[Henry Fool]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

The ending was also changed because it made no freaking sense. You're asked to activate a device in a room filled with lethal levels of radiation. A similar event happened earlier in the game, and you survived by asking a radiation-resistant NPC companion to enter the room for you. At the end of the game, though, even if you have the very same NPC companion with you who could just as easily enter the room without problem, the developers forced the player's character to die for no reason because they wanted a bittersweet ending where the protagonist has to sacrifice himself/herself.

Now, I have no problems with bittersweet endings. In fact, I think an ending of that style was the only appropriate way to finish the Mass Effect trilogy. But I did expect the ending to be well-written and logically consistent. Fallout 3's original ending was not, nor was ME3's.

If it worked for you and you enjoyed it, then consider yourself lucky. You are most definitely in the minority. It didn't work for me and I hated it. And my opinion has nothing to do with groupthink or anything else. I stayed 100% spoiler-free and didn't read anything about the game until after I was done with it. I didn't even know there was an "ending controversy" until I started reading forum threads after I had finished the game.

Spoiler!

Okay, but surely you realise that the games are very different and a giving what the critics want is impossible in ME3 without making significant alterations to the Crucible and main ideas behind it.

Suppose Shepard wakes up afterwards, which is the only real change made in Fallout - what fight is there for her to join? So that's meaningless. What sort of change would be analogous in ME3, exactly? What would fit the "precedent"?

Shepard's death is built into the logic of the machine in at least two of the choices, the protagonist's death in Fallout is incidental. And even more importantly, the significance of a character's death is not the same in every game and every story. The story in Fallout changed very little when the player woke up afterwards, but the changes that are being demanded on ME3 are much more significant. The issue here isn't Shepard's death as far as I've understood it.

I do consider myself lucky, but I wouldn't draw any hasty conclusions about how small the minority I belong to actually is. In any case, I never expect my own tastes to coincide with those of the majority. Often they do in general things but when it comes to other kinds of things, subtle personal characteristics make a bigger difference. One could say that it's then that art really functions, and that's where the true differences of opinion come into play. What I perceive is a strange lack of a real spectrum of opinion in the discussion, apart from the few who express positive things. Beyond that I just see a huge solid block of negativity, and that's the sort of thing that makes me suspicious.

But once again, I don't mean to suggest that it's not legitimate to have negative views on the game. That would really be stupid. If I say that in an argument, I'm being an idiot.

I would say it's possible that in many cases the misgivings that people have about an open, somewhat hollow ending get magnified many times over once the disappointed person joins the current discussion on the internet. Like I said, my stronger comments have been directed at that discussion, not any single person who didn't personally enjoy the ending. We've all been on both sides of this kind of divide, there's no problem there. But many observers agree that there is something special about the uproar in this particular case, although maybe it's only special because the game itself is so important. My personal suspicion is that there must be more going on than simply "logic" and the integrity of the plot, and I would think that even if I had hated the ending.