This entry contains spoilers for the entire Mass Effect series, Fallout 3, and, oddly, spoilers for the movie “In Bruges” and the musical “Miss Saigon.” I go on weird tangents.

Before I jump into things (Whee! A digression one sentence in!), I’d like to point out that Bioware has stated emphatically that they are NOT changing the ending; rather they’re bringing more to light.

In slightly different but not really news, I can’t find a screenshot since it’s been deleted, but Bioware’s Senior Community Coordinator tweeted the following on Easter:

What do you mean “at the end he died on a cross”? That makes no sense! And what of his companions? *newtestamentrage* #retakeeaster

Now, I love a good joke, and opinions can be of individuals and not the entire company, but, well, it is the opinion of the company since they’ve stated the ending is their story and they’re sticking to it.

I just wanted to say all that to outline the fact that everything I complain about here will (very likely) not be changed, unless they retcon something and invent a way to erase memories.

I’d like to throw this next bit of Required Watching out there, because it’s very likely going to be the elongated explanation that makes the ending make sense. They wouldn’t comment on it, but come on. I hope you’re comfy.

The Required Watching is the best example of the Indoctrination Theory I have found on the Internet. Again, if you don’t have 21 minutes, I will summarize that the theory is you’re Indoctrinated — brainwashed by Reapers — for the whole of Mass Effect 3. The child you see in the beginning is not really there, and you’re endangering all your friends and the entire galaxy because you’re under the control of The Big Bad.

I absolutely didn’t buy this theory until I watched that video. I now totally do, but I still don’t understand WHY the writers chose it. Like I said in Part 2, they weren’t painted into a corner (like some people say they were). It’s easy to have the ending EVERYONE saw be the BAD ending and have a totally different ending where GOOD, Paragon players prevail!

Actually, that’s complaint number one.

• Are Reapers just that badass?

Mass Effect created a world where relative peace exists until it’s threatened by a Reaper, the strongest force in the entire universe. The whole first game centers around defeating one single Reaper named Sovereign. In 3, ALL of its Reaper buddies are now attacking us. THE STAKES HAVE NEVER BEEN HIGHER. So guess what? You lose! Sorry, we told you the Reapers were super strong, so, nope, just can’t beat them.

No! Mario is a frigging PLUMBER. All the odds of a plumber defeating a humongous crazed princess rapist named Bowser are stacked against him, but he still prevails game and game again because he’s MARIO.

Harry Potter is a nerdy kid who’s beaten by fat people and doesn’t pay attention in class and prevails against the most powerful dark lord in history!

THIS IS WHY WE EXPERIENCE FICTION. If I want to read a depressing story about someone who gave it their all and it just wasn’t good enough, I’ll turn on the news. I just watched the movie “In Bruges” with Tyler, and I was quite enjoying it, thinking to myself “If anyone ever asks me for an unsung movie recommendation, I’m going to tell them ‘In Bruges’!” AND THEN EVERYONE DIED IN THE END. I threw every couch pillow I had at him because WHY DO I WANT TO SEE THAT? Why don’t you just tell me an orphan and his kitten were very sick and it looked like they were getting better, but then they died? I WAS HAVING A NICE NIGHT.

• You Final Boss guys look familiar.

In Mario, you fight through Bowser’s oddly named children. Sometimes you fight a bomb-throwing mouse and a three-headed snake, but at the end of the game, you face off with the head honcho himself. In Sonic, sure, you’re always fighting Dr. Robotnik, but his inventions start off pretty weak and rise with exponential difficulty, usually culminating with three crazy boss fights in a row, each stronger than the last!

In every mission of Mass Effect 3, you fight husks (zombies) and geth (robots) and Cerberus goons (overzealous humans) primarily, but at the end of every mission, you fight one of three crazy powerful bosses — a Banshee (a husk + an asari), a Brute (husk + krogan + turian), or an Atlas (human inside a robot). They’re formidable foes, especially the Banshee whose screech still sends chills down my spine.

But the LAST BATTLE of the entire series is…5 or so Banshees and 5 Brutes. It was hard, sure, but so would be telling me I couldn’t use any weapons and needed to punch them with my nose. So would throwing me in with 1 million Banshees and Brutes.

Also, technically, the final boss is Marauder Shields, whose video never ceases to bring a tear to my eye, even though it’s a parody. I’m such a sucker for sad piano music and melodramatic backstory. Oh, here come the waterworks. LOOK, I WAS CHOPPING ONIONS, OKAY?

• But also, who cares about Banshees and Brutes?

