At first, there were other plans to conclude the Mass Effect story.

We’ve previously written about People Make Games‘ documentary, but regarding a different topic (working overtime). This time, we’ll talk about the buzz around the original ending. Drew Karpyshyn designed an ending before he left BioWare. Still, another animatic (technically, it’s a video form of a storyboard) version came after that, and that was in place until the finale of the original retail release. There are many similarities between the second version and the pre-Extended Cut finale, but the differences are significant.

The Catalyst (or Star Child, whichever you prefer) appears at the end of the game; it’s that pesky artificial intelligence that is tied to the conflict between organic and synthetic life, but before that, a reaper queen was in place. Shepard steps onto the Citadel, which has merged with a mysterious superweapon called the Crucible. According to animation director Dave Wilkinson, Shepard was already so augmented with electronic devices that the captain could attach himself (or herself) to the ship. Thus, the captain entered a virtual world where (s)he ran into effectively the goddess of the Reapers, which (according to the files of Casey Hudson, the project manager at the time) was a queen.

Here, she explained that her servants had locked her because they thought it was unsustainable to continue to wipe out civilizations in cycles. They cannot evolve because of the limitations of artificial intelligence, although they would like to. The Queen made proposals that the servants did not support and said that the opportunity for all development was there so that progress could be made. There were three options for this (think of the dialogue wheel…): for the renegade option, Shepard went with something like “f___ yourself”, after which he turns on the Crucible, and it blows up the Citadel, taking the reapers with it… and Planet Earth falls victim. It became the Destroy ending.

Shepard became the reaper king with the paragon option, but he still had the universally recognized one-fingered displeasure towards the Queen. However, the reapers were put to good use by the new leader. It is similar to the Control ending. The third option, Synthesis, was not meant to be the hardest ending to get, but the one that everyone would have gotten (the other two could have been based on how many paragon/renegade choices were made during the game(s)). Here, Wilkinson says the Queen said she would combine her and Shepard’s best elements with a kind of space magic, send them out into the universe, and it would change everything.

Wilkinson didn’t touch on whether the Normandy crashes somewhere or if the mass relays are destroyed in the endings. However, it’s mostly the same as what we experienced nine years ago… but it still feels better without Catalyst.

Source: PCGamer