The original Natural Selection did have the RTS elements, and it was a Half Life mod.

Zimmer has very limited range - I don't think he's particularly suited to Halo (or, honestly, most soundtracks.) Take Crysis 2: he only did one track and it's nowhere near the best in the game.

Zoic took pains to create semi-Newtonian movement, but they never went full Newtonian - it was a hybrid of atmospheric and realistic flight. Beyond the Red Line and Diaspora reflect what you can do very faithfully.

Hi Mike.

He deleted the original post, but you can still find it linked on Reddit and SA. [www.gamesthirst.com]

The 'Final Hours' iPad app combined with BioWare's recent reaction proves that they intended the current ending to be what really happened, rather than a clever prelude to DLC.

Already more or less confirmed false by behind the scenes material from BioWare.

Wasn't all the writers. According to one of the BioWare writers posting on Penny Arcade, the ending was written by Walters and Hudson without input from the others, and left many of them (including those who did great sequences like Tuchanka and Rannoch) profoundly cold.

The show was never fully Newtonian, and if you want to go that far you can always play Orbiter.

Is politely asking for the developers to follow up on the promises they made before release going too far? Because while FTC complaints are certainly insane, I don't think petitions, charity drives and forum posts are really hurting anyone.

I do, but I'm worried about getting someone fired. :( There was a link in a recent Reddit thread if you want to catch the most damning of the gossip.

When you say that it ended 'the way they felt best', you're ignoring the fact that this ending was internally divisive, that many of the writers who authored some of the game's strongest scenes didn't like it or want it, and that it was a last-minute kludge because the lead writer couldn't figure out what else to do.

It isn't 'their' story - many of the BioWare writers hated this ending and protested it vociferously internally. It was written by the lead writer and lead designer without much input from the others.

"I guarantee you if you did a survey of people who didn't go online to talk about games, the OVERWHELMING majority of them would be fine with the ending. "

You may well be right! But there are still certainly degrees of competence, and the quality of the writing in Mass Effect 3's ending is at a lower degree than that of the rest of the game. (Ironically, the same writer who handled the ending is responsible for the shoddy beginning and the game's worst character.)

A film's financiers compromising the filmmaker's work seems analogous to an incompetent lead writer ignoring the pleas of the rest of his writing team, which is what happened at BioWare.

I was - I'm drawing an analogy between Blade Runner's bad theatrical ending (later revised) and Mass Effect 3's awful release ending (hopefully later revised). Each one is the product of bad internal creative decisions.

After the first performance, someone spotted a big plot hole in Act 3, so Tennessee Williams rewrote it.

Mass Effect 3 had its ending revised before release, by idiots. Hopefully it can be restored by its creators!

That was a fun theory, until the behind-the-scenes material came out and we realized BioWare never even thought about it.