Extended Cut impressions

This is the part where I do that thing where you type something out as it's happening! And this time, it's the Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut!

Right, I've finally finished the Extended Cut, and all three endings. I haven't had enough time to get some perspective on them, but here's the notes I made as I played through all the endings.

Obviously: MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE EXTENDED CUT. ALSO MASS EFFECT 3.

Okay, time for the Extended Cut!

I'm starting from the run to the beam; I expect nothing new until I'm past the Illusive Man, but I wanted to make it through the entire endgame just to see when the game falls apart. So far, it's been pretty bad all throughout.

Okay, running to the beam just like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault's Omaha Beach level. Any moment now, Tali and Liara are going to take the beam and... Huh. That Mako didn't blow up the last time, did it? Wait, that second Mako definitely didn't blow up almost on top of Tali and Liara! Wait, they're taking cover!? WAIT, SHE'S CALLING FOR EVAC!? HOLY SHIT, THE NORMANDY!

I SUGGESTED THAT! I SUGGESTED THAT TO THE BIOWARE ENDING FIX SUGGESTIONS THREAD! I SUGGESTED THAT THEY SHOULD EXPLAIN THAT JOKER EVACUATED THE CREW MATES AND THAT'S HOW THEY WERE MAGICALLY ON THE NORMANDY! ...HUH!

Well!

That's...

That's kinda weird, actually.

...My suggestion was to do it after Shepard went through the beam, which would've been less awkward. Just sayin'...

But hey; they explained that the team mates didn't die, and then I got to say farewell to Liara, and then they flew off. It was *real* awkwardly sandwiched in the middle there, but yeah.

Okay, BioWare.

You've made your first move.

I'm intrigued, now.

...Dang, I was *not* expecting that.

Let's see what Marauder Shields has to say about this...

He still tries to stop you from reaching the ending.

Oh wait, more new stuff. Admiral Hackett sending the ships to protect the Crucible. Or wait, that might've been original. Hm. Probably false alarm.

Okay, nothing new in the chat with The Illusive Man. And end credits at the point where Anderson and Shepard re-enact John Carpenter's The Thing would have been an improvement over the non-EC ending, just saying.

Nothing new with the Catalyst until he finishes his opening speech, as far as I noticed. Let's see if he has anything more in-depth to say about his justifications for galaxy-wide genocide...

It seems like the Catalyst has new justification for his actions, compared to previously. Before it all sounded kinda random, now the he just sounds like a crazy AI. Which is better for sci-fi. Although, it may just be that it's so long ago that I played through this bit, and I remember the interpretations of the Catalyst more than the actual Catalyst, and only now does his ramblings make sense.

Come to think of it, I *don't* think they changed any of the lines, since it's still just "yo dawg, I herd you liked not being killed by synthetics". But I recognise something new, now! "Details." is the most passive-aggressive dialogue option I've ever seen in a game! I just find it hilarious. "Look. Guy. Details. Give them here. Come on." Catalyst; I *do* want details.

Okay, those details were a bit passive-aggressive. "Look here kid, this fries electronics. Are you electronic? Then it fries you. Do you have a soldering iron? Then you can fix you." Neat to have a quick cutscene of the effect in action.

Okay, onto Control! Once again, amusing dialogue options: "I think I understand..." compared to "I don't understand." It almost *feels* like this has been written with seething contempt for the players they have to dumb this game down for. I find that funny. "Catalyst; I don't understand. I guess you'll have to dumb it down for me."

Okay, that's explained. Now for hilarity; Synthesis. "How?" indeed.

And the answer was... Wow. That was some amazing technobabble. Broadcasting my organic energies? Changing organic matrix to incorporate synthetic? Those words don't work like that!

Well, now I have The Choice. And first off: One of the choices is Synthesis, which previously would have required multiplayer. And I'm at 50% galaxy control, so they've changed that.

Now, from worst to best, let's try the options. And since I've heard they put this in... Kid; Meet pistol to the face.

