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(Yeah, this post is like one giant spoiler. Spoilers for Mass Effect, Macbeth, Knights of the Old Republic, Lord of the Rings and A Tale of Two Cities below the cut!)


The weakness of the Extended Cut is the same as the original ending of Mass Effect 3: the Choice at the top of the Citadel.

Spear-points

Let's start with a digression on endings. The author Jo Walton has a concept she calls the "spear-point":

There comes a point in writing, and it's a spear-point, it's very small and sharp but because it's backed by the length and weight of a whole spear and a whole strong person pushing it, it's a point that goes in a long way. Spearpoints need all that behind them, or they don't pack their punch in the same way.

Examples are difficult to give because spear-points by their nature require their context, and spoilers. They tend to be moments of poignancy and realization. When Duncan picks the branches when passing through trees, he's just getting a disguise, but we the audience suddenly understand how Birnam Wood shall come to Dunsinane.

To take an example from Bioware's own oeuvre, in Knights of the Old Republic, the reveal that the main character is Revan is a spear-point. The entire game has been building up to that point, and that moment of revelation has force behind it.

The best endings are the ones where the spear, which has the length and weight of the entire work, is driven home. There is an aura of inevitability, that this is the only ending that could be, that all the choices up until now have been leading to, even if the final goal was unclear. Think of the ending to Lord of the Rings, where Frodo claims the One Ring and Gollum saves Middle-Earth. A spear-point set up from the very beginning, all choices leading to that inevitable ending.

In my opinion, the best ending in all of English literature is the ending to Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities:

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

The entire novel is one giant spear leading to that line, and that line is both sacrifice and redemption for the protagonist, Sydney Carton.

The problem with Mass Effect is that the entire series has been building a spear. From ME1, to ME2, to ME3, with choice after choice the player has forged a spear. And then the ME3 ending throws the spear away!

The Choice at the top of the Citadel bears no relation to any choice previously made. For example, if you're Paragon, you've been fighting against Control for three games now. But suddenly, Control is a valid, and maybe even the best, choice.

The first major flaw of the ME3 ending is that it deliberately throws the spear away in a bid for a twist, robbing the ending of force and weight that it should have had.

Magic

The Crucible is magic.

There are no rules as to how it works, or what its limits are. As such, it is entirely arbitrary.

The choices presented are arbitrary. The costs of those choices are arbitrary.

Why Synthesis? That's the way the magic works.

Why does Shepard have to die and lose her humanity with Control? That's the way the magic works.

Why does Destroy kill EDI and the Geth? That's the way the magic works.

Because the choices are so arbitrary, you can easily substitute new choices without changing anything. Off the top of my head, here's three more choices which are just as valid or as possible as the three presented in game:

1. Banishment - The Reapers are banished for a century giving the galaxy time to prepare for their return.
2. Ascension - All intelligent organic and synthetic life in the galaxy ascends to the next plane of existence. The Reapers return in the next cycle, but are defeated thanks to the clues left behind.
3. Dissolution - The Reapers are dissolved and a new generation of the species that had been harvested to create each Reaper is born from the remnants.

The author Brandon Sanderson has a rule which he calls Sanderson's First Law of Magics:

Sanderson's First Law of Magics: An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

How well do we understand the magic of the Crucible? We don't. The audience has pretty much zero understanding of the magic involved. If you can rewrite the DNA of every organic and synthetic living in the galaxy, what can't you do? Following Sanderson's Law, that means that Bioware's ability to use the Crucible to solve the major conflict is zero as well.

Thus the whole thing comes across as arbitrary.

Sanderson continues:

Yet, if the stories don't have rules and laws for their magic, don't they risk Deus Ex Machina (contrived endings) in their books? ... If we simply let ourselves develop new rules every time our characters are in danger, we will end up creating fiction that is not only unfulfilling and unexciting, but just plain bad.

And further:

There is a reason that Gandalf doesn't just fly Frodo to Mount Doom with magic, then let him drop the ring in. Narratively, that just doesn't work with the magic system. We don't know what it can do, and so if the reader uses it to solve a lot of problems, then the tension in the novel ends up feeling weak. The magic undermines the plot instead enhancing it.

The Mass Effect 3 ending pretty much validates Sanderson's First Law completely. Using arbitrary magic without limits leading to Deus Ex Machina, creating fiction which is unfulfilling, and undermining the plot instead of enhancing it? Check, check, and check.

The second major flaw of the ME3 ending is that it relies on magic, with arbitrary effects and arbitrary costs, to provide a solution to the major conflict. To quote Sanderson, that ends up "creating fiction that is not only unfulfilling and unexciting, but just plain bad."

Conclusion

Taken together, these two flaws are a fundamental flaw in the Mass Effect ending. The chain of choices leading to the ending was thrown away, replaced by arbitrary magic. This structure undermines the plot of ME3, and of the entire series. It creates an ending which is both unfulfilling and separate from the rest of the game.

