Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut Ending Discussion

27 June 2012

Now that the hotly anticipated, Mass Effect 3 ‘Extended Cut’ DLC has been released (for Xbox 360 and PC owners), Meg discusses what she thought after finishing the Destroy ending!

This video has been split into a spoiler and spoiler-free section and includes BIOWARE’s message to fans.

Here’s the Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut Ending Discussion. Take a look!

This video was (again) far from planned but I tried to answer all questions from the previous video and include all my thoughts on the other endings. This second video is FULL of SPOILERS!!

Bioware never stated that they would ‘change ‘ or ‘rewrite’ the ending; in various interviews, many members of the Bioware team have stated that, ‘The Extended Cut expands on the endings of Mass Effect 3 through additional scenes and epilogue sequences. It provides more of the answers and closure that players have been asking for. It gives a sense of what the future holds as a result of the decisions made throughout the series.’

This being said, we all should have known what to expect: added scenes to enhance the ending we already have to achieve a sense of closure, and they have done this, remarkably well I feel. Bioware plugged the holes that needed plugging. If you were looking for a completely different ending, you’d best put your inner rage to bed, cause it’s going to be a long wait…

I can personally die happy and having now completed the Synthesis ending I can’t help but feel the sense of closure that I so desperately needed.

I have no reservations in saying that this, however, should have been done the first time around and it will be a long time before I can trust Casey Hudson or EA Games again…

So what do you think of this DLC? Do you feel that both Bioware and the ending are unfixable? Perhaps you have not played it yet, and if so what are you expecting? Feel free to leave your thoughts and opinions on the Mass Effect series, the ending of the third instalment or anything else that comes to mind in the comment section below!

Side note — the music playing in this video was purchased from the official Mass Effect 3 soundtrack on iTunes.co.uk and belongs to the respective owners. These are (in the order they appear):
1. An End Once and For All
2. Rannoch
3. Prothean Beacon
4. In Praise of the Han River (B4-A3) — The Host, Byeong Wo

To refresh your memory, here are the four different Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut endings.

Hidden Refusal Ending: You didn’t see that coming…

Destroy Ending: Whaaattt?!?!? Crazy…

Control Ending: Who wants to Control them…?

Synthesis Ending: Awesome! Where do I sign up…

Tags: Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut

Categories: Features, Let's Talk, News, PC News, PS3 News, Shows, Videos, Wii U News, Xbox 360 News

About the author

By Meg Smith: An avid gamer with a two year degree in Video Games Art and Design, she lives to broaden her gaming horizons and loves any game that captures the imagination or tries something new. Read her posts here and connect with her on Twitter, Facebook and at Google+.

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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=501334632 Michael Ratliff

Couldn’t agree more. While the ending wasn’t the only thing about the game originally, this certainly added to it and made it so much better. The extended cut ending made the game sweeter for me, and made me feel comfortable to return to BioWare in the future.
http://www.facebook.com/keith.wells.543 Keith Wells

Meg needs more coffee.
Mike

I liked the new endings!
Eldan

When you bother to give serious thought to the options open to you at ME3′s end as oposed to the typical mentally pasive way of watching a mass entertainment product of our time, synthesis can only be seen as the enbodyment of evil: a galactical scaled brainwashing and eugenesia program, in the real world Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot would have chosen it! With the only difference after what we see in the epilogue that Shepard (or rather the Starkid) succeeds while those two failed in the real world.

Control isn’t much better but at least it only implies control through force and not actual brainwashing, there is a limited freedom in there and if you buy the catalysts reassoning I can see why some would prefer it to destroy and risk losing all in the future. That said the catalyst reassoning is fundamentally flawed even if you trust he is being honest with you, though it would take me too long to reasson that so I will leave it at that.

I will sincerely thank Bioware for one thing, as disapointing as it was to be denied a decent ending (before and after EC) at least that failure prompted me and many to actually analyse this mass phenomenon, read about narrative theory and ponder on several interesting issues I would have never thought a main stream entertainment product would promt me to do. No doubt that wasn’t exactly Bioware’s intention, but I think that enormous mistake they did has actually made lots of people like me learn and grow far more than if the ending had had any quality in: plot coherence, scienctific specualtion and narrative structure.

So for what is worth: Thanks Bioware ;P
http://www.videogamesblogger.com Ferry

Is it me or did Bioware still explain nothing, leaving room for Mass Effect 4 with the Reaper creators reveal? You seem to be the one to tell me this, but am I a bad person for thinking the fan-made Indoctrination ending is far better than the four options we got here? Starkid STILL looks like the kid from his dreams and the vent/crash scenes, so why trust an A.I. entity that’s IN YOUR HEAD. Seriously!
Regardless, it’s just my opinion. But I like that fan discussion felt more right than the writers came up with.
http://www.videogamesblogger.com Ferry

Yeah they were definitely better!
http://www.videogamesblogger.com Ferry

LOL! No sleep, no food, and that much caffeine has got to be a dangerous combo! I hope she slept it off…
http://www.videogamesblogger.com Ferry

A definite improvement for sure. I like all the hidden details in between the lines, like us suddenly finding out about the Reaper creators and them being destroyed against their wishes by their own creations, it made the whole Starkid speech of a solution so freaking ironic.
A G

I enjoyed the extra background material in the Extended Cut. The static images of everyone happy were a little cheesy, but I think they accomplished the main thing lacking from the original ending–a sense of denoument. Whether you object or not to the three original choices, there’s almost no narrative after Shepard’s decision–and therefore no time to process your way out of the story. I am sympathetic with almost every complaint I’ve read, many of which raise much deeper criticisms of Bioware’s story choices, but I still feel confident that if there had just been a little more falling action after the final choice, more people would have felt satisfied with the original ending(s). It’s like the fadeout on a pop song or the final joke (often called a tag) after Act 3 of a sitcom. Now, with the voiceover and the still shots, every one of the 3 endings has a down-beat. (I don’t mean that they are downbeat, or sad, but that they have action that works you down from the climax.) Even the new 4th ending gives you something within the narrative (Liara’s lesson) before the Stargazer.

(continued below, because I can’t see the rest of my comment in the box)
http://www.facebook.com/michelle.debari.7 Michelle De Bari

Everything can.be rebuilt, not EVERYONE. The Geth and Edi were all fully self aware individuals. Now they’re all dead, and the reaper tech that made them that way is gone. That’s like saying thay even though a million people died it’s okay because we can just replace them by giving birth to new babies, so nothing was lost.

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