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Of course this is just the opinion of one person, a man who in fact has never been any good at any of the Mass Effect games. Regardless, even as soemeone who sucked as bad at playing these games as Square-Enix are at convincing everybody that the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy was worth any good will, I have to admit that the story of the Mass Effect series is something so bombastic, large and epic that you have to admire it for its scope as it just manages to elevate itself above the crappy ending at the end of the thrid game. Yet sometimes there might be a bad ending which when looked at closer, actually reveals a clever thematical and narrative ploy to raise the plot of a game from average to hihgly enthralling. Take a step forwards, one of the most famed and popular FPS games of all time, Halo 2.
To all extents and purposes, one could just as easily argue that the Halo Series (2001-) has as much of an epic storyline and plot as that of the Mass Effect games. In Halo as in Mass Effect, we follow an elite corps (in this case the mighty spartan marines) as they combine with the united forces of either humanity or an allied galaxy to fend off the advances of an enroaching alien speacies hellbent on total annihalation. I was perhaps never that into the Halo games as much as my two best freinds Brendan and Sam (aka Thunderrunner487 and Telescuffle respectivley) perhaps best shown by how a good chunk of their millenial memorabilia is tied to the original Halo trilogy while mine was tied to games like Spyro: Year of the Dragon (2000) or Company of Heroes (2006). Regardless, I have to admire the Halo series for combining its likewise bombasitc and enthralling storyline with its refreshingly simple gameplay and sometimes very relatable characters particularly in games like Halo Reach (2010). It is perhaps not too hard then to see why the series as a whole has gained such a widespread following in the mainstream gaming public and why my freind Sam (aka Telescuffle) has pointed out to me that his favourite game in the franchise to this date is Halo 2.
But what about the ending to Halo 2 that has so many people up in a tizzy when they talk about it? After all, the game was released in 2004 and so its been quite a while since the initial controversy about Halo 2's ending has died down. If you don't know however, Halo 2 ends with Master Chief (the main character of the series) boarding a battered warship headed towards a swirling sapce battle around planet earth asked by the character Admiral Hood what he is doing before Cheif calmy replies "Sir, finishing this fight" as the game then fades to black after which the credits roll. In a purely thematical sense, I can perhaps see why people were pissed by this ending when the game first came out as it is indeed very abrupt, leaves little closure on the story of the game individually and leaves us unsure about the fate of Master Chief other than his oncoming glory in the fight that he's yet again heading towards.
Now to be fair, this would be frustrating to a first time player. However, contextualised within the game itself and the original trilogy as a whole, the ending to Halo 2 makes a twisted sort of sense. The game itself rides narrativley upon the idea that humanity is in a desperate struggle with the alien forces known as the covenant and the flood, in order to defeat this threat, Master Cheif and the player are repeatedly thrown into harsh and bloody missions throughout with many citing Halo 2 as having some of the hardest in the franchise to date. Therefore, the openess of the ending leaves it up to the player to realise that as the initial threat has been dealth with, there is still much to do and it is only up to Master Chief (and in turn the player, thus creating a narrative connection between Chief and the player) to deal with it and thus 'finish the fight'. This in turn creates an interesting advertising and narrative hook as 'finnishing the fight' was the general tagline of Halo 3 (2007) resulting in a strong narrative link between the two games.
Now personally, my favourite game in this particular franchise will always be the orignal Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) which revolutionised the idea of the modern FPS after the era of Doom and Quake and before Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) came along years later and came to dominate the culture of modern FPS games in the 7th game generation. Arguably, next to games like COD4, Unreal Tournament (1999), Serious Sam (2001), Resistance 2 (2008), Battelfield Bad Company 2 (2010), Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 showed that simple gameplay combined with a straightforward plot intertwined with large scale situations and stakes and threatening situations that challenged your abilities as a gamer and hero could not only create for a grabbing game that shook you to your bones but drew you into its gameplay and story to play more and pay more attention to it. I've certainly experienced this with some series that I've had alot to complain about such as the original Dawn of War (2004-2008) quadrilogy or the Supreme Commander games (2007-2010) but Halo 2, out of most of the games that seemed to define late-6th generation storytelling and gameplay acheived this more than most as Halo 3 went on to become one of the most highest-grossing games of all time and one of the best reviewed and most popular FPS games of recent memory.
