The End

Achtung! Ich kommentiere im folgenden Text viele Aspekte der Mass Effect-Serie, unter anderem das Ende des dritten Teils. Da ich nun die Serie zum ersten Mal komplett bis zum Ende durchgespielt habe, habe ich ein paar der Gedanken, die mich dabei begleiteten und dir mir währenddessen kamen in eine Briefform gebracht. BioWare gibt ja selbst an, ihre Fans ernst zu nehmen, weswegen ich mir dachte, dass es dort vielleicht auch Interesse fände. Falls eine Antwort eingeht, werde ich berichten. Ach ja, da die Jungs drüben höchstwahrscheinlich kein deutsch sprechen und ich das Spiel eh in englisch gespielt habe, ist der Brief selbstverständlich in derselben Sprache gehalten, zum Übersetzen war ich dann auch zu faul.


Hey folks at BioWare!


Let me first of all thank you. Thank you for the adventurous journey it has been with my personal Commander (Chris) Shepard through the course of an outstanding gaming experience spanning three titles and some additional side missions. Before that, I have only very rarely been that much moved, that much motivated to follow a games' story and its characters (specifically in Final Fantasy VII and VIII).
I only got into the Mass Effect series not long before the release of the second game, but when I first started this, I knew I was going to witness something great. Generally, I am a big fan of science-fiction rather than fantasy which I for myself have just seen too much of. So when I heard of the second part, it looked really promising and thus I tried the first part which I got pretty cheap by the time.
What can I say, even the menu music got me right from the start. That is always a good point because I definitely am into good soundtracks for they can totally enhance the overall experience and give special moments in the game that certain feel. After I created my very own Shepard and the quest, whose significance I could not even think of at that time, started, I was happy. I had a complete galaxy filled with interesting characters of which some I came to make really good friends with, alien races, wonderfully written dialogues, an overwhelming story that would only slowly start to unfold, fast action-packed combat sequences and all that underlined by some of the greatest pieces of gaming score I have ever heard.
Honestly, as I said, I really like to listen to good gaming music and no one would question the Japanese Mr. Uematsu to be one of the greatest musicians of his kind. Yet still, as I heard Vigil the first time, it had a very specific effect on me. Combined with the scene where you are talking to the VI of the same name, it felt just perfectly fitting. Listening as that tens of thousands of years old computer was telling you about the fate of the Protheans just gave me the shivers, in a positive manner of speaking. And even just listening to the score piece itself makes me feel kind of calm, peaceful. It's absolutely amazing and I found myself having it set to repeat so I would listen to the track over and over again for, like, an hour or two. It does not get boring ever. I have come to think that it became some kind of core musical piece of my life actually. So thank you for that, too.
Then there are the decisions you face and that sometimes really made me sit back and think about. As I try to be more or less a nice person in my real life, I took the renegade approach in the game for the fun of it. At the end of each of the games, my character screen would tell me that I still am at least 20 to 30 percent a softie as I could just not take some of the renegade choices (I have only seen a video of the renegade scene with Mordin Solus, who could even DO that?). While some things were easy, like punching the bitchy reporter (nice running gag by the way), I could never take a renegade decision against some of my squad mates, especially friends or love interests. So I always ended up with a few paragon points, but i called that my "lawful evil" alignment in a way, because I only acted bad at people that deserved it and treated the ones close to me nice. Also I would usually not abandon any side mission just because I did not like the character offering it to me (although that seemingly happened in the third game).
The consequences of those choices sometimes were hard to take at times. When I got to the scene on Tuchanka, where I had to cure the genophage to get the support of the Krogan and Mordin told me he had to do the manual adjustments on his own... I admit it, I was so surprised and overwhelmed that I actually felt tears on my face (which does not happen usually). Then, again, Vigil was played in the background and Eve's funeral was shown which made it only worse. It took me some time to be able to play on afterwards. A great example on how truly outstanding this game can be.
On the other hand, and I felt that especially in the third game, decisions only feel like you have a certain freedom of choice but do not actually change much. One example I faced was the decision to end or save the life of the Rachni queen in Mass Effect. As I took the renegade approach, I killed the hideous creature. Searching YouTube-Videos, I found out, the only mentioning in the second game would have been an Asari on Illium talking to me, which is not actually much. In the third part, there would have been a reunion during a side mission where I could have saved her again, thus getting her help on the Crucible. Instead, I met some random breeder queen which I indeed saved for the help she offered. So until that point, the choice I made two games before, did not even matter! Later I got a very brief side note that the breeder queen betrayed me, which cost me a few war asset points. I found out that would have never been the case with the "true" Rachni queen from the first game. The choice felt much more grave in the first game than the eventual outcome. The biggest decision at the very end of the second game: Destroying the Collector base or leaving it intact, handing it over to Cerberus. What do you get? One of two different war assets, that's basically it. That is not how the consequence of such a big choice should feel to me. I felt it could have meant more, made a bigger difference, I simply would have preferred more impact of the consequences of my decisions.
