Kotaku game diaryThe last thoughts of a Kotaku employee about a game we’re playing.It didn’t start out as something I tried do it. It just happened. The year was 2012. I got to the point where Mass Effect 3 where it felt like I was one or two loose ends from reaching the grand finale. So, for several reasons, I stopped. Almost a decade has passed since then. Somehow, despite the endlessly expanding spoiler galaxy that is the internet, I still don’t know how the first Mass effect trilogy ends.
It’s not that I didn’t like it Mass Effect 3. I did! It was a sequel to my favorite game about hanging out with cool aliens, Mass Effect 2, which in turn was a sequel to my favorite game about spending time with cool aliens in bad cars and worse elevators, Mass Effect 1. But when I realize that the end is near in games where the central appeal is creepy with buttons from worlds beyond, I tend to hit the brake. I don’t want the games (or books, TV shows or whatever) to end, so I leave them in what I consider to be a state of perfect ecstasy. Everything can still happen, forever. It doesn’t matter that it means wasting the real time you could spend with the characters; brains are not rational things.
Obviously, I know about the controversy. This played a role in my slow abandonment of the game. I heard that the ending was bad, or at least unsatisfactory, and I didn’t want a last-second prank hovering over a multi-game experience that I otherwise enjoyed very much. But also, it was all that everyone was talking about at the time, and I got tired of hearing about Mass effect generally. Whether the ending was bad or not, it was disheartening to watch thousands of people scream in unison to shatter the eardrum for a studio to undo their artistic choices. It was obvious that the entire event was setting the stage for even more ugly things to come – to become just another day in video games each time a traveling herd of self-proclaimed “fans” harassed and chased developers, say, changing some reckless rear shots, on its own. I didn’t want to be reminded of this more than I needed to, so I pressed the pause on my Mass effect playthrough.
Initially, I avoided spoilers because I sincerely believed that the game would end in a few weeks or months. Then a year went by. So one year became two years and two years became five. Around the sixth or seventh year, it became kind of a personal challenge to see how long I could avoid knowing the details of this thing, which somehow became inconsequential, despite its terrible importance to one of the first high-internet mobs enough to go down in history. The moment has already occurred, and it would have set a miserable precedent, no matter what people were doing. Meanwhile, I was no longer sorry for my particular permutation of Mass effect cast more. After all, years had passed.
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It was surprisingly easy to just … not find out. I made sure to avoid articles and videos that specifically mentioned Mass Effect 3it’s ending, but on the other hand, I really didn’t go out of my way to avoid spoilers. I read many articles about Mass effect it was not about the ending – including sections of wild, unruly comments where anyone could have launched themselves at me, fierce fury in their eyes, and recited every line of the final scene word for word. But it never happened. Here’s what I know: There are three versions of the ending. They are color-coded for some reason. Each has a name that probably reveals something about him, but I forgot them.
I recognize that in writing this article, I am probably doomed to myself. Someone on Twitter will make it his mission to ruin the ending for me, and will probably succeed. This is going to be a drag, because the Mass effect remastering rekindled my interest in coming to an end for me. But at the same time, I did not know for nine years; I will live, find out or not.
As I said before, the reason I play these games is to go out with characters I like. Since then Mass Effect 3’s ending involuntarily detonated an anthill, the characters in the game – to an even greater extent than at the time – took on their own lives and escaped any notion of “canon” that contained them. Mountains of fan art, fan fiction and discussions mean that I could live a thousand lives with them, if I wanted to. No ending can invalidate this, nor would it ever go. Finals are just suggestions. They say it might be time to move on, but that doesn’t mean you can’t come back later.