Saying goodbye to Mass Effect

[Black Aeronaut]

I read some stuff online at the time that the ending was supposedly leaked, and... I dunno.  Certainly it feels more Mass Effect-y than what we actually got, but at the same time, I've /read/ Karpyshyn's Mass Effect books.

The man is a horrible writer.

It doesn't necessarily follow that he's a horrible storyteller or that his intended ending for the trilogy was in any way wrong or bad; it just means that I don't know if it would have survived the EA approval process, and I suspect the success of ME1's storyline was due to the editing process in-house at Bioware... back before they got eaten, heart and soul.  Mass Effect 2 was during the EA period, and already it had signs that things were Not Right at Bioware.  Truth be told I suspect that that is why Karpyshyn left.

This does not in my mind absolve Bioware of blame, and I've noted before that I don't like any of the endings that we did get.  But the ride up until that last 10 minutes was very sweet indeed.  I wonder how much of ME3 was set in stone before K. left, and how much was after?

All that said, it sounds to me like they were going with Karpyshyn's general plan, then the ending got leaked, and they threw the last ten minutes away and maybe even got a new writing staff.  Did they use a new writing staff post-leak?