Hehe, now that's basically a joke ending. "MWAHAHA, I WAS A DEMON ALL ALONG!" But okay, it was a proper joke ending. And Liara's message was nice.

Now to sit through the end credits...

Okay, the new Stargazer for this ending was a better actor than Buzz Aldrin. And the rewrite of the DLC ad was pretty satisfying to notice, heh.

Now for Control, the worst option. I don't think The Illusive Man had a good idea going...

Interestingly, if you load that autosave, the Catalyst isn't there. So to shoot him again, I'd have to replay that dialogue again.

Okay, so... Hm... First proper ending... Hm...

I did not like it very much.

Deconstruction time:

It opens with the same self-sacrifice as before, with shots of Anderson, Thane and Liara. Now, I don't give a damn about Thane, but the game doesn't know that. But then it goes on to show the Normandy evacuating the system; I actually suggested that, too. I also noticed that they changed the relays from exploding to disassembling. They also re-animated the Normandy crash to seem far less destructive. One thing I genuinely liked an awful lot, was the extension of the Independence Day shot. Yeah, you'd better cheer, asari!

After the crash, Evil-Reaper-God-Shepard steps out and starts talking. I found it amusing that she was wearing N7 Armor; apparently, kevlar is divine. At this point, my distaste is personal; I just don't like the Control ending, philosophically. So I don't need to get into that.

Then it goes on to a Fallout 3-style "ending slides with narration", although with somewhat more production value. Still; far less production value than any other point in the Mass Effect series. The ending slides shown also reflect actual choices made throughout the games, and their consequences, so *that's* covered. Which is a bare necessity, but just like you complain when you don't get enough air, you also *should*. Now there's enough air to survive, but not enough to actually be comfortable, if that makes sense. One thing I'll bring back up; they show Evil-ReapShep's Reapers rebuilding the Mass Relays.

It then goes on show the Normandy crew holding a ceremony where Liara affixes a Commander Shepard nameplate to The Wall of Fallen, and then the Normandy takes off. And then end credits, with the *old* Stargazer scene with Buzz Aldrin.

Now, this is the point where I'm going to criticise it for being poorly written: The Catalyst blows up the Mass Relays, and the Normandy crashes on an alien planet. In the old version, this was meant to inspire a sense of mystery and hopefulness for the future. But then, the new ending goes on to show the Reapers fixing the Mass Relays, and the Normandy taking off again. That immediately makes *both* sets of scenes pointless; there's still Mass Relays, and the Normandy is not crashed on the planet.

Well. I don't know. It was *not broken*. Poorly written, below the standards of Mass Effect. But... It was not a flaming trainwreck as it originally was. If my sister asks "hey, is Mass Effect 3 any good" I can say "not as good as 1 or 2", rather than "it's so broken at the end, it's unplayable". Also, I'd say "and the ending is not as well-produced as Dragon Age II's, but better-looking than Dragon Age: Origin's, although less well written".

I'm going to be up all night complaining about Control if I don't hold back a bit.

I think I'll move on to Synthesis. Agreeing with Saren *and* the Catalyst seems like the second-worst idea of the bunch.

Okay, Synthesis is actually *pretty good*. It seems that Control really was "the bad choice", at least for me. It was a bit odd that the ending was dedicated to EDI rather than Shepard, but, that aside, it "worked" a lot better than Control did. Also, I remembered to time it; it's about 13 minutes long. As for what happened in it; I thought it was interesting to see the ending slides change; in Control, Kasumi is in a messy apartment, engrossed in the memory shard of her dead boyfriend, which is the "sad" ending for her. In Synthesis, she's standing all happy-like with his hologram on a field somewhere. Production-value-wise, the green wiring was a bit weirdly photoshopped onto a lot of the slides, though. I also liked this version of the Normandy scene a lot better; the Adam and Eve thing between Joker and EDI was re-animated for the landing, being far more huggy and kissy. And a bit more awkward when Liara wlaked in on it. And all the way at the end, it got a bit weird after the nameplate ceremony, when EDI says that she's not alone and Liara somewhat too intimately hugs her. It would have made sense if that was *Joker*, not *shepard's* girlfriend, so yeah. Also, I found it chuckle-worthy when Liara's fingers had motion capture jitter while hanging up the nameplate. I've done motion capture cleanup; it ain't easy.

