Mass Effect 3’s Ending Was Intended To Polarize

Mass Effect 3’s director didn’t want the game to be forgettable, particularly the ending.

{Spoiler Warning: This article contains minor spoilers regarding Mass Effect 3’s ending.}

Give me a moment while I look up a nice, neutral-sounding, news article-friendly word to describe Mass Effect 3’s selection of endings. Ah, here we are: Divisive. Mass Effect 3’s endings are divisive. They’re supposed to be, according to the game’s director and executive producer, Casey Hudson.

“I didn’t want the game to be forgettable, and even right down to the sort of polarizing reaction that the ends have had with people-debating what the endings mean and what’s going to happen next, and what situation are the characters left in”, he told Digital Trends.

“That to me is part of what’s exciting about this story,” he continued. “There has always been a little bit of mystery there and a little bit of interpretation, and it’s a story that people can talk about after the fact.”

Fans are certainly talking, but they’re mostly using their outside voices. The impression I get from all the frothing, is that a large proportion of fans are not fond of the way Bioware chose to end Commander Shepard’s saga. “Retake Mass Effect,” a movement asking for new, more palatable endings for the game, is using donations to popular nerdling charity Child’s Play to make its point. Thus far it has just over 10,000 supporters who’ve collectively donated more than $27,000. Whether the movement is a positive way of sending a message to developers, or a manipulative attempt to strong-arm the creative process is still up for debate, but it proves fans are willing to spend money to get what they want.

The direction Bioware took with the game’s endings appears to contradict some of Hudson’s earlier statements. In one pre-release interview he claimed that “[Mass Effect 3’s ending] is not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.”

Pithy fans have been quick to point out that Mass Effect 3 does in fact end with a choice between three options that could, if you were trying to be droll, be labeled A, B and C.

There may be hope for those disappointed by the ending, however. In the more recent interview, Casey mentioned that players will be seeing some “really great single-player content” in the future, lending some credibility to the numerous theories that the game’s endings aren’t as final as they might first appear.

Source: Digital Trends