The ending to Mass Effect 3 is fundamentally, fatally, flawed. Barring a complete rewrite, it cannot be fixed, and will never rise to the standard of a good ending, let alone a great one.

That being said, the Extended Cut is a vast improvement over the previous ending. This ending is significantly stronger, and significantly more cohesive. The Extended Cut is still a poor ending, and is not the ending the Mass Effect series deserves. But it is better than the absolute travesty that preceded it.

(Spoilers below the cut!)


Strengths

There are two major strengths of the Extended Cut.

First, it cleans up a lot of the unanswered questions surrounding the Choice that were alluded to. Why was the Normandy escaping? How did your comrades on the ground get on the ship? How do you control the Reapers when you are dead? The reasons given are good enough.

It also clarifies who the starchild is, making it pretty clear that its an AI that went rogue and turned on its creators. Why we now trust it to elucidate our choices is not clear, but I guess we just run with it.

The other strength is that it clarifies the aftermath of the Choice, showing what happens to the galaxy and your comrades after your choice. They also got rid of that silly "Into Eden" ending, making it obvious that it was just temporary, rather than a cliche.

Weaknesses

The weakness of the Extended Cut is the same as the original ending of Mass Effect 3: the Choice at the top of the Citadel.

I started detailing this weakness, but it got very long, so I'll turn it into a separate post. But basically, if you were unhappy with the Choice before, I expect that you will be unhappy with the Choice now.

Other Details

One minor change I noticed is that during the Battle for Earth there's a sequence where a civilian radios in for help and a medic walks her through bandaging a wounded soldier. In my original game, the civilian failed to save the soldier. Then when a husk approached she took the soldier's gun and commits suicide rather than suffer being harvested. It was quite tragic and shocking, especially as it was purely done over the radio/phone. But in the new play-through, the civilian saves the soldier, and everything works out. I'm not sure if this is an actual change, or if it's a consequence of the lower EMS ratings needed for the "best" endings.

Sadly, they didn't change The Illusive Man confrontation. It's still the impossible Paragon conversation option and double Renegade actions.

There is one new ending: Refusal. If you refuse to make a choice--or if you are like me and Azuriel, you shoot the starchild in the head at the first opportunity--a new ending triggers. In this ending the Reapers win and wipe out everyone. But the information Liara leaves behind allows the next cycle to defeat the Reapers once and for all. Possibly because Liara leaves better clues than the Protheans.

This is actually a really good ending. It makes sense in terms of what came before. It is a real consequence of your choices. The only bad thing about this ending is to get it you have to deliberately spurn the "real" choices, deliberately condemn everyone to death. If this ending had been unavoidable, maybe if your EMS rating was too low, it would have been a solid option.

Of the aftermaths, in my opinion, the best one is Control. Shepard as the Ascended God-Queen of the galaxy, guarding if Paragon, ruling if Renegade. It's totally in character, and so very Dune.

The aftermaths are all well done, and worth seeing.

Finally, baby Krogans! I'm pretty sure this whole kerfluffle was worth it for that one slide.

Conclusions

The weakness of the Extended Cut is the same as the original ending of Mass Effect 3: the Choice at the top of the Citadel. But everything around that Choice has been made as strong as it could be. A lot of the questions surrounding the ending have been fleshed out and answered. The ending is stronger and more cohesive for this.

But the Choice is still a gaping wound. A fatal weakness.

If the original ending was an F, I would say that this ending drags that up to a C.

However, Mass Effect is arguably the seminal science fiction work of the last decade, and it is extremely unfortunate that the ending does not live up to the rest of the series.

Real Money Auction House and Third-Party Real Money Trade

In the comments on the last post, Redbeard asks,

Whaddya think that the RMAH is attracting the credit card thieves?

Honestly, I would wager that all the RMAH traffic is legitimate.

The thing is that when you are engaging in something illegal, you don't want someone who opposes you to have control of the money. If the credit card thieves used the RMAH, Blizzard would have more opportunities to detect and stop it. And, most importantly, Blizzard would have an opportunity to prevent the thieves from cashing out.

It's like if you do something illegal in the real world, you pay in cash. Cash is not traceable, and a cash transaction cannot be stopped by the bank.

Similarly, I would think that most RMT operations will use their own credit card operations to cash out, rather than relying on their enemy, Blizzard.

Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut

The Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut comes out tomorrow. Hopefully the Bioware which made the first 99% of ME3 will show up.

The unfortunate part is that I have to leave town on Thursday and won't be back until next week sometime. Here's hoping I have enough time to finish all the content on Tuesday and Wednesday evening.  Given my flight leaves at 7am, I'm even considering pulling an all-nighter Wednesday, to finish the game and make sure I don't miss my flight.

I do hope that the EC is good and rectifies the mistakes of the ending instead of doubling down. I would like to stop boycotting Bioware and play The Old Republic for a bit.

