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xparrotI've been thinking more about the end of the Mass Effect trilogy, and by the fan reactions to it that I've encountered online as I look up vids and fanart. (Among other things, I found these essays, from a fan who uncompromisingly loved the original endings even pre-extended cut, a fascinating read. This post isn't anywhere near as thought-out or high-concept, and the way I fan is quite different, but it does echo some of the ideas mentioned in those.) My reaction was somewhat different than most of my friends, for a couple reasons. For one, I played the extended cut ending first off, which definitely, as my brother says, reduces the sting. I also had the benefit of knowing the ending was widely panned, and was braced for it to be awful. So it actually wasn't as bad as I expected it to be from the first.
And the more I consider it, the more I think I don't actually dislike it at all. I'm still not sure I like it; I'm probably always going to engage with it with a bit of denial. And I think there were ways they could've made it more palatable, without completely compromising the story's integrity.
On the other hand, this is one of those cases in which there was no way to satisfy the entire fanbase. That's always true with any story like this - when your audience is this big, and this emotionally engaged in a story, it's categorically impossible to make an ending which will satisfy everyone. And Mass Effect, thanks to its medium, is an even greater challenge than usual, because it's not just a question of coming up with one appropriate ending, but with multiple endings, that all are appropriate to the story.
Ironically, this seems to be the biggest problem some players had with the ending - that there wasn't a single ending, or at least, that there wasn't a single 'right' ending. And a lot of fans seem to really want there to be. Which for me...I'm really torn. On the one hand, a single super-happy everybody-lives ending would've been fun - I loved all these characters and their universe by the end; of course I wanted to see them go on! And it would've allowed for a sequel, easily enough.
On the other hand, one of the most interesting aspects of Mass Effect is how the story changes depending on your decisions - and there are very few 'right' or 'wrong' decisions in the game. There are actions you can take which or more or less ethically defensible, but for most of the bigger questions, the ethics are incredibly complicated, without clear right answers. And the game supports this by not punishing you for the decisions you make - while at the same time, those decisions will change your game. Depending on whether you let Ashley or Kaidan die, you get completely different stories and romance options. If you kill Wrex on Virmire, you are deprived his company for the rest of the games - but it's also the only way Mordin can survive ME3. On the other hand, if Mordin dies on you in ME2, you can still save the krogan (and get some interesting dialogue about krogan from Mordin's replacement.) If you don't romance Garrus in ME2 then you can't romance him in ME3, which...well, that one is just a tragedy however you look at it :P
This interactive, adaptive storytelling is one of the highlights of the ME games - that I could decide based on what I felt was the best thing for my Shepard to do under the circumstances, confident that my choice wouldn't ruin the story, even if it changed it. And having a single 'right' ending would've spoiled that however it was done. Either it would've been a last-minute decision - in which case you could just reload and try again until you got the 'right' answer. Or it would've been a difficult-to-achieve possibility, something in which you had to get a whole number of variables correct throughout the game or games - which would've guided all the rest of your gameplay, would've constrained your decision-making to a specific 'correct' track, and punished you for screwing it up.
The games actually do something like this; certain options are only available to you if you fulfill certain requirements. The most major of these is probably the quarian-geth conflict. I resolved that one peacefully, with both the quarian and geth surviving - I didn't find out until after I finished the games that this option isn't available to everyone, but depends on decisions made in ME2 and ME3. Otherwise you have to chose one or the other, at the cost of a teammate either way. (Well, even in the peace-making, you sort of lose Legion; but their essence is preserved in the other geth.) But even then, that's not an absolutely right-or-wrong; the story continues on regardless, and you'll get scenes you wouldn't otherwise, depending on what happens.
And that's maybe the biggest challenge of any ending of Mass Effect - because it is the ending. When the entire storytelling mechanism is predicated on the player's decisions and seeing what happens afterwards - the ending is going to be a let-down no matter what, because no matter what it does, sooner or later you reach the last decision, the last time the player actually interacts with the game. Past that point, the adaptive story becomes linear. A cinematic cut-scene, however epic, is going to be a letdown after the emotional engagement of the interactive game.
