Warning! Major Spoilers Ahead!
Let me start by saying that I love the Mass Effect franchise. I love 99% of Mass Effect 3. In fact, the reason I’m criticizing the ending and even writing my own is because I love it so much. It deserves an ending that fits; an ending that rewards those that invested in its story emotionally.Why the Ending Really is as Bad as Everyone Says
I won't rehash the obvious plot holes, unanswered questions, nonsensical justifications, and character inconsistencies many others have pointed out about the ending of Mass Effect 3. In case you missed these, here are a few summaries:http://kotaku.com/5892676/why-mass-effect-3s-ending-was-so-terrible/
http://kotaku.com/5898743/mass-effect-3s-ending-disrespects-its-most-invested-players
http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6M0Cf864P7E “10 Reasons We Hate Mass Effect 3's Ending” (warning: includes F-bombs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7MlatxLP-xs “Mass Effect 3 Ending: Tasteful, Understated Nerdrage (SPOILERS)”
I'll focus on the problems with the abandonment of the underpinning rules of both the Sci-fi genre and the video game format and narrative and theme construction in general. Then I’ll give one way I think it could’ve been done successfully.
Conflicts with the Conventions of Story Structure
My first quibble with the ending of Mass Effect 3 is that the writers didn’t seem to understand what kind of story they wanted to tell. Orson Scott Card wrote that in literature there are event stories, milieu stories, mystery stories and idea stories. (http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/write-first-chapter-get-started/4-story-structures-that-dominate-novels).The writers seemed to think they were telling an idea story. In idea stories, the resolution is finding out WHY something is happening. In that regard, the Mass Effect 3 ending would seem to have satisfied the critical criteria because the player does get to understand why the Reapers are destroying everything.
However, the amount of outrage regarding the ending proves that most players didn’t feel any resolution. Why? Because Mass Effect 3 is not an idea story, it is an event story. And as in any event story, what matters is what the protagonist (player) does.
At the end of Mass Effect 3, Shepard (and thereby the player) isn’t really the protagonist anymore. The Catalyst is the one dictating and deciding. All Shepard gets to do is choose the color of explosion. Because there’s no context for the decision, it amounts to no more than a dice roll on which is the best choice.
The resolution of an event story happens when the protagonist puts right what was broken. In Mass Effect 3, the discord to the galaxy’s natural order is the Reaper invasion. It can’t come to resolution until the protagonist takes an action that fixes the problem and we know what was accomplished and what the result is after it is done. In event stories the disorder must be fixed, and if the world has been changed in the process, we need to see how those changes have affected the world and its characters. The ending of Mass Effect 3 fails to do that.
Conflicts with the Norms of Sci-fi
The worst insult to a sci-fi audience is to end a story by saying, "don’t try to understand this. It’s beyond your ability to comprehend." Certainly one should not do it at the end of a 3 part story. This is, in general, an audience willing to deal with complex moral and scientific issues. Sometimes sci-fi is the only genre where these issues can be talked about away from a politicized context. The Mass Effect 3 ending patronizes their core audience when the God Child essentially tells Shepard, "this is the way it is. Don’t question it, you wouldn’t understand."The 2nd worst insult is resolving the central conflict with Deus Ex Machina; literally, in Latin, God in the Machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex_Machina). It comes from the ancient Greek dramatic practice of resolving difficult plot points by having a god or angel fly in attached to a set of pulleys or mechanical lift, to make sure that all comes out alright. It was a lazy method of resolution then, it's a lazy method of resolution now.
This method of resolution is particularly disliked in Sci-fi because it is so easy. In Sci-fi, writers can bring in any number of advanced races or godlike creatures to simply snap their fingers (or tentacles or claws or calibrating lasers; take your pick) and solve problems. However, since it doesn’t rely on action by the protagonist, this kind of ending is tantamount to "and it was all a dream", or "he imagined the whole thing". That's why I don't think the Indoctrination Theory of the ending improves things at all. It would be just as lazy and then we'd truly have NO ending rather than just a very bad one.
Conflicts with the Conventions of the Video Game Format
The most obvious problem with the ending is the abrupt end of gameplay in favor of dialogue and cutscenes. It was like watching Return of the Jedi up until Luke meets the Emperor and then having the movie switch to a narrator and black screen. Worse, imagine the narrator quickly summarizing it by saying, "The Emperor decides to let Luke blow up the Death Star. Also, the characters that were on Endor are now on Tatooine. The End!"With the experience making games that Bioware has, it surprises me that the ending disregards so many other gaming norms. Why get rid of the squad format? Why not finish the playthrough on the Citadel/Catalyst? Why no unique gameplay for the ending? Why no boss battle?
