Suicide Mission: Defending Mass Effect 3's Ending

This blog started out as a school project that I expected to continue even after the class was done and over with.  Several months and zero posts later, I realize that I rather sadly let it fall by the wayside.  But this is something that should not die, and since there’s a big online discussion about something I care about, now is a perfect chance to discuss real game criticism, so it’s time to get this blog going again.

That thing is the ending of Mass Effect 3.  If you’re reading this and somehow know nothing about the internet craziness surrounding Mass Effect 3’s ending, you’re probably reading through backlogs or something.  Because if you’re reading this at all near the time it’s posted, you’d have to be living on the moon to have not heard about it.

While this discussion will necessarily lead to spoilers, several points can be made without them.  I won’t necessarily speak for the sites I reference, but the first three points spoil nothing about the content, only certain conceptual flaws, which some might not want to hear.  And yes, I’m defending the ending.  There are flaws, and I may revisit what I think are the most significant another time, but I think the ending is amazing despite those flaws.

First of all, there’s various theories out there about the ending that are very interesting and would not have happened without such an unusual ending.  In particular, the often mentioned indoctrination theory documented well on the Bioware forums is very interesting.¹  The existence of this and other theories and all the work and thought going into picking apart Mass Effect 3 (and even previous games) is absolutely incredible.  This is the kind of thought that I’ve been talking about and Bioware’s ending inspired this.  If that isn’t praiseworthy, whatever the other flaws may be, you cannot turn around and say video games are art, as this is exactly what we want see if video games are indeed art.

Secondly, Bioware has already announced an “extended cut” on their blog that is meant to address one of the main flaws: the lack of closure.  Whether or not this will fully mitigate that flaw will depend on the future, but we haven’t seen everything there is to see.  Also, if you object to the extended cut itself, note the beginning of the article on their blog mentioning it (linked below)²:

“An official press release went out today announcing how we are re-prioritizing the Mass Effect 3 post release content schedule to provide a more fleshed out experience for our fans.”

(emphasis mine)

Re-prioritizing is not the same as adding to their post release schedule.  This sounds much more as if this was already planned, was considered less important and pushed to the back of the schedule, and then that was re-evaluated.  In that case, it is not in any way reducing their artistic integrity.  Only Bioware knows what their intentions actually are and were, though, but I’d tend towards giving them the benefit of the doubt considering their previous work.

Third.  Disregarding the lack of closure and coherency (the other major flaw in the ending), it is incredibly well put together.  The music, the cinematics, the voice acting all remain just as good as the rest of the game, if not better at some points.  And if you’ve played the game, it goes without saying that the rest of the game was executed extremely well.  Flaws aside, many of the technical aspects are great examples of how the ending should work.

*****   Spoilers for all three games start here   *****

Fourth, what people normally deem “the ending” isn’t what we should be calling “the ending.”  Is the ending of Mass Effect just the stuff after the Saren boss fight (the choice between Anderson and Udina)?  Is the ending of Mass Effect 2 just the final conversation with the Illusive Man and the big rush back to the Normandy?  I’d say no.  If you disregard the latter part of Ilos, the battle around the Citadel, choosing whether or not to save the council, and fighting Saren, Mass Effect’s ending was crap as well.  Same thing if you disregard everything in the suicide mission up to the final rush.

If you’re going to talk about Mass Effect 3’s ending, you should include everything from when the fleet arrives at Earth through the rest of the game.  The entire arrival cinematic was a massive nod to your choices.  The conversations with your various squad mates and the distinct lack of certain people like Mordin, Kaiden/Ashley, and more (possibly a lot more) is the culmination of three games worth of choices.  And all of that is beautifully executed.  But for the sake of argument, let’s even set that aside and focus on the events after Shepard is knocked unconscious by the Reaper.

Fifth, the final sequence is by no means artistically bankrupt.  But since this is already rather long, I’ll leave that for the next post.  That’ll be a full post of in-depth analysis on what the game means if the events are taken at face value.  And even the fact that such can be done demonstrates that the final sequence isn’t artistically bankrupt, and if so, the end has some merit, especially during a time when video games are only just beginning to be recognized as worth the effort it takes to get some meaning out of them.

1. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/9727423

2. http://blog.bioware.com/2012/04/05/mass-effect-3-extended-cut/