If this is new content and a new ending they developed sure I'll pay for it. If this is some [censored] money grubbing scheme to cut the ending out and sell it back. God help them.

How will you know? If they sell it to us ( and they undoubtedly will) how will you know what really happened. Or all we know they have one set and ready to go, they are just tweaking it to fit any one of a number of fan theories. I think if they sell it to us they deserve an even bigger backlash.

So you want them to produce, voice-act and pay to have released a DLC for free because fans weren't happy; yeah I'm sure that'll go over well with the EA overlords.

That's the thing, I don't. I really don't. So for now keep cool. If it was ever discovered then freak out. That's all I could do. Though this is for sure the last time I'm touching anything EA/Bioware. This was the end of Shepards story and it was so dumb. No damn it, this will be changed here. With this final good make sense ending they hopefully make it will finally be over. To any doubting my conviction I was one of the first to say I was skipping Dragon Age 2 (not a hard thing to do) and despite how amazing it looks also Battlefield 3.

I still don't understand the hate about the ending. And anybody who says that I'm "indoctrinated" or a "super fan" will need to go take a flying [censored] at a rolling donut and blow it out their ass.

Here's what I think about the ending: The entire game was the ending. A forty-hour ending (give or take an hour).

Originally, I thought: man I'd like to see what happens after I (who chose Synthesis) died. Then, a little later, I realized: I just saw what happened to everybody. From the moment I started the game until the moment it all ended, I was experiencing The End. I saw what happened to all my friends and enemies, and I saw what happened to the universe.

As for lore? Let me tell you how much I care about lore: ""

That was an empty string right there. That's how much I care about lore. In the same vein, I think, as far as the *source* of the lore: everybody gets their information from the Codex. All that stuff could have been compiled by characters in the Mass Effect universe which means it could be flawed or, in the case of the Relays exploding and wiping out the universe, intentionally false information (maybe that was the information passed around so that nobody would ever launch an attack on one during warfare or something).

I hope Bioware doesn't change the ending of the ending.

How about people just get over it ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSWN6Qj98Iw is what I picture whenever I open a mass effect thread now.

Just two different people who like too different kinds of things. You just happen to be in the minority on this one, sad to say.

EA doesn't really have a choice. Look at their stock. Its floundering and steadily dropping the longer this goes on. At this point, keeping your customer's happy so they keep spending is going to keep your investors happy as well.

It depends on how much the DLC costs to make really and the fan reaction to an official announcement. It could go either way. If I had some way of guaranteeing a paid DLC would be higher quality than the "free" dlc I would gladly do so. But I'm not unreasonable, I know how business have to operate. Most fans however aren't so smart and if they make too many unreasonable demands EA might just forget the whole thing.

"Will help answer the questions" doesn't leave me as hopeful. "Game content initiatives" could simply mean a couple of cutscenes or dialogue exchanges added to other DLC's (Omega, Illium, whatever) that preemptively fill in some of the blanks. For instance -- an exchange between Joker and Shepard where Shepard makes Joker promise that he'll pick up the squad and make for the nearest deserted planet if the mission looks like it's going to fail. Or the team uncovering some more information on the Crucible that sheds extra light on the Catalyst or the three choices. I doubt that pleases many people. Beyond that, maybe a Fallout-style epilogue slide.

I don't think the ending as it is will be changed. The defenses of "artistic integrity" and the mentions of people who would consider it an "affront" if the endings are changed tell me that that's where the wind is blowing. I also don't think this is as much a struggle between ending-detractors and ending-supporters as it as a struggle between the BioWare writing team and the company heads who want to make good with the fans. What kind of message is BioWare sending to Mac Walters if they tell him "your ending wasn't good enough, rewrite it?" Everything we've seen indicates that Walters is proud of this ending. He must be campaigning heavily in the staff meetings to keep it in tact.

