7052 réponses à ce sujet

[Ark819]

Brainstorming some far flung ideas. I think at this point, personally, that if the indoctrination theory was not intended, Bioware should sure as hell take it and run, at least it gives them an option to save face. Now, back to the brainstorming..

The god-child was not the Catalyst. Sheppard was. The Prothean beacon back on Eden Prime was both a warning, and a gift. It warned Sheppard of what was to come, and strengthened his mind against indoctrination. It's why, if we're going by this theory, he was able to hold out so long against every bit of reaper tech he'd encountered until then.

Harbinger's blast may have weakened his body, and by association, his mind..shutting down this Prothean "firewall." But in the end, it was Sheppard's sheer will, and his interactions with his friends that allowed his mind to fight and break free, (Or I guess succumb, based on previous decisions?)

Like I said, far-flung. Now for something not so far flung..

Think Blizzard has sent a formal thank you to Bioware for sending all those SWTOR players back their way?

[pho3nlxl]

delete this

Modifié par pho3nlxl, 21 mars 2012 - 05:57 .

[stellap20]

I am probably repeating everything that everyone else says. But let me put it in a different prospective. I can say I like the idea of Shepard to sacrifice her/him self. However I do want the choice of a happy ending. Now I know that well life isn't all about happy ending but if you really think about it get into a game were surviving against all odds is very uplifting. Life is full of disappointments why gaming will take that happy feeling even if it comes from a game.
I am not a miserable person. i am happily married living in a nice house with my husband and our dog, I do have a good life.
However gaming is part of our lives and we were both devastated when we got the same ending even though we followed completely different paths.
I think that the indoctrination theory is the best solution that way you can keep the endings but add something extra for us butterfly and rainbow people. That way even if I do choose to die you can add what happen to the rest of my crew, characters that made me giggle or angry for the last 4 years, although not real are still part of my life and thousand of other peoples lives. My LI completely disappears having no idea what happen to him or her. Oh wait there back on Normandy and crashed to a place that looks like Brazil.

Sorry if a lot of things don't make sense but that's how I feel after playing ME3 which was awesome but the ending was like the Mass Effect relay explosion(not good)

[Dan the Man]

The biggest issue I have with the current endings is that you CAN'T LOSE. In spite of the fact that galactic civilizations are less advanced than the Protheans in their heyday, the reapers ultimately lose the fight no matter how ill-prepared Shepard is.

If nothing else, I would like to see a truly "bad" ending. For example: my renegade Shepard was made to deliberately screw everything up--killed the Rachni queen, killed Wrex, gave Legion and the Collector Base to the Illusive Man, split the Migrant Fleet by exposing Rael'Zorah's evidence, etc. etc. etc. The ending I want for so spectacularly FUBARing my decisions should revolve around the utter lack of resources these choices would leave me: no quarian fleet, no rachni help with the crucible, geth rewritten as heretics and reaper slaves once again, no united Krogan front helping the turians. Ultimately, this would lead to Shepard losing the battle for earth due to a lack of manpower, never making it to the citadel (and possibly having the Crucible destroyed en-route to the Citadel from a lack of fleet protection).

What I would like to see from here is the razing of Earth, the destruction of the combined fleets, and the spread of the reapers to the other systems (again). Asari celebrating the liberation of Thessia would look up in horror as the reapers returned to finish off their system; Turians hang their heads and brace for one final, overwhelming assault on Palaven; krogan forces watch in awe and horror as Kalros is dissected by Sovereign-class dreadnoughts, which turn to face them when they finish; the few quarians that made it to Rannoch either try to flee the system again in the remnants of their fleet only to be shot down, or else commit mass suicide as the geth set foot on their homeworld once again. The Illusive Man, under reaper indoctrination, takes the Collector Base back through the Omega 4 Relay and oversees the constructions of dozens of new reapers from Cerberus' new headquarters.

All sentient life in the Milky Way is harvested over a matter of years rather than decades, and when they finally retreat back into Dark Space the galaxy falls into an eerie silence not heard in 50,000 years.

[TMA LIVE]

http://social.biowar...5797/1#10345797

Yeah, yeah, we really want a new ending for ME3.

