Saying there’s a bit of chatter about Mass Effect 3 on the internet is like saying there’s a bit of fur on Sasquatch’s body, or a bit of rapping on a Rick Ross album. A lot of people are on the fence about the game’s ending, but Tim Clark at Computers and Videogames is serving as the voice of reason:

Unless you’re prepared to really rinse the multiplayer and scanning system then chances are your ending in Mass Effect 3 is going to be partial and ambiguous too. That’s something to embrace, not go nuts about. Or to put it another way: the reason people are freaking out about Mass Effect 3 is because they love Mass Effect. And it’s a fundamental by-product of the medium’s interactivity that people feel like they own part of the outcome. In the same way football fans talk about owning the club, even though the shareholding invariably says otherwise. Like Tom Francis said, we feel like it’s a collaboration, which is why some people get upset when their ideas are effectively overruled. (Although imagine how dull gaming would be if developers simply served up the most popular crowd-sourced climax.)

It’s hard to imagine The Wire, or even, like, a Lou Reed album ending in any way that was meant to satisfy every single fan. So why do we as gamers sometimes feel it’s our right to get the ending we want?

[via Computers and Videogames]