Grave Gamer News & Views — mass effect 3

Mass Effect 3’s Extended Finale Free to Download on Tuesday

The PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 versions of Bioware’s third space odyssey will be receiving the extended ending in the form of a free download starting Tuesday, June 26th.

Bioware claims the Extended Cut will not fundamentally change the endings already present in the game.  Whether or not you found the resolution to your Shepard’s storyline satisfying, that conclusion is there to stay.  However, through additional dialogue and scenes spotlighting how your choices affected the galaxy at large, Bioware hopes players can find deeper meaning in the supplemented finale.

“It provides more of the answers and closure that players have been asking for. It gives a sense of what the future holds as a result of the decisions made throughout the series. And it shows greater detail in the successes or failures based on how players achieved their endings,” says Bioware.

That’s right about within the ballpark of my initial complaints towards the ending(s).  Thematically, I was actually pretty okay with the outcome.  But three games worth of decisions amounted to a static conclusion that disregarded them all.  Not so okay.  Altering the ending is tricky business and still probably won’t be enough to assuage fans – the Extended Cut may only prove to irk the fan base even more but…You just can’t beat free.

Don’t Buy Digital?  You’re Halting Progress

“A lot of our consumers don’t own credit cards. A lot of our consumers are still afraid of what happened to the PlayStation Network when 77 million accounts were accessed by Anonymous in 2011.

A lot of our consumers prefer to go into retail, buy those Xbox Live or PlayStation Network cards, and retail gets a very strong margin on that. For retail, if they can evolve to be not just a physical media purveyor, but a digital media purveyor, it’ll play a very strong role in our business going forward.”

-EA’s Chief Operating Officer, Peter Moore

It’s interesting to hear that the consensus between video game publishers and developers is that digital distribution is the market’s next evolution; a model they all seem to believe can take over the business space as soon as tomorrow, but they shake their fists at those pesky brick n’ mortar retailers stuck in the past as well as those silly analog consumers afraid of change, blaming both parties for impeding the wave of the future.

Forget about the fact companies like EA fail to present a competitive pricing structure for their digital downloads (as pointed out in this article), and that they always like to fuck us hard enough to shake the change out of our pockets with monetary schemes the likes of the ever contemptuous day one DLC.

Moore himself seemed plum tickled at Mass Effect 3’s padded numbers thanks to at-release DLC, “we saw a 40% attach rate that first week to DLC at GameStop in the United States. Not only are you selling a $60 game … you’re selling $20 DLC, so the sale becomes $80."  Mr. Moore, if you’d like consumers and retailers alike to step out of the past, it’s time to leave behind your gleeful, ‘80’s businessman-esque greed behind as well.

ME3 - A future for Rannoch by Lornet

Bioware Actually Did It - Mass Effect 3’s Ending Altered in Extended Cut

An ending holds quite a lot of power.  No matter how varied, how intense, or how good the journey was, a bad ending is strong enough to vaporize those experiences and replace them with the morning-breath taste of disappointment.

Such was exactly the case with Bioware’s closing chapter of the sci-fi odyssey that is Mass Effect.  I don’t need to get into why the ending was bad.  For as divergent and unique the paths our Shepards blazed, we remain united in our stance that the endings provided sucked.  It was about the only time a Return of the King, week long epilogue was acceptable.  Now, Bioware is working around the clock to, surprisingly, bring us additional content sort of along those lines.

Simply dubbed Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut, the DLC is planned for all platforms over the summer and comes with additional scenes and narrative to compliment your final choice in the game.  Bioware promises the Extended Cut will offer even more clarity and insights while managing to stay faithful to the development team’s vision.  Mass Effect producer Casey Hudson believes the content presents the ending “in a way that will feel more personalized for each player."  In another bow to fan service, the content is downloadable for free.

If done right, Bioware, this could mark the end of the vehement bitching that has ensued since last month.  Mass Effect 3 left me with more questions than I can ask (most notably, what the hell happened to my team?!), let’s hope Bioware is careful with their answers.  This can easily be more of everything we don’t want out of this game – reworking endings is volatile work, after all.  But for many fans, this is our only shot at closure.

Dig This: Toonami’s T.O.M. Reviews Mass Effect 3

As an April’s Fools gag, Adult Swim went above and beyond your average prank and aired a solid night’s block of old school Toonami programming.  From Dragon Ball Z to Gundam Wing, in one astounding fell swoop, Adult Swim made up for the many suicides it incurred the year they put Tommy Wiseau’s painful The Room into rotation.

Rather than re-airing...