beccatoria | Mass Effect 3: The Ending, Why I Loved It, and Battlestar [Redact][Galact]ica

I played Mass Effect 3. Most of the world seems to hate the ending. On the wrong side of a technocalypse featuring Tricia Helfer as a robot yet again, I adored it.

This post will detail some of why, although I don't intend to get into a detailed rebuttal of the criticisms of the ending and its apparent tonal and logical diversions from what came before - I may do so at some point, when I want to actually discuss what I thought the game and the ending was about, but this is actually more of a post about artistic intention, the purpose of authorship in a shared world, and how the meaning of an ending can vary depending on the experience of the story. A lot of these thoughts relate to my experience of hating the end of Battlestar Galactica so much I created an alternate fan-edit of the last half-season titled Battlestar Redactica. Obviously that makes for a fairly large and ironic counterpoint to my current position. ;)

Broad spoilers follow.

It makes me wonder how I would have reacted if there'd been a large fan movement to change the BSG ending. I...don't think I would have wanted that, I don't know. I don't think that it's unprecedented to change the end of a story (in recent times I'd point to Neon Genesis Evangelion as an example), perhaps even partially based on critical response (though I would prefer that response to be more measured than an announcement mere weeks after the fact). But I also have deep reservations about this sort of thing for both reasons of artistic integrity and also because I don't want an era of gaming where you get free "basic" endings and then have to pay for the better ones as DLC.

I guess I also find it enlightening how quickly fans will praise the prospect of video games as art when it's in their interests or provides those games with critical acclaim, and then revert to demanding they be treated as purely products when they don't get what they want. I see a lot of people dismissing the notion that it's "art" by saying it's "bad art" and that shouldn't render it immune to criticism, which is true. Whether or not it's art, it stands in the public domain and is open to any and all criticisms, and whether or not it's art, the producer is under no obligation to change it; despite certain insistences it was not sold under false advertising. The art issue really only relates to the reasons Bioware might elect not to change some or all of the ending. "It would be too expensive," or "our research indicates the majority do not want it changed," would be product-based reasons for sticking with the endings. "This was always the story we wanted to tell," would be an artistic one.

But to get back on track, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the end of BSG and how its ending is...sort of similar to ONE of the possible endings in ME3, while the ending I chose was closer to what I would have WANTED for BSG and...well, combined with lots of reviewers saying things like the journey is more important than the destination, I've been thinking about that. I don't actually agree that the journey is more important, but I think that the journey contextualises the destination. What the destination - what the end of the story means - will change depending on one's experience of the journey.

Battlestar Redactica was always meant to be an exercise in practical criticism, probably even above and beyond the way it was an attempt to give myself some narrative piece of mind as a visual form of "fix-it" fan fiction. It was intended to bring out the aspects of the show I was watching all along to see if they were still there, to show how my subjective show would have looked - of course also intending to show that that version of the show made more sense for I am nothing if not passionate about my opinions... ;)

But I think it's interesting to look at Redactica as perhaps a way of restoring, or rather, introducing, the fluidity of the journey experience - a way of demonstrating how the experience of the journey can cause the destination to signify different things, and why, from my perspective, the end of BSG was so radically lacking.

On the one hand, thinking this way makes me more sympathetic to those who felt their ME3 destination signified nothing in the context of their journey.

However, I also think the reason why I was so satisfied with the ending, and so surprised so many hated it, was because rather than "only three choices!" I saw a spectrum of responses, literally coded to thesis, antithesis and synthesis, that allowed any Shepard I could think of to pick an ending in line with her moral code and conscience. It wasn't an easy choice, no, but...it was a choice nonetheless. And I'm fairly sure that choosing even the same option means very different things depending on how you get there. I feel these options offered a fairly robust way of avoiding that destination/journey discord. Because it cannot literally be completely open-ended, choices have to be programmed, at a certain point, the breadth of choice will be an illusion. Perhaps that's why it's the journey that's powerful: the largest beats of the story will always be set, to some degree, and it's the way we get to them that allows us to claim variable meanings in those same moments?

Do you choose the Control ending because it's the only way to save everyone without forcing an unchosen evolutionary path on them? Or do you choose it because you think that in the future you may have to, however unfortunately, use the Reapers to maintain order when a synthetic-organic conflict arises? Do you do it purely because you cannot bring yourself to kill your synthetic friends? Do you choose synthesis because you want to save everyone and fundamentally break the cycle, or because you want to elevate organics over their enemies? Do you choose to destroy the Reapers because the Geth are a fair price for achieving your goal, do you do it because the goal is all important regardless of context, or is it because you think all synthetic life needs to be destroyed because the Reapers and the Citadel AI are themselves examples of the dangers of synthetic life and their "solution" no less barbaric than the conflict they purport to be preventing? Why did you come to these conclusions? How? Did the story you played through in ME1, 2 and 3 influence your choice and opinion, either by confirming or complexifying what you would have done all along, or by changing your mind?

