Soooo....Mass Effect 3

[[wcip]Angel]

Let's face it, consumers have a right to argue something is inferior and either get their money back (which won't happen in this case due to how the game is setup) or get the product changed due to the inferior make up (which is happening in this case). It's like BioWare played a shell game with the ending after building up such a wonderful experience to that point.

To me, this doesn't hold water at all.

1. I have never heard of anyone claiming they have the right to get their money back if they're unhappy with a video game. Consider all the crappy movie cash-ins that come out every year. ME3 is a good game, but consider the torrent of crap that is published. People who buy these games have no recourse. Buyer beware.

2. Even though Bioware made some promises in regards to the ending that now seem ignored and discarded, anyone could argue that the "ending" is indeed the final level, not the final cinematic. In that case, your actions from ME1, 2 and 3 do have consequences. Hell, the "ending" could also mean the ending of the trilogy, meaning the whole of ME3 whose story is played out in light of what happened in the two games preceding it. If you check the actual statement, it wouldn't be difficult to argue that Bioware hasn't done anything wrong here. (I'm playing devil's advocate here. I fully agree the ending sucked... I'm just saying that fans have no legal recourse. The fact that Bioware is actually taking their feedback into consideration is (to me) quite generous.

3. This is where the conspiracy theorists come in. I'm not a part of the rabid fan base who blame EA for all of Bioware's shortcomings, but you could argue that EVEN IF Bioware made some promises in regards to the ending (cinematic), they were unable to follow through on that promise because of their obligations to EA. On today's episode of Invisible Walls (GT.com), Marcus Beer was quite adamant that EA had their "sticky little fingers" all over this game and its creative team. Should a developer be penalised if the publisher pushes an unfinished product through?

I bought the Mass Effect's Final Hours-app on my Ipad last night and rummaged through it this morning, and according to the interviews that Geoff Keighley conducted at Bioware, they were struggling with time, even so much that a central character needed to be cut from the original game(The Prothean) and attached as DLC. In March 2011, they pushed back the game from a November release too a March 2012 release, but even then Bioware was struggling for time. Martin Sheen was supposed to be done with his final voice-over work in August/September, but needed to be brought back for the final conversation options in November/December. The game was still in the process of being planned up until the very end.

What does this mean? Perhaps nothing. But perhaps Bioware was so stretched for time that they didn't have enough time to craft a proper set of endings for the game. This is of course impossible for us who aren't in the company to answer, but the striking gap in quality between the actual game and the way the endings were handled does lend credibility to some of these rumours and conspiracy theories.

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Back to my original concern: art by democracy. I really think the suitcase in Pulp Fiction should remain a mystery, despite the rabid masses' appeal for closure. In my mind, art should be left up to the artists. If popular opinion should dictate what games we play, I doubt we would ever have had a Silent Hill 2, Shadow of the Colossus, Monkey Island, Psychonauts.. hell even a Deus Ex. The artistic vision of the auteur must come through. There is too much pandering to the lowest common denominator in modern games/cinema already. There's a reason why most movies and games these days are brainless, insulting pieces of garbage.