You don’t have a backstory with them. There’s no sense of accomplishment when you defeat them. You don’t even get the honor of killing the Illusive Man yourself in gameplay. There’s no cool, different battle like in at the end of 1, where Saren’s hopping around the room like a jackrabbit. Nothing!

• The end was one big goodbye hug!

I’ve heard some people insist the game is great, saying that the “End” was the whole last few hours, where you’re walking through ruined London, saying goodbye to all your comrades and giving a final speech, but YOU DID THAT IN MASS EFFECT 2. It was called a SUICIDE MISSION. And guess what? In the end, whoever was dead was respectfully mourned, and you walked through to your surviving squadmates with solemn nods like, hey, we lost a few, but we made it. We survived what we and everyone else called A SUICIDE MISSION. Why couldn’t that have happened in this one again? Oh, sorry, the Reapers are just the most powerful force in the made-up universe. Can’t defeat them. Even though the game creators MADE THEM UP.

• Life’s Full of Tough Choices.

Tough decisions about your friends abound in Mass Effect. In 1, as you know, it was either Kaidan or Ashley. In 2, even if you’re BFFs with everyone on your ship, you still have to decide — which biotic do you want staying behind and which holding the shield, which technician do you want jamming the door and which should run back to the ship? 3 had that in a few measly missions, which just served to take you down a character and make the battles that much harder.

But in the end of 3? Just choose your squadmates. Got ‘em? Cool. They die.

• Cold-Hearted Snake.

When Mordin and Tali die, everyone on your ship is depressed. You hang your head and say a few heartfelt words in front of their memorial. As Thane is slowly dying, his son asks you to read a poem ending with “Guide this one, Kalahira, and she will be a companion to you as she was to me.” The son explains it’s not a death prayer for his dad, THE MOST RELIGIOUS GUY IN THE SERIES, it’s a prayer for you and your upcoming battle, as Thane slowly lets go of his life. That was so touching.

I went into my final battle with Liara and Kaidan, two of my three love interests, and because I buffed them up to be great biotic fighters. They both died. As soon as Shepard hears word over her headset that they’ve died, she limps to the beam, crazy stuff goes down, she shoots a dude, and sits (painfully) laughing about life with Anderson.

I understand bucking up and doing what’s best for the universe instead of crying over spilled milk, but not even a solemn head shake? Not even a “damn, that sucks, all my lovers dying in that laser-beam explosion.”

Who knows? Bioware may say that since you didn’t SEE them die necessarily they magically come back in the DLC, but — and I can’t stress this enough — THEY DID NOT EXIST IN THE ENDING OF THE GAME I PAID FOR. I bought the Collector’s Edition. I paid the company MORE before even playing it on the good faith that THEY WOULDN’T KILL ALL MY BEST FRIENDS and maybe ransom their Schrödinger’s-Cat-like existence for $20 of DLC. I think I need to sit down. This is why people pirate things, Bioware.

• If not Indoctrination, then what?

On the off chance the Indoctrination Theory isn’t correct, let’s talk about these quick inconsistencies: 1) How did Anderson superjump? There was only one entrance from the beam through the red dead body room, but somehow Anderson ported to a different entrance that ALSO spilled out into the moving wall hall? Nah, dawg. 2) Where are the others on the Citadel? Assuming you are beamed to the clamped-up Citadel, it seeeeeeems a lot smaller when you’re in there… 3) Why do Shepard and Anderson say it looks familiar? Are they insinuating it’s not the Citadel and something else? 4) When you’re dying back before the beam on the ground, Rando British Guy says over your headset that everyone’s died (meaning you and your friends). Then why, when you’re looking at Earth with Anderson, does Admiral Hackett radio YOU and tell you to type in the secret code on the terminal?

• Hope you’re listening!

Maybe it’s undiagnosed ADD. Maybe my brain was too WTF. But…the first time Mystical Hoodie Star Child gave me my three options, I DIDN’T KNOW WHICH DIRECTION TO WALK TO CHOOSE THEM. Okay, I guess he looked at them and the camera angle changed when he announced them the first time, but as soon as he finished the third, I was like “Okay, yeah, I was waiting for one to make sense, but that last one really sounds silly. Now what are the first two again?”

SORRY. Can’t go back and ask him. Unlike other RPGs, where they say “Oh, I guess you weren’t listening or taking notes with a controller in your hand. Here they are again.” Even a bit earlier in the game, when someone was like “Are you ready to do this huge battle, hint, hint, you can’t come back?” You could say “Not now,” and when you WERE ready, the character would be like “Okay, now TO REVIEW: we’re trying to save the universe.”

