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BioWare's Lies

The Milkman The Milkman April 29, 2012 User blog:The Milkman

BioWare used to be my favourite developer. I'm serious. Now, I hate them, and the company that published their unfinished games. Harsh, I know, but I can't bring myself to support a company after it blatantly lies to the fans. I decided to compile some quotes and respond to them personally, just to show how messed up this whole situation is.

Most of these are from Mac Walters, the Lead Writer of Mass Effect 3, Casey Hudson, the Executive Producer, and Mike Gamble, the Associate Producer.

BioWare's Bad Business

“And, to be honest, you [the fans] are crafting your Mass Effect story as much as we are anyway.” — Mike Gamble


Lies. When fans demanded a proper ending for their characters, the one which we were all promised, we were told to shove it. Before people played Mass Effect 3, it was our game. Now that we want to do something about it, it's their game. The "artistic integrity" defence is just a convenient front. So which is it BioWare?

“[The presence of the Rachni] has huge consequences in Mass Effect 3. Even just in the final battle with the Reapers.” — Mac Walters


False. You're choice to destroy or spare the Rachni Queen meant nothing. If you destroy her, they just make a new artificial queen anyway. In fact, despite saving the Rachni queen twice, the only Rachni I ever saw were in the final battle were the Ravagers, and even then there are no variations. Everyone gets the same cinematic.

“There are many different endings. We wouldn’t do it any other way. How could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and

then be forced into a bespoke ending that everyone gets? But I can’t

say any more than that…” — Mike Gamble


I really don't know what to say. A monkey is smart enough to know that's blatantly false. No matter what choices you make, the Mass Relays are destroyed, Joker and the Normandy crash land on a jungle planet, and Shepard dies. For some odd reason, the only ending in which Shepard lives is the Destroy ending. Why? Why the charade?

“You'll get answers to everything. That was one of the key things. Regardless of how we did everything, we had to say, yes, we're going to provide some answers to these people.” — Casey Hudson


Except for those trivial questions like "What happened to my best friends and my love interest?" or "Did I just destroy all live in the galaxy?" right?

“Mass Effect 3 will shake up the player's moral choices more than ever

before, even going so far as allowing the Reapers to win the battle

for Earth.” — Mike Gamble

Oh wait. That one is actually true! He clarified that if you take to long without making a choice, you're non-choice is still considered an ending! Apparently, he was talking about the game over screen! So now we have writers who think having the words "Critical Mission Failure" pop up on the screen counts as an ending to a trilogy. I am gonna hold you to that.

“Of course you don’t have to play multiplayer, you can choose to play

all the side-quests in single-player and do all that stuff you’ll

still get all the same endings and same information, it’s just a totally different way of playing"” — Casey Hudson


Well that's actaully been proven false. You can't get the "best" ending without touching multiplayer. Nice guess work though.

“There is a huge set of consequences that start stacking up as you approach the end-game. And even in terms of the ending itself, it continues to break down to some very large decisions. So it's not like a classic game ending where everything is linear and you make a choice between a few things - it really does layer in many, many different choices, up to the final moments, where it's going to be different for everyone who plays it.” — Ray Muzyka, CEO


Well I certainly don't remember anything like that. In fact, the Suicide Mission from ME2 has more varied outcomes than the supposed ending to the trilogy. That's just retroactive. Your work is supposed to get better as you make more games, not worse. The endings are so similar in fact, that almost everyone got the same ending. Kinda sad how we know more about it than the company does.

“The team has been planning for this for years, since the beginning of the Mass Effect franchise. Largely the same team, most of the same leads have worked on this for years and years. They’ve thought about [the ending] for years and years. It’s not something they’ve had to solve in a week or a month even, but over the course of five or ten years.”


Oh. So you planned to lose Drew Karpyshyn? You guys were planning on leaking the script all along? Did you intend on copy and pasting Tali's face, which was expected to be a big reveal from the first game? Was it your plan all along to alienate your fan base, destroy your reputation, and be forced into making an Extended Cut?

“If you wish to sum up the conclusion of a multi-part epic game series as "Red, Green and Blue," then feel free to. But please don't complain that the endings are oversimplified. You are the one who has slapped that label on, not us.” — Stanley Woo

Where do I even start? First, is it ever a good idea to condescend to your fans after lying to them? Exactly how deep is BioWare planning on digging this hole? Are they unwilling to admit how badly they screwed up? We are forced to sum up the ending this way because the colours are the biggest differences. Everything else is so minute, and lacking in detail, that the colours stand out the most. BioWare, YOU labeled the endings to the once-epic multi-game series yourself. Don't talk down to the fans because we notice how bad your ending is. Instead of being overly defensive, try taking in some of the criticism and treat your customer right. You know what, pictures are worth a thousand words, so here you go:

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1xpyinxDG1rrkssuo1_500.jpg


Now let's ask the Better Business Bureau what they think:

“Consider this: If you had purchased a game for $59.99... and were told that you had complete control over the game's outcome by the choices your character made and then actually had no control over the game's outcome, wouldn't you be disappointed?” — Marjorie Stephens, Director of Communications, Better Business Bureau of Northern Indiana


Anything else you wanted to add?

“The issue at stake here is, did BioWare falsely advertise? Technically, yes, they did. In the first bullet point, where it states 'the decisions you make completely shape your experience, there is no indecision in that statement. It is an absolute.” — Marjorie Stephens


Nice going Bioware. You have successfully betrayed your fans by lying to them outright.

Also See

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