Don't Fear the Reaper

It’s very rare for me to observe a chain of events in its entirety and still have to stop and ask, with no irony whatsoever, how did we even get here? How did things degrade so fast in, at the time of this writing, only fourteen days? I’m sure that’s the question being asked around at Bioware at the moment, because as March the 6^th finally dawned on us I don’t think anyone was expecting this.

After years of waiting, months of hype and loads of hard work, Mass Effect 3 was finally released and for a time everything was good. But then people reached the ending, and the internet exploded.

Pictured here: the internet hate machine in motion.

By now I think it’s become readily apparent to the internet at large that ME3’s ending is… let’s say “divisive”. Now, I’m not going to discuss the ending itself in this article because the game has just now only been out for a full two weeks and I’d rather not divulge any spoilers. If you want to know specific details I’d be happy to direct you to literally any other part of the internet in existence. We won’t be discussing it here. The only thing I’ll say is that there is a fair amount of criticism of the ending floating around, and it is valid. To be fair, I agree with a lot of people that there is a lack of closure post-decision at the endgame that, if that wasn’t the case, I’d otherwise be content with how it ended, other factors be damned. With that said, we need to focus on something of far more importance; the fallout that the ending has caused.

Now, I’ve made it no secret in the past what my opinion is of the Bioware fanbase at large. They can be called a number of things. “Passionate”, for example. “Dedicated”. “Outspoken,” even. “Unpleaseable,” if you want to make blanket generalizations. They are, as a collective, a by-product of Bioware’s corporate culture itself and how they maintain close ties with their community. This is both a blessing and a curse, because this results in fans that are very loyal, but fans that become very enraged and very vocal when they feel they’ve been slighted.

And hoo boy, are they being vocal now.

Prior to this chain of events unfolding I’m not sure if it would even be possible to imagine the degree in which things have degraded. To put things lightly, people do not like the ending, and instead of this stopping and ending at the logical point of mere criticism (both constructive and not), we’ve advanced past that into something else entirely. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the “Retake Mass Effect” movement.

This is a full-on movement requesting, nay, demanding, a revision of ME3’s ending.

I can only feel sympathy for the boys and girls of Bioware at the moment, because even pre-launch the more vocal members of their fanbase must have been giving them the impression that they could do nothing right. Just about every detail released about the game, every marketing move, every sneak peak, everything somehow managed to spark some hate. There was the inclusion of Kinect support, there was the entire FemShep fiasco, there was the reveal of multiplayer, then Jessica Chobot’s involvement, then the Day 1 DLC issue, and so on. Everything they talked about managed to draw the ire of somebody. Now, some debates over these issues were probably more warranted than others. Hell, I’ll readily admit that I’m still curious as to what the rationale behind casting Jessica Chobot in a role is when, among other concerns, she can’t act.

If I may be blunt, I can only assume that it involved her doing something similar to this.

I will say one thing in all of the anger’s defense; it was at least criticism. Regardless of how valid or helpful these people’s opinions were, they were still opinions and they wanted them to be heard. As obnoxious as that got at times there isn’t anything inherently wrong with that. The problem with the boat we’re in now is that it’s not just criticism. What we have here are demands.

The Retake Mass Effect movement is a community drive formed for one purpose; to convince Bioware to change Mass Effect 3’s ending. The movement has created a petition requesting Bioware to create an alternate ending that the community will be satisfied with and, to show how serious they are, they started a charity drive with all proceeds going directly to Child’s Play. At the time of this column’s writing said donation drive has accumulated close to 70 thousand dollars. Now, for the most part this movement has been rather civil and their good intentions have been backed by good deeds, but that doesn’t change the fact that they can be readily identified as the proverbial “eye of the storm” for this entire mess. The movement is, by far, the most visible aspect of all this and regardless of how well they’re conducting themselves as a whole, their end-goal still boils down to a simple statement of “we want you to change this”.

Of course, every movement also attracts its radicals, and with this being the internet the fury and mindlessness is out in full force. From what I’ve observed everything that Bioware says is being met with a response of “change the ending”. Everything. Here, take a look at an example I found.

You’re getting angry over t-shirts of all things you shrill, belligerent harpy.

