd me off too I suppose

The only thing I think they could've done to make the ending better would be to put the choices on seperate paths. The fact that they were all right there in front of me ticked me off. Destroy should've been located somewhere else and should've been a defiance of Reaper control. Synthesis should've been the kiddo's main suggestion and Control shouldn't have been there at all. What's to stop the Reapers from coming back? Paragon option was the only ending that totally disappointed me.

Why did everybody assume it was going to be a Silent Hill type ending where what you do or don't can effect the occurences of the ending? Regardless, the choices you make effect the situations at hand and having multiple outcomes within a situation is enough cause to replay as I did with 1 & 2. You still see the results of your decisions within ME3's story, they don't need to reflect on the ending. Besides, name another game where you were given 3 choices for an ending

@Ski_Spastic Obviously, you didn't talk to EDI much. She felt the Reaper threat coming during the Earth invasion and flew the crew to safety since she now has full control of the ship. Take it u remember the ending from 2. She also says she exists primarily in the ship so regardless of whether you take her humanoid vessel on the last mission, she's still in control of the Normandy and she knew what was happening.

For those who's biggest excuse for not wanting to change the ending is because they want to call it art, I have but one thing to say. Anyone can throw a pile of c___ on the wall and call it art. Doesn't mean that it is or that it's good. Anyone going into a restraunt and ordering a nice dinner, don't complain if it's not how you wanted it. The chief has every right to make it the way he feels it should taste. It is his art, so just shut up and eat it. Doesn't matter that you've spent good money on it, if he changes it for you the rest of us will lose respect for him. It is his artistic right to cook your food anyway he likes. You guys are such a joke. As far as it being there interpretation of how they wanted it to end, what a load. It was a rush job to change the end from the one that got leaked.

If they do write a new ending, I bet they'll sell it as DLC....

@GreySeven, and what about the integrity and reputation lost from delivering the exact opposite of what they were yapping on about? Or doesn't that count? How does fixing your screw-up cause you to lose integrity? Why create day 1 DLC (That was just to "kill time" cause it could get certified faster, or whatever the excuse-of-the-week is), when your ending isn't done? Why implement a lacklustre multi-player experience when you're not even going to finish the main game? Oh right, that's because you could get more people to buy it, and buy it at a higher price. And as a bonus, anyone who calls you on it will be insulted by the bought-and-paid-for game sites and many of the fans. You advertise a product, you deliver that product. If you don't, the onus is on you to either take returns, or to fix it. If BioWare would take my copy and give me back my $60, I'd have just done that and kept my mouth shut.

After thinking about it I give the fan boys credit, if you played this game from mass effect 1 and expected your hard work to be rewarded with a secret locked ending that only the dedicated would enjoy I'd say your right. Bio-ware dropped the ball on it and lied to there fan base promising a rewarding ending for anyone who played it since the first. All you got were a few cut scenes. I played since the second and got the same ending as anyone else. And for that I gotta says that bull because I was gonna buy mass effect 1 but whats the point?

I have to be honest, when i first ended the game i didn't like it one bit, partly because all the bad expectation because the other people. But then i repeated the last part so i could see the 3 endings and i thought about it, and now i really like it. first i think all you need to do is think about the ending a little bit. yes mass effect is a game in which your choice matters a lot, but we all knew that it would end with the reapers defeat, it was the journey here that was really important. the final choice let's you thinking about the future of the galaxy instead of just showing, or telling to you. if you really cured the krogans are they gonna to conquer the galaxy? you don't know so you think about it what makes you take the game with you even after you finished it, the same with the final choice, did you make the best one? then all the complains about the normandy and the plot holes, to me it seems it is obvious it is just a metaphor for a new beginning, why? because sometimes your squad mates are there too, and if you believe bioware would make such a mistake I don't even know why you bothered to play the game. Finnally i think the thing that really pisses me off is how everybody is dishing out hate on mass effect just because of the ending when it was one hell of a game, whether your talking about the trilogy or any of the games alone.

**SPOILERS** I cured the Genophage, saved the Arachni, gave the Geth free will, watched helplessly as the Quarians went extinct... and none of this was addressed in my ending. Guess the changes I made weren't significant enough to mention...