But besides that, and the possible Omega DLC, I think James should get a DLC mission. Or a mission where he stands out more.

The reason why is because, even though he might have some good elements about his character, he doesn't have a mission where he can stand out. He doesn't really have a purpose in the story, beyond asking nub questions. You don't really get that many conversations with him. He's not even an LI. He's mostly just around. He doesn't have the benefit of having a loyalty mission, or a personal mission, like your crew in ME2 and ME1. He's just along for the ride. Which makes him seem like a waste.

That's why I think he needs a personal mission. Or a mission that makes him stand out more.

[Lanceare]

This article does an excellent job of detailing the numerous problems with the Mass Effect 3 ending(s): www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/

I would also like to add that being forced to destroy the mass relays would (a) likely wipe out much of life in the galaxy, far more than the Reapers themselves would according to established lore and ( even if that can be explained away still dramatically alter he Mass Effect universe in a detrimental way as it would now be impossible to travel between solar systems. As many people have pointed out this means that many in the galaxy, including all of the forces at Earth, are going to starve to death It also means that the possibilites for the future off the Mass Effect franchise are seriously diminished. No more inter-stellar travel.

Imagine the mass relay system being preserved, the races of the galaxy continuing to develeope and learn from reaper tech and eventualy learning how to travel outside this galaxy - to meet a new threat in another. Nope. Can't happene now. Everyone is stuck wherever they were at the end of ME 3, for who knows how long.
 

[Avalon Aurora]

I have numerous issues as well.

1. Reapers stealing the Citadel and taking it to Earth, everyone on citadel dead? Um, wasn't one of our war assets building up C-sec and the Citadel militia? Given how long the forces on earth held out, and how large the citadel is and how many people live there, I have a hard time seeing the Reapers taking the Citadel so easily, at least on ground level, I'm sure they'd beat pretty much any fleet guarding it so dominate at air level, but the Citadel is filled with tunnels and catacombs and buildings and stuff which would make it easy to evade reaper air support without forcing the Reapers to heavily damage, if not outright destroy the structure in order to get at everyone in a reasonable time-frame. There should have been survivors still fighting on the Citadel, or if there isn't, I'd like the game to show or explain to us why.

2. Multi-Player involvement, there is no good reason to force us to play multi-player to even help get better endings, I've heard claims that people have done checks and it is impossible to get the best endings without multi-player, but Bioware has claimed otherwise. I'd like to demand that they remove the whole Galaxy at War thing and make single player only reliant on Single Player, and multi-player be a totally separate thing, or at least that they really make sure and follow through that the multi-player isn't necessary for the best endings if they refuse to do that.

3. Challenging the star-child- I have no idea why the star-child was put in in the first place, or why we get given the Deux-Ex rip-off choices, especially the synthesis one, as I have no idea how Mass Effect's technology base would concieveably make that possible on a galactic scale as implied. I also don't know why the control or synthesis options cause destruction of any relays. But most of all, I have no idea why Shepard accepts the assertions of the star-child in the first place, there is just too much evidence to the contrary, at least depending on how your playthrough went, especially if you got peace between the Geth and the Quarians, the whole main argument of the star-child is nullified, if not reversed, meaning the Reapers or even any sort of 'solution' isn't neccesary. Worse, his whole chaos vs. order thing is total bunk IMO, there is nothing inherently wrong with chaos or order, although a balance between the two tends to be better than the extremes of either or, and he doesn't seem to get that, and you can't argue your points. Shepard has repeatedly challenged false-assertions of various people throughout the games, especially in ME1, then blandly accepts these ridiculous claims of the star-child at the end? It doesn't fit. None of the 'solutions' offered are even vaugely acceptable, my Shepard opposes the reapers partly because they don't just slaughter people, but they enslave many in the process and transform them and use indoctrination, she would in no way consider enslaving the reapers back to be an acceptable choice, even without the ridiculous side-effects of the destruction of mass relays, or worries about power corrupting, or the dubious nature of him likely dying to 'take control' of them, and who will control them afters he dies. The destroy option also destroys the Geth, who have proven to be great allies and innocent people with their own free will and sentience, worthy of being called life, even if that life is synthetic, this is even more unaccepable, and ties into why the Reapers are the enemy in the first place, because they have no respect for free will or the sanctity of life. The synthesis option is downright horrific in many ways, forcing this bizzare, questionable transformation on the galaxy, and from the sound of what the star-child claims before you actually see the ending, it sounds like everyone, synthetic and organic, would be wiped out, and new combo life would form in their wake created by the star-child, which I, and my Shepard, would never accept, plus, I don't trust the reapers, nor their creator, so why would I give them power to synthesize all life in the galaxy.

