So I’ve just heard about the Bioware decision to alter the ending of their wildly popular Mass Effect series after a sustained outcry by fans. As someone who himself recently finished the game and was haunted, but certainly not outraged, by the ending I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I think revision makes everything better and Bioware gets an opportunity here to build upon the concepts of their initial ending in order to (perhaps) make something that is, in the long run more satisfying. On the other hand, and this is the more dominant hand for what it’s worth, I do not, in any way, believe that the precedent set by this kind of fan pressure speaks well for the future of artistic integrity in games.
First and foremost, I think it is worth remarking upon the ending of Mass Effect 3 in order to contextualize and categorize the fan outrage, as near as I can figure it. This will contain lots of spoilers if you haven’t already played the game through the end so be forewarned. Essentially, I think the problem with the ending comes down to its abrupt shift in tone, given the third game in the series. It’s a dark shift. Your character, some iteration of Commander Shepherd (in my case the middle-aged, openly gay, morally ambivalent Hippolyta Shepherd), hero(ine) of the galaxy and uniter of various races jumps from Malkuth (earth) to Yessod (the dues ex machine) quite literally. (S)he sees the inner workings of the god machine that powers the galactic extinction event against which (s)he rails and is forced to make a choice. (S)he can A, destroy the Reapers, those diabolic machines that threaten civilization, but in doing so (s)he will kill off an entire race of sentient machines whose rights (s)he has fought for and kill her/his own AI buddy, the spirit of her/his ship with whom her/his pilot has a relationship (it’s not as hokey in the game). (S)he can B, sacrifice her/his life to control the Reapers and force them to abandon their mindful killing but leaving the fate of organic/synthetic life uncertain. Lastly (s)he can also C, use her/his life energy to power a galactic wide synthesis of organic and synthetic life in the hopes of creating a new order that bypasses the cycle of uncertain chaos and cruel order that has defined the entirety of the galaxy’s history.
All three endings are about sacrifice and uncertainty: whether it’s personal sacrifice or the sacrifice of one race to ensure the survival of others, or the sacrifice of all history and all the natural order in an attempt to create something better. None of the choices sit well, especially when most of the game has been spent uniting organic races (and one synthetic race) to fight off their own extinction and put aside old hatreds. Even more, all these revelations come in the last 5 or 6 minutes of the game, the information being delivered by a spectral, artificial intelligence, implied to be a ghostly echo of some unnamed god-like race of individual. So, yeah I suppose I get it. No ending is purely happy. The information is overwhelming and abruptly delivered and, even if it makes sense in the context of the game (all of this is revealed once Shepherd enters the inner sanctum of an alien space station that, for three games, has always been built up as mysterious and full of secrets), seems to be something of a literal dues ex machine. It’s a concern that the player did not know about or understand until seconds before and though thematically congruent with the rest of the series, had virtually no set up.
I personally chose the “synthesis” ending; it made sense with the long narrative of Hippolyta Shepherd’s struggle for redemption. She made many questionable snap judgments over her long career, and giving the galaxy a chance to start over, sacrificing herself in the process seemed fitting. This ending also seems to be the one that the developers prefer, seeing as one had to be particularly thorough and attentive throughout the game in order to “unlock” it. I was surprised in trolling youtube that numerous people refer to the “destroy” ending as the “best” one. To my mind it’s the least heroic. It allows Shepherd to live—barely scrape by—but at the cost of many other individuals. Granted, that may be the value system you play with. One of the best parts of the whole franchise is the ability to make decisions that dynamically alter the plot. It’s not by any means user generated, but it’s very involving. Still, even given the difference in play style I was dismayed by the use of the word “best.” There is this niggling thought that I can’t shake that it’s the best ending solely because the main character survives. That somehow, the outrage of fans is, in part, because there is no way to live and also do the right thing for the galaxy.
Maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe, at the end of the day, the other complaints (more legitimate to my mind) about the abrupt shift in tone are what really get under the skins of fans, and not just the inability to live with honor. But there is this part of me that suspects that its about not being able to perpetuate and not being able to end the game entirely on their own terms. And that strikes at the heart of the problem for me. The ending of Mass Effect may be good or bad or somewhere in between, but it does not merit the response from fans. I’ve read a few articles from legitimate and less legitimate news sites trying to encapsulate the debate for the non gamer audience. Invariably, the irate gamers are described as “passionate fans” and though it may technically be correct, I think that characterization speaks to part of the problem. Somehow, being dissatisfied enough with the ending of a story to mount a campaign to get the authors to change it and, in one shameful case, attempt to report Bioware to the Federal Trade Commission for “false advertising,” makes you “passionate,” more involved with the game—more invested in its outcome. I say, it makes you whiny, it makes you misunderstand what storytelling is about, and it sets a very, very bad precedent for how creative endeavors are handled.
