I make no secret of the fact that I quite liked Mass Effect 3, including its contentious ending. (And I'm not the only one.) Sure, it was a bit "out there," but once you've painted yourself into a corner with a story about innumerable, indefatigable death robots from beyond the galactic rim, what else are you going to do? Not everyone shares that opinion, however, including Ty Franck, the co-author of The Expanse sci-fi novels—now a hit Syfy television series sometimes described as "Game of Thrones in space"—who told Glixel that the end of ME 3 "disgusted" him so much that he swore off the whole series.
"The first two and a half games promised so much and set up such a fantastic universe, and then the end of the third one, it just... It made everything that had come before irrelevant. It was just a fucking terrible ending," Franck said. "It really felt like there was a fantastic ending that I had been promised, and then when I got to it... You know what? The ending of Mass Effect for me was like the ending of Lost, where [you] became aware that they really didn't know where they were going the whole time and they'd kind of just been making things up."
I can't actually argue that final point: My tolerance of the Mass Effect 3 ending doesn't preclude me from recognizing that it was less than ideal. But it's not like Mac Walters came over to my house and shot my dog—and even if he did, that doesn't negate the many hours of fantastic space opera action that took place prior to the surreal wrap-up. But Franck is clearly more of an ending aficionado than I.
"When we hit book nine of The Expanse, that will be the last book—and we've known the ending from the beginning. That's because I like endings," he continued. "I think great media, great art, whatever, is all about the edges of the canvas, and anything that you try to string on too long gets a little threadbare. I also think that because of that—because endings are so important—you better know what your ending is and you better be setting that ending up right from the beginning. Otherwise it just feels muddy and unsatisfying."
Fair enough. But I still though it was pretty good. The Expanse season two gets underway tonight, by the way. Here's a taste of what to expect.