4. The Crucible, what does it do? I think it was insane to try to create the Crucible without knowing what it does, especially in the face of an enemy like the reapers that can do things like indoctrinate people. There were so many times I wanted to have Shepard yell at people not to start building the damn thing until they knew what it does, because the whole thing could have been a trap left by indoctrinated agents for later cycles, which, in retrospect, it could very well have been, depending on your point of view of the current endings. Even if it wasn't something like that, if you don't know what it does, you can't properly control it tactically or safely deploy it, for all they knew it would blow up the entire galaxy using the mass relays to take the reapers out with them, or they needed to ensure all the reapers, or at least as many as possible, were present when it was used, as a one use weapon, or you might need to have some special weapons equipped on an accompanying fleet to rip through Reaper armor after it takes out the Reaper sheilds, and your own sheilds and eez0 based systems might be also taken out, not just that of the reapers, so you'd need redundant non-Eez0 reliant systems to take out the Reapers before they re-start their systems, or the thing may have killed all biotics and synthetics within range at the same time it kills the reapers, or it may cause the reapers to temporarily go berserk, so you'd want to use it in a system that has plenty of reapers, but is mostly unihabited with no fleets present, so that the reapers only destroy each-other rather than you. Whatever it is, you don't build technology like that when you don't understand it, this is related to many of the core lessons of the first game, and what Nazara tells you in the first game, and Legion in the 2nd game, regarding following tech paths set out by the Reapers.

5. The Crucible, the data has been sittin' there- this is perhaps even worse than the previous. I don't get how the data could still be sitting there undiscovered for so long. First of all, the reapers systematically wipe out evidence between cycles, so only evidence that they can't recognize or interpret and was placed after most of them left, like the beacons, should have remained, Illos was a secret hidden location, purged from Citadel records, Mars was not, the reapers specifically left humanity alone in the previous cycle, and should have purged the Mars databanks of anything related to the war against them. But worse than this, there is no reason why there would still be undecipherable Prothean data lying around still, especially anything vaguely technological, it is too valuable, and massive resources would have been put into recovering any technologies hidden in the databases, huge amounts of computing power and massive teams of scientists, and they would have made numerous back-ups as well, not just had it only in the original databanks like it was during the Mars mission, ready for Cerberus to steal. I don't care how many petabytes of data were in those archives, the installation wasn't big enough that they couldn't have found the worth of building even several larger installations to store backup copies in, and set up processing teams to datamine everything ASAP, especially while they are competing technologically with various Citadel races. Inability to accurately translate prothean can only go so far, given the universal aspects of schematic illustrations and mathematics. Something Liara could find within 6 months of searching... it just sounds too sketchy. The mars ruins were literally the biggest discovery of mankind basically... ever... they would have poured their full resources into understanding everything, especially after discovering the Citadel, competing races, and the suspicious fact that the Protheans are no longer around and nobody is quite sure what happened to them. Earlier implications from prior games was that the Mars base was only the simplest of scientific observation posts, relatively old in Prothean terms, used to observe early proto-humans, and all the data had already been extracted. I also seemed to have the impression from somewhere that the prothean language was used as a sort of universal language that helped initiate early translations and negotiations between humanity and the Citadel, as they both had the language at least semi-deciphered, it wasn't the prothean language that was the main hurdle of the beacon messages, but the Prothean mindset and culture and brain-wiring and brain-chemistry, as well as the fact that Shepard personally didn't know the prothean language, in fact, I seem to remember that Liara at least knows some Prothean as an archoeologist specialized on them and at Feros and Illos her being able to read and understand some prothean words, just not as well as Shepard who had the Cipher.

