1. Mass Effect 3 Ending
Oh how I wish this was a joke entry. Now before we get into the debate around how a modern world has created such a sense of desensitization that a badly scripted ending to such an airtight franchise could possibly be worse than butchering two civilians, well, just hear me out. First off, in literal terms, its not. However when running the gamut of controversial gaming scenes youre always going to find entries focused on the most disturbing scenes possible, and whilst Mass Effect 3s ending would possibly more suit a Most Disappointing list, if were measuring fallout from a particular scene leading to real-world ramifications, ME3 wins hands-down. Just to fill you in, the scene in question involved an intergalactic battle of universe-spanning proportions, all put in place so that your character Shephard could activate a certain weapon and win the war for the forces of good. After three games and hundreds of hours of gameplay, all roads lead to a scene where Shephard ascends a structure, hoping to save himself, his crew, and all those other than the dreaded Reapers who were ravaging the galaxy. But no, what happened instead was a hologram of a small child popped up and proceeded to explain the purpose of the Reapers as much less than the omnipotent badasses they appeared to be, alongside ruining what was one of the greatest build-ups to a final push wed ever been part of. Full spoilers and plot breakdowns are available online, and even with such a wretched ending, Mass Effect remains a fantastic trilogy, albeit one whose original form is anything but complete. The reaction to the resulting backlash of fan-hate was four-fold. Firstly, a
retraction from Bioware head Dr. Ray Muzyka as he admitted what hed been seeing on their community forums was incredibly painful, yet the team were forced to accept the criticism and feedback with humility. All would have been right with the world in the first place, if these next two points were not a factor. Secondly, the game was given an Extended Cut downloadable ending that attempted to calm the fire raging inside the Mass Effect camps. It did go some way to explaining some extraneous elements, but many felt it was too little too late, and as further DLC for the game cropped up, it was painfully obvious that the original complete vision for the game had been split up for the sake of charging for extra characters, scenes and exposition. Whilst the game did launch with one of the main characters as a downloadable character on day one, the overarching realisation that the exposition necessary to make the original ending work was split into separate downloadable chunks was a disgusting move that not only sabotaged the Mass Effect series, but videogames as a worthwhile medium. Here we had one of the shining examples of videogames as a narrative artform, having a world even more realised than something as monolithic as Star Wars, and yet the final pieces were relegated to something like a DVD extra. Had Star Wars Episode 3 got to its climactic battle, only for you to pay an additional amount to witness the final scene, the series reputation would be buried even further underground than it already is. All of this lead to EA being labelled as The Worst Company in America (the first time around), the second of which yielded this
brilliant reply, somewhat acknowledging their failings whilst remaining fairly level-headed and self-aware of such a claim. All-in-all a fairly hefty list of titles that have caused some Godzillian waves in their time. If you have any more to add, please dive into the comments, chances are therell be something huge I've omitted, so please let us know!