Mass Effect 3 - Controversies of 2012

Among the various 2012 wrap-ups on the 'net, Edge Online and PC Gamer have looked at the Mass Effect 3 ending as part of their respective major story collections. From Edge's Mass Effect 3, BioWare, and the new age of entitlement:

So, what was actually wrong the ending to Mass Effect 3? As a final act, it was flawed in two distinct ways. Firstly, it was bad in the conventional way that endings are often bad: it was abrupt, plot-holed, and dramatically unsatisfying. The kind of badness you might expect from a suddenly cancelled TV show that had a season’s worth of plot arcs to tidy up and 42 minutes of screen time with which to do it. Secondly, Mass Effect 3′s ending was bad in a way unique to the series: it didn’t offer players a sense of meaningful choice, or the feeling decisions made over three game’s worth of galactic adventuring had actually mattered, in direct contradiction to what Hudson and other members of the team had promised. If BioWare had avoided one of these issues, they probably could have gotten away with the other. They didn’t of course, and inside the slow-cooker forum threads bubbling with resentment, the Retake Mass Effect campaign took shape.

...and from PC Gamer's Five Greatest Gaming Controversies of 2012:

They had valid complaints. Mass Effect 3′s ending was really weird, but demanding a new ending from Bioware and then writing one for them perhaps went a little too far. “Fans of the Mass Effect trilogy have put far too much time, effort, and money into the game to be abandoned with such a fate,” the group insisted.

“Bioware desperately needs to resolve this issue. New DLC (something long) to add a new, more satisfactory ending to the game, or even a full expansion based as an epilogue to the trilogy.

“Some possible ideas include Shepard retiring or settling down with his/her love interest, returning to work as a Council SPECTRE, or traveling the galaxy as an inter-species diplomat.”

I won't post it separately but PC Gamer's second controversy is Diablo III's Error 37.