Even more so at the end of the last game. I know that I am only one of many complaining about the ending, but that does make it only more meaningful. As I invested quite a lot over the last years, a lot of money, not only for the games (of which I even own both the second and the third part as Collector's Editions) but also for DLC, lots of time, because I tried to discover nearly everything (at least as much as I could) which in the end put around 150 to 200 hours of intense gaming on the record (plus the not accounted time for redoing scenes for fun or cause I died trying) and last but not least lots of emotions ranging from joy and happiness to total sadness and shock - hell, I really love some of those characters! -, I felt this conclusion to be pretty shallow. I mean, this is supposed to be the outcome of not only the third game itself, but for the entire series of all three games, so I expected something epic, probably some incredibly long video sequence (like Final Fantasy games often feature) or at least some really "vastly" different endings, like it has been quoted over and over again (I actually found a nice compilation of pre-release quotes on the BioWare forums themselves: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10056886).
The ending we got now still is, in a way, epic, but it just does not seem completely right or satisfying to say the least. It was said that there would not be "A, B and C"-like endings to choose from, but then again, this is pretty much exactly what we have been presented - provided that you have the right amount of EMS points without playing multiplayer, otherwise it could be even less of a choice. There is no final obstacle to overcome, no endboss of sorts (if you count "Marauder Shields" out), the only thing that players have to face is the fact that some ghostly, god-like child appearance presents them its solutions to the situation in a short monologue (I do not call this dialogue if the options do not change even the slightest thing). This feels like some last minute deus ex machina somebody came up with because there was just no more time (granted by the publisher?) to work out any real solution(s). This is only confirmed as the suspicion it is by the fact that Shepard seems to be in total acceptance of the things he is told. No renegade interrupt for just telling the thing to shut the hell up? Not even contradiction, Shepard seems to just assume he is being told the ultimate truth. How can that be? He always had the freedom of choice, he could always step away if he did not want to help anybody or even punch or shoot somebody when interfering. No he is forced into one of three options, all of which are bad in the end.
Why do I have worked so hard on brokering peace between the Geth and the Quarians (one of the greatest and most emotional moments, especially as I chose Tali to be my love interest since Mass Effect 2) only to be told now that I have to wipe them out if I truly want to eliminate the Reapers? Where is the logic in that? EDI does also count as synthetic life, right? So she will as well be destroyed - I have to willingly kill one of my crew members! Also, why does the appearance not even take the fact of the newly achieved peace into regard, as it only tells how "the created will always rebel against their creators" (By the way, it created the Reapers, right? What about them rebelling against it?)? As I had finally resolved the Geth-Quarian conflict, the Geth were at total peace with the Quarians, inviting them back to their homeworld - not even mentioning the fact that it was the creators who rebelled against their creations in this case... Overall, the sense of its talk is not believable - it creates synthetic beings (Reapers) to "save" (by making them "ascend") everybody (at least everybody able to speak and read) from being killed by synthetics? I understand now, what "cycle" in this case truly means...
Also, why the hell is the Normandy... where IS it exactly in the ending scene? And how? Last thing Joker told Shepard was that he would be rejoining Sword Forces in earth orbit. Now he is flying around somewhere in space, crashing the ship on some unknown jungle world. Why does the Normandy even crash? The colored wave did not seem to damage any other ship (besides the Reapers in case of the red option), so why the Normandy? It also seemed pretty magical to me that my squadmates, who presumably died when Harbinger (It was Harbinger, right? His role got so diminished from the big boss he seemed to be in the second game) set out to his final attack near the Citadel beam were seen stepping out of the crash-landed ship. On one hand, I was happy to see them alive and breathing (especially my love interest of course), but on the other hand, how could they have been saved and why would they let Joker escape the battle? Did they all turn their backs all of a sudden? Not very realistic in my opinion.