I suppose one of the things that I'm most intrigued and a little saddened by is the insistence that there was a lack of choice and/or that it had nothing to do with your previous decisions, when this is actually in keeping with previous games and if anything offers more choice and a more significant one. At the end of ME1, you fight Saren. You get no choice. You can choose to save or abandon the Council, but this ultimately has minimal in-game effect and your choice is NOT dictated by any of your previous actions (renegades can save the Council, and paragons can abandon them). At the end of ME2, you destroy the proto-Reaper, you have no choice. You can choose whether to save or destroy the Collector base, but again, this has minimal in-game effect later and is not tied to your renegade/paragon status or previous game choices. This is where it gets interesting though, because you see a lot of the consequences of your previous in-game choices during the ending when you see who lives or dies, partially based on how you treated them throughout the game. This makes it feel like your choices are all coming home to roost dramatically in the end sequence. By that standard, I can see why the ending to ME3 would feel less momentous, but the entirety of ME3 is about the consequences of your previous choices. It's like one gigantic suicide mission. Every set piece and sequence, nearly, has people or entire races who will live or die based on what you did in previous games. You cannot save both Mordin and Wrex. It is very hard to save both the Quarians and the Geth - and completely impossible if you made a huge number of specific choices in ME2. Most of the ME2 characters you meet along the way have the option to be killed based on things you did or didn't do either in this game or the last. I got Kelly Chambers killed in ME3 because I chose to be kind and not remind her of the harsh realities of running from Cerberus. I saved Conrad Verner because I took the time to do a completely (at the time) unrelated sidequest in a different game. I didn't meet her in person, but by reading news updates, I discovered that a minor Asari character I gave a second-chance in ME1 & 2 actually went on to do some terrible stuff and maybe it would have been better for the galaxy if I'd killed her when I had the chance. Saving every last damn colonist from the Thorian in ME1 and then getting medical help for them in ME2 meant that they showed up on my War Asset list and I got to hear a radio bulletin about them, even if I didn't meet them personally, because their subtle telepathy rendered them a more cohesive combat unit. In enormous set pieces with huge cut scenes, in shorter in-game encounters, and in detailed text-only and background material, my choices were reflected back at me.

So then, at the end, once again, you are presented with a choice (trinary rather than binary this time) that is available in its entirety to all characters regardless of previous play choices - the same as games 1 and 2 - and this time with a genuine, undeniable impact on the universe. And we go back to my earlier points about the experience of the journey making the endings mean something different to each character. This is...in narrative terms, more an epilogue than a climax: this is the opportunity to contextualise the journey of your Shepard in retrospect?

If I were being uncharitable, I'd say that some gamers don't appreciate having to use their experience of playing the whole of ME3, of everyone they've seen live or die due to their decisions, as something that informs their choice at this point. Because Shepard doesn't make a speech about her perspective, and because the game doesn't actively lock you out of options, because the roleplaying is down to you it's seen as lesser?

If I'm being charitable, I'll agree it's a shame that the end animations weren't more diverse (though I do think people confuse the fact the animation of the Crucible firing being very similar with the idea that all the choices are themselves similar). I think the most likely thing Bioware will do, now that they've announced their intention to do something, will be to add epilogues, and I would be largely okay with that. If I'm being arty and pretentious, I do think that there's something appropriate about not allowing gamers to ever verify that they made the right choice - because Shepard would never know. Forcing you to make a gamble on the future of the universe never knowing if it was the right call so you can go back and replay it again and get the "good" ending? But I also think that argument could legitimately be called pretentious bollocks and I'd believe it if someone told me they ran out of cash and time and that's why the animations are similar.

I do think, though, that if the ending had simply been to destroy the Reapers, we'd get a lot less discussion about choices mattering, because we would be focusing on where we knew all those characters we interacted with would end up, based on seeing them again throughout ME3, rather than on the uncertainty of their position in a universe our Shepard just fundamentally altered. Despite being okay with more detailed epilogues in principle, I do hope they don't destroy the mystery - the sense of scope and newness, the impossible uncertainty about the meaning of what Shepard just did, because I think there's something powerful in that.

And anyway...there's what I think about that.

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