12 Abusive Video Game Sequels That Completely Missed The Point

7. Mass Effect 3

The Mass Effect series to date has been a thrilling sci-fi odyssey with weird, wonderful characters, an exhilarating inter-galactic narrative, and a sense of place like possibly no other game of the genre. One of the most acclaimed features in the sequels was the ability to transfer your character into the next game, and with the third Mass Effect, fans were promised that every decision they had made up to this point in the franchise would contribute towards a very different journey by game's end. This turned out to be completely false, as the end of Mass Effect 3 hinged largely on selecting a colour and watching a cut-scene. This isn't what fans had signed up for, nor something that was helped by those involved with the game constantly playing-up how player choice would factor into the finale. As a result, there was major controversy when the game hit stores and fans saw this for themselves, causing an Internet campaign for BioWare to "fix" the ending. Never before had democracy played out so publicly after a video game's release. BioWare ended up releasing an extended ending which clarified many events, though the game still failed to deliver on its (admittedly very ambitious) promise of three games worth of choices resulting in a significant number of different outcomes.