14 DAY TRIAL // After I first played through it, I didn’t much care about the suicide mission that ended Mass Effect 2, mainly because it felt manufactured to allow for too much player freedom and it made some of its inner working too obscure.
After I first played the ending of Mass Effect 3 (small spoilers might follow), I loved it, mainly because of how it confounded the expectations that the rest of the game created and delivered a break with the usual video game tone that permeated the franchise.
I thought some more about both the sequences and played them a second and even third time and I do believe that looking at the suicide mission from the second game of the series and the Crucible ending of Mass Effect 3 side by side tells us something about BioWare and their creation process.
The Mass Effect 2 ending is filled with possibilities and switches, allowing for outcomes based on squad status, Normandy upgrades, previous dialog choices and on the spot decisions (who goes through the vent?).
It’s precise and almost mechanical; the player supplies a number of variables and the Mass Effect 2 machine spits out a tailored ending.
It was in many ways what Mass Effect fans were expecting from BioWare for the finale of the series, but one must keep in mind that some gamers criticized its nature back in 2010.
In Mass Effect 3 the final half an hour of the game is much more esoteric and BioWare was careful to obscure the exact impact of most previous choices.
The main decision is clearly presented in the game, but there’s no history that can validate it, making the end of Mass Effect 3 open to various interpretations and less solid than many fans would like.
I believe that the two approaches that BioWare tried for the series are equally valid, although they generated very different reactions, and I hope that the developers manage to create a blend of them for future projects.