Nope. Not important for the last choice of the whole series. I hope no players’ cats knocked over a glass while Star Hoodie was talking in this un-pause-able scene because he’s only saying this once!

• So, you want to kill part of yourself?

I’m told by a few sources, and the Internet, who would never lie to me, that the Good, Paragon choice is the Red ending — Destroying all Reapers and technology, including your robo friends, computers, ships, and the Relays that allow you to fly to different solar systems in an instant. It’s also good because you see Anderson choosing it in your haze, and although it’s red (the Renegade color) and the blue (Paragon) is chosen by the Illusive Man. It’s also the only ending where Shepard takes a breath at the very end.

Oh, but, as the Hoodie God Child reminded you, YOU’RE part technology. Didn’t you just destroy that part? Why isn’t your, like, heart exploded? Also, you appear to be lying in rubble — of London? Did you fall from the space computer? WOULDN’T THAT EXPLODE YOUR HEART, TOO?

I don’t even.

• These Jokers Don’t Run.

As I mentioned in Part 2, one of the last things you see in the end cutscene, after the Reapers fly away and most of Earth blows up, is Joker, your tried-and-true pilot friend, frantically speeding off in the middle of a Mass Effect Relay jump and palming his keyboard because, well, you’ve just obliterated all technology (apparently?), and that doesn’t really work for piloting a ship.

But why was he running? He dropped you off at the edge of the Reaper attack, watched his pilot friend die (MAYBE), and then PROBABLY just watched you get sucked into a beam? Or assumedly heard them talking over the radio asking for you to hit the button in the space terminal. WHY IS HE FLYING AWAY? Joker would never leave your side! Even if it meant he would likely die, I don’t buy it. No man behind.

• Let’s Get Two Hells Out of Here.

Not only would he not fly away, he wouldn’t HOP INTO A MASS EFFECT RELAY and travel to an entirely different solar system, with NO chance of circling back to save a comrade radioing for help. No way, no how.

• Instants Keep Getting Longer and Longer.

The video clearly shows the Light Beam chasing after Joker, since it’s exploding all the Mass Effect Relays. So, he’s mid jump as the Beam closes in on his ship.
Oh, except that jumps are instantaneous.

Did the people who wrote the third game even play the first game?
I have two more examples that back up my theory that they neither reread the script for 3 after writing it NOR played the previous games.

1. At some point, when you’re on your ship talking to Anderson, he tells you he was born in London. Then, at the very end, when they meet together, he tells you he was born in London. And you respond, “Oh, REALLY?”
2. I unfortunately can’t find the video for it, since it’s just a passing dialogue and not a cutscene, but if you talk to Garrus right after Tali dies, he says something to the effect of “I don’t know what was under that mask, but I like to think of her as…What do you humans call it? An angel.” Really? Really. HIS NAME IS ARCHANGEL. AND HE DOESN’T KNOW THE WORD ANGEL?
   Yeah, I’m often like, “What’s the first name of that famous actress? …Something Bacall. Same as the last name of that clothing guy Ralph something… Oh, yeah! ‘Lauren’!”
   I… I just… No words.

• You want to save technology? Gotcha. We’re destroying technology anyway.

Why did the Mass Relays even blow up in endings other than Destroy? What does Synthesis and Controlling the Reapers have to do with space travel technology? Part of the reason I chose Synthesis was to SAVE synthetics and computers and space travel!

• Donner, Party of Several Billion.

Oh, yeaaaaah. Remember how you got the entire galaxy to fly to your solar system to help you defeat the Reapers? Oh, then the Mass Effect Relays that enabled space travel blew up no matter what you chose? Yeah, the ENTIRE GALAXY is now stuck in Earth’s Solar System with maybe 8 potential planets to live on, depending on your living/air/gaseous needs.

Yeah, every race in the galaxy is going to starve to death after they finish eating each other. And that’s in every ending, including the BEST POSSIBLE ENDING YOU CAN GET.

• Oh, and half your squadmade survivors die, too.

In every ending (whether you’re good or evil) your surviving friends crash land on a planet. As an aside, part of the reason that nerds love Mass Effect so much is its rich and thorough world building. Including the fact that Quarians and Turians have “dextro-protein” diets, while humans and asari have “levo-protein” diets, and apparently every world can only sustain one type of protein sustenance.

THIS MEANS, that even though a few of your friends are shown to survive, depending on whether the planet is dextro or levo, half of them will starve to death, too! Hooray!