It isn’t just things that Bioware says, either. The best I can tell just about every person in the games industry that says a single positive thing about the game these days gets accused of being “paid off” by Electronic Arts. For example, I know that Susan Arendt has been accused of accepting bribes or some such drivel thanks to her review that’s up on the Escapist. Susan, for Pete’s sake. This is a woman who I first met on the Escapist back in 2008. I have a lot of respect for her both as a game journalist and as a person, and the very notion that she’d be willingly “bought” is just galling.

It’s not just half of The Escapist’s staff whose credibility is being called into question, though. I’m sure every major gaming outlet is being hit with these kinds of accusations, with IGN probably getting far more flak than most. The one that puzzles me more than any is someone said this about Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade. Considering that one of Penny Arcade’s largest scandals was almost entirely the result of Krahulik sticking to his guns and being uncompromising in speaking his opinions I don’t see any justification for that beyond a simple need to lash out at someone.

Oh, but it gets better. Yesterday morning I discovered that one enterprising member of Bioware’s fanbase took it upon himself to report both Bioware and Electronic Arts to the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau on the grounds that the ending in the game wasn’t what we were promised and that Bioware should be punished for false advertising.

It… it’s just… am I the only one seeing this? Does no one else see anything wrong here? Is it just me? Am I really the only sane one left? Does no one else notice this lunacy? Does no one else care?! What is going on here?!?!

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here!

Okay… let’s try to take a step backwards and see if we can explain my stance…

The Creator and their Work

First of all, it might help if you understand where my rage is coming from. I am, first and foremost, an artist and a creative type, so the movement as a whole to make Bioware change the game’s ending disgusts me on a personal level. If you don’t quite understand the correlation here, you need to stop and realize that the entire Mass Effect franchise is, at its core, a creative work. It’s the result of seven years of labor from writers, programmers, concept artists, voice actors, animators, level designers, and countless other people working together to create this trilogy of games. These people all pooled their talents together for one purpose; to tell a story. Now, it’s true that based on both criticism and suggestions from their fans each installment of the story did slightly change, but it’s still Bioware’s story either way. They made it, and what’s happening here is that people are looking at their work and saying “I don’t really like this part. Do it again.”

If you read that statement and don’t understand what the issue is, than I regret to inform you that you are the problem.

This is why earlier I made a very clear distinction between what has been criticism and what has been demands. There isn’t inherently anything wrong with criticizing a work of art. Personally I’d say it’s necessary. Hearing a person’s personal opinion on what you created gives you a fresh perspective, can bring up points that you may not have considered and can even offer suggestions that can make your art better and help you grow as an artist. The thing you have to keep in mind here is that all criticism is inherently based on a person’s own opinions, and an opinion is not ironclad fact. It’s just what a particular person thinks, how they feel, and so on, and these things vary wildly from one person to another.

Herein lays the problem. Personal opinion is influencing demands of Bioware to alter their creative work. I honestly don’t care how much of a consensus there is about how bad the endings were. In the end it’s irrelevant because it’s an opinion. More importantly, it’s an opinion held by someone other than the creator.

Understand something, here and now. It does not matter how big a fan you are of something or how fervently you support it. You never have the right to tell the creator of a piece of creative content that based on your feelings with their work, they need to change it. This is even true with something like Mass Effect where the story is essentially tailored for each player. The game gives you the illusion of participation and control, but every possible event and outcome was written by someone. At the end of the day, it’s not your story, and it never was, and as such you are not allowed to control it and dictate what needs to be changed.

... however, Bioware does have that kind of control, and if they feel so inclined...

The Retcon

Lets take out my own moral objections to all this for a moment. Rather, let me ask you a question; assuming that Bioware suddenly has the urge to change the ending to ME3, is there really a precedent for this kind of thing?

I know it's safe to say that this is hardly the first time someone has been "upset" by a piece of media. Certainly not the first time someone has been mad about the ending, either, but to be fair I don't remember seeing any fan petitions being created to change the ending of The Sopranos. Or Lost, either. Hell, even all the uproar over the quality of the Star Wars prequels and George Lucas constantly editing the films has stopped at mere rage. I guess what I'm asking here is "what exactly is different"?

