Why Mass Effect 3’s Extended Cut Ending Can’t Possibly Fix Everything

According to the latest column from Joystiq’s Rowan Kaiser, Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut could have never hoped to fix the problems with the original endings, since the series’ vast mythology means that there was simply too much to fix to give proper closure. Here’s a snippet:

By focusing on the nature and motivations of the Reapers in the end, Mass Effect 3 inadvertently calls attention to the prime structural issue of the series: the Reapers were never the most interesting component of the narrative. Indeed, they never actually make sense within the gameplay of the series. Setting a group of massive spaceships as the primary antagonists of a squad-based shooter/RPG is simply bizarre. Thus it makes sense that the Reapers would, within the moment-to-moment gameplay, threaten Commander Shepard with corrupted denizens of the world: heretical reprogrammed Geth, devolved Protheans, and mockeries of the universe’s races in the forms of Husks, Cannibals, Banshees, and more.

Yet the depictions of the Reapers in the games don’t match the description that the narrative provides. The Reapers call themselves servants of “Order,” something confirmed by the Catalyst in the finale of Mass Effect 3 and expanded upon in the “Extended Cut.” Yet if they are forces of order, why is corruption, both physical and mental, their prime weapon? Corruption and order are usually diametrically opposed concepts, and explaining the Reapers in such a way renders the entirety of the storyline nonsensical.

This is just one of multiple specific issues, but it’s one that effectively demonstrates the problems of mythology-based storytelling. Questions are generally more interesting than answers, and turning those answers into intellectual puzzles means debates over solutions, not celebration of storytelling. What the “Extended Cut” needed was to be a “Shortened Cut,” removing the explanations for the Reapers and simply letting them be powerful villains. Mass Effect 3 would have been a stronger story and game without the embodiment of the Catalyst trying to explain everything, without the Reapers’ explanation for their motives.