The Secret World

There's an old superstition that a bad dress rehearsal foretells a good opening night. Hopefully this holds true for Funcom. The last beta weekend seemed a lot buggier than the previous one. Not to mention that they disabled the Investigative quests, which are a main selling point of the game, in my view. I really wonder why they did that.

I am rather on the fence about TSW. It is very interesting, but at the same time it is a bit unpolished, and the early adopters will struggle through it.

The other thing I am not thrilled with is that Funcom is offering a Lifetime subscription. In my experience, Lifetime subscriptions just mean that the game will go F2P. Probably sooner rather than later, once the game company realizes that its most enthusiastic players are no longer paying for the game.

I think ME3 will be the deciding factor for me. If the EC is good, I'll play The Old Republic. If the EC is bad, I'll play The Secret World instead.

A couple of items that caught my interest today.

Diablo Digital Purchase Restriction

Now when you purchase a digital copy of Diablo III, you are restricted to a Starter Version for 72 hours.

Blizzard must be having serious problems with stolen credit cards to take such a drastic step. I would wager that hackers/gold farmers are using stolen credit cards to purchase digital editions, make a throwaway account, use it to launder or convey gold in some fashion, and then repeat when Blizzard bans the account.

Credit card charge-backs are a serious issue for merchants, as Visa and Mastercard heavily punish merchants who have a high volume of fraudulent transactions.

My guess is that Blizzard is implementing this delay to make purchasing "temporary" digital copies an unattractive option for hackers while they work on a technical solution. I would imagine that the next patch will probably lock out trading or using the Auction House until you are level 13, or maybe until the Skeleton King is beaten.

RIFT Expansion Including Base Game For Free

I have to say that Trion's Marketing people are impressive. From Massively:

Storm Legion will apparently include the full version of RIFT along with it, allowing new players to pick up the expansion and experience both the core game and the additions without restriction. 

Of course, this sounds like less of a deal if you already own RIFT, but you're covered there as well, as existing players can expect a price discount on purchasing the expansion.

Let's see (all numbers made up for demonstrative purposes). Let's say Trion prices Storm Legion at $40, but says that if you already own RIFT, you can get a $10 discount:

Storm Legion + RIFT = $40
Storm Legion = $40 - $10 = $30

Subtracting both sides,

RIFT = $10

This is a very interesting definition of the word "free". It is mathematically identical to Trion saying that RIFT costs $10 and Storm Legion costs $30, and the combination costs $40. Only Trion's way of phrasing it will net them slightly more money because a percentage of current RIFT owners will not use the discount or coupon.

Yet the internet appears to be amazed at Trion's generosity. Well done, Trion Marketing!

That's not to say that it's a bad idea. I've always thought that expansion packs should just contain the full game. It means there's only one SKU running around. There's no chance of buying the wrong version. New players get access to the entire game right from the start. It's clean and easy, and really the only problem is dealing with the old unsold physical boxed sets.

In Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard is opening a Black Market Auction House. This auction house is bid-only (no buyout) and will feature rare items like mounts and pets. Stuff that is traditionally hard to get, like Rivendare's mount, or Ashes of Al'ar, and requires a lot of farming.

(There's also a possibility that the current tier Heroic raid and PvP gear will show up on the Black Market. As Theck points out, this specifically is a horrific idea. It will cause a lot of issues with Loot as Investment, and I think also devalues those items as Loot as Reward.)

The purpose of the Black Market is to serve as a gold sink for whales. A way for goblins to spend hundreds of thousands of gold without greatly impacting the rest of us. I'm sure that the Black Market will fulfill this goal.

I don't think I have any items that would actually be sold on the Black Market. Maybe an Ulduar or Firelands drake. I certainly do not have enough gold to buy anything off it. So maybe my point of view is skewed.

However, I don't think the Black Market is a good idea. The type of items that would be sold are the type of items that generate stories.

Stories about how it dropped for your guild and you won the roll, or how guild all passed the item to you. Or stories about how you farmed for days, and it finally dropped for you. Or how you worked with a small group of people to get everyone their mount. Or even how you're a lucky punk and you accidentally found and killed the rare spawn while questing without even knowing it dropped a mount.

These are the type of items that bloggers would make blog posts about, and other people would jump in comment about their experiences. Everyone who gets one of these items has some sort of interesting story to tell.

In some respects, the story of how you got the item is more important than the item.

And to all these stories Blizzard is proposing to add, "Actually, I bought it from an NPC on the Black Market."

How exciting.

Ah well, it could worse. It could be a Real Money Auction House.

Edit: I've thought of a parallel situation: the warlock and paladin class mounts. Back in Vanilla, every paladin and warlock had a story about their class mount. There was lots of farming, and you had to rely on friends and guildies. Then Blizzard just gave out the class mount from the trainer, and all those stories dried up. Maybe it was necessary because of the level cap increase, maybe it wasn't. But I think that the Black Market will end up doing for all those rare mounts/pets/items what the trainer mounts did for the paladin and warlock class. And I think the game will be worse off for it.