It's certainly not how passionate the fanbase is, considering how many self-described "Losties" and people that claim Jedi is their religion there are running around in the world. Granted, Bioware's fanbase is more vocal and passionate than most, having just accomplished something thought impossible by convincing a company to patch a book. Still, it's more of an issue with the medium itself rather than the work's fans.

I know that there was no shortage of hardcore Star Wars fans who weren't exactly "happy" with The Phantom Menace, but to my knowledge there was never any movements to get George Lucas to reshoot parts of the movie. "Yeah, things like the lightsaber battle and seeing some of the characters again were nice, but that Jar-Jar character is an insufferable skidmark stain on the metaphorical underpants of this movie. Get rid of him, make Anakin about ten, fifteen years older and get rid of all of the podracing and I'd say you'll have a much better movie. So yeah, what I'm saying is film it again."

Now, besides the fact that saying such things would make you look like a stark raving madman, something sadly not stopping people now, the reason no one made outright demands to Lucas to "fix"his movie is because it's functionally impossible. The thing with movies, and indeed any visually recorded creative medium, is that it requires numerous different elements to create. Not just the presence of the actors, either. To theoretically refilm even one scene of "Phantom" after the fact actors would need to be contacted, sets (re)constructed, props and costumes gathered, camera and sound equipment would need to be bought or taken out of storage, and depending on the scene all of the above would need to be lugged out to a location somewhere. That isn't even taking into account all of the post-processing like basic editing, folly work, special effect and, of course, re-releasing the movie.

With that all in mind changing Mass Effect 3's ending is a more reasonable request from a technical standpoint. For the most part the only people or resources Bioware would need to actively seek out are, in theory, the voice talent. Beyond that everything else is already in-game or they have the staff to create whatever is needed on hand. Whatever they make can be delivered to the audience with next to no effort via download, much like a patch or any other downloadable content. Essentially the argument boils down to "well, if they're able to make DLC for the game, they're able to make a new ending".

Indeed, there is a precedent of sorts for this kind of thing in the form of Fallout 3, but I wouldn't quite point to it as an example of history repeating itself.

As the game comes to a close the player character has the option to activate something called "Project Purity", which for the sake of brevity is a way to fix the Capital Wasteland and make it less of a putrid, irradiated armpit of a place. However, the control chamber for the project is heavily irradiated so whoever steps into the room to turn it on will die. It comes down to a choice between choosing who to kill off, yourself or the leader of the local Brotherhood of Steel forces Sarah Lyons.

... except that, you know, you have companions who are immune to radiation poisoning who could do it so no one has to die.

Comic by PhoenixFuryBane

This plothole aside, the main issue with Fallout 3's ending was that, after completing the main quest, all gameplay was over. If you're scratching your head at this statement and don't quite understand the problem, you have to understand that this is a Bethesda game we're talking about. Bethesda's "hat" as a developer is to create massive, immersive worlds that you can faff about in for hundreds of hour and essentially do whatever you damn well please, up to and including actively ignoring the story. Compared to the game's then closest contemporary, Oblivion, not being able to play after Fallout 3's ending was completely unexpected and rather jarring. There was a lot players didn't do under the reasonable assumption that "I can do it after finishing this quest", but finishing the final mission in the main questline locked out all other content without any real warning.

Eventually "Broken Steel" was released as the third DLC pack for the game and tweaked the ending, fixing the plothole and allowing players to keep playing after the end. Even in spite of all that I would hardly call Broken Steel precedent for what's happening here. While this does show that a game's ending can be changed after the fact, the circumstances are entirely different. With the Fallout 3 situation the ending change was primarily a gameplay fix. Any changes to the story were so negligible that they could have just as easily not been included and there would barely be any difference. While Broken Steel was made to address a gameplay issue that would effectively lock the player out of other content and end their character's journey, the drive to alter Mass Effect 3 is one targeted just at the writing.

For the sake of contrast, allow me to show you the complete opposite of the Fallout Precedent, a game that suffered from the exact same problem as Mass Effect 3 in which an otherwise solid game with brilliant writing was derailed in the last five minutes.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West wasn't exactly a game that broke sales records, but it reviewed rather well and still worked for what it was. The story itself wasn't exactly Shakespearean in it's complexity, with the driving focus of Act 1 being that one of the main characters gets back home. From Act 2 onwards it becomes a story of revenge as a result of what the characters found at said home. Still, the main strength of the story came from the character's themselves and their interactions. As things progressed it became apparent that it was far more about the journey and the characters, not the end destination.

