Mass Effect 3 is making a lot of people feel quite angry. In addition to the day one DLC controversy, there's been an outpouring of bitterness from players upset about Mass Effect 3's ending. A group has even gone as far as to petition Bioware to change the final act to meet their specifications. We won't drop any spoilers in this post, but there will be some through the links below, so take care if you're still playing through ME3.
As Edge report, the campaign has garnered plenty of support. The Take Back Mass Effect 3 campaign has 25,000 likes on Facebook , 3,000 Twitter followers and 40,000 backers in a Bioware forum poll.
All this noise hasn't gone unnoticed by Bioware. Mass Effect 3 director and executive producer Casey Hudson spoke to Digital Trends about what the team were aiming for with the finale. "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 says.
"That to me is part of what's exciting about this story. 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."
The good news is that Child's Play has unexpectedly gained a lot of support form the movement. The Retake Mass Effect Child's Play page has so far raised $32,502.60 for the charity. The campaign organisers say that they started the drive to "bring positive attention to our petition for an alternate ending to the fantastic Mass Effect series."
"We would like to dispel the perception that we are angry or entitled. We simply wish to express our hope that there could be a different direction for a series we have all grown to love," they add.
The likelihood of Bioware making another ending for Mass Effect 3 is ... very small. However, it's possible that the campaign will have an affect on upcoming DLC misisons, as Casey Hudson mentions: "We have some really great multiplayer content and some really great single-player content coming over the air, and their feedback will become part of how we design that."
Personally I was never happy with the ending of Citizen Kane. It was severely lacking in bears. The story of one man's corruption at the hands of his own ambition would have been much improved with a bit of unarmed man-on-bear combat. As such I'm petitioning Warner Brothers for a full re-cut of the final third. Is it what Wells would have wanted? Pfff, who cares. What do you reckon, should Bioware change the ending?