For me it would've been an even bigger let-down, to go through the end, watch the final scenes to close the story, and then find out that I made the wrong decision - that I should just reload and try again, to see the better ending, the 'right' ending. After the freedom of decisions in the rest of the games, it would've been obnoxious to have your very last decision be ruled this way.
So the designers made a different decision - to offer the player multiple endings, but have none of those endings be clearly 'right' or 'wrong'; each have positive and negative aspects. Their execution of this concept is arguable. One of the frustrations a lot of players had is that the original version of the ending, there is very little obvious difference - the brother's major complaint was that, even though plot-wise the endings are drastically different, in terms of what you actually saw, the main thing that changed was the color of light. The extended cut mitigates this somewhat, by showing a few different scenes from different perspectives (of which I find the most effective the battlefield scene, in which what happens with the husks is strikingly different for all three options, and I think appropriate for all) and having the different narrators. At the same time if you watch all three endings together, the reuse of a lot of shots between them still leaves them feeling a bit too similar. (In some ways I might prefer Synthesis just because the shots are noticeably altered from the other two.)
I also think there's an issue with how the endings are presented - to have the Catalyst/starchild brat just tell you what your options are, and all Shepard can do is say 'yes' or 'no', is really frustrating and also OOC for Shepard, who is usually so good at pulling crazy solutions out of their ass. It would've been mechanically identical but more satisfying if Shepard had been the one to challenge the Catalyst, to say, "I'm going to do this!" and have the Catalyst counter with the ramifications and maybe try to stop you.
But the concept itself, of having multiple endings with a blend of positive and negative outcomes, I think is absolutely appropriate to the games, and the only way they really could have ended.
So it interests me that a lot of fans get into passionate arguments, not over the quality of the endings in general or which ending they personally preferred, but about which ending is the 'right' one. In particular there are a number of debates online about how the Destroy ending is the only right ending, and that anyone who picked another ending is morally bankrupt and possibly brain-damaged (direct quotes! Ahh, internet debates. I haven't seen yet the one explaining how Synthesis is what Hitler would've done, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere...) My favorite of these arguments was the commenter insisting that Destroy is obviously right because EDI and the geth "are only robots in the end", and aren't real or alive. Which, as someone else pointed out, really made me wonder what the heck game they were playing...
There was also the Indoctrination Theory which went around before the extended cut DLC was released - the basic idea being that the Reapers were gradually attempting to indoctrinate Shepard throughout the games, and that the end of the game, from when Shepard enters the beam to the Citadel, is all in Shepard's head, as the Reapers' final ploy to complete indoctrination. According to the theory, the right answer was either not to choose at all (which is apparently why they made the Refuse ending, to counter this) or else Destroy. Supposedly the other two options were both representative of indoctrination - Control is how the Illusive Man was indoctrinated, and Synthesis is somehow related to Saren's indoctrination (I don't get this one, Saren was getting borg-i-fied, but he thought the endgame was obedience, not merging?) It's a fascinating re-interpretation of canon, but it doesn't make much sense (why would the Reapers actually allow you to go through with Destroy?) and its adherents often use it to justify Destroy as, again, the right answer.
I find this especially intriguing because to me, when I encountered it, Destroy seemed like the worst ending of all those offered. Partly because my Shepard was team first above all, so any solution that killed EDI and Legion's legacy in the geth, I couldn't imagine my Shepard taking. And part of it was because, while it seems like for a lot of players the main objective was to destroy the Reapers - I never thought of it like that; I always thought my goal was saving the galaxy. And after saving the rachni queen, and making peace between the geth and the quarians, not to mention the turians and krogan - Garrus jokes at one point that after that, all Shepard has to do is make peace with the Reapers and they'll be nominated for sainthood - and that's seriously what I wanted to do!
There's also the whole matter that the Reapers are in fact reaping - they're preserving, albeit in some esoteric unexplained way, the civilizations they end. So if you destroy them, you're destroying some of the last remnants of countless peoples going back millions or billions of years.
But all of these arguments don't invalidate the Destroy ending, or make it wrong. It is the most assured way to end the Reaper threat, and preserves the galaxy in closest to its original form. Including Shepard - and I think was it very deliberately chosen as the ending that Shepard survives, but I don't think that was to show it was the right ending, but rather was intended to balance it. Especially with the extended cut, the other two endings both seem more positive than Destroy, for the rest of the galaxy if not for Shepard.
