I’m think about turning it off right when he gets hit by Harbinger’s beam.
And then nuke the disk from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
The End!
Somehow it must be gotten across to writers that gimmicks like this actually punish your audience for their willing suspension of disbelief. And a story like Mass Effect depends heavily on willing suspension of disbelief. There are a lot of plot holes. I know I forgive all these except
Udina’s betrayal, which didn’t make sense as given. The Dalatrass gave you the warning just after she had declared herself your enemy, Bailey and C-Sec show up at a suspicious time. The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and it looks like part of that plotline just got dropped.
My recommendation is not to try for a tricky ending for any story that is not absolutely airtight in its plotting and premises, because in general you’re just pissing away the audience’s trust and making them actually pay attention to things they just let you get away with.
Interestingly, the Witcher 2 for Xbox360 has an extended ending (called “extended out-ro”). Originally, the game ended rather abruptly, but with closure, as a certain NPC who was your nemesis stayed along and explained all the twists and turns of the game, but there wasn’t a proper epilogue. For the xbox360 version, the developers added one.
Best of all, the new content for the xbox360 will be available for the PC too. Price? Free.
Here’s a Google doc with every glaring flaw in the ending. I haven’t gone through the whole thing yet, but it’s interesting.
If the indoctrination theory is correct than I feel like it’s the greatest game of all time - as long as there is a free DLC ending.
The pessimist in me says it’s just poor writing. 
I bought into that with the (admittedly implicit) knowledge that Cerberus had something akin to working indoctrination technology going on–I assumed Udina had been subverted rather than being a willing traitor.
Ditto.
They never did explain Udina’s mysterious change of hair color.
NB: these aren’t spoilers, but speculation of what Bioware *could *do to explain away their crappy ending.
I just want to say that audiences (understandably) hate the “it was all a dream” ending when the dream encompasses the majority of the movie/book/game. It’s a big “fuck you” to an audience that willingly suspended disbelief and tried to follow along with the rules the writers laid out along the way, and especially abuses the audience’s emotional connection with the characters and their travails.
However, a brief interlude preceding the real climax, which turns out to be an attempted (but thwarted!) mindfuck by the antagonist, wouldn’t have the same level of betrayal and “why did I just bother watching the whole story if it was a dream?” element. I’m quite sure I’ve seen more than one movie that uses this technique, but I’ll be damned if I can remember specific titles, and I suppose to name them would be spoilers for those movies anyway. But I bet y’all can think of examples yourselves.
Spoiler joke for one of the endings. I think the option I chose is the best [spoiler]because here is how I like to imagine the aftermath of “Control” http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y133/aimlessgun/bestblue.jpg[/spoiler]
![http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y133/aimlessgun/bestblue.jpg[/spoiler]](http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y133/aimlessgun/bestblue.jpg%5B/spoiler%5D){kind=link}
oh and (slight spoilers for peri-ending stuff)
BTW, have you guys seen the Marauder Shields meme going around? Lacking a proper final boss fight, fans have adopted Marauder Shields as the ultimate antagonist, who turns out to have been trying to help you by keeping you from seeing the ending. It’s silly and fun, and makes me love the fan community so much.
Many of us are amazed at what they’ve done to it.
We didn’t expect them to ruin the whole series with the final 10 minutes of the game.
One such movie that comes immediately to mind:Brazil. Nobody who appreciates the movie thinks the happy ending makes it complete or even a good movie. The final cut back to reality at the end is depressing as hell, but is also what makes it hit so hard and have such a lasting impact. It most certainly isn’t any kind of cheat or copout.
I love that one!
Unfortunately, my husband kept going and now he is sad too. I was watching him play the last few minutes, and he just turned to me and said, “WTF?!”
Exactly. Whole franchise ruined in 10 minutes.
velveeta, we had the exact same experience. Chris took the kids a lot last week to let me play, so I finished first, and then spent the rest of the time he played trying to manage his expectations. Then when he finished, he literally turned to me and said “WTF?!” Then we spent the rest of the night talking about the plot holes and general suckiness.
I honestly think this is a bit extreme. Everything up until the last minutes either after Harbinger’s laser or after the confrontation with TIM, depending on where you draw the line is basically one of the best game experiences I’ve ever had–especially the beginning of the attack to retake earth which gave me a huge sci-fi boner the likes of which I haven’t had since, hell, watching B5 Season 4 for the first time.
It was probably like 5 minutes if you went through that last bit quickly. I spent several long agonizing minutes trying to find another option. But I’m not lying when I say it ruined the entire franchise for me. I even wrote Bioware (nicely). I have never done that before, but I really wanted to let them know how my husband and I felt. Even if they never read it, it was cathartic for me. What an amazing ride it was until the ending that left me just… sad.
I don’t need a happy ending, but how about one that just makes sense?
A company can be destroyed by something like this. I feel like they have to do something at this point or end up as another footnote. My only wish, if that happens, is that they take EA down with them. It is to dream…
I’m pretty sure they have something planned. Had something planned for a while.
Granted, their coyness in not being upfront may still hurt them.
I am willing to believe that this is a stand in for a real ending that perhaps they didn’t have time to finish. I’d be less sympathetic if it turns out the stunt was something they drumed up to get cute, rather than out of desperation. They pushed out the copies and braced for impact, and hopefully are working on a free DLC that gives a satisfying conclusion to the saga. But that won’t change the fact that it was a shitty thing to do, whether out of desperation or out of attempt at cleverness. However, I am persuaded that they did not expect this crap to stand to begin with.
Anyone remember Fable 2’s ending? (Or Stephen King’s the Dark Tower series?) I think those two are about the only ones I can think of which came up to this level of fan rabies. Though the cancellation of Firefly is probably up there as well.
Well, it appears that I was wrong that Bioware couldn’t have meant these to be the actual endings.
Meanwhile, they’ve recently announced moving on to the next phase of Dragon Age. I find my enthusiasm for their next big thing somewhat restrained.
Yeah, I don’t know about you, but my enthusiasm for DA3 is low. I thought DA2 had a bad ending, but nothing like this. Fool me once, fool me twice, etc… I don’t think I want to go for a 3rd time. :dubious:
My husband was stewing all night and didn’t want to talk about the game. Today, he’s talking about it, and not in a good way. He has no desire to replay it at all either.
Meanwhile, the media is still claiming that it’s just a vocal minority that doesn’t like it. They need to worry about all the non-vocal people that don’t like it.
I figure, what Bioware’s earned from me is waiting for the discount bin fairy to strike their next game. I still think I got good value for the money I paid for ME3 (and I got the digital collector’s edition), mind you.
I honestly think they’re probably smart enough to do a Bethesda and fix this, though.