I need to scold Jeff Cannata for jumping straight for the "Entitled" button. It seems like the word "entitled gamers" gets thrown out there as a default first defense against a bad reaction to anything, immediately placing blame on consumers wanting "too much".

As someone who hasn't played any of the Mass Effect games, but has read about this controversy, I personally think that Mass Effect fans are "entitled" to an ending that's more substantial than a 2.5 minute Bink video with palette swaps. Is it too late to wash away the stink of that lackluster handling? Yes. Is it too late to build a new ending series that's bigger than just "press A, B, or C"? Yes. But I think that at least some text on the implications of those decisions would be better than some Bink video that was phoned into Blur studios (or whoever they had do those renders) a few months before certification.

The multiple endings thing made me think about Catherine. Atlus had Studio 4 C make six sets of ending animations, all unique, all with dialogue. That of course requires finishing the writing ahead of time. Which makes me think: how much was BioWare making up the Mass Effect 3 story as they went along?