Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut DLC Ending

Well it’s been a long busy summer.  I finally played the new DLC Mass Effect 3 ending; Extended Cut.  So here it goes.

I will not wax and wane philosophically about the meaning of the different endings, if any, or how that relates to us in our daily life.

I liked the new ending and I’m appreciative that EA/Bioware recognized the angst the original endings created in the Mass Effect community and took positive action to address the player’s and fan’s concerns and feelings.  I also want to thank everyone who emailed, tweeted, facebooked, youtubed and used other social media outlets or old school letters to complain and make their feelings known to EA/Bioware.

There is an old saying that goes something like “One awe-shit erases ten that-a-boys.”

That is exactly what happened to EA/Bioware with the original Mass Effect 3 endings.  For all the acclaim and good will Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 generated from the story lines, characters, voice acting, graphics/animation, combat system and the immerse universe EA/Bioware created; they squandered it all away or some might say they flushed it down the toilet with the most horrific endings ever conceived.  The original endings where ill-conceived and just plain lame.

Spoiler Alert:  The video shows one of the possible endings of Mass Effect 3.

When you consider that on average most players spent about 30 hours to complete each game in the series, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect, about 90 hours of total playing time they deserved an ending that closed out Commander Shepard’s story and the multiple story arch’s with characters that we came to like and invested our time in.  Players also deserved the unique endings promised in that our decisions in Mass Effect affected the outcomes resulting in a different play through for each individual player.  Did you kill Wrex, save the Rachni Queen or side with Miranda or Jack?

The original Mass Effect 3 ending were so bad I didn’t even know if Commander Shepard lived or died.  The new Extended Cut endings resolved many of those issues.  I know what happened to Commander Shepard.  I know what happened to characters I had come to like, to races, civilizations, the Reapers and even the Mass Relays.  So the new ending provided for me the closure of Commander Shepard’s story that was missing in the original endings.

I personally thought it was sad because some of my favorite characters didn’t live.  But as I said in a previous post, a sad ending is ok, we see that all the time in movies, books and television.  An ending that isn’t an ending isn’t ok.