I had so much material for this one, that I had to split it up into four parts.
Part Two.
Part Three.
Part Four.
Before you click over to whatever net destination you'd prefer over what appears to be yet another nerd-rage laden Mass Effect 3 rant, let me pacify you: It's not another nerd-rage-laden Mass Effect 3 rant. It's not even a rant, per se. I'm removed enough now from my initial anger and I've come to a place of more constructive critique and less rampant stabbing. Yes, I feel less stabby. Don't let the title of the piece fool you. I'll explain how it comes into play. First, let me clarify one very important thing here, before I get hip-deep into self-serving prose and irreverent humor (which is how I deal with disappointment. Bear with me.):
I love Mass Effect 3. I love Mass Effect 1, and 2. As I write this, I've got my N7 patch sitting nearby awaiting attachment to a coat or hat, and the soundtrack that came along with my Collector's Edition of 3 playing on Winamp. I love this franchise. I believe, without equivocation, that the Mass Effect Universe (hereafter referred to as MEU because that's just ridiculously fun to say) is the most important sci-fi franchise of the current generation. I'd put it up there in terms of depth and detail right alongside Star Trek and Star Wars without batting an eyelash, and without a single trace of irony. Now, before the blue-box crowd lights their torches, I'll point out that I'm also a huge Who fan, but I've always considered it to be its own genre-hopping creature. Bow-ties are cool, and I desperately want a TARDIS.
This, however, is all about Shepard's galaxy. I LOVE Mass Effect. How much do I love Mass effect? I love it enough to prattle on at great length to terrified random strangers, and then to the cadre of police that arrive shortly thereafter to deal with the call about the babbling psychotic who's preaching about the glories of quantum-entanglement skype calls. Check and mate, Trek and Wars. Sorry.
Cool story, Skywalker. My entire arm turns into a laser sword.
Now, to also curtail the backlash, you'll have to excuse the imagery or the free-slinging of masculine pronouns I'm about to use. I played my initial run of Mass Effect 3 as a male Shepard. I freely play both, and enjoy the game as either. (Insert “switch-hitter” jokes here.) For the purposes of this piece, you may freely interject “her” for “him” and so on as pleases you. Either Shepard, to me, is Shepard. It's that simple. There is no “correct” Shepard gender- the Tao of the Shepard is not the true Tao. The Galaxy is not saved by fleshy bits or lack thereof, alone.
I'll also say this here, though I will point it out from time to time hereafter: SPOILERS. If you've not played 3 through to completion, then your cognitive span is needed elsewhere. Go, my child. There is a galaxy to save. I'll still be here when you get back. But, if you've finished the game, and genuinely have a satisfactory opinion over the game's controversial ending, I invite you to stay. I'd like you to see that dissent, in this case, does not automatically mean bandwagon hate.
You see, I love Mass Effect 3. I also love the ending of Mass Effect 3. There's just one small issue: it's not a Mass Effect 3 ending.
I can hear the sound of the needle gouging your mental record, so let me explain.
I don't say this with the same thousand-yard stare and upraised threatening fist I might use when I declare that Highlander 2 doesn't exist. H2 doesn't exist because it was a bad movie, and a bad move in the franchise. The ending to ME3 was a GOOD ending. ME3 is a FANTASTIC game. The problem is that, when taken as a whole, the ending is an oversized titanium-coated square peg that's suddenly, and unnecessarily, forced into a tinier, rounder hole made of a completely different material.
I can honestly see what the writers were trying to do here. I understand the message, nihilistic though it may be in terms of some of the choices. I even understand the hints, subtle and overt, that are pointing the player to a foregone conclusion. The hints they give in the series, and its end, are completely different and separate from each other. What the ending does, in the 11th hour (11th hour herein actually referring to the last 15 or so minutes of the game) is present you with something unexpected, jarring, and ultimately too simple for the mythology that has been established up until this point. In short, it's not a twist, it's not clever, and it's handled so poorly that the reaction has been justifiably visceral.
This is the last thing a Bioware forum mod sees before mercifully drinking themselves into a full blown blackout.
I'm not in the “fix it”camp; that growing group of gamers online who have confused frustration with self-entitlement. While I don't necessarily approve of some of the commentary coming out of the EA and Bioware bastions, I sympathize with them and agree on one crucial point: They owe us nothing in terms of additional work. That's to say, if there was an issue that was game-breaking or prevented me from playing the game, I'd be among the multitude singing hosannas of PATCH THIS. What the “fix-it crowd” wants, illogically to me (but hey, it's the internet) is for the companies to effectively work for free to produce some form of DLC that completely unmakes the finale and replaces it with a more palatable proxy. I hate to break this to you, but even with my disappointment with the ending, it is what it is. You don't get to lobby for change to creative decisions. It's there, it's canon, and your rage in this department is impotent. I could easily say the same for myself as I'm writing out this article, but the key difference here is I'm simply clearing the air concerning my thoughts. I'm not about to flood Bioware's already straining inbox with yet another futile example of “I r angry give me wut I want, assholes”.
And don't even get me started on the Facebook legions.
In the future, Reaper-Facebook is preferable. Soul-crushing posts aside, there's no Zynga, no games, no Timeline, and reaper chicks have no lips, so no more duck-face pics.
