The biggest middle finger from business-minded executives to anyone who wants to play any title for some semblance of narrative, is the idea that a game's story could be fragmented into sections that are then auctioned off for additional cost. Sometimes these will fall into the likes of the aforementioned pre-order bonuses, but Mass Effect 3 is the biggest known culprit that really hammered home the effects of when a company like EA are allowed to gut a story-heavy franchise for business purposes. We're not going to labour the point about the game's ending in terms of its quality (that can be found over here), instead the point to be made is that objectively the version of the ending was not complete in the way it was initially designed. ME3 featured not only a character integral to the story as additional content that you had to pay for on top of the full retail price, but also a handful of missions and locations that actually made the ending make sense in of itself. Opinions on whether or not the Starchild was a good ending or not, he literally barely made sense on a fundamental level because of the fact the requisite information to comprehend what was going on was withheld. Respectable figures in the industry such as Giant Bomb's Jeff Gerstmann have mentioned that in years gone by game development teams just wouldn't have had the time to create additional content for their games at all - being that these extra missions are usually worked on after the body of the game is complete. However it's one thing to offer a completely optional mission pack that lets you just have fun doing more of the same - like in Sleeping Dogs, GTA or Red Dead Redemption - and another entirely when a game's artistic vision is thoroughly compromised for the sake of mining your love for more money it in the first place. Are there any other issues you have with the way the games industry is handling itself at the minute? Let us know in the comments!