Then the mass relays are destroyed. All of them. The last time that happened, the Batarians wanted Shepard's head for killing hundreds of thousands of their people, because the explosion wiped out an entire solar system. Is there really a difference between an exploding relay and an exploding relay? Then again, with the relays gone, do I have to feel shameful for gathering nearly every fleet in the galaxy around earth? As Turians and Quarians are not able to eat human food, they are most probably the first ones starving to death (if the Quarians brought their live ships, they might survive a little longer). With earth widely in ruins there will not even be enough food for humans, I assume. So did I doom the entire fleets to their certain deaths in the Sol system? Not exactly what I would call a happy ending, at least they cannot sue the now dead Shepard for it.
Questionable to me was also that in the blue version the Citadel stays intact, as some sort of control station for the Reapers, I guess. But why is it destroyed in the green version? The Reapers are still there and might need some guidance with the now radically changed situation. If you destroy them, okay, no more control of any kind is needed, understood. But if you keep them in either way, I assume there will be a need for some sort of master control. That is one thing that came to my mind when I tried out the different colors.
The fleets themselves look little different in the battle cutscene, it merely matters if you have the Geth and/or Quarian fleet and if your EMS rating is high enough to not have too many casualties right away. Why do I not see any of the assets I collected, sometimes not only by scanning planets, but through real side missions, like the enhanced Cerberus fighters or the three mercenary groups? I did not expect them to be featured in major scenes but just as some side notes, acknowledging that they are really there.
Overall, whatever color one chooses, the sequence following shows little difference except the color tone. I know the consequences afterwards might be different, but nothing of this is even hinted at. I only get a short cinematic with vivid colored "explosions" that cross the galaxy.
There is no such thing as closure as it was promised beforehand. How will the situation work out with all the fleets in earth orbit but no more mass relays to travel home by? What will happen to my crew, stranded on some planet? Will Tali be grieving me? Will my ultimate sacrifice be honored and they might name a planet Shepard? Or is this one-second-sequence that I got after I raised my readiness rating by multiplayer true and Shepard does still live? But if, where is he and how did he miraculously survive yet another certain death situation?
Do not get me wrong, I am absolutely okay with the concept of the hero making the ultimate sacrifice to be able to save the galaxy. So I was actually thinking that Shepard will most probably die at the end of his fight against the reapers. But the way in which this is presented, does not quite match the sacrifice he makes. There is no reward for the gamer, no really epic aftermath. It just does not feel as if I achieved the ending, I have not actually earned it. All I have to do is pick the color in which the ending is presented. And facing this after not only one, but as I already stated, the complete journey through all three games, is just too shallow. I would really like to see some of your staff taking the courage to step up and simply explain their thoughts on the ending and not saying something about "artistic visions" again. I do not know what could possibly be so hard about that, except there is no explanation besides the plain fact that there was too little resources. Yet I do hope that over the course of the last years, you had a more or less clear idea of what the end should look like and are able to present and explain your vision to the folks how do not seem to quite get it.
Then there is one thing I personally encountered: When I destroyed the Reapers, I got some very short black and white flashback scenes of Joker, Anderson and Liara. But why am I shown Liara, which I only chose as a love interest in the first installment? Afterwards, I went with Tali for the next two games, so I expected her to be in Liara's place.

I of course have heard the news of the announced "Extended Cut" you intend to be releasing in summer. Cautiously I also noticed you saying that there will be no fundamental change that seemed to be needed regarding the feedback from the fans you are getting. I still have hope that you guys WILL get this totally important scene, this very ending to the Mass Effect series done in the appropriate way, epic and with answers and closure and all. On the other hand, I do am afraid that somebody in a higher position will have you stick to your "artistic integrity" and actually have the defining moment of one of the very best (if not THE best) gaming series around ruined forever. Thinking of Vigil again (and I am actually listening to that piece right now), I know you CAN do it. Please, do it for the people you sell your games to. Do it for the fans. Do not make me cry again.


Sincerely yours,
Chris



Darüberhinaus habe ich den einen oder anderen interessanten Link zu dem Thema gefunden:
The Writer's Block mit einem Artikel zum Ende aus der Sicht eines Schriftstellers
Angry Joe's 10 Reasons we hate Mass Effect 3's ending sehr amüsante Zusammenstellung
Marauder Shields Comicserie um ein alternatives Ende, unglaublich großartig