And conversely, while I chose the Synthesis ending myself, it seems like generally speaking it's the least favorite ending, and a lot of fans actively hate it, for being deus ex machina, or because they think it's brainwashing everyone/turning the whole galaxy into a geth-like collective, or for just not making sense. I don't buy the first two arguments (it's no more deus-ex than the other two; and even in the original non-extended ending Joker and EDI's interaction is pretty obviously between individuals.) As for not making sense, as a fanficcer I enjoy the open-ended-ness of it. There's also an argument that it's altering the DNA of everyone in the galaxy without their consent, which is an entirely valid point - especially because you're given no clue what the extent or effect of the modification will be. If Shepard is being used as the model - Shepard was resurrected by Cerberus as partially synthetic, and yet seems to be fundamentally the same person. But it's not clear whether it'll work like that or not - and for that matter, we only see Shepard live, what, a year or so after their resurrection, so long-term consequences wouldn't have shown up. And the implications of EDI's voiceover is that Synthesis is bringing about, or at least accelerating, the technological singularity - after which life as we know it ceases and what replaces it is unimaginable. Synthesis is terrifying in that whatever it means, it's the biggest change of any of the endings (and has the glowing-green still shots to prove it!) - and frustrating in that those changes are so vague.
Ironically, Control is probably the 'happiest' ending, or at least has the possibility to be. All the synthetics live, the Reapers' reapings are preserved, and Shepard survives in a manner of speaking - it's the only extended cut end in which Shepard gets the voice-over. Or, well, Reaper!Shepard, but Reaper!Shepard sounds awesome, and also, if that much of Shepard is still around - it's Shepard. My money's on them, over the Reapers! And yet Control is the ending that gets the least discussion. Maybe because I think it's the hardest to justify with most Shepards - because it's pretty much agreeing with the Illusive Man, and while some Shepards probably do, I suspect the majority don't. My Shepard definitely didn't have the ego to try it. It's a shame, though, I'd rather like to see more fanworks done with it (all right, I just want the fic that Shepard ASSUMES DIRECT CONTROL to make out with their love interest :P) Or this fan comic XDXDXD
I do think the ending is flawed, that there were other ways they could have gone - more options that Shepard survives, for one; after playing a character for so long, it's pretty brutal to lose them. Especially since they kill Anderson, too, which is really gratuitous - the death of the mentor is pretty classic, but usually they die so the hero lives. Or else the hero can sacrifice to save them. Having both die is just piling it on and I really don't get the dramatic necessity - maybe so you think Shepard might make it out?
And I found the conversation with the Catalyst disappointing - no more than I expected, it's a limit of storytelling, but one that always frustrates. It's common to have all-powerful beings talk about how they and their motives are so beyond mortal ken that it's useless to try to talk or explain anything to you - and invariably when the explanation does finally come out, it's something so simple it would have taken all of ten seconds to explain. Reapers cull organic life before organic life can create synthetic life that will destroy it - it's not that difficult to say, guys! (The writer of ME2 talks here about some of the ideas for the Reapers' motives they were tossing around when they were writing the second game - he left before writing ME3, and the idea was vague and maybe wouldn't have worked, but it had to do with dark energy - that organics using biotics caused dark energy reactions that were hastening the end of the universe, so the Reapers were meant to stop organic civilizations from progressing that far. I would've really liked that twist, that the Reapers were actually trying to save the universe...!)
For me, the ending I could've wished for would've come in multiples, but would've had more engagement from Shepard, and more chance for Shepard to survive. The ultimate Paragon and Renegade choices - Renegade would've Kirk'ed the shit out of the Reapers, convinced them their whole purpose was flawed as they're the ones provoking organics to kill synthetics and made them self-destruct; and Paragon would've shown them that there could never be peace if they never give organics time to adapt to living with synthetics, and convince them to take this cycle off, see where we end up in another fifty thousand years.
But while I would have preferred something different, I find myself accepting how it actually did end. And a lot of it is from seeing the fan reaction. I think that for all its flaws, having ends that are this controversial, with people arguing over what the 'best' or 'right' ending is, is a sign that they did something right. It's complicated - and whatever else they got wrong, that's definitely what Mass Effect's ending should be.