• Bug? Or I have amnesia?

To give you some small morsel of hope, you’re given a brief glimpse of who, from your team, survives the crash landing on the mysterious planet. The game automatically throws in your most-used party member and your love interest. Only…for me, my most-used was Liara and love interest was Kaidan…who I had brought with me to London and had died before I was beamed up.

Even if they somehow will live on in the DLC, HOW DID THEY GET ON A SHIP FLYING OUT OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM?!

• Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine!

You’ve beaten the game. If you’re me, you’re drying your tears. The credits have rolled. You get an extra cutscene with Buzz Aldrin talking to some kid about the amazing Shepard on a planet that is very much not Earth.

A quick aside — throughout the game, you’re given messages on a cool see-through iPad sort of deal. They’re called Datapads, because who needs notebooks in the future?

The moment the game ends, you’re given this datapad to read.

…A commercial? In MY VIDEO GAME?

I don’t think I need to mention how offensive this crushed Fourth Wall is after playing the game I paid for and didn’t even get an ending to.

• Thanks, Ghost of Christmas Future!

After the datapad debacle, do you end up on the title screen? No! You end up back on your ship! It’s okay! Nothing happened! Oh. They just want you to…play the end again? Maybe they agree that all the endings were so horrible, you needed more war assets than exist in the world to get the unreachable Good Ending that doesn’t actually exist.

When I did the play “Miss Saigon” in high school, I asked my dad how he liked it afterwards. He said he loved it, but that he felt a little strange in the very last scene, watching the main character kill herself so the American GI will raise her son…the curtain falling, and then the main character walking out to take her bow. He got it, storywise, and he got that actors need their recognition, but emotionally, he was confused, because he’d just watched her die.

Yeah. Cool.

• If DEAD, How DLC?

I can’t imagine Bioware would pull a Fallout 3 and say “NOPE, you’re not dead! Remember that horrible death you saw? We healed you right up!” However, you can ONLY get the mysterious breath at the end if you’re a) super high effective military strength, b) maxed out Paragon (maybe also Renegade, but must be maxed out), and c) chosing Destroy. So, who wants to bet it’s some BS pre-ending DLC?

I’m not even talking about the promised DLC to fix the fubar’d ending itself, I’m talking the DLC promised in the Ovaltine Datapad. They want me to pay to spend 10-20 MORE hours fighting a war that I know I’m going to lose and watch all my friends die again? Yes, please, take my money.

• Who Remembers Sovereign?

So, remember in Mass Effect 1 how the whole point of the entire game was to stop the Reaper named Sovereign from using the Citadel (which is actually a Mass Effect Relay) to port in all the other Reapers from Deep Space? If there was a Mystical Hoodie Child who wants to kill everyone anyway, why didn’t he just step in and press the big, red button? Why send a humongous space krakken to do your APPARENTLY INEVITABLE dirty work?

• Shh, shh, it’s all a publicity stunt. They purposely made the ending vague so they could sell DLC.

Maybe I’m jaded, but the case for this is pretty much made when you have Day-One DLC. If they always planned on releasing a new ending, I’m just done. I’m done paying for video games pre-release. I did the right thing. I paid for a game. I supported the industry. I paid extra for the Collector’s Edition because I like Mass Effect just that much. I hate evil empires like GameStop and hate taking money out of the developers’ and testers’ pockets who MAKE the games that I usually do love so much, but there’s only so much I can give before I feel like a chump. And that’s how the end of Mass Effect 3 made me feel.

3,400 words later, I feel like I’ve finally made my point. Until tomorrow when I remember 3 bullet points I should have also included. I get passionate about stuff. Mass Effect gave me a lot of feels. I thought the ending was going to be epic. It can be done. Just look at any movie or book that really satisfied you. It just takes a skilled writing staff, and I honestly don’t know what happened here.

All right, one more video for old time’s sake!

This entry contains spoilers for the entire Mass Effect series and not much else.

Like almost every other nerd on the Internet, I was disappointed with the ending of Mass Effect 3. I say “almost,” because there are a few holdouts who swear that an ending is an ending, and it did the series justice. I am setting out to prove why they are wrong and why they should be enraged like me. Also, unlike many nerds’ opinions, I didn’t just dislike the ending of Mass Effect 3, I hated almost the entire game. Who’s ready to get their heart racing?!

Without further ado, I’d like to list out the reasons I hated Mass Effect 3.

• Citadel or Space?