To end...Another thing were your love options...for folks who held off til ME3 to cvontinue with ME1 relationships, they got greeted to good things..folks who chose Tali or Garrus in ME2 and carried over to ME3 got a good thign too...but folks who took Jacob, Jack, Miranda, Thane...well Jacob dumped you for another girl, Miranda basically is in hiding, jack does nothing more than talk it out and Thane well Thane was a given. Also the death of Thane, Mordin, Legion and Morinth[if you had her on your team instead of samara] are kinda bittersweet. Folks also wanted to have Zaeed and kasumi to have bigger parts, but hey folks also wanted your crew form ME2 to join up with the crew of ME1 to make a great team, btu that didn't happen either...basically Bioware decided to screw folks over with the love plots for everyone who chose ME2 love interests and stick with only ME1 interests...apparently ME1 characters were more important then ME2. So to recap..game was great...endings sucked...Questions never answered, more questions added, Needed mroe teammates, Love interests were limited or never concluded properly...anything else anyone cares to add?

to contuinue....Though you also wind up technically killign off the Geth as well....whichy ruins your choices form before. The idea that your choice from ME1 and ME2 and all of ME3 would make a unique ending for you...well didn't turn out like that. Your decisions scaled up next to nothing in the 3 ending choices which are basically the same for everyone. Unlike ME1 where everyone had a unique ending based on their decisions [save or not save the council, udina or Anderson for council], ME2 [who survives and how ready you are determines the outcome]. Though the choice of who you made Council member in ME1 does not carry over to ME3, your stuck with Udina being Council member with no explanation at all. Also there is no explanation as to why Joker is flying through a Mass Relay when he was up in orbit with the other races fighitng reapers. No explanation on when the crew form Normandy was picked up from Earth, or how the ones with you at the final moment appear miraculously on the Normandy....also if you want to follow canon, in ME2 DLC Arrival, Mass Relay destruction means death of Star System...so technically the entire galaxy with Mass Relays in star systems are wiped out. That does not seem to occur and further aliens are now stuck in Sol System. What folks want more are answers, not hints or more questions..also there was no final boss, and Harbinger was completly missing form this game cept for a cameo..so you never really got to have a satisfying end.

Ok, a few thigns why folks are upset about the game overall and the ending...the first thing was the first day DLC [I personally have no issue with it, adds more detail to the game], the other thing is the way the game ends....and since spoilers are up i'll just write up the endings...You have the choice to control the reapers...the choice to synthesize with them and the choice to destroy them....in the first 2 shepard dies. The third shepard has a chance of living.

It is not about Shepard's fate at the ending that the makes the gamers angry, it is the pointless, misleading binding at the end that makes the 90+ hours of time I spent with the previous two instalments totally pointless. As someone said " If you are colour-blind then all three endings will be same for you.." :(

@Daemoroth I don't disagree with the point that the ending is incredibly illogical and stupid, I'm saying that BioWare should just keep it, and in changing it they lose integrity for their reputation in all future titles. It's bad enough that they have to live with it now that it's completed, if they lose all integrity then there's no hope for the future at all.

I just beat the game, and I thought it was as epic as ever. The end of a trilogy. All you nerds need the quit nerd raging over this. I have no idea what you people are complaining about the devs lying about the ending before the game came out. All's I knw is that I thoroughly enjoyed my Mass Effect experience. I hope they don't change the ending for all you people who have nothing better to do then complain about some game's ending. It's like people who didn't like the ending to the movie Arlington Road...I haven't seen people b1tch1ng about that. GET OVER IT!!!!!!! You have to admit, the game was friggin awesome.

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

@GreySeven, difference between not liking the ending, and being misled and deliberately lied to in previews and interviews ahead of release. And then having "journalists" conveniently leave out that particular detail in their "perfect score" reviews. I'm pretty sure this whole saga would have gone in an entirely different direction if the reviews pointed out that the ending threw everything that led up to that moment out the window, ignored every single statement made by the devs ahead of the release, and leaves you with the choice of which color explosions you want with your ending (Oh, and that the last words you see during that ending is "DLC"). Maybe if they pointed out that the time spent on the multiplayer component as well as the three months they had for the day 1 DLC should have been spent on actually creating the ending they've been bragging about, we wouldn't have been playing the game expecting the ending they've been bragging about. If we had honest reviews on the popular gaming sites, we would not have spent our money blindly. Instead we get fed some PR review meant to drive sales to repay the publisher for spending so much money on ads.

