Mass Effect 3 was a great game, there’s no doubt about it, but its ending was definitely controversial, as some gamers were profusely disappointed with it. One such a gamer is none other than the co-author of The Expanse sci-fi novels, Ty Franck, who had some very harsh words to say about the conclusion of the Mass Effect trilogy. Just in case you’re not already aware, The Expanse is also a highly successful Syfy television series that was described as “Game of Thrones in space,” even though the two shows have little in common. Back to the matter at hand, Ty Franck said that Mass Effect 3’s ending “disgusted” him so much that he gave up on the entire series altogether.
“The first two and a half games promised so much and set up such a fantastic universe, and then the end of the third one, it just… It made everything that had come before irrelevant. It was just a f*****g terrible ending. It really felt like there was a fantastic ending that I had been promised, and then when I got to it… You know what? The ending of Mass Effect for me was like the ending of Lost, where [you] became aware that they really didn’t know where they were going the whole time and they’d kind of just been making things up.”
Maybe it’s true that the ending was not exactly ideal, but that’s not to say that the game itself was not a masterpiece in its own right. However, Ty believes that the series’ creators should have known what the ending would be from the very beginning, much like The Expanse’s authors are doing with their books.
“When we hit book nine of The Expanse, that will be the last book—and we’ve known the ending from the beginning. That’s because I like endings. I think great media, great art, whatever, is all about the edges of the canvas, and anything that you try to string on too long gets a little threadbare. I also think that because of that—because endings are so important—you better know what your ending is and you better be setting that ending up right from the beginning. Otherwise, it just feels muddy and unsatisfying.”
I know it’s been a while since Mass Effect 3 came out, but what did you think about the game’s ending?
I found the end of Mass Effect 3 to be awful.
3 games leading to an exciting ending, and that.
I played the first two multiple times, after that ending, I have only played Mass Effect 3 once.
I can bearly play 1 & 2 again because I know the story goes nowhere.
I myself was a little disappointed with how abrupt the ending was, with no mention of the companions’ futures at all, but my biggest concerns were solved with the release of the extended cut. But I can’t go along with the notion that they didn’t have a clue what the ending was going to be as that was obvious right from the start – the good guy defeats the bad guy. That’s how it was always going to be. The exciting part is the journey itself, not the destination, otherwise the majority of all fiction would be deemed boring thanks to having the same ‘good defeats evil’ ending.
In terms of a specifics, true they probably didn’t come up with the whole Crucible notion till the third game entered development, and initially creating an enemy so overwhelmingly powerful that their defeat necessitated such a deus ex machina was perhaps folly, but it was that scale which provided the series with such, well, scale and incentive for victory.
I’m curious as to what specifically Ty Franck and others think make it a terrible ending, and what their perfect ending would have been. Considering that, being a game, it has to be somewhat interactive and allow you to beat the Reaper fleet once and for all, I’m not certain what I would have done differently, although I am certainly not a game developer or story writer.