In Mass Effect 1, you had Feros, you had chilly Noveria. In Mass Effect 2, you had beautiful Illium with those double-crossing spy quests and seedy Omega. Sure, there were other planets to explore, but you could sort of tell they were one-quest planets, with 4 or 5 “different” zones.

But in Mass Effect 3, ALL the quests originate on the Citadel. There was no other land to explore. Every planet was designed for that one quest you were there for, and you could never go back. There was nowhere to help out some dad who had lost his kid, or solve the mystery of plants that had hypnotized everyone. You go to the Citadel and you go to space. Where’s the world building?

• Overheard On The Citadel

Gone are the days of a heartfelt back-and-forth between Commander Shepard and some doctor who’s all out of specialized Batarian medi gel prompting you to vow not to give up your fight until you’ve saved every last creepy Batarian because YOU’RE COMMANDER SHEPARD. In Mass Effect 3, all you have to do is walk past someone, and sometimes before you’ve even heard their first sentence, the New Quest icon would pop up telling you that there’s something for you to do that you barely even care about. I don’t get how, in a game that relies NOT on over-CG’d cutscenes but actual zoomed-in/camera-angled gameplay footage would skimp on emotional conversations prompting you to action.

Every “Quest” is solved either by mining or finding something on a planet, so it’s not like you get the pride of saving someone’s long-lost daughter from a burning building. Instead you’re charged with clicking a white dot to discover the long lost Library of Elcor. Wow, what a rush.

• No time, saving the Earth, lulz

Where are the Keeper Scanning Quests? Where is the lovestruck asari and krogan on a break that you have to convince to get back together? Where are the puzzles? Sure, maybe you could argue that the Reapers are invading and there’s no TIME to be running around on side quests, but that’s BS. We’re playing a game here. For enjoyment.

• No time for innovation, Doctor Jones!

In Mass Effect 1, you had to type in a secret code as it flashed on the screen to pick a lock. I guess people didn’t like that, so it was canned. It’s been too long since I’ve played 1 and 2 to remember much about the weapons system, but I remember it being really complicated and fun — match this type of bullet to this level gun and add on these add-ons and see what happens! In Mass Effect 3, all I took away from the weapons system was looking at a chart once or twice and using the same type of gun all the way through.

In Mass Effect 1, mining and finding artifacts was a bit tedious, but at least you got to visit some interesting planets. And, SPACE COWS! So in Mass Effect 2, they decided to replace that whole system with simply scanning the planets from space and sending down a probe (which you had to pay for). It was fun because not only could you get cool prizes or quests, but you could also just move the cursor around to get some pretty expensive and rare minerals, which you discovered by reading a meter on the right. IT WAS FUN and it felt like I was doing some science or something! Mass Effect 3, let’s cut out the cost of probes, so you can just shoot them at planets willy-nilly, and let’s take out the science and just leave it to finding white dots that maybe added a War Asset. To an unwinnable war. Can we say no replay value?

===

That’s why my dislike of Mass Effect 3 isn’t confined to the ending. There were some high points. Mordin’s death scene. Shooting off the Citadel with Garrus. (And if you didn’t let him win, you have no heart.) My finally having a romance scene with Kaiden, after missing my chance in 1 and accidentally romancing Liara. The only memorable, superfun, innovative non-cutscene was the Legion/We-Are-Not-Legion TRON level. That was fun for me. The rest of it sort of felt like a chore. AND THIS IS COMING FROM THE PERSNO WHO PLAYED EVERY MAKO PLANET ON 1. Land on planet, hide behind shields, advance, repeat, fight “boss” at the end — Atlus, Banshee, or Brute.

Now. The ending.

For those of you who don’t know anything about Mass Effect, I will give you the gist of what everyone’s upset about. I hope you are very bored, because there’s extra-curricular videos to watch.

The first Required Watching is this 6:30 minute video from PATV on why people enjoy playing “western” RPGs. My main point begins 1:35 into it, and although the entire episode is really well-said, the brass tacks are that people enjoy RPGs because you get to BE the person. It’s not like Final Fantasy where you’re watching a character progress through a world and learning about his history. Those sorts of games certainly have their merit — neither Uncharted or Bioshock would even WORK in a world where you didn’t play as a pre-determined character in a narrative.

