The Witcher, Sherlock Holmes and 007: When Authors Fail to Kill a Series

[Winter]

On my post about ME3 Continuing its story I noted that the biggest problem with Mass Effect trying to move forward with the story is that the endings of ME3. The writers of ME3 basically tried to kill off the series (at least in the Milky Way) by creating 3, later four, endings that killed off Shepard, destroyed the Mass Relays and made it so you suffer a major loss (either you compromise your morals or beliefs and make peace with the Reapers or you kill the Reapers along with EDI and the Geth if you've made peace with them).

This has caused issues in the series with MEA trying to restart the series while trying to move away from the endings and ME4 (or ME5, can we PLEASE get a title or number for this game BioWare?!) has to choose an ending in order to move the series forward.

What's funny is that, this isn't the first time this has happened, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming and Andrzej Sapkowski all did the same thing with their respective series as they ended, (or attempted to end) their stories in such a way that would insure that there was no way to tell anymore stories in this universe. Doyle killed Sherlock by having him go up against someone who was his equal and had him die at the end, Fleming (I think it's been years since I read the books) did pretty much the same thing and Sapkowski killed of Geralt and Yen in what was suppose to be the last book in the series.

And in all three cases, well, this ultimately failed because not only did none of these series ended like the authors intended but kept on going. The Witcher is the most interesting because the sequels in question where the games by CD Project Red which have ended up overshadowing the books. Doyle's attempts to end Sherlock's series is funniest because he kept trying to end the series with one of his last real attempts being Sherlock stopping a world war. No comment on Bond because, again, long time since I read the books and I didn't much care for them.

And now we have Mass Effect which is trying to continue the series and has the same problem, continue a story that the writers tried to kill off.

I want to state that I'm not AGAINST this idea, I think a series can end on a downer or bitter-sweet note and still be a great story. Red vs. Blues Chorus Trilogy, which WAS the end of the Blood Gulch Teams story for a few years is, IMO, a great ending to that series and my personal favorite saga in the series and that ended on a bitter-sweet note where the fate of the crew was left ambiguous and ended on Church's final death with no chance of him coming back.

But with these stories it felt like the writers just wanted to be done with the series and didn't care what the fans wanted and just dropped a bridge on their series. As if to say, "There, now I can finally move on from this series and never have to deal with it again." And end it in a way that suggests that they don't care about anything and just want to spite everyone who fell in love with it.

The Witcher games are great but I still don't like how the story ended and it seems that Sapkowski himself feels the same way because he stated that Geralt and Yen did live and that he seems to have regarded how he ended the series as a mistake.

I should note that, again, I'm not against a series ending on a depressing note I just don't like the F it ending where the writers are ending the story more because they just want to move on and not bring things to a proper conclusion.

[hammerofglass]

One big difference is that Mass Effect was always meant to be a trilogy. That was part of the marketing right from the first game's announcement. It wasn't plotted out in a lot of depth ahead of time (the Reapers motivations in particular were only nailed down at the end) and who was in charge of writing it changed a few times, but that there would be three with a definite beginning and end was still always the plan.

[Winter]

One big difference is that Mass Effect was always meant to be a trilogy. That was part of the marketing right from the first game's announcement. It wasn't plotted out in a lot of depth ahead of time (the Reapers motivations in particular were only nailed down at the end) and who was in charge of writing it changed a few times, but that there would be three with a definite beginning and end was still always the plan.

Mmmm, that's kind of debatable because I've seen several interviews suggesting that the developers had no real plans to end the series after game 3. In fact, from everything I could find, MEA was already greenlit before ME3 was even finished and the developers, including Casey Hudson, made a big deal about how many stories could be told in Mass Effect, pointing to the Citadel as an example and that the reason the made it so big was to tell as many stories there as possible.

No,w I've no doubt that the Reaper threat was going to be a Trilogy because their arrival was the main focus and you can only get so much mileage out of Winter- I mean, The Reapers are coming. So, I've no doubt that there was to be a Reaper Trilogy but from what I've seen Mass Effect was never meant to be just three games. Which begs the question, if MEA was already, at the very least, in early concept stages why did they burn the bridges in ME3. The series was a huge hit and fans WANTED to explore this galaxy as much as possible and the only thing the game promised about the end of the series was that the Reapers had to be defeated.

When George Lucas decided to end Star Wars with Return of the Jedi he didn't do it because he disliked the series but because he wanted to spend more time with his family and most of what he set up could be resolved in movie 3. The only thing that he had to see too was the deaths of Vader and the Emperor. He didn't kill off the original trio or make it so traveling through space would now be impossible because he didn't want to close the door for more stories he just wanted the films to end so he could be with his family. And when Timothy Zahn came in and asked to make a sequel to the Trilogy Lucas gave him his blessing and because of how Jedi ended there was more then enough room for a story to be told.

Mass Effect has made it impossible to tell a story set after the end of ME3 without dealing with an ending that was designed to kill off a galaxy that had so much potential in the first place. The only option is to pick an ending and stick with it and hope for the best.

[Frustration]

Exactly. It's as though the galaxy blew up at the end of "Return of the Jedi", so no further stories could ever be told in the setting.