I also do agree with what everyone else says - no matter how annoying or frustrating the end might be, the games are still totally worth playing. Which is one of the highest praises a story can get - that the journey is absolutely worth the destination.
And the more I consider it, the more I think I don't actually dislike it at all. I'm still not sure I like it; I'm probably always going to engage with it with a bit of denial. And I think there were ways they could've made it more palatable, without completely compromising the story's integrity.
On the other hand, this is one of those cases in which there was no way to satisfy the entire fanbase. That's always true with any story like this - when your audience is this big, and this emotionally engaged in a story, it's categorically impossible to make an ending which will satisfy everyone. And Mass Effect, thanks to its medium, is an even greater challenge than usual, because it's not just a question of coming up with one appropriate ending, but with multiple endings, that all are appropriate to the story.
Ironically, this seems to be the biggest problem some players had with the ending - that there wasn't a single ending, or at least, that there wasn't a single 'right' ending. And a lot of fans seem to really want there to be. Which for me...I'm really torn. On the one hand, a single super-happy everybody-lives ending would've been fun - I loved all these characters and their universe by the end; of course I wanted to see them go on! And it would've allowed for a sequel, easily enough.
On the other hand, one of the most interesting aspects of Mass Effect is how the story changes depending on your decisions - and there are very few 'right' or 'wrong' decisions in the game. There are actions you can take which or more or less ethically defensible, but for most of the bigger questions, the ethics are incredibly complicated, without clear right answers. And the game supports this by not punishing you for the decisions you make - while at the same time, those decisions will change your game. Depending on whether you let Ashley or Kaidan die, you get completely different stories and romance options. If you kill Wrex on Virmire, you are deprived his company for the rest of the games - but it's also the only way Mordin can survive ME3. On the other hand, if Mordin dies on you in ME2, you can still save the krogan (and get some interesting dialogue about krogan from Mordin's replacement.) If you don't romance Garrus in ME2 then you can't romance him in ME3, which...well, that one is just a tragedy however you look at it :P
This interactive, adaptive storytelling is one of the highlights of the ME games - that I could decide based on what I felt was the best thing for my Shepard to do under the circumstances, confident that my choice wouldn't ruin the story, even if it changed it. And having a single 'right' ending would've spoiled that however it was done. Either it would've been a last-minute decision - in which case you could just reload and try again until you got the 'right' answer. Or it would've been a difficult-to-achieve possibility, something in which you had to get a whole number of variables correct throughout the game or games - which would've guided all the rest of your gameplay, would've constrained your decision-making to a specific 'correct' track, and punished you for screwing it up.
The games actually do something like this; certain options are only available to you if you fulfill certain requirements. The most major of these is probably the quarian-geth conflict. I resolved that one peacefully, with both the quarian and geth surviving - I didn't find out until after I finished the games that this option isn't available to everyone, but depends on decisions made in ME2 and ME3. Otherwise you have to chose one or the other, at the cost of a teammate either way. (Well, even in the peace-making, you sort of lose Legion; but their essence is preserved in the other geth.) But even then, that's not an absolutely right-or-wrong; the story continues on regardless, and you'll get scenes you wouldn't otherwise, depending on what happens.
And that's maybe the biggest challenge of any ending of Mass Effect - because it is the ending. When the entire storytelling mechanism is predicated on the player's decisions and seeing what happens afterwards - the ending is going to be a let-down no matter what, because no matter what it does, sooner or later you reach the last decision, the last time the player actually interacts with the game. Past that point, the adaptive story becomes linear. A cinematic cut-scene, however epic, is going to be a letdown after the emotional engagement of the interactive game.
For me it would've been an even bigger let-down, to go through the end, watch the final scenes to close the story, and then find out that I made the wrong decision - that I should just reload and try again, to see the better ending, the 'right' ending. After the freedom of decisions in the rest of the games, it would've been obnoxious to have your very last decision be ruled this way.