In RPGs like Mass Effect, Fallout, Dragon Age, Fable, and Knights of the Old Republic, part of the FUN is choosing. Had a bad day at work? Choose an evil option, backsass some colonist, kill a pile of peasants, force those weaker than you to your will. Or, if you play like I do, work to be the most just and honorable person in all the land. And I *like* sometimes wondering if what you’re doing is right. In Mass Effect, sure, there’s a bit of a forced narrative — besides, how different in a Candy-Getting quest, for example, is befriending a baby versus killing the baby and taking the candy at the end of the day? — there were a lot of affect-the-outcome-of-the-game choices that were epic. Until, you know, the end.

In the buildup of the trilogy, there are several choices you make that do influence the entire game. Besides your backstory, which gets a few mentions throughout — if you’re an orphan, people mention it, whereas I grew up in space with my parents, and I sometimes get to hop on a call with my mom — at the end of 1, you have to choose between your (likely) love interest or your BFF, and the one you don’t choose to save dies. Forever.

When Mass Effect 2 came along, and they each played a smallish role (I had saved Kaiden and killed Ashley, and Tyler did the opposite, so I got to see both), I understood, because, hey, maybe voice actors are expensive and busy, and you’d have to write a ton of totally different dialog for each.

But in Mass Effect 3, they played HUGE roles. I can’t even imagine how many different branches the writers went down, because there were different circumstances for whether or not you cheated on them in 2, whether or not you slept with them in the first one and were trying to again, if they were jealous that you slept with someone ELSE in 1 and they had always loved you. I will give them props for everything involving Kaiden. Not Ashley, because for some reason, the artists deemed that she’d gotten several thousand dollars worth of plastic surgery on her lips sometime after 2. Nice girl. Sex bot.

Other things, too. In the end of 2, depending on how much the character liked you, they either survived the final attack or died, leaving them unusable to you in 3. In 3, there’s a race of aliens that multiply like CRAZY, and before the games begin, they hate another race of aliens who mutated their DNA so that only 1 in 1,000 births was viable. Was it the right thing to do in terms of overpopulation? Or was it wrong to limit someone’s species through science, causing faction wars over the rare fertile females, and subjecting them to rape at the leaders’ whims? In the game, you have to choose whether or not to reverse the genophage.

There’s a race of AI created by another race called the Quarians, and although you’re taught they’re your enemy, you slowly learn that as soon as the AI gained awareness, they were killed by those who created them. And the few evil ones were brainwashed by an even higher power, so are they really evil at all? You have to choose if gaining self awareness is a crime punishable by genocide. I decided it wasn’t, and the repercussions of taking their side were that my friend Tali, a Quarian who had fought by my side for 3 games, committed suicide because her race would never accept the AI as friends, and her entire fleet was destroyed by the AI fighting back in self-defense.

These were the good things in 3 — the sorts of choices that reflected the overall series.

The overall plot of Mass Effect 3 is that you need to get every race in existence to fight on your side against the Big Bad, enlisting the help of everyone you’ve ever met and loved. You succeed. Everyone prepares for the big fight, and you run in guns blazing. And you lose. All your friends die. You get ported up to a magical space station heaven — deus ex machina for those of us in the business of knowing if something sucks or not — and a magical space alien boy in a hoodie tells you that he’s decided to wipe you out pretty much anyway. You are given three options.
1) (Red) — Destroy the Reapers AND every bit of AI (including your robo friends) and technology (including computers, ships, and the Mass Relay machines that enable space travel).
2) (Green) — Merge with the Reapers to create a synergy between synthetics and organics.
3) (Blue) — Control the Reapers and use them how you see fit (which you’ve been saying the whole game can never work).

I chose Green, because I was friends with synthetics, and it seemed like the nicest thing to do. As I dove into the green beam of light, I watched myself disintegrate. I watched the Reapers leave Earth! Yay. I watched a beam of light disintegrate all the Mass Relays allowing space travel. Oh. I watched my friend Joker piloting my ship careening out of control, frantically pushing buttons as the terminal didn’t respond.

It was at this point I started hysterically crying. Not only were all my friends dead, but the one crippled guy who had been my true friend through it all was about to explode all because of me. Every alien race failed because of me. As I was drying my eyes, I saw that he crash-landed on a planet and walked out with a few friends (one who I thought I saw die, but okay). Roll credits.

I was sniffling and hoping Tyler wouldn’t walk in and see me crying at a video game as I watched the credits roll. I thought I did the right thing, but the Magic Space Hoodie boy said the Reapers would be back, and now we didn’t have Mass Relays to travel and everyone was stuck and I was dead. Did I choose the evil option on accident?

The second Required Watching is this movie off all three endings side-by-side, with a key at the bottom right as to which it is.

