Mass Effect, the end.

I managed to complete my journey through the Mass Effect trilogy last week and originally I was going to write a bit about my thoughts on that ending, but since the Internet has been inundated with people arguing for and against how Bioware chose to finish up their tale I thought I would do something a bit different. (For the record I was disappointed with the ending and I think this article and this video sum up my problems with it.)

No matter how you feel about the ending though we should be praising Bioware for what they have achieved with the Mass Effect trilogy. Over the course of three games they have managed to bring to life a world and a cast of characters that players have grown to love. For the first time a series has allowed you to shape and mould the protagonist over not one, not two, but three games. The Sheppard and story that you had to tell at the end of Mass Effect 3 was one that was shaped by your actions, not one that had been predefined before you even started. This is pretty much unheard of in the realm of video-games and I think this fact has been lost beneath the vitriol coming from both sides of the divide. 

 

The amount of fervour on both sides of this divide about the ending, clearly demonstrates that people have become invested in the characters and world that Bioware has created. That people care so much about the way the story has finished shows what a great job Bioware has done with the series. People have become emotionally invested.

For me the Mass Effect series feels like the maturation of what Bioware started to do with the Baldur’s Gate series. In those games you had a few decisions to make that changed how things played out, but with Mass Effect they have taken that genesis further.

Despite the success however, I do feel like this may be a once in a lifetime series. With budgets increasing and EA already meddling with the design, I don’t know whether Bioware will get the chance to do anything like this again. The cost involved in designing a number of different stories must be quite large, added to that–people’s expectations will only grow leading to cries for more choices and even more divergent outcomes. It’s hard to see a publisher, especially one as conservative as EA, green-lighting such a project again.

So whatever your thoughts on how the series has wound-up, I urge you to recognise the feat that Bioware have managed to achieve with the Mass Effect series, especially as we may never see its like again.