Well, there is a life lesson to learn in every little comeuppance. The matter has been triggered by the little deception I felt in finishing Mass Effect 3, and of course upon reflexion, I've seen the same shit appear in other mediums.

There's no mystery as to why Mass Effect fans whined about Mass Effect 3's ending. In a sense, if we aknowledge the greatly detailed theory made by fans, the ending makes sense... Somehow. But what's getting on people's nerves is the enormous amount of plot holes, the lackluster "conclusion" where you don't even see the results of what you DID throughout the series, whether it'd be a narrative description of the aftermath, or a real closure with characters interacting with each others. All in all, the ending to the Mass Effect franchise (and Mass Effect 3) lacks in details. We, as fans, spent mostly 30 hours per game rummaging through the nooks and crannies of the Universe to find every little plot details we may find, every little mission available, everything we could manage to interact with, every little step we may take in the right direction, or for the Renegade ones, every little ways we can be douchebags to every races in the galaxy.

And we're greeted with an ending not even worth a spot in a 1 hour shitty arcade game. I have seen better closure out of a plot from House of the Dead 3 than that from Mass Effect 3. Of course House of the Dead does not compare to Mass Effect in terms of plot, but that's the point! It SHOULDN'T be that way. I felt like my third and last entry in the franchise was rushed and botched to fit in whatever deadline EA had installed. And Bioware is about to launch an extended ending for Mass Effect 3, as a DLC. Maybe free, but still. The feeling that the product I bought was incomplete, still here in my mind.

Don't misunderstand me. The Ending to Mass Effect 3 was disappointing, but in its core and given the untold mysteries behind it, it makes sense. I have seen many stories have a bummer ending so, I can manage endings that aren't "American Dream". Endings that end on mysteries, though they piss me off since I like to have a real closure to the stories I follow, I can still manage. Do I expect a sequel? No. Not really.

People kept begging Bioware to change the ending to Mass Effect, to make something more fitting, something that makes more sense. More like, people were unsatisfied with the content of the ending, not enough closure, ends in a major plothole, multiple endings that end up being the same shit repeated over and over with just a different color of explosion to justify the... "multiple ending" scenario.

In a sense, I get why people are angered. I was too. I think the creative team or whoever was responsible for this were just jerking off on their work, tapping themselves on the back and congratulating themselves for their work without even noticing the black hole of nonsense that spawned from it. It's -again- fans that made sense out of the Ending for Mass Effect. And I'd be hard pressed to believe Bioware didn't think about the Indoctrination theory in the making of ME3.


What I fear, as a consumer: Bioware didn't think about that clever twist, even though every details described in the Indoctrination Theory makes all kind of sense, everything shown and told in the Lore of Mass Effect points out to EXACTLY that sort of twist. All that stuff that made so much sense, all in the mind of the fans. Mass Effect isn't supposed to make sense.


What other fuck up does that make me think about? George Lucas and his many betrayals of his own franchise. Turning Star Wars into a kid-friendly furball fest (the Ewoks), a hour and a half long Flying Hot Wheels commercial (Star Wars 1), the debunking of the supernatural Force for a simple germ (the Mediclurian... or however it's spelled), Gweedo shot first, and in Star Wars VI, Anakin the Blue Ghost is now that crybaby sissy from Star Wars 3 instead of the original actor. All in all, the Fans made Star Wars what it is, and George Lucas went on trying to make money out of his material by "adapting" his work to the general audience. Kids don't give a shit about the original actor for Darth Vader, they only know that sissy schmuck from Star Wars 3. Kids don't give a darn if the Empire is indestructible, they wanna see furballs kicking ass! Kids don't care about the Force or the Legacy of Star Wars, they want to see flying crap and silly creatures that pass themselves as Aliens, fart jokes, slapstick.
And what about Bobba Fett? Well poor guy died in the Sarlak Pit... except he didn't. Cause some writer decided Bobba Fett kicked too much ass to die in there, and George Lucas saw that as an opportunity to make more money. So it's cannonicaly approved.
As I said, the Fans of the franchise made Star Wars what it is. The FANS turned the Jedis in that flying circus of blades and impossible manoeuvers. What it was before: knights with shining blades. Knights don't move like Dante from Devil may Cry. Knights don't throw Kamehamehas of Force to pwn some noobs in the alleys of the Dark Star. Fans demanded that the Force become OP.


So what is gonna happen if they alter the ending to Mass Effect, to fit what the fans demand? Of course I'd be the reasonable one to say... Make my grinding worthwhile, I don't care if Shepard still ends up in the rubbles in a regular playthrough, as long as I can have a decent "perfect" ending, to justify all the troubles I went through. What SHOULD be in every RPG, an ending that closes the conflict for good. It was there in ME3, but not in a way that was satisfying, and left us with more unanswered questions than necessary.