Which is good, because it turns out the "end" of everything is a reveal that Pyramid, the omnipresent and threatening presence in post-apocalyptic Earth who uses a massive army of mechanical soldiers to abduct and seemingly enslave what's left of humanity, is actually The Matrix.

I'm not even joking.

The characters actually look more confused than I was.

Enslaved's last ten minutes or so introduces so many plotholes that the writers might as well have shot the game's script point-blank with a shotgun. The degree in which the game's ending disappoints and derails things is on par with what happened at the end of ME3, but I've never seen any movement or community drive set up to fix this. I could jokingly say the reason for this is because a grand total of seventeen people actually played this game, but even that hints to the real reason. There just isn't any passion for Enslaved, at least nowhere near the levels that Bioware's fans show for the Mass Effect series, and that's because players failed to become invested on an emotional level.

Entitlement

I hate to harp on the issue of modern gamers having an undeserved sense of entitlement any more than I already have in the past, but it's an issue that's come to the forefront of all of this madness.


Just to clarify, look at the above picture. The overall movement to retcon ME3's ending is called "Retake Mass Effect 3", with a great deal of emphasis on the word retake. Exactly who are you retaking the game from? Bioware? They're the ones that made it. The game is in no way yours and you don't have the right to dictate what happens to it.

I know that it seems like I'm retreading ground from previously in this article, but bare with me here. As I see it, everyone clamoring for a change to the ending feels that they're entitled to something different, something "better" than what they've already been given. My usual response to these sort of complaints is that you are owed nothing free, nothing extra, and you in no way deserve anything.

... except this time, well, you do and you don't. At the end of the day I still stand by the belief that you really don't have the right to demand anything of a developer, regardless of whether or not they can technically do it. After making their game and shipping it out in working order you don't deserve anything else, but in this case it's just not about additional content anymore. It's about something else.

For five years now fans of Mass Effect have been a part of the story. They've seen the universe change, they've watched as characters have developed and grown. In some cases they've started relationships with some of those characters and have taken things even further. They have grown attached to the story and the characters involved in it. They care about these people and what happens to then, and you know what? In that regard you're right. You do deserve something better. You deserve, at the very least, closure to something several years in the making that you helped give your own personal touches to. Instead, where there should have been resolution, there are only more questions. You feel cheated. I know for a fact that I do.

I guess what I've been attempting to explain here is that, while I disagree with the drive to make the ending change, I still agree that what we were given just isn't good enough. We're sort of in murky waters here, If anything, I guess my stance could be summarized as "I agree with why this movement exist, but not with it's existence" if that makes a lick of sense.

Either way, I think it can be agreed that events are rapidly approaching the point of being taken too far (that is if we haven't crossed that line already). Bioware is currently dealing with a storm of disgruntled fans and bad PR the likes of which I have never even seen within our industry before. All thanks to fifteen minutes at the end of a game.

Fifteen. Minutes. Regardless of what side of this debate your on or what your stance is, you have to remember that's all it is. Fifteen minutes of story and exposition that went wrong. Perhaps more importantly, it's fifteen minutes at the end. Think about everything leading up to that last moment. Everything you played, everything you experienced. Everything you felt as events were unfolding. Up until the tail end of the game was brilliant, and regardless of what your feeling on the ending are those fifteen minutes cannot devalue whatever you were feeling earlier on in the story. No matter how bad those fifteen minutes are, even up to the point where you have to ask yourself if anything you did actually mattered, those fifteen minutes can never take away the emotional impact you were feeling before.

If everyone had just taken a minute to take a breath and put everything into perspective like that, maybe we wouldn't be where we are now where things have degraded so fast. Sadly, we are now, and all we can do is sit and wait to see how all of this unfolds, for better or for worse.

~V

Max "Vanguard" Phillips is a freelance photographer, occasional writer and a long-time gamer. He's nowhere near important enough to be bribed by anyone, so don't even bother accusing him of anything.