Original Mass Effect Writer Reveals Other Potential Endings for Trilogy

The ending of Mass Effect 3 was one of the most divisive in recent gaming history, with extremely dedicated fans filling in on both sides of the fence. The way the trilogy ended wasn't always what was envisioned though, as former BioWare employee, and writer on Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, Drew Karpyshyn explained.

Speaking with Eurogamer, Karpyshyn divulged some earlier ideas on how the whole story would finish, including a few that could have been even more dividing among the fanbase.

"Dark Energy was something that only organics could access because of various techno-science magic reasons we hadn't decided on yet. Maybe using this Dark Energy was having a ripple effect on the space-time continuum," Karpyshyn explained. "Maybe the Reapers kept wiping out organic life because organics keep evolving to the state where they would use biotics and dark energy and that caused an entropic effect that would hasten the end of the universe. Being immortal beings, that's something they wouldn't want to see."

He claimed the idea wasn't fully fleshed-out, and obviously ended up abandoned, but there were some other directions the game could have went. "Some of the ideas were a little bit wacky and a little bit crazy," Karpyshyn said. "At one point we thought that maybe Shepard could be an alien but didn't know it. But we then thought that might be a little too close to [Knights of the Old Republic character] Revan."

Then, of course, there's the plot that eerily resembles the ending of the third game, but was thought up to answer questions in Mass Effect 2. "There was some ideas that maybe Shepard gets his essence transferred into some kind of machine, becoming a cyborg and becoming a bridge between synthetics and organics - which is a theme that does play up in the game," Karpyshyn concluded. "At one point we thought, maybe that's how he survives into Mass Effect 2."

It's always interesting to see how games could have turned out, or to just get a peek into the process behind development. We wonder what kind of endings were originally brainstormed for games like Gears of War, Tomb Raider, and Half-Life, but we'll probably never know.