(Penny Arcade reference)
For lo! – The company has decided that the umpteen billion complaints – of which at least some could be, dare I say, accurately described as whines – represents an opportunity for the company to score an extra six to ten bucks out of all of the complainers’ hides.
The co-founder of Bioware Studios wrote on the company’s official blog that game developers are looking at the alternative outcomes for “Mass Effect 3” following protests that the differences are too minor, depending on choices players make during the course of the game.
The term of art is ‘game content initiatives.’ I suspect that means ‘happy-shiny ending DLC;’ and all I can say is, it better have a lot of spare credits and upgrade scattered through the play-through and not automatically replace the original ending. Contra this, some of us actually liked the way that Mass Effect 3 ended.
But… fine. Some people had legitimate reasons for being upset. I’m happy for their sakes, even if it means less other-DLC down the line.
Moe Lane
PS: What? Danged straight people should pay for this. The voice actors, programmers, writers, technical staff, clerical staff, and the cleaning lady all need to be paid; and Bioware is a business. It’s not a surrogate family-substitute and it’s not your college roommate. Besides: this is already going to eat up some of the production time for DLC for the game that I personally particularly want; I’d rather that it not eat up any of the existing budget, too.
I’d say there are two (maybe three) areas that Bioware could address. 1) the lack of differences in the endings. That’s pretty tough without radical surgery. and then 2) explaning what the hell just happened and 3) what happened to your cast of colleagues, which are rather easier to do.
I suspect we will see a lot of 2) and 3), partly because that will play into whatever game they NEXT wish to do in this universe, I wager.
Love ya Moe but I disagree … mostly because of what is outlined below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M0Cf864P7E
There is a written version out there that I originally read and agreed with but I can’t find it :(.
Just change the reason why the Reapers are attacking to something that makes sense, that is all I ask.
@AZR
What, you don’t like the “Yo dawg, I heard you don’t wanna be killed by synthetics so I made some synthetics to kill you every 50K so you won’t be killed by synthetics” explanation?
Sorry, Dan, but when it got to two minutes and hadn’t actually gotten to any of the reasons I kind of decided that I didn’t really care that much. 🙂
I’ll read a version of it if there’s one available, but I can’t fast forward my eyes and ears.
@Moe – I found the article that I read originally: http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/
Now, that being said I did enjoy the game as a whole and he series (as a whole). I sort of agree with Gabe (of PA fame) that the entire 3rd game could be considered ‘the ending’ but really, that last 10 min cut scene really does spoil what was pretty much a phenomenal story.
Dan: I respect the point of view of the person who wrote that, but I think that I have a disconnect with that point of view: from where I sit Shepard’s actions got pared down to no-more-choices somewhere around the attack on the Citadel. That was then she realized that almost nobody in the Galaxy wanted her to be a human anymore. They wanted her to be a perfect heroine, and everything that wouldn’t fit would be taken away from her.
And it was. She died alone, but Shepard knew going in that she would die alone. She would not be permitted to keep anything for herself, and that was the way of it.
Moe – yeah, I can accept that, but I really wish I hadn’t saved all my credits to upgrade for a final battle then finish the game in toasted armor and the starter pistol!
One of the points the video made that resonated with me was that none of the choices at the end would have been a choice my Shepard would have made. She had just reunited the Geth and Quarians for goodness sakes. I would have like the “No dice lil dude, we’ll just sit here and see how all this plays out.” … or an interrupt .. something.
Also – seeing Elcor ‘living tanks’ would have been awesome (yet another item the video brings up).
Funny thing is, I didn’t buy ME3 because it wasn’t on Steam, so I figured I’d wait til it was $20 or so, that being about my non-Steam limit. Plenty of other stuff to play. I wasn’t actively avoiding spoilers or anything, but honestly, there’s not usually much to spoil in a video game ending. But they managed to come up with an ending that more or less got rid of any desire I have to play through it, so I guess I’ll save the money. I think that’s where they shot themselves on this, they’ve killed the sales that would normally have come after the initial release.