Are you back? THEY’RE ALL EXACTLY THE SAME. All the choices I made, all the tough decisions, and in the end, every person gets the same ending. Not even the same result but with different graphics. ALMOST THE SAME GRAPHICS.

I get that it’s a HUGE game with SO many different paths that you get to go down. But you don’t even get a cutscene of the aforementioned metaphorical baby slowly trusting you, giving you the candy, and being your friend if you choose the good ending. And the evil players don’t get a cutscene of cruelly murdering the baby and standing over it, candy raised triumphantly in the air. BOTH GOOD AND EVIL get beamed up by a Mystical Space Hoodie who says you actually need to feed the baby vegetables, not take its candy, oh, and all your friends are dead.

I was livid.

Now, I thought I was going to get into actual Ending Dislikes here, but it appears I’ve rambled off again, because I can’t expect people to read over 2,200 words in a single sitting unless I’m writing sexy fan fiction. Please stay tuned for Part 3 coming soon. Really soon because I’m just going to keep writing this because I have such NERD RAGE.

Let me start off by saying there are spoilers ahead. Spoilers for the Mass Effect series, some for Buffy and House MD (both pre season 5, so no spoilers past, if you please), some for Soylent Green, Sixth Sense, all Harry Potters, and Game of Thrones, season/book 1. If you have not completed these forms of media and you hate spoilers, as I do, you should not read ahead.

I hate spoilers. There was a time when just finding out that there might be a spoiler infuriated me, because it was a spoiler that there was a spoiler. I’ve gotten over that last one, because you have to start somewhere, and there’s quite a difference between saying “Spoiler Alert: I’m going to talk about Sixth Sense” and “Spoiler Alert: I’m going to talk about the huge unforeseen twist at the end of Sixth Sense that you may actually have seen coming if you notice Bruce Willis never actually opens the door for himself and maybe is there another reason the wife says nothing at dinner?”

I’ve spoiled myself several times. When I was in Japan, I was watching episodes of House, and I had apparently not been sent the correct number of DVDs. I loved the character Cutthroat Bitch, and when the season ended, I went on Wikipedia to read more about her. I found it odd that her character had a Date of Birth and a Date of Death…so my eyes slipped down the page, and I learned not only were there 3 or 4 episodes that I hadn’t watched, but she freaking DIES in one of them!

There’s the famous “Snape kills Dumbledore,” which I stumbled across on SomethingAwful just days after book 6 came out. When book 7 came out, I was RELIGIOUS about not going on websites where jerks are. I wasn’t on Twitter much, and FB was a safe haven, so I was safe to read “Deathly Hallows” in Japan in relative peace…until I stumbled onto the comments section of a blog somewhere that proclaimed that Moody, Fred, Snape, and Ron died. I was SO UPSET. Furious. I removed myself from as much Internet as was humanly possible and flew through the book — partly to get these sad parts over with, partly so I could actually get back online.

And I don’t feel like I was really as sad over each of the deaths as I would have been if I hadn’t known it was coming. After each death, I just kept flipping pages to get to the next one. Ron was still alive. He embraced Hermione after a particularly tricky battle. JK’s really trying to draw it out now, isn’t she? I got to the end…and Ron never died. I reread the epilogue, making sure I wasn’t reading something wrong. I’m still not sure if this person was ill-advised or just trolling, but it was almost WORSE that I THOUGHT he was going to die on “good” authority, because I couldn’t actually attach myself to his heroism, thinking he’d kick it on any page.

I am hesitant to fully immerse myself in the Buffy fandom because I’m terrified of reading anything past season 5. Sure, statistics are in my favor, but it’s still a mine field.

Reading “Game of Thrones” (or “A Song of Ice and Fire,” really) has been interesting, because, while I can’t wander into chats or Google any characters, since I’m technically two books behind what’s published, I don’t fear stumbling upon show spoilers that much, since, you know, I know what’s going to happen. I read someone’s tweet a few days ago that said something to the effect of, “Wow, no nudity alert?! Thanks a lot! I’m watching with my dad!” And I hadn’t seen the episode yet. For an instant, I was almost upset that she was actually spoiling some nudity that I had, what, wanted as a surprise? Then I remembered…this is “Game of Thrones.” How did you not know there would be nudity and WHY ARE YOU WATCHING WITH YOUR DAD?

So I ask you: what is the statute of limitations on spoilers?

