The Rabbit Hole

This is a five-point defense of the players who disliked the ending of Mass Effect 3, so naturally there are A TON OF SPOILERS should you choose to read it. At the risk of becoming, as I worried with my roommate last night, the backlash against the backlash, I still find these arguments lacking. There is exactly one point they raise on which I agreed, but that was a logical error so out of line with the events of the ending that, like or dislike, stands out like a colossal WTF?

I hereby resolve to stop protesting against the backlash. Haters gonna hate, I believe, is the thing the kids say. And who knows? If I play through a second time with Renegade Shepard and like the ending less, I might be among them. Bloody unlikely, but we'll see.

What I'm most contemplating now, though, is a re-play through the whole series, stopping along the way to pick up a couple of the DLC adventures from the first two games that I never played. (Yes, you read that right: there was something branded Mass Effect, a video game no less, that I have not played!) I'm still mightily opposed on grounds of fuck EA and their enforced new-game buying tactics, DLC shouldn't be used as a bribe to get people to pay for your game or prevented from having if you don't, etc., etc. But my high and mighty standards stand weak before my love of these games. I don't expect my willpower to last.

In other video gaming news, has anybody out there played Heavy Rain and can anyone explain to me why the game wouldn't be, like, immediately solved by the protagonist just going to the fucking police in the first place!?!? Even with abusive asshole cop in charge of the investigation! It would be better! moonlightalice and wellgull are watching me go through the story--which I bumped down to easy difficulty because the game play is that much not fun--and we're all in fits about how stupid absolutely everything the hero does is. Every five seconds, I'm hissing Call the poliiiiicccccceeeeeeeee.

Between trips to the bathroom, I managed to complete Mass Effect 3 this weekend. (I typed "4" there by accident at first. Alas, never to be.)
( Absolutely no spoilers, just my opinion on the tenor of the ending, but just in case. )

I am more upset that the franchise is over. I suppose it isn't, really. If I want to try and get different endings, apparently I have to play multiplayer. Or one of two iOS games, which, yes, I've already bought and will put to use with my Renegade Shepard to see if it does diddly or squat. There's always something more you can do, given the way the game has been marketed--more you can buy to get at the cheap thrill version of the fun you had actually playing the game. I've never subscribed to that, which is why I'm annoyed that you can alter your results with things that feel completely extraneous to the game. Multiplayer? Come on now. Are you going to give out codes for reading the comics as well? Might as well, seeing as multiplayer is going to get fuck-all attention from me.

I don't like the necessity of having to pull on more and other media or different genres of video gaming within the same universe in order to achieve within the game you love. If you want more from the game, by all means, have at the comics and the extra missions, but, call me old-fashioned, I believe, for all the choosing of my own adventure within Mass Effect, there was a core story and very little extra was needed or improved it where it was added. It's nice that they are something else I can have if I get too depressed that the story is over. I'm a little depressed, not gonna lie, but it feels cheap to go for those tie-in stories as if they'll satisfy in the same way. I'd almost love to see a trilogy of games that takes place centuries after the ending of Mass Effect 3. Where will the universe be then? That, to me, is more interesting than all the stories of what various folk are doing while Shepard is saving the goddamned galaxy.