In a recent AMA promoting the release of his new novel, former Mass Effect writer Drew Karpyshyn was asked by a few fans of the series about the team's earliest plans for the ending of the original trilogy. His answers were quite... revealing to say the least.
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As reported by TechRadar, Karpyshyn said that the original ending to Mass Effect 3 involved no resemblance to the red, blue, and green endings. Instead, the first plans were for Shepard and the galaxy to lure the Reapers into the mass relays, blow the relays up, and destroy the entire network. The resulting blast would kill the Reapers but also basically leave every other galactic race stranded wherever they were.
However, there were still a few details that made the team decide against the original ending. Their biggest concern was what they'd do in the next several games in the series, which is him hinting that the Mass Effect franchise has always been planned to be a long-running one.
Obviously, that's not the kind of ending we get. The original ME3 ending had the aforementioned red, blue, and green choices. Red means destroying the Reapers but also all other synthetic life (the Geth and EDI included); blue means controlling the Reapers with Shepard's mind being turned into an all-powerful AI; and green means Shepard will sacrifice himself/herself into a beam that will unite both organic and synthetic races in the galaxy.
There was even a so-called secret ending called Refusal, where the players simply just let the galaxy die and the harvest cycle of the Reapers continue. Either way, the original ME3 ending left many a fan disappointed - some of them downright pissed off.
According to a lot of folks back in the day, the three main endings (including the Refusal ending) basically meant that all of their choices throughout all three games never mattered in the end. Another ending that was planned involved ME3's ending directly connected with the trilogy's Paragon-Renegade system, as shared in a video by the YouTube channel People Make Games.
In the end, the three colored endings were what fans got. And even if Bioware released the Extended Cut DLC to further flesh things out, it was considered as too little, too late.
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A Few Problems With This ME3 Ending
While this might sound like it's way better than the original Mass Effect 3 ending, there are still a few lore-connected reasons that would ensure Karpyshyn and his teams' original plans wouldn't really work. Here is perhaps the biggest issue: the mass relays have always been thought as almost indestructible. And even if you do manage to blow one up, its explosion is like a supernova in terms of magnitude.
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Sure, Shepard managed to destroy the Alpha Relay during the Arrival DLC in ME2 by slamming an asteroid into it, but remember that doing so completely destroyed the entire system where the relay was located. All of the Batarians living in the system were killed when the relay blew up and took their colonized planet with it.
So what Karpyshyn said with the races being trapped wherever they are in the galaxy is only the least of their worries. They'd also have to survive the destruction of the relays in their respective systems - that's assuming they even can.
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This article is posted on GameNGuide
Written by RJ Pierce