Update: We've received an anonymous tip with a screencap of Takyris' messages on the Penny Arcade forums requesting that those discussing the game's ending not attribute the pertinent facts to him. The posts are dated March 11.

BioWare writer Patrick Weekes is well known on the Penny Arcade forums as user Takyris. Earlier, that account allegedly posted a fairly damning diatribe about Mass Effect 3's controversial ending. In it, the author claims that the game's finale was written by Casey Hudson and lead writer Mac Walters without any input from the rest of the team, and many protests from the other writers were ultimately ignored.

Now, the reason I've been throwing around the word allegedly like it's nothing is because the entire story has become very muddled by recent events. The original post has since been deleted, and several other posts on the Penny Arcade forums quoting the post have been edited to remove the text, ostensibly because the author asked that he not be quoted.

In addition, BioWare's community coordinator Chris Priestly has said that after contacting Weekes about the matter, he's decided it's nothing more than an imitation.

That being said, the text in question does seem to have some insider knowledge of Mass Effect 3's development process, and subsequent responses on the Penny Arcade forums, as well as one trusted firsthand source, have indicated to us that the text in question did, in fact, originate with the Takyris account. That's obviously not solid proof that Weekes penned the post himself, but it's quite clear that the situation isn't cut and dry either way.

In the interest of not making the hearsay any worse than it already is, we've reproduced the full text of the message below. Verified or not, it provides an interesting perspective on Mass Effect 3's ending, and it's a worthy read regardless of the source. There are some major spoilers, though, so be warned.