I'll freely admit that I haven't read all 536 pages on this forum, but I've read a whole lot of them. The overwhelming sense that I get is extremely negative, and almost ALL of it has to do with the last ten minutes of the game.
Granted, I was pissed about the ending. I felt it was hand-waving and sloppy. After over 100 hours of gameplay and story development, to introduce the final overarching "bad guy" AND the grand solution in the last ten minutes is quite simply bad writing. However I have a very difficult time blaming the writers of the game for this, because it is so incredibly inconsistent with the rest of the narrative. I feel that the game was rushed, and the creative and wonderful minds that gave us so much awesome story were simply boxed into a corner in the interest of shipping the game on time.
That being said, how great was this story? The final minutes of the game are certainly open for debate, but why doesn't anybody consider the other 25+ hours of this game? Why does everyone seem to say "yeah that was good, but the ending KILLED the entire franchise"?The ENTIRETY of Mass Effect 3 was an ending, not just the final scene. The whole game tells the story of each character and what their ultimate fate will be, and believe it or not, our choices actually DID matter in that regard, just not in the binary way some people think.
I've talked with people who couldn't understand why they weren't able to save the Quarians, even after making all the "right" choices in ME3. Turns out it was because of something they did/didn't do in ME2. The fate of Kaiden/Ashley has an arc that begins in ME1 and doesn't end until ME3. Same thing with Wrex.
Take Mordin for another example. His story in ME3 has a very simple arc where his options are 1) he dies curing the Genophage, 2) he dies because you kill him in his attempt to cure the Genophage, 3) he lives, but Eve dies (not clear on the details of this one), or 4) he dies in ME2 during the suicide mission. Really doesn't seem too complicated on the face of it. Actually, it seems pretty simple to write.
But I personally couldn't do it. Even on my Renegade playthrough, I absolutely could not betray Mordin, let alone kill him. This isn't because I'm some altruistic, awesome person. It's because they made me care about the character. All logical signs pointed to deceiving the Krogan. It's quite simply the most pragmatic choice to take in both the short and long term. But I didn't do it because I felt like I knew Wrex, and I knew Mordin, and I knew all the progress they were both making. I couldn't betray that.
The same applies for Tali vs. Legion, or Grunt vs. the Rachni Queen. We can all bemoan it now because we all know the results, but think about before that, the first time you played the game. When you had to make the call about whether you should reinforce Grunt and lose the Rachni Queen, or leave him to die to protect the her. Or when you were faced with the decision of who to support when the Geth faced off against the Quarian Fleet. Or the fact that a lot of us got Miranda killed because we didn't give her a heads-up. Same with Kelly Chambers.
So what if my decision to let someone live on a side-quest in ME1 didn't translate to some awesome revelation in ME3. The narrative was based around the characters all along, and in that regard this game succeeded on a level I have never seen any other game produced (final ten minutes aside, obviously). And that narrative wasn't necessarily based around "what option will you choose to save everyone", and more about "how much do you care about this person?"
As I said before, I get the criticism people are leveling about the ending. But can we not just take a minute to appreciate what these writers, programmers, actors, and staff have done? Just a minute? Or is absolutely ALL of it wiped away because we didn't find the ending satisfactory?
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