Thank you very much for the time you took to explain. I might find the strength at some point to actually brave the leaked scripts and discover the original plot in all its glory. But to be honest the fabled "Bioware writing" didn't ever do it for me and I've started to suspect that is a conspiracy by an alien insectoid species to enslave us by corrupting the naive and impressionable minds of our generation's youth. They call themselves Biodrones but only in secret and they will violently dispute such a claim by an outsider.

In any case your list confirms few things, like the cut content to later sell it as DLC and that the plot was weak from the get go.

Honestly I've played most of their games since the BG days and they never had really strong writing. It was mostly pleasant enough to keep you going with the occasional moment of excellence that stuck out of the otherwise contrived and many times ham handed average. When did they become the "masters of storytelling" I do not know... They did good stories... for a game. But not that good. And the irony is that the more they loudly advertised their "asum, immersing" worlds, the weaker the result became.

PS Is it just me or the actual word of mouth dropped significantly faster for ME3 than ME2?

People love Bioware's writing because of the characters and the worlds they create, not because of the plot.
Yup, this was the original plan (which is why it was foreshadowed earlier in the series). Unfortunately the writer left Bioware, and for reasons unknown the ending was changed.

Since Bioware is so big on protecting "artistic integrity", I wish they would have respected the original script instead of replacing it with nonsense written in a hurry in the last minute.

I would have loved to have seen the dark energy plot coming to a finish.

I completed Mass Effect 3 once played again for a while but the ending EA/Bioware gave us has put me right off the game. Even with the extended cut coming out i dont feel the urge to replay which is sad as ME 1 & 2 where some of my most played games.

All of this is subjective, not objective. IMO Bioware's worlds use tired clichés, but they use them well and put enough new spin and flavor to them to make them interesting. As what comes to characters, I've personally enjoyed the variety, the humor and relationship dynamics between your character and NPCs and between NPCs. Unlike in JRPGs the characters don't get annoying, and unlike in most WRPGs the characters feel more than just pack mules for my loot. All of these things are enough for me to forgive whatever shortcomings the writing otherwise has. I understand if the same doesn't go for someone else, we are all different after all. Different strokes and all that.

It might not seem like it, but I actually said the same thing. Just a tad more harshly expressed. It's enjoyable writing, even good at times, but not great. It's things like "immersive world", "deep story" and "3-dimensional character" that I see get thrown around so easily that get on my nerves.
Also there was a period that I played only Bioware games and after a while the paper-thin characters and tired clichés were too obvious for me. I have built a low level of tolerance for Bio-writing nowadays and I can't cut them some slack anymore.

I didn't read all the script, but now that you mention it I think you're right, it was converted into the Citadel scene (wich was also quite different, but take a look yourself). Open the pastebin link and search for "Kasumi", that's the Citadel part. The mission on Thessia is four paragraphs above.

Extended Cut DLC coming next week (6/26) for PC & 360, in July for PS3. 1.9GB download.

Not sure of full site link as I saw this on my phone (IGN, short version: http://t.co/cBcSzwMZ) and most gaming sites are blocked at work.

I'll be curious to load this up and see what they have done and then watch the internet explode next week.

The download size is encouraging at least.

I read somewhere on their forums that the download size is because of Xbox's limitations. Apparently MS doesn't let them use more than 2GB. I wonder what else could they have included without that limitation.

Couldn't they have split it into multiple 2 GB chunks? (e.g. "DLC_name Part 1", "DLC_name Part 2"...)

I'm not to sure about MS policies on new content but I'm pretty sure they don't like when developers release DLC for free so the limitation may have something to do with that. For example, Bastion got a free DLC on PC and PS3 but they had to charge $1 on Xbox 360.

You can do a lot with 1.9GB. Considering the whole game is around 13GB, adding that much for just the ending is a lot of content...

Or it's inefficiently used space, which wouldn't be unheard of from big game studios not really caring about efficiency.

I doubt it will make any difference in the end. Stretching (or should I say... extending) a bad story does not make it a good one. The ending was fundamentally out of place and bad. An exposition can not fix it. But whatevs, let them try.

Anyone got hands on Extended Cut?

I'm still waiting for it to appear on alternative distribution method, as my game also came from over there (Before EU release, mind you :P ).
If this is true, i see another shitstorm incoming....