Everybody Loves a Happy Ending

After a little bit of waiting, the Mass Effect 3 extended cut ending has been sent out for our viewing. What's the verdict? Well, the best word I can think of is 'meh'. Spoilers abound, kiddies.

Because it was never going to change anything. Developers Bioware said they weren't going to change the ending per se, which was fair enough. In the final reckoning, it's their game and their ending to fuck up. After all, I don't send my copy for Abbey Road to the surviving Beatles with a note saying "Her Majesty as the last song in your career? Fuck off and do a proper song!". If we are to accept video games as art, as we should, we have to put off with not liking everything we get.

So, there's still the three endings we had before (as well, apparently, as an option to ignore them all, which I haven't tried out) but with added bonus between the choice and Buzz Aldrin talking to some little kid. Now, we get a few minutes of narration from a character to whom the choice relates over pictures relating to how you got on. I went with how I went first time originally, so had EDI praising my sacrifice and how the future was all looking rosy while we saw Zaeed relaxing on the beach, Rex with his baby and everyone looking very happy. Not animations, mind, just pictures, which seems a little bit cheap.

All the same, it's an improvement on what we got but the conspiracy theorist in me thinks these were always meant to be there, but they ran out of time before the release date. I mean, would they really spend the money to get the voice actors back in the studio to record the dialogue? Lance Henriksen isn't that cheap, surely? If they did, however, then major kudos.

However, I still would have liked to see some reaction from Tali, who was the other half in the romance sub-plot I went down. In the ending, EDI seemed more upset that I'd thrown a seven than my supposed girlfriend. Maybe she just using me. Bah. Or perhaps there's further DLC to come where Shepard says just before the big battle "yeah, I think we should take a break from dating a while..."

More seriously, though this DLC kills off some bugbears, it hasn't made me want to go play Mass Effect 3 again in a hurry. There still didn't seem to be any real satisfactory conclusions from my actions to make me want to play through with different consequences. Perhaps further content with go down that road.