Used to be — before ubiquitous DVRs — you were free to talk openly about TV shows the day after they aired unless someone specifically started flailing when you mentioned the title. There’s the famous first “Seinfeld” episode (I’m pretty sure the statute has run out on this one, so I’ve left it out of the title warning…) where Jerry asks everyone he comes in contact with not to mention the outcome of a Mets game he’s taped, answering the phone with that request, and at the end, Kramer spoils it right before he gets to finish watching it. But those were the rare cases, and I think Jerry’s constant warnings were the right thing to do. But how can I do that now with ALL the shows I’m halfway through, yet still don’t want spoiled? I’ll need a scroll and more cellphone minutes.

But now, with DVRs, people watch stuff on their own time. Then you have facebook, and when the east coast watches “Game of Thrones” first, they rush to their computers to post “HOLY CRAP DID YOU SEE WHAT JUST HAPPENED? THAT’S NOT HOW YOU GET AHEAD IN LIFE. HE’LL NEVER BE THE HEAD OF A MAJOR CORPORATION. WHAT I MEAN TO SAY IS THAT EDDARD STARK JUST GOT BEHEADED. I NEVER SAW THAT COMING, UNLIKE THE REST OF YOU SAPS BECAUSE I’M AN UNTHINKING MORON.” I hate those people.

But still, when is it okay?

I was once in an sketch comedy group, and we were talking about “Soylent Green,” and some guy — a few years older than me — didn’t know what I was talking about. I said, “You know, Soylent Green. As in ‘Soylent Green is PEOPLE!’” And the leader of this group legitimately got upset that I had spoiled his friend on a movie released in 1973. That same guy stole my Directing book AFTER mocking my bookshelf sign-out system created SPECIFICALLY to avoid such thievery. In 2004. I’m still mad. And possibly secret twins with Tina Fey.

This whole topic came about because I wanted to talk about Mass Effect 3 like just about every other nerd on the planet. I got it, like most other nerds, the day it came out. Unlike most other nerds, I either like sleep or my job too much, and I didn’t finish this 45-hours-of-gameplay game the first weekend…or the first four weekends.

My friend Ryan came into work three days after release and said, “I just beat it. I liked it, but I didn’t like the ending.” I felt heat rising, and I must have twitched or something, because he quickly followed with, “It’s not a spoiler. I just didn’t like it.” Maybe I’ll like it, I thought, and I clung to hope. After all, I’ve been known to like a few things that not everyone likes. I like Twilight. I like Evanescence a little too much. I would eat a bowl of garlic if I could. Surely it’s just the hardcore nerd elite.

I have since beaten the game, and it so happens that I agree with everyone that the ending is terrible, and tears were streaming down my face during the final cutscene AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY. Not like, goodbye to one of my favorite video game series of all time. Like:

But I will talk about that in Part 2. What I want to talk about here is how infuriated I was that LEFT AND RIGHT people sought to spoil the everloving Eezo out of me. It was being discussed and tweeted in every gamer blog I went to every day. Gabe from Penny Arcade tweeted that Tycho had written up a good post with no spoilers. However, sadly, since he linked to their website itself and not the blog in question, I was brought to HIS take on the ending and in the second paragraph, he mentions something about an Indoctrination Theory, which up until that point, I hadn’t even heard of or considered. AND (as you will see in my next post) THAT THEORY IS ALMOST CERTAINLY TRUE. So, looking back, I read something that was (as the result of a misunderstanding) guaranteed not to be a spoiler that changed my entire perception of not only the ENDING, but THE ENTIRE GAME.

I’m not sure what the answer is. Movies have been released, and most people know not to go trouncing around giving away the ending, but all you need is one moron. With TV, how long do you allow? A week might be fine, but sometimes I’m busy on weekends. With games, how long am I supposed to take? Can I be given a month? On the other hand, should no one ELSE be allowed to talk about it for a month — much less a video game webcomic that I usually enjoy because it does just that? I suppose I should have known better, but, as I said, they DID say no spoilers…I just got directed to the wrong entry and started reading immediately like some crazy person.

The news of the historical ending spread to my work, and although only Ryan, Chris, and I were actually playing the game, it was such an interesting and relatively new case, Ron wrote up an article about the future of storytelling, citing this as a possible new chapter of crowd-sourced storytelling, where if you have enough people invested and complaining, you might be able to make a difference. Or maybe not. Maybe artists can fold their arms and take their ball and go home, smugly reminding you that without them, you wouldn’t have even HAD a ball to play with. I rushed through the rest of the game before the article was released, because, since I wanted to read about it at work, I wanted to avoid being spoiled about anything else as long as I could.

I don’t know what the answer is. All I know is that people should use spoiler alerts. And mean them. Some of us take our time with stuff.