6. Stock Images and Multi-Colored explosions- this bespoke of serious laziness in development, Tali's face picture was like a big finger flipped off at the fans, she looked far too much like a human or space elf, rather than something more original, and had far too much hair for having been under that helmet, plus she seemed to be on Earth based on aspects of the background. The hand also didn't match Quarian proportions and form, instead looking like an awkward photoshop job (as it obviously was). They couldn't even bother to have actually set up a real face under her actual helmet, for us to see when she takes it off on Rannoch, instead only those who romanced her get the crappy photoshop stock photo thing. The idylic after-planet is yet another stock-photo based thing, and the multi-colored explosions were not only basically identical, but silly, demeaning from the solemnity of previous scenes like Anderson's death, and in the case of the Synthesis and control endings, it was questionable why any sort of explosion was involved, rather than just simple energy pulses, even if there was some sort of overload from the energy pulses, it couldn't have been too much effort to make it clear that it was an overload, and localize the explosions a bit more, as well as make them look more like explosions in space should, rather than the awkward ground based atmospheric looking explosions that many of them were, even from the Mass Relay.

7. Joker Joker, where is the Joker, Batman Batman, where is the Batman- Why is the Normandy fleeing from Random Explosion color A, and how did crew members X get on board before it attempts to do so? Why does joker have to go through dozens of menus to try to go faster? How do they safely 'crash?' land on mysterious garden world Z after this? Why does synthesis have trees that look like the leaves have large glowing circuit designs in them? How can crew members that presumably were killed in Harbinger's beam waltz out of the Normandy moments after the Crucible's explosion is done? Are there even any garden worlds within short conventional ME FTL range of Earth without using Mass Relays?

8. All my choices... are just worth points to the endings?- why don't my choices actually cause specific things to happen during the endings? Why can't we see different races and ships we recruited fighting the the reapers, or even help direct them or call upon them to help at key moments, in order to aid in the final outcomes? Shouldn't we have to ask fleets to sacrifice themselves to protect the Crucible, or help us approach the transport beam, or distract Harbinger? Shouldn't it be like the ME2 ending where tons of factors affect the outcome, each loyalty is tested, you have to pick the right people for the right roles? Does it really all come down to just the number of points we have?

9. MAKO vs. Hammerhead vs. neither vs. new- we might not have been promised ground vehicles, but we at least thought that Bioware learned their lesson about completely eliminating it when they wound up releasing the Hammerhead through DLC content. There were numerous missions where it would have been awesome to be down there in some kind of vehicle, or get to control a certain vehicle were were down there in anyway, like the big tanks on Tuchanka. Bioware got close a few times, such as controlling Atlus Mechs or static turrets, but it wasn't enough, and it was awkwardly placed. Plus with all the gunships flying around, it would have been nice to try out one of those at some point.

10. Harbinger beam-o-undodgeable doom- I heard somewhere that the developers originally intended the beam to be avoidable if you had high enough stuff brought to the final battle, and this would have even made sense, but even without that, you dodged similar beams on Rannoch already. I wouldn't have minded if depending on your scores and fleets available it determined weather Shepard and how many of your squad-mates survive the beam. I'd also have loved to fight a Harbinger controlled TIM or a small reaper guard inside the Citadel, since the Reapers supposedly took over the location and those bodies are all over the place. Also, what happened to all Shepard's awesome implants from ME2, and herstocks of medi-gel? Can't she treat some of her wounds on the way up? Perhaps she'd still be in bad condition, but she shouldn't still be bleeding that badly. It felt like we were forced to take the Harbinger hit just so that they could excuse a lack of final boss, leaving Kai Leng the closest thing to one, which he utterly failed at. A final boss wasn't completely necessary, and might have been 'too video gamey' but the near complete lack of opposition on the Citadel didn't really make much sense, and the 'no matter what you get hit by this beam' aspect really ruined the significance of all your previous hard work to gather fleets and ground forces and prepare your squad, and your 2.9 games worth of combat experience and cybernetic upgrades, not to mention the ability of Vanguard Shepards to virtually teleport if needed in order to dodge. Your infinite ammo handgun after that was an even bigger joke... also, I accidentally shot at Anderson a few times in the back mistaking him for TIM at the end, so it might have been nicer if the lighting was a bit better and it was easier to tell who was there, not that it mattered since he was invincible, but it might have been nice for Shepard do do something like recognize him as Anderson as soon as she sees him, rather than having that awkward approach where you can actually shoot at him, if with no result.

