Mac Walters attempts to rewrite history on ME3 ending.

Mac Walters

Mac Walters is a dude who had lot to do with Mass Effect 3’s ending (he was the lead writer for the game) and appears to be trying to rewrite history. 

During a recent awards show he was reported to have said about ME3’s ending that ‘he doesn’t think the majority of Mass Effect fans had an issue with Mass Effect 3′s ending and that it was just a very vocal minority’. 

Which just seems a nonsense thing to say.

Every man and his dog was talking about the ending. It got people seriously wound up – so much that a Extended Cut was released by Bioware to placate everybody. If it was such a minority, this would never have happened. NO game developer would change their ending just because a couple of people didn’t like the game’s ending. 

I wonder if this was a case of the 'silent majority' and the vocal minority being of similar views.

If so, I think Mac Walters might being a little too cute for his own good. 

He’s currently working on Mass Effect 4: “Right now I’m actually just working on Mass Effect 4 (I wouldn't call it 4, I’d just call it the next Mass Effect).” Read into that what you will.

Follow him on Twitter! Or check out this awesome Ashley Williams cosplay. And some Femshep.

How ME3's lead writer writes

Mac Walters who is the lead writer for Mass Effect three has given a pretty sweet interview to the Wall Street Journal on the writing effort that goes into a game like Mass Effect. I liked his answer to the followin question about balancing all the tricks and treats the game has to offer. 

WSJ: One of the things that’s interesting about Mass Effect 2 is that your gameplay choices affect how many of the characters survive during the final battle—how well you prepare the ship, whether you complete certain character quests, things like that. How do you balance the completionist tendency of a gamer who wants to complete every quest, collect every treasure, fill every bar up 100 percent—with the need for drama and tension in the story itself?

Mac Walters: Part of what you have to start to do as a writer in those instances—and it’s not just with the big choices, it happens with the smaller choices that you encounter on a mission—is that you want a certain dramatic tension in it. With multiple outcomes, we know the drama isn’t going to be as high or as peaked in certain instances of that, but that’s the joy and the curse of giving player agency.

You have to come around to the side of the player. So, I would love it if you played it this way and experienced it this way, but you are choosing to pursue this path. And that’s your choice—clearly that’s what you want your game experience to be. And so we want to craft that player experience to be as whole-heartedly appropriate to the choices that you’ve made. So in those cases maybe the tension does come down, but maybe there’s more of a sense of heroism in it, the sense that, “Wow, I really did pull out all the stops and made this work perfectly.

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You might have seen Walters talk about the decision you took regarding the fate of the Rachni Queen in the original ME game....

Did you kill the Rachni Queen in the original Mass Effect game?

So, did you kill the Rachni Queen in the original Mass Effect game?

Mass Effect has always been a game where decisions have consequneces. That's a key element of the game right? In the original Mass Effect game, the first true 'boss' character was the Rachni Queen. Once you and your pals had defeated her, you had to make a choice - kill her and thus the entire Arachni Race or let her live.

Those who got the Play Station version of the ME2 were also asked to make the same choice by way of a very cool comic before they started the game proper. In the actual game, and only if you let the Queen live, a message was delivered to you when you first landed on the Asari homeworld (I think from memory!) that the Queen had not forgotten this kind act.

This suggested your decision to save (or not save) would have consequences but nothing come of it in the end.

In a recent interview by Darren Franich with  ME3's lead writer Mac Walters some comment was made on that decision and the effect it may have in Mass Effect 3:

Darren "I saved the Rachni in the first game, and there was a little tease about them in Mass Effect 2. How big of a repercussion do choices like that have in this game? Does that mean I get a mission that someone who killed the Rachni wouldn’t get?"

Mac "The thing I will say about Mass Effect 3 is that the choices you’ve made previously, and the differences that those choices represent, are much bigger than they’ve been in the past. There are certain missions that are simply not available at all because of something you’ve done in the past. Those are usually on a smaller scale. It’s a role-playing part. Is Conrad Verner alive or dead? [The presence of the Rachni] has huge consequences in Mass Effect 3. Even just in the final battle with the Reapers. "

There you have it, you probably should have saved the Queen.... unless it's one big long fake out and they sided with the Reapers years ago......