![]() If you have interest in writing or stories, I highly recommend reading it as well as The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler. The Hero’s Journey is what Joseph Cambell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces first identified as being the core narrative structure of any character driven story. Commander Shepard has always followed the Hero’s Journey, in all three games. Now there are some that break from this structure and are still incredible, but that takes exceptional storytelling skill and character development. For the most part, you either keep to this structure or end up with a story too incomprehensible and stilted to be enjoyable, especially if your story is following the Hero’s Journey. This is how most stories in the western world progress, name me a story and I can show you how it follows this pattern. I’m going to be spoiling these things worse than I was spoiled in 24 years of being an only child…and let me tell, that’s spoiled.įirst of all, let me introduce you all to the Dramatic Arc: Warning: I am about to spoil not only Mass Effect 3, but every other Mass Effect game in the trilogy. As you know, this blog usually publishes every other Thursday, but it isn’t a Thursday is it? The ending was so terrible I needed more time than usual to organize my own thoughts, and figure out how to describe the ending in less than 50,000 words. Since I’m a writer, however, I’ll simply keep my critique of the ending to how it failed on a literary level and leave the gameplay/art design failures to be described by more qualified individuals. It so utterly, and completely fails on every level that I can’t even list them all. The entire game was awesome, a tribute to how meaningful and emotional a video game can be, and then in the last 5 minutes completely falls apart. ![]() Unfortunately Bioware fumbled the ball at the 1 yard line. We wouldn’t all be up in arms if we didn’t love it. I love Mass Effect and the universe Bioware created, and Mass Effect 3 was supposed to be the epic conclusion to the trilogy, and many others shared my love for the series. ![]() Which, in itself, is rather a huge accomplishment. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a video game ending ever having that kind of impact before. That’s right, Bioware made such a bad ending that Forbes, a magazine about business and marketing, has been covering this disaster and highlighting the bad business practices. It has gotten to the point that it has actually been covered by the BBC, is now offering full refunds for Mass Effect 3 to assuage disgruntled customers, and has been extensively covered by a series of excellent articles on Forbes. I’m not sure how it works exactly, but yes, people have donated over 70,000 dollars for Child’s Play to show just how bad they think the ending is. ![]() So for those of you who haven’t heard, the ending of Mass Effect 3 was so terrible that players have taken to the internet in a rage of tears and money. Who knew I would have been predicting the fate of one of my favorite game series: Mass Effect 3. Way back in the day, when I was a naive youth making my first steps into the world of blogging, I wrote about the ending of a story being one of the most critical parts of a narrative and how much damage a bad ending can do.
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