So, this morning BioWare announced "Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut", a free downloadable content extension to the ending of the game that is supposed to help clarify some of the things people were confused about as well as provide closure through " additional cinematic sequences and epilogue scenes," due to be released sometime this summer. These words suggest to me that what I wrote the other day is correct: the so-called "Indoctrination Theory" is wrong. The ending we got is, for better or worse, exactly as bad as it seems.
So, now that we have some idea of what BioWare is doing to address the concerns of the fans, will it manage to satisfy those who have been so angered? Maybe. BioWare's founder and CEO, Dr. Ray Muzyka, has stated that he believes they've managed to find the right balance between addressing the biggest issues the fans had with the ending, while also maintaining the "artistic integrity" of the team (I put "artistic integrity" in quotes mainly just because I don't think the original ending had much "integrity" in it at all).
First, we have the problem of the destruction of the Mass Relays themselves. It is established canon in Mass Effect, starting with the Arrival DLC for Mass Effect 2, and reaffirmed in the Codex in Mass Effect 3 itself, that rupturing a Mass Relay will release an amount of energy roughly equivalent to a star roughly the size of our sun going supernova. This would mean that destroying ALL the Mass Relays throughout the Milky Way would cause untold amounts of destruction, becoming, effectively, galactic genocide. Now, since the energy released during the ending of ME3 is a special color, we might assume that this is somehow a special case that would NOT cause said destruction. This leads to another problem, however: galactic populations and the importance of trade.
There are two significant species in the Mass Effect universe, the Turians and the Quarians, whose biology is based upon dextro-amino acids, as opposed to levo-amino acids, which almost every other sentient species in the galaxy is based on (yes, including humans). Now, at the ending of the game, when the Mass Relays are destroyed, huge numbers of the military force of both of these species, and perhaps even the entirety of the Quarians in the galaxy, are in the Sol system, on or orbiting Earth. Dextro-based lifeforms cannot subsist on levo-based foods, and it is almost unheard of that the two would be found in the same star system, meaning that neither of these two species would be able to survive indefinitely in our solar system. Since the Mass Relays are the only means of traveling rapidly across the galaxy, that leaves only conventional Faster-Than-Light travel, meaning that if they started traveling immediately, it could be years, perhaps even decades, before they reach a star system with any renewable food sources.
Now, even worse than the idea that these two huge fleets would starve to death is the idea that, with so many billions of people of all different species stranded in the Sol system, which has only one habitable planet, how could all those people survive long on such limited resources? It seems inevitable that war will break out sooner or later as groups begin fighting for survival against starvation, unless they can manage to discover the technology to build Mass Relays on their own REALLY fast.
These are just the BIGGEST issues I feel would have to be addressed in an "extended" ending. There are others, but those are the biggest, and certainly not the only ones that would need to be there for me to feel like it's even worth it. Other issues include:
The fate of your crew. The crew of the Normandy includes a Turian and a Quarian, who, along with the rest of the crew, are stranded on an uninhabited garden world. Either the life on that planet is levo based, in which case both those characters will inevitably starve to death if they don't die of an allergic reaction first, or it is dextro based, which means everyone else will starve to death.
The Catalyst and the Crucible. It is still entirely unexplained how the two devices, built hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years apart with no prior knowledge of the existence of the other, become somehow compatible. Did the Reapers design the initial version of the Crucible? Is the Catalyst just magic? The convenience of this is never even mentioned, let alone explained.
The Reapers. So, the Reapers were created to harvest organic life every 50,000 years before it can develop synthetic life that will destroy them? Ignoring the circular logic there for a moment, what exactly does that mean? Who created them to do this? Does this mean they just ignore the Geth, an already existing synthetic lifeform? More than that, they actually through the course of the game EMPOWER the Geth by providing them with more advanced technology. If synthetic life is so dangerous, why make them MORE dangerous? Furthermore, if the Catalyst "controls" the Reapers, as it says it does, does that mean the Reapers are not really AI because they have no free will? By extension, since the Catalyst is all of a sudden able to do something differently but can't (or won't) do so on its own, does that mean that it isn't truly an AI? I have my own theories, but they are all based entirely on conjecture at this point. While some things can be vague, things being too vague can just become ridiculous.
And finally, pardon my French, but what the fuck is "Synergy?" In the Synergy ending, in which all life, synthetic and organic, are supposed to be merged somehow to create a "perfect evolution" somewhere between the two. What does that mean? We see that the Normandy's crew, climbing out of the crashed ship, now have glowing green "circuitry" on their skin, including EDI, who was already a machine, so are we to assume that the green "circuitry" is also somehow representative of organic life? Does it flow with glowing, digital sap?
Okay, that last one is just me ranting a little bit, and I really don't care that much, but it does feel nice to just let my mind screw around with it. As for the rest, though, these are legitimate concerns I have. I could accept an expanded ending if it at least addresses these clear problems. It doesn't need to be perfect, but I would at least like to know if these major questions can be answered. If not, then it will just seem like a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.
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