Mass Effect 3 ending originally led to ME4, says ex-BioWare writer

pcgamesn.com:

Mass Effect 3 originally had a different ending, which would have queued up a fourth game in the space RPG’s main series, explains one former BioWare writer during a Reddit AMA.

We should warn, this story contains spoilers for the whole Mass Effect series.

As we all know by now, the ending of Mass Effect 3 is perfect, wonderful, and beloved by fans all over the world. Shepard is presented with three choices by the Catalyst: destroy the Reapers, but also all other synthetic life in the process; take control of the Reapers, but die in the process; or throw themselves into the Crucible, somehow creating a perfect unison between the Reapers and the rest of the galaxy, but also, of course, dying in the process.

There are a lot of reasons that people take umbrage here – personally, I feel like these so-called “moral” choices in videogames are usually very straightforward, and ludicrously weighted in favour of one, particular option, and that the ending of Mass Effect 3 is one of the best – or at least, most prominent – examples of the problem. But that’s just me, and I digress.

Drew Karpyshyn, a Canadian, former BioWare writer, whose credits also include Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, recently took to Reddit, explaining how Mass Effect 3 was originally planned to end in an entirely different, potentially more gratifying way, which would also have implications for a Mass Effect 4.

“We had some very rough ideas planned out,” Karpyshyn says. “Basically, it involved luring the Reapers through the Mass Relays then detonating the entire network to wipe them out, but also destroying/damaging the relays, and isolating every galactic community from the others. But we still had to figure out a lot of the details, and there were