Overall, Synthesis was actually *good*. This was *not bad*. This "worked" *well*.

Now, onto Destroy. Eat mass effect accelerated lead shavings at super-high velocity, you series of tubes!

Now, this ending was 12 minutes. I'd guess they all are. So mathematically; a great improvement, if nothing else.

First, the Independence Day shot works even better now. Cheer on, asari! For the ending-slides, this time around it's Admiral Hackett narrating. Kasumi is still sad. It basically proceeds as Control does, so I guess that's the "good" ending, while these two are the okay endings. That's in line with the war asset requirements pre-EC, so that makes *sense*, in a video-gamey sort of way. Overall, this was the middle one of the bunch; it spoke more directly about the survivors coming together to rebuild, and to that end, it was maybe a bit pandering in the sci-fi technobabble department; it's not reflecting on the themes and morals learned from the story when you talk about "mass relay networks". In this one, they could have also done more to point out that EDI died; a Return of the Jedi funeral pyre would have been appropriate, or having the EDI nameplate be hung up first, and not just already there, off in the corner. Also, I noticed that Liara did not actually hang up the nameplate, so is Shepard alive or not (!?) I guess.

And now for the huge letdown; they don't change anything about the scene of Shepard (?) waking up in the rubble. Boo. Just boo. Is that taking place after the Citadel was rebuilt? Where is this? Why is this clearly female moan coming out of that male breastplate? Whose breastplate? This was a pretty cheap end-of-credits teaser in the original ending, and they didn't fix it. Boo! They did remove the Effective Military Score requirement, but I don't think this is "best ending" territory.

Overall, this ending seems to be the closest to what I think the original ending was supposed to imply; it's a brave new world for those still alive. I just don't think that it gets across in writing or execution as well as it should.

So yeah. Those were the Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut endings. I'll need a little time to digest them, but first impressions are, as I predicted: Too little, too late.

The Mass Effect games has been BioWare's flagship franchise, and the high watermark in interactive storytelling. But Mass Effect 3's ending of these games just isn't up to the level it should be. It should be *great*, like Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, but Mass Effect 3 is just *okay*. And so are the new endings; they're fully voiced like Dragon Age II, but they're ending slides with narration like Dragon Age: Origins, but don't go on to talk about the universe of characters and races in any detail, which is what made *that* ending satisfying. It might just be that I actually completed all of the side missions in such an ideal way that I ended up getting all the "boring" good endings; the two most interesting slides were Jack standing over some graves, I guess her students because of that choice I may have made poorly, and Kasumi being happy/sad with the memories of her dead boyfriend. I guess if I messed up the krogans, or chose the geth over the quarians, I'd get more interesting slides, and maybe the narration would change. But unfortunately, as in all storytelling, the imperative is "show, don't tell", and ending slides with vague narration is telling, not showing. Immediately, had they been in-game cutscenes like the crashed Normandy bits, I would have been way more satisfied.

I guess, that if this ending had been included with the original game, people would have been complaining more about the game itself, rather than just the ending. I think they would still have complained about the ending, but more in the sense that it doesn't have the production values or polish this game should have. Like the rest of the game. And that's a real bummer. Mass Effect 3 should have been great. And so should the ending.

They did fix a lot of things though. You don't have to play multiplayer at all for even the "best" endings. The different ending options are clearly distinct, and not just palette swaps. The changes to the ending slides also reflect your choices through three games. *Although* they still don't mention the Rachni Queen at all in the ending, so Mac Walters is still a liar. So there.

So, my immediate verdict: This is good enough for Mass Effect 3.

But Mass Effect 3 is not good enough for Mass Effect.