I had a nice chat with some game designers, some of whom may have been from Bioware, about the controversy about the MASS EFFECT 3 ending.
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So, the hero, Shepherd, does what Buffy does at the end of seasons 1 and 5: sacrifice herself for the good of everyone else. And some players object to that. Even though, y'know, Shep has been dead at least once in the series already.
And the whole 39 hours of gameplay are all about loss and sacrifice.
But maybe the issue players are having isn't that Shep dies. It's that you have no choice about Shep dying. You are given up to three endings at the end of the game, but in each of them, Shep has to sacrifice her life for the good of all, at the end of a long sequence of cut-scene after cut-scene in which you have barely any choices to make or even anything to do.
I think the problem is that the player doesn't own Shep's sacrifice. He doesn't choose to sacrifice his life for the good of all. He has the controller taken out of his hands by the designers.
Sid Meier famously says that there are games where the computer is having all the fun, games where the designer has all the fun, and games where the player gets to have the fun. At the end of ME3, the designers are having the fun.
What if there had been an option for Shepherd not to sacrifice himself? But in that ending, only Earth survived, not the whole galaxy? Or there would have been some other sort of qualified victory? Then most of the players would have chosen to sacrifice Shep, but they would have chosen it. And then they would have owned the sacrifice. They would have got to have the fun.
I had the same issue at the end of RED DEAD REDEMPTION. Marston sacrifices himself to save his family, but the player doesn't get a choice. Suppose the player could choose to send his family to safety, or fight it out with his enemies, his son at his side. If he brings his son, his son dies. And then, bitter, sad, he goes to take revenge for his family. Most players would choose to save the family, if the game made it clear that there were real risks for the son. But they would own that decision. They would feel the redemption mentioned in the title.
I think it would also have helped ME3 if there were a bit more of an epilog. Bioware really saved a lot of money on the alternate endings. They're all about Joker and the Normandy racing to outrun the shock front of Shep's decision. If I choose to control the Reapers, I want to see a hideous giant fleet of Reapers heading out from Earth, with "United Federation of Earth" painted on their sides, so I can wonder if I've given humanity too much power. If I choose to destroy all synthetic life, I want to see the Geth die. Otherwise each winning choice doesn't really feel different. Either way the Reapers stop fighting and Joker fails to outrun the shock wave, and crashlands on a planet with some crew members on board.
It seems a shame that the ending of such a well-crafted game comes up so short. I can see why Bioware made its choice. The end-game cut-scenes are already expensive. It's a game; they wanted to maximize their efforts on levels and gameplay. But if you want your game to tell a story, a weak ending can really spoil an otherwise successful story.
(See all my Mass Effect posts.)
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