I Am Error: Pick your ending?
| May 2, 2012 | Posted by S.A.Perkins under I Am Error |
One day I'll be able to stop talking about Mass Effect 3... One day...
With the whole Mass Effect 3 ending debacle getting on my nerves recently, I thought I’d address the issue of the impending summer DLC and give a few thoughts on what it means for games – that is, if the industry doesn’t listen to the various trolls (not the “playing jokes on the internet” kind, but the “hideous, deformed and often smelly creatures who live in dank, dark places” kind) that can be found around the internet.
If they had charged for the ending – and this is EA, so believe me, I was fully expecting an £8 price tag – then I would be joining the assembled ranks of the geek army to fully voice my displeasure (we are a disorganised yet deadly bunch: our stench of filth and loneliness can kill a man). But they are not charging for it, and that means they have given the fans what they want and done it for free. People want a more satisfying ending, and now they can have it.
To charge for this kind of content would make for a ridiculous and rather insulting business model: “Oh, you want this new, very much improved ending we’ve made? Give us money first, otherwise you have to stick with that really crap ending we gave you.” Actually, I take that sentence back, and quick, before it reaches the eyes of certain publishers. Creating bad endings on purpose to force people to buy new ones could lead to major problems in the industry. Publishers could force developers to release unfinished games with horrible game mechanics or terrible plots and endings – or, as I like to call it, Dragon Age 2 - and then, when the fans and customers rise up in outcry, they would offer the actual finished game but at further cost. Unfortunately this sounds like something that could potentially happen, but I really don’t want to live in that future world. I’d say I would stop playing games if that happened, but… well, at this point I think they’ve actually become part of my internal organ system. Living without them would be like missing my heart. I’d probably die.
I dislike them. Don't ask me why. It's like my hatred for spiders: I don't know where it came from, but I want to smush them dead.
As an aside about the ME3 ending (and for this one I’m going to give a huge SPOILER ALERT), I am partial to the whole Indoctrination theory towards the ending. If you look at some of the evidence videos online – some of them, and I warn you: prepare yourselves for many minutes of absolute nerd energy – you can see there are some clues, especially in the hidden section that is only given to you if you pick the Destroy ending. My own theory on the ending is that this was actually the point just prior to the ending, that there is actually more to do after Shepard wakes up, but because of intense fan out-roar over the addition of multiplayer and the demands not to move the deadline back they decided to push the game out and then add on the last section of the game’s ending as a later DLC. Since it is being released for free, I have no objections to this: it means I got my game on time and we all get a finished product in the end. I’m just looking forward to seeing if I’m right or not.
Of course, I’m probably just being hopeful out of sheer blind faith in BioWare. Only time will tell.
And if you’re wondering why I’ve been really bashing on the forum ranters in this article, it’s because I really, really, really, dislike them.