Nor am I in the group who skewed their reviews based on their anger concerning the day-one DLC. I just don't care. I really don't. Even if I had been in a position of knowing what the DLC entailed, but without a way to access it yet (Happens to me all the time. I'm a freelancer, which is to say broke. I didn't play Borderlands or Mass effect 2 DLC until long after it dropped) I would not care. Bioware and EA are in it to make money. Don't like it? Don't support it. But given what I like to call the “Battlefield 3 Effect”, you'll rage and snarl and brandish weapons and still be playing the game the day it goes live. Spare me.
Look at Space-Kanye's uncaring expression. LOOK AT IT.
I'm talking about the general wave of anger. Now, I've already seen a few articles floating about in the ether that are dismissive of this anger to the point of insulting. I understand that. It's easy to dismiss what you perceive as a trend, or even a “let's hate this game because it's popular” meme. That's the easy road; it's a top-down critique on what you see as bandwagon antics because you could not possibly fathom why the point of view is so radically removed from yours. So, it's unfounded, biased, and ultimately unimportant and easily regarded as trite. It's just the internet doing what it does best. But what if- just what if, some of those in the throng had a point? For example, I'm not dismissing those who enjoyed the ending, or those who have qualified it utilizing an impressive arsenal of florid praise and nods to what they see as a philosophical thought-project. I get you. I get what the ending tried to convey.
What am I getting at? Simply this: don't be so quick to dismiss without taking a harder look. You may not agree with me, and that's fine, but the current attitude of “you're not right to your anger/criticism” is absolutely ridiculous, and completely undermines your stance and the content your are so valiantly defending. That's like saying “you're wrong to turn pickles down, or say they're bad, because I like pickles, and you're just being an asshole and joining the anti-pickle brigade because it's trending”.
Again. Spare me.
Still Space-Kanye. Still uncaring.
I won't talk overlong about the “our choices don't matter” bit, either. Guys, Mass effect, for all it's virtues, is an extended Choose-your-own-Adventure tale. (Yes, I'm freely dating myself with that reference). The choices ARE illusory free will, and half the fun is going back and seeing how things play out through other choices- but those choices, and the outcomes, have always been finite. I hate to sound nihilistic here, but in terms of bringing things to a close, no- your choices could not matter. Like in all things, your choices could only affect the collateral damage. The building's still going to blow up, player, but how well you do will decide if the orphanage next door gets nuked or just has a REALLY interesting day.
The "Mundane Daily Grind" DLC was not all that well received.
Come along with me, if only for a little while, and I'll walk you through my writer-rage. That's right. Not nerd-rage or gamer-gall or even player-pique. This is all about writer-rage.
When I finished the game in the wee hours of the morning, my wife (who's not an avid MEU fan, but who had heard me talking so much about it and had caught some very cool parts of my playthrough, decided to sit next to me as I finished so SHE could find out what happened next) noted that I did something that I have never, ever, done after finishing a game, or movie, or novel.
I said nothing but “hmm”, and without further comment I went outside for a smoke, I came back inside, and went straight to bed. No commentary, no fist pumping explosions of “that was awesome!” that Dr. Chakwas might approve of-
The sad thing is: I didn't have to do anything to this pic. It came made to order. Thanks, Internet!
-no launching into an obscenity-laden tirade over how miserably fail the ending was (I'm looking at YOU, Sword of Truth series). Nothing. My conclusion to Shepard's story; the arc that brought me such joy, pathos, heartbreak, hope and vicarious feeling of accomplishment, ended with hardly a word uttered.
Not with a bang, but a whimper. A fucking confusing whimper, at that.
Shepard was understandably shaken, and perhaps a little gassy.
On the consumer side, on the gamer side, on the individual who was looking to be entertained and enjoy a little late-night escapism side, I found myself stunned into almost a catatonic state, and turned off my console without so much as displaying any sign that the game's final imagery had affected me at all. The game had failed to deliver.
I slept. Upon waking, I began to think over it. I went online and read viewpoints, pro and con. I contemplated what came before, and how things turned out. During all this, one inescapable and ultimately ruinous (for my weekend, anyway) thread began to take shape and take hold: I was angry. I separated the gamer experience and looked at it for what it was, and for what had entertained and engrossed me up until this point. I looked at the story as a whole, and how the ending effectively ruined it for me. Not because it was a bad ending, but because it was not the ending that I could logically pin to the end of all things in the MEU, and because it unnecessarily undid so much genius on the part of the writers that had so successfully hooked this writer.
And that spawned the title of this piece. When you meet another person, the first impression is often what you most strongly remember and associate with that other carbon-based bipedal unit. When it comes to entertainment, that last bit is what usually shapes the whole of the experience for you. I mention the Sword of Truth series, because I found the ending to be a flaccid affair to what was shaping up to be an epic conclusion. Naturally, I fail to mention my love of the first three novels in that series- why? Because that last impression is the one I carry with me. There's a reason so much work and effort goes into a finale for any form of entertainment. The creator wants you to leave with a very specific impression, because they know that's what you'll remember after it's all said and done.
Mass Effect 3's left me with a decidedly poor view of the game overall, even when I could rationalize and remember the absolutely fantastic experiences I had leading up to that last little bit. It made no sense. It was completely non-sequitur. The the game I had just been gushing about, and who's narrative had managed to even draw in an outside observer like my wife, could not possibly be ruined, could it?
Of course not. Stay with me here.
And after much discussion, much back and forth and consideration, I was really only left with one way to look at it, and let that anger go: the ending didn't belong in the story. In short, it was a great ending to some other game- a game that I had simply not played yet. So why is it such a poor choice for Mass Effect 3?
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