Blast from the Past - How the Gaming Media Rumor Mill Has Gotten It Wrong Before

Take a deep breath... and then dive in.

From my perspective it is quite different to have some characters for one game or book than to have them for a series that is essentially alive and going strong for a decade. That is why I think Rowling is doing apologies now. She's probably face some backlash from that. Also, keep in mind that having fans that are likely at some level of still formative years could end up being pretty crushed. Or that those fans might be more immersed in that fandom or series because that is their outlet or escape from reality. 

Doctor who as  a norm did not kill off people. Even when they killed off the doctor, he was STILL the doctor. Trek and Gate did not kill off more than a few (bringing them back from the dead too) and never killed off a fan favorite main character that they didn't bring back to some degree after their death (Looking at Daniel  Jackson here).  Gate was notorious for bringing people back from the dead. Trek didn't really kill anyone but a random one or two characters. Game of Thrones and the Walking Dead are wholly different in nature. Killing characters off is basically what they do. Dead is central to their stories as well as their themes. The harsh and brutal nature of those worlds is just that. Harsh and brutal. People die. A. Lot. Compare that to Doctor Who, Gate, or whatever other fandom where the theme is lighter and rosier and I think you'll see that the rosier shows or games don't come to brimstone and hell, galaxy frelled kind of endings. I think that is why people went sideways with ME3's ending, because previously the endings were totally different. You are a shining hero at the end of ME1 and ME2 while you could kill everyone, if you didn't want to do that, it was kind of an epic feeling ending. You were always able to control your outcomes. With ME3 there are no takebacks. No control of the outcomes other than which ending which you may or may not feel good about them. If people can feel good about them then they walk away feeling content. But the endings are the thing that has been in controversy since march 2012. Personally I don't really care about MET anymore though I might replay it some day. I was shocked at how it ended then moved on. Clearly though, that didn't really happen with a sizable chunk of fans. Seems maybe that left them rather bitter. 

I'm with Mr Lucas on this one, I went in to Witch Hunt expecting an epilogue / ending but came away with more questions than answers. Flemeth is not even truly human, change is coming etc. etc, through the Eluvian and then done?

And to be perfectly honest the way the Dark Ritual was wrapped up in DA:I was extraordinarily disappointing. I mean I can kind of see why, they really couldn't do anything big with an optional choice but still, an Old God reborn seems like it should have mattered slightly more.

Rumor mills are wrong all the time. That doesn't stop drama and hysteria though.

Wait... you're saying that opening up more stuff for the game-world was bad? 

I tend to agree. Given where ME is coming from and takes most of its inspiration from, it's not a big surprise that loosing Shepard was a big deal. Shows like Star Trek, Star Gate, Babylon 5 were very careful with that sort of thing. Even the new Battlestar Galaxtica only had very carefully chosen deaths.
And Mass Effect had those chosen deaths as well. The whole Kaidan/Ash thing was a big deal. ME2 was all about (not) loosing people. Mordin, Thane and Legion served as the mandatory dramatic death toll in ME3, not to mention a whole lot of minor characters that die on the side.
Dragon Age, which is inspired much more on stories like Song of Ice and Fire comes with a completely different set of expectations in this regard.

Besides, Shepard was handled really unconventionally. First of all, he (sticking with the male pronoun for simplicity here) had his "trial by fire" death in ME2 and was resurrected. Usually, at that point, the death card is played in a scifi franchise. Now, I am not saying that going against convention is a bad thing but contrary to intuition, scifi fans are usually a fairly conservative bunch and if you go against the tropes, you gotta do it very carefully or expect trouble.

Personally, my main problem with Shepard's death was more that they didn't just kill him, the put him in this Schroedinger's Protagonist state with the breath scene. IMO that's not a place to leave your protagonist in, at least not if you truly intend not to revisit them.

It also doesn't help that ME is a game and as people are playing Shepard and making decisions as Shepard, it's clear they they identify much more with the character than a movie/tv-show protagonist, which makes killing them off an even more delicate issue.

I have made my peace with Shepard's death, I think it works within the story (and I consider my canon ending Shepards dead despite the breath scene) but the sheer amount of head canon that has to go into this is IMO one of the main reasons this was such a big issue. So having more trouble with the ME fans, than the DA fans is not really a surprise to me.

I suppose this is another version of my above question; what's the problem with leaving that up to player interpretation? (Though I'm not sure I should grant that premise in the first place since interpreting the breath clip as leading to Shepard's imminent death is pretty strained; nobody would ever interpret such a scene that way in a film or TV show.)

If you leave it up to interpretation then you never give an answer. People want things answered. They do not function comfortably in those grey areas. That there are still debates on if Shepard lives in the breath scene and people who argue adamantly on both sides shows how frelled the whole thing is. You do not do that to any fan base unless you quite certainly want your fan base to implode. Sure, a fair portion of it will be okay with what you did, but another equally fair portion of it will not. They'll be pissed. Maybe dead. Maybe alive. No Comment is a poor way to end  anything. If Shepard looks dead  and the game makes it feel like he's dead then leaving it 'open' means nothing because enough evidence was given that makes it not look like he could be alive. 

or the maudlin or the misinformed throwing a fit...

BW didn't need Shepard for MEA to succeed. They just needed to NOT leave him in a dead/not dead state under a steaming pile of debris in the middle of a mostly frelled galaxy while his friends leave him behind. It's the worst thing you can do to any fandom and stupidly believe you'll survive the carnage to come without getting the snot beat out of you first. 

It fits fine as long as you're not trying to use it to prove that ME needs Shepard, sure. There are alternative hypotheses for the failures of both properties which have nothing to do with the absence of the original protagonists, and you don't have the data to prove which hypothesis fits for either property.