Will You Love Me When It's Over? (September 5, 2012)

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Gameological has posted an interesting article comparing the overall impact of the ending of Mass Effect 3 to the endings of Wing Commander 3. The article assumes the reader is familiar with the controversial endings to Mass Effect 3 and doesn't delve into those endings much in favor of dissecting the various end-games from 'The Heart of the Tiger.' It is also unclear whether the writer took the time to try out the extended conclusions from Bioware's recent DLC. Still, I guess there are worse reasons to use as excuses to talk about Wing Commander.

The writer also has an odd sense of the "good" ending of the game, going as far as calling its implications shameful. As well, he seems to miss the parallels between the T-bomb and the nuclear blasts unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, given the moral nature of the author's argument, would seem to be a glaring omission.

Do you agree with the author's assesment of the Wing Commander 3 endings? Can you draw similar parallels to the Mass Effect endings? For a refresher, don't forget to watch the Wing Commander 3 losing endgame videos in our Holovids section here and the wining ending here. Let us know what you think in the comments.

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Years before Commander Shepard raged against the hostile machines, there was another human soldier fighting insurmountable odds?and making hard choices?to save humanity?s freeze-dried bacon. Wing Commander?s Colonel Christopher Blair fought the ferocious feline Kilrathi in a take-no-prisoners space-fight to the death...

Neither postscript is perfect, but the makers of Wing Commander resisted the urge to press the history eraser button, and made both endings matter in a way that Shepard?s never will.

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Original update published on September 5, 2012

 

[HotJob]

Meh, the article was drek (with a few "Oh no you did-n't!" references to Mark Hamill's other work), but the comments are pure philosophical gold! And GaryX did reference the WCPedia site as the go-to source for Kilrathi history.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

The article goes through some hoops to make an analogy where none exists; Wing Commander III isn't a choice of multiple endings... it just has an especially cool option for /losing the game/. Mass Effect 3's equivalent is presumably the fact that Shepard can die or you can botch a plot-essential quest. In fact, the CHOICE in Wing Commander III's ending is simply which lady you end up going back to Earth with. And THAT probably does merit some comparison because it's something you have to establish earlier in the game... whereas Mass Effect 3's ending (per my understanding) is something that you have the total freedom to select during the endgame.

(Also, a better comparison is obviously Wing Commander IV... which at least lets you 'choose' a terrible you-lose ending during the final cutscene... and which has vastly different codas for Blair depending on how you played the game.)

 

[LeHah]

The first and main problem is the writer's sense of entitlement upon disagreeing with the ending of Mass Effect 3. There is nothing wrong with disliking it per se - but when they enter with the same stupid mentality that people did with The Phantom Menace over a decade ago, you know this is more of a cry from a child than anything worth your time.

 

[Dondragmer]

Yes, the article seems to need an awful lot of putty to fill the gap between WC3 and ME3. If I were trying to do this I would name WC1 as a high point in plot branching, especially because all wingmen can die independently of the plot. However, WC1 also demonstrates why you can't do that and have interesting character arcs, foreshadowing and similar narrative devices.

However, attempts to justify or pan the WC3 ending make me uneasy. They hinge on how "evil" the Kilrathi are, when that is in the hands of the writers. Yes, the WC3 Kilrathi broke an armistice, and Hobbes turned out to be a double agent. They were written that way. Within limits, they had to be written that way. Imagine if in WC3 the Kilrathi honored their armistice, so you spent the entire game flying patrols with no hostiles. The game had to end with a "boss fight". The very first design document mentions destroying Kilrah, and justifies it with a bad ending where the Kilrathi destroy Washington. (It also has Blair becoming Emperor of Kilrah - I'm glad they discarded that bit.)

I think the only questions we can ask are:

1. Is the WC3 portrayal of the Kilrathi consistent with WC2? (Not according to the WC2 draft.)
2. Did the WC3 make the Kilrathi kick the dog enough to justify destroying their planet? (Yes.)
3. Would the WC3 narrative be more interesting if the Kilrathi had more variety, as they did in WC2? (I think so.)
4. Would the WC3 gameplay be more interesting if the Kilrathi had more variety? (Definitely not.)

It's good to see plenty of the article's comments acknowledge how WC4 shows that the war and its ending have had a lasting effect on Blair, on Tolwyn, and on the Confederation.

Oddly, WC4 would help prove the point of the article. Many writers, on being told to make a sequel to WC3, would have created a flimsy excuse to bring back the Kilrathi. (Uh, you're attacked by the KIS Shiraak! And it somehow manufactured a million fighters! And you're flying a Hornet! Because the Terran Confederation sold everything else! Because your superiors are complete idiots!) Instead, WC4 fully acknowledges the finality of the WC3 ending. It introduces new enemies, locations, events and characters, all neatly tied to the previous games.

 

[GrimCW]

hmm the article writer must not have played ANY of the other games (heya guys i still exist if anyone even recalls me been YEARS... i miss the old ranks and insignia format... heh) or even researched much into the storyline.
blowing up kilrah would hardly wipe their species from existence as claimed. The Kilrathi also had a "planet killer" they'd used in the past willingly and with intent to use on colony worlds not just one planet alone as confed had, and a whole heap of other missing factors..
if glared simply from the incomplete pov of WC3 he might have a few points, but IMO it doesn't look like he really even tried to consider that there were more than 2 worlds involved in WC, and you didn't wipe out all space travel for everyone either.