Mass Effect Ending Controversy:

Rejected Meanings

And now we finally get to the audiencing part of my audiencing project! When thinking about video games and rejected readings one game comes to mind: Mass Effect 3. The Mass Effect series is a popular RPG series set in space. It was praised for its unique moral choice system and open ended gameplay. The third and final game in the series though was marred with criticism though for what fans saw as an ending that didn’t live up to the promises its developer BioWare made for it, they claimed BioWare promised an ending that would be affected by the choices throughout the game. Some fans, while displeased with the ending defended it along with their preferred reading of the game while other attacked the ending saying it not only wasn't what was promised but was simply a bad ending. At one point several fans had filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau which the bureau answered by saying that complaints about false advertising were valid. (Chalk) At the peak of the controversy there were several forums full of people debating about the issue.

Screenshots of all the endings from the game Mass Effect3. In the corner are the requirements for getting each ending

Looking at this image of all the possible endings for Mass Effect 3 we can see that at least visually the main differences between them appears to the color of what appears to be an explosion. From a visual perspective it's interesting to note the colors they assigned though, for all the "destroy" endings, the color is a fiery orange, perhaps symbolising the idea of destrucion. For the "control" ending your given a wavy blue and for the "synergy" ending the color is a glowing green. Looking at the mcompred like that its possible to note a gradient effect between the different possible endings indicating that the designers may have a moral hierarchy in mind as they planned the endings, likely with the fiery "destroy" ending being considered the bad one while the glowy "synergy" ending being considered the good one.

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