I’m a Victorian literature scholar by trade and, as luck would have it, my field has two examples of this kind of fan outrage having an effect. The first is the ending of Charles Dickens’ 1861 Great Expectations which was altered, at the suggestion of monumental hack, Edward Bulwer Lytton, to be happier. The second, an example more similar to our current, Mass Effect, situation, is Arthur Conan Doyle’s capitulation to fan pressure to resurrect Sherlock Holmes after having killed the character off in the short story “The Final Problem.” In both cases artistic intent was subverted by the will of the reader, forcing the author to compromise their original vision. As a literary scholar, both of these instances produce a lot of fascinating scholarship. In the case of Dickens, the two endings can now be compared for endlessly fascinating permutations of theories of novelhood. In the case of Conan Doyle, it produced many, many more Sherlock Holmes stories to write on and enjoy, even if the artistic integrity went over Reichenbach Falls alongside the great detective.
The downside of both of these instances, however, is the laying bare of the power of the fan-base to interfere with the works they purport to love. Much like the 19th century, we are again, living in an age of serialized fictions. They may not come out in monthly papers, but they are broadcast weekly on television and are released yearly in endless sequels to both movies and games. This 20th and 21st century serialized form differs from its 19th century predecessor in one critical way: the stories often do not have endings. We’ve built all kinds of terms into our lexicon for this. “Jumping the shark” for instance, refers to the moment when a story has outlived its usefulness and believability, when we realize that it’s just stalling for time. Furthermore, in the age of outdated Nielson’s ratings, and cruel, artistically bankrupt networks and cable channels pulling the plug on shows before they can even start eyeing their water-skis, fans feel as though they must flex their Jacobin muscles in order to save those stories they think are worth finishing. And lately, they’ve been winning. Arrested Development is set to return. Firefly got its big screen dénouement. Community looks more and more likely to be renewed for a fourth season after a weirdly amorphous hiatus.
But as I said before, there is a downside here. Fans feel like they own the properties they fight to save. And it’s true, in this free market, consumer society where women’s rights advocates can vote with their checkbook and get obnoxious right wing radio show hosts to tremble as sponsors drop like dominoes, we do all “own” a bit of the stories we support. I bought Mass Effect 3 (and 1 and 2) and I watch Community (and bought the season 1 and 2 DVDs) and went to see Serenity and will continue my Netflix subscription, in part, so that I can see the new season of Arrested Development. I’ve paid my money and I’ll be entertained for doing so. But leaving behind this depressing capitalist model, I don’t own any of these stories. They are stories that someone else told and that I happen to enjoy. Just because I invested time in Firefly, doesn’t mean I get to have any effect on its narrative outcome, and, honestly I shouldn’t. I’m not Joss Whedon or any of the writers of the show, or any of the cast and crew members who contributed to its ethos. I’m just someone who liked that ethos and even when I didn’t like where they took it, I have no right to be outraged that I didn’t like it.
The same holds true for Mass Effect. The situation is confusing. Mass Effect 3 is the third in a series of games where the decisions of the players have dramatically altered the story being told. I chose not to kill the insectoid queen of a forgotten alien race in the first game and, as a result, I am rewarded with her support in the third game. I own the decisions but not the outcomes. Bioware wrote a game where both possibilities existed and I just chose what I wanted most. The vast spread of different stories that are possible in the Mass Effect series is not, as I said before user-generated. I didn’t come up with the situations and Bioware owes me nothing as to what choices are offered. Their decision, to rewrite the ending and release it for their fans, is theirs to make, but I am disappointed that they made it under duress. The ending good or bad, was the ending Bioware originally wanted—the ending the story was supposed to have. That people are unsatisfied with that ending is fine, but it’s not okay to demand it be changed. We aren’t storytellers in our role as gamers. We are involved in enjoying the story, but not in producing it.
Gaming is a young industry, much like the novel was when Dickens wrote Great Expectations. It has barely had thirty odd years to establish its story telling conventions and figure out how the bounds of its artistic integrity. What Bioware fans who railed against this ending have done, essentially, is bullied the storytellers into taking back what was intended. I don’t blame fans alone for this. After all, it was Bioware’s decision to change the ending. But it only got to that point because fans demanded that the story be compromised. It will not fix Mass Effect 3 when the new ending is released. A hundred and fifty years from now, we will look back (as we do with Dickens now) and say, look, here are two endings to one game. How do they play off against one another? Mass Effect 3 will never, as a result, have a real ending now. Just a long discussion about why the ending was changed.
I’ll play the new ending. I may even like it more. But why it exists will never sit right with me. I don’t believe I know what a better ending is. And that’s not really the point is it. These aren’t angry fans writing fan fiction to satisfy their need for closure. That would be a creative endeavor and a therapeutic one. Instead, these are fans expressing their dislike for the end of a story and demanding that they be given a better one. The end result of that is Glee. Ryan Murphy takes fan input seriously. As a result, his show has gone from being interesting and intricate and important, to a naratological mess: its characters are wildly inconsistent, its plotlines end too quickly, its excessive desire to please is its own undoing. In the end, the public is fickle, and you really can’t always please everyone. I’ve respected the storytellers at Bioware for years. I really hope this move isn’t the beginning of a long descent into fan service at the cost of well told stories.
