by Shane O'Hare Mass Effect 3 and The Story of Privileged Gamers.

Just the other day Bioware and EA announced that they will be offering FREE DLC to owners of Mass Effect 3. This DLC addresses the complaints gamers had with the milquetoast ending. The DLC will include new cinematics for the end that are said to offer more closure and context. What does this decisions mean for gamers and other developers?

CAUTION SPOILERS AHEAD

First off let me just say this. Fuck you (not you, I like your hair), all you privileged spoiled brats. The people that got together and complained to the BBB on Bioware and EA because the story didn’t go the way you wanted. Fuck you guys that ordered $1000 worth of cupcakes and sent them to Bioware, forcing them to pay the COD charge because you felt the choices were “vanilla”. Fuck you guys that voted EA the worst company in America, beating out BofA, a corporation that was a key factor in the US housing crisis. Worst of all fuck you Bioware, get a god damned backbone. This series of events is NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR!

How is going to a story creator and demanding they change their work to suit your taste even remotely ok? You don’t go up to George R. R. Martin and demand he put out a new ending chapter to one of his books because you didn’t like how it ended. Go up to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and ORDER them to put out a new ending verse to Californiacation because you didn’t like how it ended.

This thought process is absurd and shocking to me. We live in the time where the ability to talk to some important people is terribly easy. Your favorite drummer on Twitter? Fucking tweet him. The creators of Mass Effect 3 on Twitter? Tweet them. So this pseudo friendship or bond is created, and we (well not me, you) get this sense of entitlement. We think “Hey, Larry really made a bad ending to Mass Effect, lemme give him a call and ask him to change it for me”, AND THAT IS NOT OK.

What happened to the days where if you bought a game and it had a shitty ending you dealt with it? Unless it was a PC game that had proper patch releases or expansion packs, you never saw narrative changes in a game. The only time I could EVER think of anything like this happening before is Turok Rage Wars. Acclaim offered a cartridge exchange for one that was fixed, but that was only because the game had a giant non ending bug in it, not because the ending wasn’t fulfilling.

I find the Mega64 guys offer the best explanation on the actions taken by certain gamers.

People keep forgetting the fact that its a FREAKING VIDEO GAME! The people getting upset are demanding this real world sense of accomplishment, something to show around to people saying “MY CHOICES AFFECT A GAME”. It is completely childish and asinine. The reasoning behind the “protesters” is the ending doesn’t give them their sense of closure. They feel like they didn’t change anything. It. Is. A. Video. Game. I am disgusted to be apart of a community that made these choices, that bullied a videogame company into changing their story. Changing their work of art. So let me say it one last time.

YOU THAT DEMANDED THIS CHANGE. YOU ARE ALL ACTING LIKE BABIES AND IT IS EMBARRASSING WHAT HAS COME OF YOUR ACTIONS. IF YOU KEEP THIS SHIT UP THEN WE WILL HAVE ANOTHER LUCAS AND HIS SPECIAL EDITION TRILOGY.

I am a very upset and angry man, so for now I am going to turn it over to my friend and fellow Geekscapist, Steven Kunz. His take on all this Mass Effect 3 business is far more level headed.

I think this Extended Cut DLC is really a combination of a few things. 1) It is my personal belief (And my personal belief alone at the time of writing this editorial) that Bioware simply did not have time to finish the ending as they truly intended, so this DLC is simply going to fill the gaps that Bioware wanted to initially fill but ran of time to do so. 2) I think that all this is going to amount to, in the end, is additional cutscenes in the final battle against Earth that show more variety with the species that you recruited as well as possibly show more results of the war assets. (Ships destroying more reapers for high EMS, reapers dominating Earth for low EMS) as well as show an epilogue of where the species end up after Mass Effect 3, and how your decisions do impact the epilogue. 3) I feel that this does address at least ONE of the fans’ major concerns with the ending, so Bioware is moving in the right direction, especially since the DLC IS free.

However, Bioware is only addressing ONE major concern with the ending whereas the other major concerns still range from the sudden appearance of the Starchild, why Shepard chooses to simply believe what the Starchild says, why Joker was seemingly running away from the final battle, amid other criticisms about the ending. If Bioware chooses to stick to it’s guns and not update or add to the ending further, and I make this statement as an extremely broad assumption, but I have a strong feeling that this could negatively impact future DLC for the game to the point where it no longer becomes profitable to create DLC to further generate revenue, which could also lead to all potential development of extra Mass Effect 3 content to a complete stop and that also means no guaranteed ending changes.

This is all opinion based on what was said from Bioware and EA, and until the DLC is released, we can only judge from what we have, and what we have regarding the ending isn’t much. Hopefully, at least some of the major concerns are addressed in some manner while new ones aren’t added.

And as for my personal thoughtrs on the ending, the ending didn’t fully register until 2 weeks later, mainly because I thought Garrus and Tali died in the last section of the game. When I replayed the ending after seeing they were not dead, I did see the sudden introduction of the Starchild and the limited endings as major dissapointments, but not dealbreakers to me, as I know that this is NOT the end of the Mass Effect series. I do hope that more changes occur to offer more ending variety, and I do hope that additional DLC will be just as fulfilling as most of the series has been, but overall, I’m not holding my breath for any drastic changes. Lastly, despite the last 10 minutes of the game, I would STILL give this a recommendation to play, as well as a recommendation to get into the series, as Mass Effect is still a great franchise in my opinion. The ending of the Shepard Saga of Mass Effect should not deter any gamers from experiencing the universe, nor should it also invalidate the time and memories players have invested in the series.

That’s my take, what about yours? Any opinions on the DLC ending?