To Bioware from a loving fan.

First I would like to thank Bioware for all the wonderful entertainment they have brought me over the years. From Knights of the Old Republic, to Jade Empire, all the way to Mass Effect. Your products have given me countless hours of joy playing and I hope to continue in the future. However that future is very dependent on how the next few weeks play out.

First I want to say what ME3 did right. The voice acting and dialogue were par to the other ME games. Truly amazing on their part. Story progression through areas like Rannoch and Tuchanka were truly some of the most memorable moments in the entire series. Mordins sacrifice, Wrex and Eve’s hope for the future of their species, Tali’s plans to settle down on her home planet with Shep, Legion and the Geth gaining full consciousness, all of these moments’ truly inspirational and uplifting moments in an otherwise bleak universe. Combat had a few improvements as well.

Now onto what disappointed me about this game. I’ll go over the main points to me that seemed to have been missed opportunities, as well as parts that just felt like a lackluster effort.

The disappearance of the “Middle Option” in dialogue threw me off at first. The lack investigate options, lack of options total, as well as the very VERY small differences in these choices felt wrong and out of place. It un-immersed the player from the role of Shepherd.

I was truly expecting at the final combat area to be overrun, and have a cut scene showing Shepherd in a truly desperate situation. Then off camera came the sound of explosions, and Grunt and Wrex bust down a wall with a few husk corpses flying through the air. Then Shepherd is about to blasted by a bunch of Cannibals when Jack and her students throw up barriers and blast them. Moments like these are what make a final segment truly great as it not only rewards the player for establishing these relationships, but let the player feel like he’s not alone in this fight. Instead what we received was just some running through grey ruins, alone and forgotten by your crew and friends.

And finally the ending. This ending broke the lore. Period. It was so out of place I literally opened my disk trey to make sure I was still playing Mass Effect. Then I attributed it to being a little tipsy. Then I fully realized what was happening. It felt like the writers, maybe with best intention, had tried to throw in a hook/twist element that they thought could expand on the scale or story of the Reapers. However I don’t believe it was fully thought through. In epics like Star Wars, LOtR, or any other, people don’t really care WHY the bad guy is bad. We don’t want a history lesson on how he came about being the bad guy. The emperors dying scene was not about why he became the Sith Lord. No one really cared, and if they did, that’s what fan fiction is for. This rationalization of “Why the Reapers” do what they do was totally pointless. It ruins the epic feeling of seeing a Reaper and imagining the epicness of their existence. It made it feel that fighting them was like nothing more than fighting a mad scientist, rather than fight these truly mysterious, giant, robo-organic hybrid race that was exterminating all life. The introducing the starchild as a Deus Ex Machina was just wrong. The loyal fans who have been with you sense day one truly deserved something better than some ghost kid. Joker running away my people’s LI and crew… The exploding of the Mass Relays… none of this fits in this universe.

You want to know what broke this game? It is to me what made it great. The lore and the codex. These things allowed the player to gain knowledge on how this universe operated. From things that mattered to the plot, to things that were far out and crazy, but we loved it. These things were abandoned and left to rot at the ending. And to those of us who really appreciated the effort the writers put into this universe, to have it all dropped to give us a “Twist ending” we didn’t want in the first place seems like a slap in the face.

What truly worries me the most is how Bioware is reacting to this. They go into a defensive mode, siting all their “perfect scores” and “artistic integrity”. Bioware should be estatic about how big of a wave this has caused. Never before can I remember has any game caused this much backlash. The reason Bioware should be happy is because the reason BEHIND the backlash. The backlash is because we all LOVE Bioware! However they have been making mistakes, and we don’t want to see them end up like other companies who lose holding with their customers. If I truly wanted to hurt Bioware I would just stop caring. So if by in the one and a million chance some Bioware lackey reads this, please understand outrage. People have a bad habit of showing it differently. But for the most part its origin comes from the same place. We don’t want clarification on this ending. For the most part we get it. We want something that fits this series. You’ve made something we care about. That make this game a double edged sword. I hope Bioware realized that this is a goldne moment to show fans they truly do care, unlike so many other companies.
With best wishes and hope for the future,
Matt T

Agreed, completely.