So with Mass Effect 3's ending expained in a technincal sense and the ending of Halo 2 explained from a standpoint of narrative storytelling and player interraction through gameplay and dialogue, where does this leave the also controversial ending of Final Fantasy XIII developed by Square Enix and released in 2009?
Now in comparison to the Mass Effect and Halo series, with exception to Final Fantasy VI (1994) and Final Fantasy IX (2000), I've never had a huge amount of interest in the Final Fantasy (1987-) series as a whole or even for most of the individual games. However, as a (for the most part) indifferent game to the franchise, I can understand the attraction of the series within itself as a whole and within the individual games thanks to the enthralling RPG elements, the usually epic storylines, the engaging struggles of the characters and the inclusion of some of gaming's most iconic and nastiest vilains like Final Fantasy VI's Kefka or VII's (1997) Sephiroth.
But anyway, enough contextualising, what about Final Fantasy XIII's ending. Well, this might sound bad, but I really can't remember much about what the ending was like or what it represented. This might stem from how unengaging the plot of the game was or how much I disliked the main protagonist Lightning or how much the game seemed to drag later on or how disinteresting the main vilain was but I really can't remember much about this game's ending. At the end of it all (a nice little reference to Final Fantasy Dissidia's (2008) final boss there for you all) Final Fantasy XIII is a perfect example of not involving your player through some means or another (for me it was mainly the grinding length of the game and the unlikeable main protagonist) which in turn kills the involvement of a player in the game's ending and story. Now I've played good games with one or two aspects that have killed the prospect of a good ending such as Darkstar One's (2006) ending being incredibly cheesy and going against the style and ethos of the game or Max Payne 3's (2012) ending which was severley weakened by the suprising unlikeability of the main character souring the ending.
However, whereas those games were still enjoyable for the most part and were only partially soured by their endings, I didn't enjoy Final Fantasy XIII for the most part, wasn't drawn into the main protagonist's main struggle despite their shortcomings like in Darkstar One and as a result, combining this with the excrutiating length of the game and its disgustingly sequel-bait ending, I couldn't bring myself to remember or care much about the ending after I finished slogging though the game as a whole. Subsequently, when I found out how much of a sequel-bait ending the game had with the onset of overly-expensive paid-DLC and a trilogy that not even the most devout Final Fantasy fans asked for, I felt deflated and disinterested by Final Fantasy XIII's ending.
As a result, I think that the evidence is pretty clear from looking at these three games that it isn't a bad ending that ruins the game, its a bad ending combined with either a bad or unengaging game that ruins the game. Mass Effect 3, despite the ending that essentially went against the entire series and all it stood for, did not ruin the overall experience either I nor many gamers had with the game itself. On top of this, the prospect of cheap DLC soon after the game's release that sorted out some of the narrative problems of the ending sweetened the deal a bit and besides, from my viewpoint at least, I would argue that the ending of Mass Effect 3 was not just down to bad writing but perhaps a great deal of admirable but misplaced overambition. Halo 2 in turn is perhaps a greater example of misinterpreted storytelling a-la the ending to Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising (2010) that tried something ambitious, pulled it off, but could've perhaps done with being a bit clearer and more elloquent as telling from the general reaction to it. Final Fantasy XIII in turn is an example of how even with great production value and design as well as graphics, a game that does not involve the player on a personal level or interest them as such will fail regardless of the ending and even if the ending is good (which it wasn't in this case), the game will still struggle to rise above it's flaws, especially if it's a poor follow up to a series of very popular games.
But hey, even if you still don't get it, let me sum it up to you guys with this analogy. Mass Effect 3 and Halo 2 are like classy dinners with great service and music where the starter is a 5 star meditteranean tapas and the main course is a perfectly seasoned and well cooked moussaka but the pudding is just a bag of jelly beans served on a paper plate. Final Fantasy XIII on the other hand is a takeout from a crappy 2-star chicken 'n'chips shop where your order is late and wrong, the only music on hand is the same 5 tunes all day from Capital F.M radio and the server has left a hair in your vanilla milkshake when you clearly asked for chocolate.
