Rumours of Mass Effect Trilogy Trilogy Remaster: What would you like to see?

How could they when two players can have wildly different conditions at that point. How could the Rachni attribute anything to the narrative if half the player base killed them off?

It could have been done. Not easily, probably not cheaply, but it could be done.

Edit: and if they weren't inclined to have it matter inthe first place, they probably shouldn't have touted the game as "choices matter" to hold onto our save files.

Easy. You wouldn't make the mission. It's not there. Maybe Aralakh Company or what they're called shows up somewhere else. Maybe they save, uh, Sparatus' son? Because they were available and no occupied in the Rachni mission. The "Rose of Ilium" guy might have survived as well. So maybe killing the Rachni queen would be a better choice, than sparring her. If you have more than 18 months to make a game, something that Allan Schumacher admitted to having, in a conversation I had with him in the old BSN, maybe you can produce more content. Like having 5 years to make Andromeda and $100 million CAD, meanwhile, ME3 only cost $40 million.

So I don't think time, nor funds were a big enough constraint on ME3's final state. It was just EA/Bioware thinking it was "enough".

The whole simple=bad mentality regarding fiction was always something I found kind of weird, as if the only good and interesting endings are ones that are complicated and try hard to send some sort of deep message about something or other, or you have to sit there pondering on what the fuck just happened so you can reconcile the film in your head. Like, if it ain’t Mulholland Drive, then it’s just for simpletons, and absolute trash. I’m more about the execution than the message itself. If the execution is poor, then I couldn’t give a krogan queef about what the message is, because the way ideas are conveyed matter just as much as the ideas themselves. I don’t know if I’d be happy when my Amazon.com purchase comes early if it’s shot through my window by an air cannon. 

In this case though, simple has nothing to do with taking multiple choices into account, especially since the endings themselves do no such thing anyway. It’s more about the sudden inclusion of options that don’t really gel with what was going on throughout the game. Why does Shepard need to dissolve into the ether to do anything? Who the fuck knows. Just do it or you doom everyone to a future set in stone by a holographic mockery of your PTSD. If I helped Aria get her couch back, I get enough assets that I could screw over people and still get the same number of endings, and possibly have the privilege of waking up in a pile of space rubble. EDI and the geth might die, even though Garrus’ visor still lights up just fine. It’s like setting off a fairy dust EMP in my house and it only kills my Nintendos. Simple isn’t so much about the number of choices available, but rather about not adding last-minute complications that lack proper setup. If I wanted to be surprised with unpleasant changes at the very last minute, I could just spend more time with my family. 

The endings, as we have them, don’t account for Shepard’s actions at all throughout the trilogy. There’s no pivotal moment that culminates into the final scenes. What we get isn’t remotely complex, but does add needless complication. An important distinction between the endings and the Genophage decision is that its conclusion does hinge largely on our actions prior. We have setup. We can see it from the perspective of a krogan companion, then from the perspective of a salarian scientist who helped to modify it and see its effects on krogan society. Depending on what we do, we can drastically affect the leadership going forward prior to this decision, and we have what we need to really think about what path we might believe is best. There’s no sudden revelation that stops us in our tracks to derail our decision making in the final step of the genophage cure plot. That would be a cheap move that detracts from everything that came prior. 

Needless to say that subversion has become kind of a dirty word, and rightly so, because hack writers/filmmakers have been abusing this writing tactic a bit too much. As hilarious as it would be to sometimes find myself fighting demons with a shotgun in animal crossing, maybe I might just want to fish and earn bells for my raccoon slavedriver for a while. 

A hero’s sacrifice works better when the reason they die makes sense. Too bad Shepard’s [possible] death makes no sense. Personally, I’m not much of a fan of a forced sacrifice in a game about making choices, especially if the means by which the character can die are poorly presented. There are some exceptions, like Lee in TWD was actually well presented and a very emotional scene, and it earns that ending. But here? Like, really, dissolving into the ether? That’s the best we get? What a fucking joke. Letting us choose survival is the least it can offer.

Wonder if they regret that choice.

If they could pull it off half as well as square did this would be great. I highly doubt that.

I think you are joking, but to be fair he was a Volus. And they turn the tides of war.