Through their official company blog Bioware has given us a few extra details on how they plan to address the near-universal (hah, space) criticism for their “endings” in Mass Effect 3.  In what’s being called the free “Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut DLC”, Bioware will add “extended scenes that provide additional context and deeper insight to the conclusion of Commander Shepard?s journey“.  There’s also a small FAQ in the blog post that essentially states once again that you don’t have to pay for the DLC and it in no way diminishes their “artistic integrity” by actually changing anything that fans have complained about.

While I’m glad that we’re getting an extra scene or two to beef up what was otherwise a rather unceremonious ending for such a large sci-fi series, I still feel that Bioware could be doing more to quell all of the nerd rage that’s simmering on the Internet.  Unless one of the other theories that have emerged on the web about the nature of the ME3 ending are correct, it still is an undoubtedly lame way to end everything off regardless of whether or not it’s padded with an extra couple of minutes.  A lot of people have said that it’s Bioware’s series and they can end it in anyway they want, and that’s certainly true, but you can’t deny that there are good and bad ways to end a long-standing series.  If, for example, the Wii U Legend of Zelda game came out and after playing it for 60 solid hours a magical hippopotamus came out of the sky before you could fight Ganon and made him disappear while simultaneously turning you into a daffodil and that was the end of the LoZ series, most gamers would have some very justified qualms and questions about the ending.  If Nintendo then patched this ending so that you saw all of the other characters also turned into various flowers and where Ganon was transported to it would indeed answer a lot of questions, but it still wouldn’t make the ending any more logical, tolerable, or acceptable. 

We’ll keep you informed regarding any further developments with the ME3 Extended Cut DLC, but I can’t say my hopes are too incredibly high for an extra couple of scenes at this point.