Mass Effect 3 has one of the most controversial endings in video game history. That said, the game’s controversial ending almost didn’t exist. During a recent interview former BioWare animation director Dave Wilkinson revealed that the game’s ending wasn’t the original ending of the game. It was similar, but not the same, and it featured a character Wilkinson refers to as the Queen Reaper.
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“At that point, Shepard was so augmented with like electronic bits and all the rest of this s**t,” said Wilkinson while explaining that Shepard would have plugged himself or herself into the Citadel. “Within a virtual world he has a conversation with what was described as a god of the Reapers. I think it was a queen? And he had this conversation with the queen, and the queen basically said, ‘the way the Reapers keep going, this isn’t sustainable, blah blah blah blah blah blah, we have to evolve, but we’re incapable of evolution because of the limitations of our AI and stuff like that.’”
Wilkinson continued by noting that the Reaper Queen’s motivation led to her being imprisoned by other Reapers who feared her ideas would contaminate the rest of the AI species and thwart their mission design.ย
“So, then the conversation was really like her going, ‘This is the chance to evolve everything, we can move everything forward,’” said Wilkinson.ย
According to Wilkinson, players were still going to be presented with three choices. The Paragon option more or less led to Shepard becoming the king of the reapers and leading them to a better purpose in the galaxy. The Renegade option featured Shepard not working with the Reapers or the Reaper Queen, which led to Shepard ripping himself or herself out of the Citadel, causingย a massive explosion that would destroy both Earth and the Reapers, but allow organic life to continue with no interference or influence of the Reapers. And then there would be the Synthesis option, which would see Shepard and the Reaper Queen fuse to become some mix of organic and synthetic life, which would trigger some “space magic” that would lead to the synthesis of organic and synthetic life.
“There was an ending where there was a mom and a daughter, and I had them sitting on a hill, and I shot in with us drifting through stars and the stars get blurry,” said Wilkinson. “Then we would be drifting, and we’d follow them and we’d hear this woman explaining to her daughter how we came to this place, and we reach them and they’re like Asaris but they’re Asaris who are a little bit different, and she’s just telling the story about how Shepard made everything better and saved everybody from the Reapers.”
It’s unclear why this ending, or rather these endings, were axed for what shipped with the game, but judging by the reaction of many Mass Effect fans, EA and BioWare made the wrong choice.
H/T,ย People Make Games via GamingBible.
