When discussing the ending of ME3, I often contrast it with the ending of FNV. Apparently one of the biggest obstacle that Bioware and Obsidian experienced was making a big deal out of "choice matters" right up until the ending, and then realizing there was no way to really account for all the possible endings.

For Obsidian, the decision made was to go with the franchise tradition: Final ending that fades to black before giving you a slideshow detailing every major decision you made and what it led to. And instead of defending their choice as "artistic," they responded to fan disapproval that you couldn't play past the ending by admitting that there was just no way to create satisfying worlds for every possible combination of decision.

By contrast, Bioware (originally) gave fans a cookie-cutter ending which did not give fans any closure whatsoever, was totally reliant on the info dump you made before your final choice to give you an idea of what your choice would lead to, and then declared that if you didn't like the ending then there was something wrong with you. They then went back and used the DLCs to try and smooth over the transition and give more explanation, but they've never really admitted that their "artistic vision" was a mistake.

>Remember when the devs said the endings couldn't be boiled down to one
>color or another, juxtaposed with the photo of the game files showing
>the red, green, and blue ending movies?
>
>The Mass Effect fanbase remembers.

This fan in particular also remembers all the assurances that ME3 was the end of "Shepard's story" and that any future installments would have different protagonists. That was even the supposed reason for MEA being set in the Andromeda galaxy, so that they could have a clean slate to work with without worrying about what ending people chose.

But I guess when you release two massive clunkers back-to-back, you either start learning from your mistakes or you go back to your comfort zone.

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CdrMike, Overwatch Reject