The ending to Mass Effect 3 received an unprecedented onslaught of rage from longtime fans of the series. Many critics warmly embraced the ambiguous ending to the trilogy, but fans were deeply upset and cried out for BioWare (the developer) and EA (the publisher) to make changes. These gamers weren’t angry or entitled, mind you, they were simply belligerently demanding that BioWare alter their artistic vision while fervently flooding the Internet with degrading comments about BioWare’s staff.

Buckling like a plastic folding chair under a fat man, BioWare agreed to alter the ending in an attempt to satisfy them… and why shouldn’t they? After all, we pay their bills. Our money enables them to live in their extravagant mansions and drive their Ferraris. It is our opinions that matter, not theirs. They make the games for us, the consumers… but that doesn’t mean we’re entitled. Nope, not at all.

This ordeal has taught me one thing: If we unite and fall to the ground crying, kicking, and screaming — like some child whose mother wouldn’t buy them a candy bar in the grocery store — we will get our way. That means that I, personally, plan on perpetuating this trend of tantrum-throwing as much as possible.

At this moment, I am sending out a rallying cry to all gamers to change one of the most abysmal plot choices in the history of this medium

I demand that Square Enix change the death of Aerith in Final Fantasy 7.

 

You first meet the doe-eyed Aerith Gainsborough while she is selling flowers in the Sector 7 Slums. She joins your party a short while later, and becomes a central character to the plot.

You spend roughly 20 hours leveling up Aerith, and then at the end of the first disc, she gets stabbed by the villain Sephiroth out of the blue. This is just bad storytelling on Square’s part. It’s obviously just there for the shock value so they can get a cheap, visceral reaction from the players. I didn’t spend all of that time getting attached to her only to have all of my time and effort negated by her death.

It’s bullshit and they need to change it. I don’t care that this game was made in 1997 for the original PlayStation. That just means this was a long time coming, and I will stamp my feet, whine, bitch, moan, and complain until Square Enix makes up for this great injustice.

They obviously can’t fix it through DLC, with the game being for the PS1, so they will just have to remake the whole thing. Oh, and we shouldn’t have to pay for it either. It should be free. There is no reason that the greedy, unethical developers at Square Enix should be able to build another swimming pool from our pocketbooks!

So, who is with me? And for that matter, who has something else they want changed? It has become apparent now that it can be done. If we don’t like part of a game we buy, the developers are obligated to appease us by altering the bits we don’t want. After all, everything is about us.

Stomp-stomp-stomp.

J.C. Wigriff is a writer, columnist, musician, and admin of www.JCWigriff.com.
Follow him on Twitter @JCWigriff