“The Ghostbusters are at it again, this time at the fashionable dance club, “The Rose”. The boys in grey slugged it out with a pretty pesky poltergeist, then stayed on to dance the night away with some of the lovely ladies who witnessed the disturbance. This is Casey Kasem…”
...and now, on with the countdown…
11. No Closure
So we’ve struggled through three games, put in around 100 hours of effort and met a whole host of other characters, only to find that at the end of the trilogy we don’t know what happens to any of them. How many of them died in the final assault? Did Garrus finally get his beer on a beach in Paradise? Did Samantha Traynor buy the house with the white picket fence? Did Liara get eaten by another Yahg? Does Shepard’s model ship collection survive the Normandy’s crash landing? Will Aria T’Loak ever lighten the fuck up?
It seems likely that we’ll never know the answers to these questions, and that stinks. After that much effort, I want the final cutscene to be an hour and a half long. I want some popcorn and a few beers of my own to sup on while I watch a fittingly epic conclusion to the game. What kind of abject moron would end a story without closure?
And don’t give me any of that “some of the best movies have cliffhanger endings” shit. No decent movie ends without explaining precisely what happens to all of the major cast members. Except for John Carpenter’s The Thing. And Inception. And the original The Italian Job. But, aside from them – and a load of other great movies – it’s never done, and do you want to know why? Because it sucks. What am I supposed to do – use my imagination? If I wanted to use my imagination I would have written a book – I play games because I want to turn my brain off and stop all cognitive processes for long periods of time. I demand to be spoon-fed information. But thanks to BioWare I now have to write my own ending in my head! I forked out good money, under great duress, only to have to write the finale myself? Damn them for creating characters and a world that I became fully invested in, only to end it, much like Real Life, without full details of what happens to everybody else.
I demand that BioWare give me an 8-hour epic movie, which chronicles the complete life of all the characters. I want it in HD, on Blu-Ray, mailed to my house, and I want that popcorn and beer, or else I shall never buy another BioWare game ever again.
12. No Way to Get a Happy Ending.
After everything I’ve gone through, after all that effort, BioWare don’t even have the decency – the common courtesy – to give me a happy ending. Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate entertainment that ends on a bittersweet note, or even ends with depressive doom and gloom, but in a game series that prides itself on giving you choice I find it unacceptable that I couldn’t choose a happy ending.
Forget the fact that the Earth – and many dozens of other major planets in the galaxy – is now just a smoking pile of rubble. Forget the millions or billions of deaths that have occurred throughout the series. What this game needed was a nice ending, where everything became shiny and wonderful again.
There should have been at least one more option in that final sequence, and here’s what I recommend: another beam (preferably purple…I like purple) that fires down the Mass Relays and sends everyone back in time to before the Reapers ever got there, but with full knowledge of what was going to happen. Then we could sort the Reaper shit out before it even knocked on our door. The end sequence could echo the end of Independence Day, with people the world over jumping up and down in joy and cheering. The final scene could have Garrus and Shepard sitting in sunloungers on that beach, bluebirds flitting about their shoulders, deer and foxes and other woodland creatures emerging from the undergrowth, then coming up and nuzzling the Savior of Humanity as if to say “I appreciate everything you did to save me and all my woodland friends – we shall all live in harmony now.” It could end with a scene of a Lion and a Polar Bear shaking hands and then hugging.
Instead, BioWare gave us “Bad”, “Worse”, and “What-In-The-Name-Of-Fuck?” endings. It’s ridiculous to think that this outcome could have been avoided if only they had put in one quick phonecall to Pixar.
13. Deus Ex Machina and Retarded Logic
So we finally stagger up to the Citadel, we defeat The Illusive Man (which leads me to believe that the writers were huge Monty Python fans) and we’re about to save the world, when what should happen? A fucking glowing kid shows up! And it’s the stupid fucking brat that you tried to save on Earth at the beginning of the game, who’d still be alive if a) he’d come with you when you fucking told him to, or b) got in the fucking shuttle straight away rather than standing in the middle of the carnage looking up at the very monsters that were about to kill him. What a little asshole.
So why is he there? I’m going to assume that the “alien” has read Shepard’s thoughts and has presented itself to him/her in a form that he/she recognizes – a form that is readily present in the forefront of Shepard’s mind. No problem with that. But what the fuck is this thing? Is it some kind of VI or some kind of AI or is it an actual alien being, perhaps made of energy? (It certainly looks a lot like the Prothean VI, with the flickering light and all, so I’m willing to bet that it’s a VI.)
But what is it? What race created it? Does that race even exist any more? He says that he created the reapers – he makes it sound like he created them by himself. So did he create them before or after his race died out, assuming they died out, of course, which they probably did because they’re not there in person.
And what about his reasons for creating the Reapers? His logic is retarded. “I made these synthetics to wipe out organics before synthetics come and wipe out the organics that created them first. And I’m doing it to protect you organics from your own creations.” That’s the logic of a mental patient.
Now I’ve heard all the counter-arguments and I refuse to listen to them because I’m right and they’re wrong and it doesn’t matter what they have to say. When they say stuff like, “well, we all knew that somebody created the Reapers, so it stands to reason that the ones who created the Reapers would reveal themselves, so it’s not entirely Deus Ex Machina because this isn’t some completely Unknown Entity,” I just put my fingers in my ears and say “La-la la-la- la-la-laaa!”
When they point out that maybe the creator(s) of the Reapers became so desperate in their attempts to stop synthetics from threatening organic life that they went too far, created the Reapers and were killed by their own creations, leaving only that VI implanted in the Citadel which, in a desperate attempt to justify its race’s actions, constructed an argument which seemed logical on the surface but was riddled with flaws, circular reasoning and a surplus of tautological nonsense, I just say, “HA! MORON!”
And when they say, “Why don’t you use your own goddamned fucking imagination and work it out for yourself, you arrogant, obnoxious, knee-jerk reactionary dickface?” I just laugh with incredulity and say, “Imagination?! I can’t do that! What do you think I paid BioWare for?!”
You’ll be pleased to hear that we are finally nearing the end of this little blog. I think just one more part will be sufficient to finish off the last few niggles (and by “niggle” I obviously mean “Huge Fucking Problem That Renders The Game Virtually Unplayable”), so stay tuned for the epic finale to the Ultimate Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse blog.
Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 1
Mass Effect 3 Sucks Arse – Part 2
The Daily Heretic 