What really bothered me about the ending is that Xenosaga kept popping in my mind while watching me3's ending. They are soooooooooo similar!

played ME1 and loved it. Played Dragon Age 1 and love it... played ME2 and Dragon Age 2, mm and I stoped playing them... so far looks like the right move to do with bioware**

I played ME1 and loved it. Played Dragon Age 1 and love it... played ME2 and Dragon Age 2, mm and I stoped playing them... so far I looks likre the right move to do with bioware

It isn't that I see the entire game as the ending to the series so much as I see endings to the various storylines scattered throughout the game, with the final choice being the conclusion of only one of these. It isn't even surprising to me to see this type of choice at the conclusion of the game; it's as common in Bioware games as a game featuring a surprise attack on a small village/colony/ship by the antagonist at or near the beginning of the game. It's typical for the player, regardless of previous moral choices, to be given the choice of a light/dark ending. Mass Effect 2 was a departure from this part of the formula. That said, Mass Effect 3 was also a departure in that numerous major ongoing storylines are given definitive endings as the game goes on. They just don't all happen during the finale, and that's fine with me. In fact, I prefer to have them spread out like that, because it gives each of them its own emotional resonance. I'm not saying this as criticism of those who dislike the game's finale; one reacts to a work as they will and that reaction is going to be very personal by its very nature. I understand why people find things as they are dissatisfying. I didn't have a strong emotional reaction to the finale myself, but this doesn't bother me because I had so many along the way.

@bubbalooga You ever see a movie you didn't like? You ever read a book you didn't like? By your thinking, every author of every story and every director of every movie that didn't deliver exactly what was wanted from their fans should go back and edit their entire work as well.

Really its you own interpretation of the ending that counts the most. There are 3 different endings, and each one is open enough for you to decide what happens next. However; I do understand how the intricate choices that a player makes throughout the series do not really play out how you would expect. There really isnt a 'snowball' effect. In other words, at the end of the day no matter what u did, everyone can choose any of the endings (except the third i beleive, in which you need higher galactic readiness). Nonetheless; A paragon or a renegade has the same exact choices at the end of the game. Furthermore; it does not matter what races u let survive or gathered to help in the final battle. All these choices, these decisions, come down to endings that can be chosen by anyone regardless of the path they followed. I can understand why people are dissapointed about this and its dissapointing that bioware gave us set endings for us to choose rather then endings as a result of our actions and decisions.

I hate how these "game journalists" were quick to write us off as whiny, self-entitled fanboys. Not all of us when into rage mode. Not all of us are mindless rubes, Not all of us wanted a "happy" ending. We simply want what Bioware promised in the game, and that is variety of definitive, clear endings. Video games are Art, but not a traditional one. Video games can't be judge like other media, simply because they're interactive. Due to this distinction, the audience or player is just as much the artist as the team. Granted this isn't the case for every game, but certainly for mass effect. Even Bioware acknowledged the community's effect on development of the Mass Effect series, so much as to call the community as co-creators of the franchise as shown here http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/02/casey-hudson-bioware-co-created-mass-effect-3-with-the-sometimes-cranky-fans-interview/ . Casey Hudson stated "You know, at this point, I think we’re co-creators with the fans" in the that interview.

Anyone who was content with the endings and viewed the entire game as an "ending" I think is missing the point... Don't get me wrong.. I really enjoyed ME 1-3 up until the last 10 minutes. I wasn't looking for some cheesy happy ending where we won the war and Sheppard lives etc... I wanted epilogues for all the main characters/races/planets that we'd affected over the course of our journey. Considering this is the end of the trilogy, they could've put in a bit more effort then the "Choose ending 1,2 or 3". Out of all the 3 endings, the only one that seemed like the "Good" ending was the Synthesis one.. I didn't spend 3 games getting the Geth to finally Ally with the Quarians to see them just be wiped out in one simple ending choice. Oh well.. Either way. Fantastic game series, and I hope that other game companies follow suit and try to make games as deep and engrossing as this series was. Less FPS games please!

@beaker707, if you care to read the comments below (And tweats above) you would see how many of those defending BioWare are under the impression that we're after a "happy ending", and it gets really annoying to see yet another poster try to join an argument when they don't know what it's about. Also, about your idea that the quotes shouldn't be applied to the ending: Interview with Casey Hudson (Director) 1/10/12 http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/01/10/mass1525-effect-3-cas5ey-fdsafdhudson-interviewae.aspx?PostPageIndex=2 Interviewer: [Regarding the numerous possible endings of Mass Effect 2] “Is that same type of complexity built into the ending of Mass Effect 3?” Hudson: “Yeah, and I’d say much more so, because we have the ability to build the endings out in a way that we don’t have to worry about eventually tying them back together somewhere. This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.....The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them.” So, how exactly does that not apply to the ending? I dunno about you, but we got the A, B or C ending, wouldn't you agree?

@Daemoroth Thanks, that's quite an interesting read. @Beaker Yeah, the journey is great. I love Mass Effect 1 to 3, its just at the end of 3, everything you've done up o that point means nothing at all.