Mass Effect 3 developer BioWare has responded for the first time to fans furious at the game’s ending.
Director and executive producer Casey Hudson explained that a “polarising” finale was necessary to get fans talking.
Meanwhile a fan petition to change the game’s endings has already raised over $28,000 (about £18,000) for charity.
The Retake Mass Effect fan campaign has been appealing for funds to get the movement taken seriously by BioWare; money which it will then donate to gaming charity Child’s Play.
“We would like to dispel the perception that we are angry or entitled,” the campaign’s mission statement reads. “We simply wish to express our hope that there could be a different direction for a series we have all grown to love.”
But Hudson failed to suggest that the trilogy’s finale may be changed through a patch or DLC, as Retake Mass Effect campaigners hope.
“I didn’t want the game to be forgettable,” Hudson told Digital Trends. “Even right down to the sort of polarizing reaction that the ends have had with people – debating what the endings mean and what’s going to happen next, and what situation are the characters left in.”
“That to me is part of what’s exciting about this story. There has always been a little bit of mystery there and a little bit of interpretation, and it’s a story that people can talk about after the fact.”
More single-player content is coming however, and Hudson said that, like other Mass Effect DLC, fan feedback will help shape its design.
“We have some really great multiplayer content and some really great single-player content coming over the air and their feedback will become part of how we design that,” Hudson added.
BioWare also hopes fans are starting to see “common sense” over the controversial day-one DLC pack From Ashes, which includes a major slice of series lore.
“I think a lot of the common sense is prevailing,” Hudson said. “Initially, it was spun in a direction that suggested that we had taken the lore out of Mass Effect 3 and were holding it inside the DLC only, which now the people who actually have played Mass Effect 3 and the DLC they know that that’s not true. So that fear was set aside and, ultimately, I think people get it now.”