I don't expect Bioware to just bend over and give fans absolutely everything they want. I don't want to have "all I want". It's a bit like the reality was there, but I was closing my eyes and having my little fanfic in my brains all over again. If Bioware give us what we want, we will miss the point where Shepard's story arc is over. What will happen with him in the end? The Reapers are dead. Everyone got zapped, more or less. Some characters got attacked, but I don't even know if they're okay. What about Wrex? What about my teammates? What about the other races that came in and tried to save Earth along us, Humans?


I don't recommend to anyone to force a "perfect ending" on any story. In this matter, a proper closure is all we wanted. We WANT to see what the fuck happened to everyone while Shepard was knocked out or dead or in the stars having a talk with a little brainless brat having an egotistical tantrum about Chaos and Order and all that bullshit. We WANT to have the right to see our 90~120 hours of investment be more worthwhile than a simple "Conglaturation, you beat this awesome game" in a black box and nothing else. And I can understand that. I don't want to spend 60 bucks on a high end entry on a high end franchise only to see my investment finish on a "We don't care what you fought for" ending.



But as I make this reflexion, I can't stop thinking about other reimaginings. Carrie, a story written by Stephen King, it's a story I loved since the day I read it. I read the book, I watched the original movie, I watched Rage Carrie II (shitty remake), then I watched the remake of the original years later, where I saw that... the Ending got changed. In a sense, it's more fair to the character how the movie ended. Carrie is a victim, who happens to have super powers to have her vengeance. I'll spoil the ending so be careful, skip this paragraph if you don't want to read it before watching the movie. Carrie survived from the stabbing of her mother, in the remake. She killed the stupid bullies with shitty motivations, as the original, but the girl whose boyfriend committed to give Carrie a bit of happiness before he died, she ended up running away with poor carrie, instead of... that shitty nonsensical horror ending from the original Carrie. As I said, as a fan, I've always felt like Carrie was just a victim in that whole mess. She doesn't deserve a horror monstery ending the way Chuckie, Freddy or Jason would. But that's how the original ended. Carrie is dead, she killed her mother, burned the house down, died alongside her, and so her story ends. As a fan, I WANT to see her escape and recover, have a new life for herself, be redeemed for all the crap that happened to her. As a fan, the director of the remake also felt that way, and went on making his own alternate ending.

I'm not so defensive about whatever source material comes about, even when faced with a remake. I've seen little of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, the original, but I've seen the remake with Vince Vaughn in it. I thought it was good, I thought it was respectful of the original. And since I've never been an adept of the Old American ways of Acting, back in the black & white era, I can almost say I can agree more on the talent of the actors in the remake than the original, but that'd be ignorance on my part.

All in all, sometimes it's better to adapt an old or dissatisfying concept to the majority. In terms of Videogames, it's more like giving the clients what they want. it's true most games nowadays are more like interactive movies rather than just interactive entertainment. Games went a long way since Pong. But it's also true that it's a consumer's market, more so than movies. It's always been true that a game company had better give the players at least a little of what they expect, if they want the players to give a darn about the next games they will publish. A movie costs 10 bucks at the cinema, and between 10 to 30 bucks in a DVD or BluRay format. A game, between 20 bucks and 80. Moviegoers will give an opinion about how they felt about the ending of the movie they just watched, they will tell how shitty it was, and sometimes the director will reinvent the ending or adapt, or face the shitty reviews and try to do better in the next ones. A gamer's opinion might have more weight on the final product of a high-end game since his investment is often two to three times that of buying a movie. His opinion might have more weight on a product since game companies are infinitely more dependant on the gamer's further investments rather than the moviegoer which will often not care whether or not Howard the Duck sucked when he's gonna go watch Star Wars VI. Gamers have more scrutiny over their videogames than ever, since it's easy for a game corporation such as EA to go overboard and take its consumers for granted. Moviegoers will go see Uwe Boll's next fuck up just for curiosity's sake, and to laugh at his stupidity, but gamers won't go see how's Mass Effect 4 if Mass Effect 3 was a blatant disappointment to them. Just speculating here, but I got my own experience as an old Final Fantasy fan. Little did you know that I am still without a copy of Final Fantasy 13 in my collection? And I've got FFX-2. Why have I not been enticed by the upcoming FFXIII? Maybe because I got sick of Squaresoft not listening to his own fans and throwing metrosexual fucks at us?

All in all... it's a difficult market, the world of videogames. People expect to have fun, to have control, to have their 20-40 hours of investment to be worth it. People don't like to pay 60 bucks for a game whose campaign mode ends in 4 hours. People don't like to have their beloved franchise end abruptly regardless of the loose ties left behind. There'S alot more to say, but that's over for the moment. *bonk*