In a video game, you don't talk the villain to death. The God Child essentially asks Shepard to decide whether it should blow itself up. Can you imagine Emperor Palpatine giving Luke a choice like that? No! What’s worse, the Mass Effect 3 ending punishes players for investing themselves in the game. If the bad guy is going to kill himself for you then all the effort of gaining skills and learning tactics throughout the game feels like a waste.
Unanswered Questions
A primary reason many critics have used in complaining about the ending is a lack of explanation about the people and places that meant so much to Shepard. What really happens to the crew of the Normandy? What happens to Earth? What about the other planets and races? None of it is explained; at least not in a way that makes any logical sense from the events that came before.Another reason players feel that nothing was resolved is because the game’s mechanics (war assets, effective military strength) are essentially thrown out the window when the ending begins. What are the effects of the player’s choices? What was the effect of gathering a small or a large fleet? What were the galactic readiness and war asset point systems for anyway?
Moreover, players are given no context to many of the quests and mysteries they experienced throughout the game. Without this resolution these aspects of the game seem nonsensical. Most players can live with not understanding why a conflict is happening at a particular point because they’ve grown to trust that it will be explained at some future point in the game. When that explanation never comes they feel confused at best and cheated at worst.
Mass Effect 3’s ending also doesn’t clarify any of the underlying motivational plot points that you would expect to be answered in the ending. What was the result of the Illusive Man's work? What was the deeper plan behind what the Reapers were doing in ME2? What was the real meaning of Shepard's dreams? What did the Prothean VI (in ME1) do to Shepard? Why did the Illusive Man (in the beginning of ME2) spend so much to save Shepard's life? What was the Illusive Man's ultimate plan and why was Shepard such a critical piece in it? If feels seems like the writers let the story get away from them and then couldn't get it back.
Lack of Thematic Resolution
I think the writers of Mass Effect 3 could’ve gotten away with a lot of other flaws if players had been given a satisfying resolution to the theme. This is the course the writers of Lost took. Although not all questions were answered, because the characters and themes were resolved, most viewers were at least partially satisfied with the way it ended.Mass Effect 3 did none of that. This, in my opinion, is what really made players feel punched kicked in the gut at the end. I don’t think this means they needed a happy ending; but as in any story, they needed to get a sense that the actions the protagonist took were important to the resolution of the theme.
Why is theme so important? Because it is the one part of the game that players can connect to their own lives. This, more than the challenge, even more than the characters is applicable to our own place in time.
Those of us who bought the game aren’t really interested in learning how to stop a horde of sentient destructive robots. That is just the macguffin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin) that motivates the player to act. But we do care greatly about the characters and themes because those directly influence how we see the world. The ending of Mass Effect 3 is disliked because although the macguffin is resolved (the reapers are stopped), the theme is not.
Who is the real villain?
In good stories, the antagonist isn't just a nameless and purposeless force. Even if nature is the antagonist, it is personified within a specific creature or event. In Moby Dick, it's the whale. In ME3, the writers are trying to convince the player that the real villain is Harbinger or whoever controls the Reapers. It isn't.In the best stories the true villain is the one that is like the hero in most ways and yet is corrupted or evil in the one critical area that differentiates him from the hero. Think Sherlock Holmes vs. Moriarty, Frodo vs. Gollum, Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader. In ME3 the real villain is the Illusive Man. Throughout ME2 and ME3, the Illusive Man and Shepard share the same intermediate goals; stop the reapers. But they are different in what they ultimately want to achieve and what means they will employ to get there. Their choices should play into the overall theme.
What happened to the theme?
In a well-structured event story, the thematic resolution, character resolution and action resolution harmonize so that each strengthens the power of the others.From the ending of ME3 you'd think the theme is that technology, and especially thinking computers, are bad. That isn't the theme of 99% of the game, nor of the previous games.
The theme of Mass Effect 3 is that more can be accomplished by working together than by standing alone and that we don't have to become what we hate in order to overcome it. It repudiates the Social Darwinism of the Illusive Man that only the strong survive and that evolution means we must destroy or control everything else around us.
Themes come to resolution in strong endings when they are tested and are shown to withstand the trial. Throughout ME3, both Shepard and the Illusive Man are trying to stop the Reapers. Shepard is doing it through rallying everyone together and making friends out of past enemies. The Illusive Man is trying to do it by figuring out how to control everything and everyone around him. This should lead to a climax where the two systems of thought are placed in direct opposition to each other so we can see which wins out in the end.
Yet in the ending, the Illusive Man and Shepard argue about whether it’s technically possible for the Illusive Man to control the Reapers, not whether he should. Since it's all made-up science anyway there's no reason to believe the Illusive Man can't do it. The cutscenes in Sanctuary indicate he can. The critical questions are why does he wants that control? What would be the result if he got that control? Is that really the best way to achieve peace for the galaxy?
Here's How I Would Have Done It
