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Uncategorized Thursday, April 5th 2012 at 10:45 am

Free Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut DLC Coming This Summer

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Short of playing the new content itself, we’ve finally reached the end of the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle. Bioware already announced they will be releasing ending DLC for Mass Effect 3, but now we know some details. It’s called Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut, it’s coming this summer to the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC and it will be free. It will not change the much derided Mass Effect 3 ending, but it will fix the much derided lack of closure by including epilogues and additional cinematics designed to make your story’s ending feel more personalized. Who knows if it’ll work, but it’s a start.

Of course, as a gamer who was not a fan of the original Mass Effect 3 ending, I’m glad that I’ll be getting some additional content to flesh it out and also glad that the additional content will be free. On the other hand, as a gamer in general and someone who tries to respect artistic vision, I’m downright terrified of the precedent being set here. Sure, it feels good to get free DLC now, but Bioware has essentially come out and said that sufficient consumer pressure will make them cave and create additional content for a game, but not only that: They will also release said content for free. I mean, in this case the ending of the game in question was pretty poor, but if gamers start trying to hold other developers hostage with increasingly loud criticism of increasingly minor details, you can see how the industry would be worse off for it.

In any event, we haven’t slipped down that slope quite yet and what we have to look forward to now is the hope that the Mass Effect 3 endings can be salvaged a bit. Hopefully Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut is effective, because even if it’s free, the precedent might cost the industry a lot.

A statement on the subject from Bioware co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka:

“We are all incredibly proud of ‘Mass Effect 3′ and the work done by Casey Hudson and team. Since launch, we have had time to listen to the feedback from our most passionate fans and we are responding. With the ‘Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut’ we think we have struck a good balance in delivering the answers players are looking for while maintaining the team’s artistic vision for the end of this story arc in the ‘Mass Effect’ universe.”

(via Coming Soon)

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  • Anonymous

    Where are these protestors for the damn Capcom DLC debacle!

  • http://profiles.google.com/joint.striker joint striker

    I don’t think that Bioware attitude should be interpreted as a precedent for anything.
    They did what they thought was best in their interest as owners of the franchise, gamers where not their direct worry.

    For this kind of thing to happen there are a few elements that are more difficult to coincide than we think. There has to be a consensus among fans/gamers to give enough voice to their criticism, which was the case with Mass Effect 3 ending. This happened because Mass Effect put forward an interactive story line emotionally engaging and compelling. Mass Effect is so awesome and well structured that it’s ending leaves the impression that it was underworked.

    We all know there are a lot of games with bad endings, there sure is a “Top 10 Worst Game Endings Ever” and despite the criticism the developers never bothered to remake the endings, in most cases this was a marketing decision, not a matter of pleasing fans or gamers.

  • Anonymous

    What is this precedent you speak of? Oh, you mean the one set by Bethesda & Broken Steel for Fallout 3?

  • http://twitter.com/Val_Gravel valerie gravel

    My God, will you people never be happy?! I thought the ending was fine, it might not have been the best ending in the world, but that was because people’s expectations were too high. I’m glad that Bioware is not changing the ending, but I think they should not have released this DLC…it’s caving into the unjustified nerd rage…

  • Anonymous

    Boom

  • http://profiles.google.com/joint.striker joint striker

    That clearly is a matter of opinion like everything else.

  • Anonymous

    I don’t really feel like there’s much artistic vision to be compromised here. For one thing they’ve been saying since day one of the series that the series was meant to be made with the fans as co-authors. More importantly, I think, is that it’s a product from a team of hundreds that’s a part of a company of thousands. I don’t really feel like there’s ever a chance for auteur theory to shine through in a case like this, it feels like it’s design by committee through and through. I’m all for the idea of games as art, but I don’t know how much vision comes through it. 

  • Guest

      I
    wish people would stop saying this sets a dangerous precedent – Fallout
    already did the revised ending DLC after a fan backlash and we didn’t
    see a glut of companies following suit, BioWare already apologised and
    promised to fix a broken book set in the same universe and no one said
    it was the end times either.

    The game’s ending didn’t live up to some very specific developer
    promises or show any of the quality seen in the rest of the series,
    customers complained, companies fixed it – if it was something like a
    badly designed website or a car that didn’t work properly no one would
    have any issues with paying customers kicking off, hell most people are
    fine when Facebook users kick off about something on there and they
    don’t even pay to use the thing.

    Gamers aren’t all entitled brats, sometimes they have valid customer
    issues like every one else, and yes the ending(s) really were that bad.

  • Anonymous

    For many people it was like mass effect was a tree and all the choices in the game were the branches growing out. With mass effect 3 its like they tied all the branches together so your stuck with 3 endings. I wanted more clarity in the game and more options for the endings. For me the ending was alright but extremely disappointing. I reckon that they should release a bunch more DLC’s because i finished the whole game in 24hrs and i want more gameplay and more clarity over the series. Like joint striker said its a matter of opinion. Im not a Mass effect fanboy so I wonder how they are feeling about this.

  • http://rct.me.ht/ crashsuit

    I’m with you. The ending reminded me of my days growing up reading classics by Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Bear. Epic stuff. I would’ve liked to spend my days raising lots of blue babies, but war is hell, and endings aren’t always happy. I think they made a pretty great game.
    I can also understand the fairly limited range of endings. After all, if the Crucible is the only way to defeat the Reapers, then of course all endings are going to wind up with Shepard up on the Citadel activating the Crucible.Marauder Shields, on the other hand, is one tough bastard, and obviously breaks the game.

  • Ryo7

     How does EA Dick taste?

  • Guest100000000

    Hmmm even if all the fleet is stuck in orbit around earth do they not have ships that have recyclers etc and even food production facilities like the Quarians? Would humanity not also have research facilities and production bases on other planets in the system that could sustain the fleet abandoned as the Reapers advanced into the system. The Reapers left a heap of facilities behind from previous races they consumed so why bother with some isolated R & D facilities with no bioharvest. Also utilising standard space flight capabilities many of the long living races could return to their home worlds or at least nearby systems that would enable them to develop (if not there already) planet based facilities such as were almost everywhere in ME 1. At the end of the day I don’t really care all that much cause I enjoy shooting the shit out of the enemies in this game. I think the indoctrination theory sucks balls BTW. Is the entire serries just Shepard being indoctrinated and the original ME 1 Reaper is still alive and kicking with Shepard as it’s latest puppet? If he is alive and just hallucinated the entire ME 3 story when knocked out then I don’t think he is indoctrinated cause I don’t think the reapers would destroy good genetic material like Shepard by blasting him with there main weapon. At the end of the day just use your imagination (until the free DLC comes out.) I think that is what the developers wanted players to do in the first place (and then possibly sell players a DLC content with more complete endings, but I guess that did not go as planned.) It would be nice to see more space based RPG/shooter sci-fi games on the market like mass effect and I hope more are developed in the near future. Really it’s a bit of a space opera though lol.

  • Redacted

    Hate to tell you but there was MAJOR plot holes in the end that lead to nothing, if i’m correct this dlc will fix all of it.

  • itsKemical

    You obviously dont know what the indoctrination theory is…