So the designers made a different decision - to offer the player multiple endings, but have none of those endings be clearly 'right' or 'wrong'; each have positive and negative aspects. Their execution of this concept is arguable. One of the frustrations a lot of players had is that the original version of the ending, there is very little obvious difference - the brother's major complaint was that, even though plot-wise the endings are drastically different, in terms of what you actually saw, the main thing that changed was the color of light. The extended cut mitigates this somewhat, by showing a few different scenes from different perspectives (of which I find the most effective the battlefield scene, in which what happens with the husks is strikingly different for all three options, and I think appropriate for all) and having the different narrators. At the same time if you watch all three endings together, the reuse of a lot of shots between them still leaves them feeling a bit too similar. (In some ways I might prefer Synthesis just because the shots are noticeably altered from the other two.)
I also think there's an issue with how the endings are presented - to have the Catalyst/starchild brat just tell you what your options are, and all Shepard can do is say 'yes' or 'no', is really frustrating and also OOC for Shepard, who is usually so good at pulling crazy solutions out of their ass. It would've been mechanically identical but more satisfying if Shepard had been the one to challenge the Catalyst, to say, "I'm going to do this!" and have the Catalyst counter with the ramifications and maybe try to stop you.
But the concept itself, of having multiple endings with a blend of positive and negative outcomes, I think is absolutely appropriate to the games, and the only way they really could have ended.
So it interests me that a lot of fans get into passionate arguments, not over the quality of the endings in general or which ending they personally preferred, but about which ending is the 'right' one. In particular there are a number of debates online about how the Destroy ending is the only right ending, and that anyone who picked another ending is morally bankrupt and possibly brain-damaged (direct quotes! Ahh, internet debates. I haven't seen yet the one explaining how Synthesis is what Hitler would've done, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere...) My favorite of these arguments was the commenter insisting that Destroy is obviously right because EDI and the geth "are only robots in the end", and aren't real or alive. Which, as someone else pointed out, really made me wonder what the heck game they were playing...
There was also the Indoctrination Theory which went around before the extended cut DLC was released - the basic idea being that the Reapers were gradually attempting to indoctrinate Shepard throughout the games, and that the end of the game, from when Shepard enters the beam to the Citadel, is all in Shepard's head, as the Reapers' final ploy to complete indoctrination. According to the theory, the right answer was either not to choose at all (which is apparently why they made the Refuse ending, to counter this) or else Destroy. Supposedly the other two options were both representative of indoctrination - Control is how the Illusive Man was indoctrinated, and Synthesis is somehow related to Saren's indoctrination (I don't get this one, Saren was getting borg-i-fied, but he thought the endgame was obedience, not merging?) It's a fascinating re-interpretation of canon, but it doesn't make much sense (why would the Reapers actually allow you to go through with Destroy?) and its adherents often use it to justify Destroy as, again, the right answer.
I find this especially intriguing because to me, when I encountered it, Destroy seemed like the worst ending of all those offered. Partly because my Shepard was team first above all, so any solution that killed EDI and Legion's legacy in the geth, I couldn't imagine my Shepard taking. And part of it was because, while it seems like for a lot of players the main objective was to destroy the Reapers - I never thought of it like that; I always thought my goal was saving the galaxy. And after saving the rachni queen, and making peace between the geth and the quarians, not to mention the turians and krogan - Garrus jokes at one point that after that, all Shepard has to do is make peace with the Reapers and they'll be nominated for sainthood - and that's seriously what I wanted to do!
There's also the whole matter that the Reapers are in fact reaping - they're preserving, albeit in some esoteric unexplained way, the civilizations they end. So if you destroy them, you're destroying some of the last remnants of countless peoples going back millions or billions of years.
But all of these arguments don't invalidate the Destroy ending, or make it wrong. It is the most assured way to end the Reaper threat, and preserves the galaxy in closest to its original form. Including Shepard - and I think was it very deliberately chosen as the ending that Shepard survives, but I don't think that was to show it was the right ending, but rather was intended to balance it. Especially with the extended cut, the other two endings both seem more positive than Destroy, for the rest of the galaxy if not for Shepard.