"The whole thing was the ending" is such a copout answer. When people say they want closure, they mean they want to know what happened after the Reaper threat has been dealt with. The lead up to the final battle is not the ending. The win/loss of the final battle and what comes after is. You don't learn whether the Geth and Quarians maintain civility (or what the Quarians do if you kill the Geth through the destroy option). You don't learn whether the Genophage cure works, if the Krogan attempt to coexist peacefully or rise up as a new galactic threat. What happens to Earth and Palaven and Thessia? what do your companions do now that you're dead and they can't occupy their time with saving the galaxy, do they all even survive the final conflict? Does the Citadel remain in orbit around earth? How does synthesis affect galactic politics? Are Geth represented on the council? How do the Cerberus remnants deal with having their pristine human DNA muddled around with? Is Shepard dead or not, or does no one know for sure?

There's dozens more questions just like these, and they don't all need to be answered. The problem is that literally none are answered. It also fails to address the entire argument. Lack of closure is only one part of the criticism. The fact that things make no sense at all is more important, I'd say.

And then you saw it all blown up by the ending. I saw my efforts to unite the Geth and Quarians totally invalidated because I had to commit genocide against the Geth to accomplish the goal I'd spent three games trying to accomplish -- destroying the Reapers. I saw all my efforts to bring civilizations together demolished by the galaxy being plummeted into a dark age. And doesn't it bother you that you've struggled for peace and cooperation, to get races to accept each others' differences, only to push the green button and force total homogenization on the galaxy? Putting aside how silly the idea is to begin with.


It happens at the end of the Arrival DLC. It's the reason Shepard is in custody at the start of ME3. He destroyed a Relay and its explosion destroyed an entire Batarian-inhabited star system. People aren't making great leaps to figure that the destruction of every Relay wipes out a good percentage of the galaxy's population.

I, for one, can accept the idea that the Relays were destroyed a different way, that the Crucible's effects safely discharged their energy before destroying them. But people aren't just pulling the "destroyed relay = destroyed system" info out of thin air or even just the Codex.

I have never seen more BS out of Ray's statement. Screw them, I'll give my money to somebody who isn't going to lie to my face like CDProjeckt Red or Beth.

No, I do not expect them to give it to us for free, they should but they won't. From everything I have heard about the entire game it is a series of endings. It wraps up all the minor story arcs nicely but it does not wrap up the main story arc, Anne that's what we want. We are not asking for a happy ending (though I don't see why we can't have the option of one) we want AN ending. As it stands now we can only speculate what happens and logically that tells us that we did more damage with one action (that we couldn't even choose to NOT preform) than the Reapers could do in a century.

Just wanna throw my opinoin out there, I fully support the indoctrination theory behind the ending.

Because I think this is the actual truth behind the ending I actaully like the ending, however I do think there needed to be more, More closure and more awnsers.

But thats just me

Thats fine, if people wanna believe that then good for them. The only problem I have with the Indoctrination ending is that it means they intentionally left it at that / took out the real ending to sell it as DLC, because if it was all in his/her head, then Shep is still lying in the rubble with the war going on around them.

I don't know how true it is but apparatnly Bioware changed the ending last minute because the script got leaked but Im not sure how true that is

It's not that different from the script ending, some things got changed but mostly it's very similar from what I remember.

Bioware lied about that. The script had exactly the same ending.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10399933

I found it an interesting read, but of course there is no way to prove it.

I have no interest in Mass Effect, I'm only posting because I saw your big squishy face. Howdy!

And the writer admitting which characters he/she wrote is suspect. If a writer gets fired from BioWare within the next couple of days, it's basically confirmed. But a writer choosing to be anonymous wouldn't give such obvious clues about their identity.

Edit: And Chris Priestly has now shot it down. It's a fake.

Agreed, it comes off as someone who wants people to think they are on the team, rather than someone who doesn't want any blowback. Why delete it if you are gonna leave such blatant clues to your identity.

If you liked that song, he made two more for the series in the past. They're not for ME3 obviously, but I like the songs more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiRDJLcYua0 (Put that song in the credits for the proper ending, Bioware! )

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/miracle-of-sound/3941-Normandy-Mass-Effect-2

Also I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favourite thread on the Which is now locked.