Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut - A Disappointed Fan Responds

Playing through this ending I felt all of this impotent frustration over again €“ but then I realised there was something new. Because here, newly added to the Extended Cut, a direct response by the creators to the fan's critical outcry, was a fourth option. I cannot express the glee I felt at discovering that this fourth option existed. We did it, I thought. The fans and Bioware connected. They saw what was wrong! They felt the pain. They never wanted to put their audience through all that! Force those who despised the endings down a cattle grid of moral slaughter. Suddenly it was clear that they were going to offer a new way: perhaps not necessarily a better way, but new. For those who remained unnerved by the endings, here was the alternate path; the means to preserve what had meant most to them about their Shepard, and to still defeat the big bad. To stand up and glare it down. To maybe take some hits, but to never acquiesce, not aligning ourselves with the enemy and embracing their psychosis. And so, in spite of the emotional devastation of her last experience tottering on that spot, my Shepard rallied. She rose: a resounding, towering figure. A silhouette amidst the blaze of ruination around her. Damn right we will not bend, she seemed to be saying. We will not lose faith. We'll fight on €“ in a universe of cruel, dispassionate violence and hate, we will forge a path of unity and reassert our indomitable will. We will not be terrified and bullied into submission to some sacrifice of virtue. You cannot lay us on an altar and cut the very heart out of our spirit. And so, after months of being haunted by that moment, I got to tell the face of all the Reapers to go screw off. Got to tell him right to his smirking little face that his endless, cyclical scheme was madness, and that he was but an unhinged monster on a witless rampage. No matter what his original intentions had once been, he was nothing but a ghoul now, a husk devoid of purpose, bringing darkness and pain wherever his shadow was cast. A mockery to the very life he was trying to 'preserve'. And so, my Shepard selected the fourth option, and I readied myself to watch the Reapers feel what happens when the downtrodden bite back... But instead, the whole goddamn universe ended. Was wiped out. I saw a galaxy of life get flamed away in an instant €“ even after the cause of all that devastation had agreed with me that his ridiculous plan no longer worked. I had shown the villain the flaw in this scheme; he had admitted that his solution was no longer acceptable; but he decided to go and do it anyway. What the hell? The gasoline was already spilled. Why waste it? Like a frenzied child he lit it up because I refused to obey, because I wasn't willing to perpetuate his narrow vision of existence. To be honest, it was the most heartbreaking meta-textual moment of narrative I have ever experienced; final proof that the whole promise of individuated interaction that drew me to the Mass Effect universe in the first place (and that was repeated ad nauseum in Bioware's marketing for half a decade) was a complete misinterpretation on my behalf. This was not my story. This was never my universe. I fell in love with these characters, but I was never fighting beside them. I really was just looking through the window as they talked amongst themselves, imagining what I might say if I was there. I never talked Samara out of killing herself; I never helped Thane reconnect with his son; I never tempted a traumatised biotic to reconnect with the world; I certainly never stared down a Krogan ready to rip me to shreds. I pressed buttons. I stared at a screen. Watched polygons dance. Click "next" below to read part 4...