And conversely, while I chose the Synthesis ending myself, it seems like generally speaking it's the least favorite ending, and a lot of fans actively hate it, for being deus ex machina, or because they think it's brainwashing everyone/turning the whole galaxy into a geth-like collective, or for just not making sense. I don't buy the first two arguments (it's no more deus-ex than the other two; and even in the original non-extended ending Joker and EDI's interaction is pretty obviously between individuals.) As for not making sense, as a fanficcer I enjoy the open-ended-ness of it. There's also an argument that it's altering the DNA of everyone in the galaxy without their consent, which is an entirely valid point - especially because you're given no clue what the extent or effect of the modification will be. If Shepard is being used as the model - Shepard was resurrected by Cerberus as partially synthetic, and yet seems to be fundamentally the same person. But it's not clear whether it'll work like that or not - and for that matter, we only see Shepard live, what, a year or so after their resurrection, so long-term consequences wouldn't have shown up. And the implications of EDI's voiceover is that Synthesis is bringing about, or at least accelerating, the technological singularity - after which life as we know it ceases and what replaces it is unimaginable. Synthesis is terrifying in that whatever it means, it's the biggest change of any of the endings (and has the glowing-green still shots to prove it!) - and frustrating in that those changes are so vague.
Ironically, Control is probably the 'happiest' ending, or at least has the possibility to be. All the synthetics live, the Reapers' reapings are preserved, and Shepard survives in a manner of speaking - it's the only extended cut end in which Shepard gets the voice-over. Or, well, Reaper!Shepard, but Reaper!Shepard sounds awesome, and also, if that much of Shepard is still around - it's Shepard. My money's on them, over the Reapers! And yet Control is the ending that gets the least discussion. Maybe because I think it's the hardest to justify with most Shepards - because it's pretty much agreeing with the Illusive Man, and while some Shepards probably do, I suspect the majority don't. My Shepard definitely didn't have the ego to try it. It's a shame, though, I'd rather like to see more fanworks done with it (all right, I just want the fic that Shepard ASSUMES DIRECT CONTROL to make out with their love interest :P) Or this fan comic XDXDXD
I do think the ending is flawed, that there were other ways they could have gone - more options that Shepard survives, for one; after playing a character for so long, it's pretty brutal to lose them. Especially since they kill Anderson, too, which is really gratuitous - the death of the mentor is pretty classic, but usually they die so the hero lives. Or else the hero can sacrifice to save them. Having both die is just piling it on and I really don't get the dramatic necessity - maybe so you think Shepard might make it out?
And I found the conversation with the Catalyst disappointing - no more than I expected, it's a limit of storytelling, but one that always frustrates. It's common to have all-powerful beings talk about how they and their motives are so beyond mortal ken that it's useless to try to talk or explain anything to you - and invariably when the explanation does finally come out, it's something so simple it would have taken all of ten seconds to explain. Reapers cull organic life before organic life can create synthetic life that will destroy it - it's not that difficult to say, guys! (The writer of ME2 talks here about some of the ideas for the Reapers' motives they were tossing around when they were writing the second game - he left before writing ME3, and the idea was vague and maybe wouldn't have worked, but it had to do with dark energy - that organics using biotics caused dark energy reactions that were hastening the end of the universe, so the Reapers were meant to stop organic civilizations from progressing that far. I would've really liked that twist, that the Reapers were actually trying to save the universe...!)
For me, the ending I could've wished for would've come in multiples, but would've had more engagement from Shepard, and more chance for Shepard to survive. The ultimate Paragon and Renegade choices - Renegade would've Kirk'ed the shit out of the Reapers, convinced them their whole purpose was flawed as they're the ones provoking organics to kill synthetics and made them self-destruct; and Paragon would've shown them that there could never be peace if they never give organics time to adapt to living with synthetics, and convince them to take this cycle off, see where we end up in another fifty thousand years.
But while I would have preferred something different, I find myself accepting how it actually did end. And a lot of it is from seeing the fan reaction. I think that for all its flaws, having ends that are this controversial, with people arguing over what the 'best' or 'right' ending is, is a sign that they did something right. It's complicated - and whatever else they got wrong, that's definitely what Mass Effect's ending should be.
I also do agree with what everyone else says - no matter how annoying or frustrating the end might be, the games are still totally worth playing. Which is one of the highest praises a story can get - that the journey is absolutely worth the destination.