11. Star-Child Avatar- why does that kid have such weird 'you can't help me' lines back on Earth before he dies, why does Shepard have wonky dreams about him throughout the game, as if he's the only person she'd ever seen die? Really, it would have made more sense to have dreams about your lost squad-mates from Virmire and/or the suicide mission, or recent missions in the game, such as Mordin, Thane, etc. would have been more respectful of their sacrifices as well. Then the star-child thingy looks like the kid, and Shepard doesn't even ask why it chose that form, or at least why she perceives it as such, I would have much preferred it appearing as your love interest or a trusted ally than nameless nightmare creepy 'you can't help me' kid. Was that kid a hallucination from the beginning and you were already somewhat in contact with the Catalyst? If so, it would have been nice if he told us that. If not, why the kid? It cheapens the death of that kid, IMO if the kid was real, the nightmares didn't do that much, but the star-child thingy did. I also raged at not having a paragon or renegade interrupt to grab the damn kid and pull him along with you to save him back on Earth, but I don't care about that excessively, and wouldn't have minded him dying anyway, I'd still have liked more options about dealing with him. Also, it would have made more sense for the kid to actually trust a heroic paragon shepard who was a hero in the last two games and built up a positive reputation. That would have been an excellent opportunity to reward people who played through the first two games, to have the kid trust you if you are a paragon, or if you are a renegade, have the option to scare him into running off to join people evacuating. He might have died anyway as his shuttle was blown up, still making it an emotional moment, but the 'you can't help me' line was weird and stupid, especially for a kid previously seen playing with a toy Normandy to be saying so soon after the reaper attack started, maybe a month or two into the attack, not less than an hour afterwards, hopelessness doesn't settle in that quickly.

12. What happened to everyone afterwards? I really would have liked to know, even if it is just brief text saying bits about each race that died or survived, perhaps talking about memorials for the dead and such, and how people are re-building, and maybe bits about some of the surviving people you knew, squad-mates and such, even if you can't animate them, at least a fragment of text for closure, and if they're all dead, say it, rather than, 'oh, and The Shepard was a legend' being told by some grandparent to some kid. Perhaps if you lost to the Reapers, have it show some random new alien race uncover one of Liara's time capsules in the next cycle.

13. Happily Ever After- I don't think there should be any ending where _everyone_ survives, but I think if you played really well, there should be some paragon and some renegade path where it is possible for Shepard to get their happily ever after with at least one of the potential love interests, or at least be knocking back a cold one with Garrus or Joker or someone, after surviving. It should be the hardest endings to get, requiring very high fleet resources and such, and excellent performance on the final missions, but I still think it should be possible if stopping the Reapers is possible at all.

14. Bioware declarations and promises, false advertising- the game failed to live up to so many claims, as has been pointed out by numerous others. In particular, we didn't get the many-branching freewheeling story possibilities where the game would wildly diverge based on choices in previous games, nor did we have proper separation from multi-player, nor did we have a proper continuation of themes and closure of various plot-holes and mysteries (if anything far too many new ones were opened up). We didn't have the array of red herrings chased about the galaxy of possible ways to defeat the Reapers they originally were speaking of, and never warned us that this was changed, no, we had one method, and one method alone, the Catalyst and Crucible, which we poured everything into for the whole game, despite having no idea what it does until the last moments, by which point it appears most of us are wishing we'd never built it in the first place, if we'd even wanted to. There were no other 'possible anti-reaper weapons' we chased after, at least not ones that didn't tie back into the Crucible and Catalyst, no groups of rogue scientists inventing new anti-reaper weapons, no secret Salarian or Asari research projects creating super-dreadnaughts to fight the reapers with, barely any cases of Specters tracking down and assassinating indoctrinated individuals, relatively few indoctrinated individuals involved in the plot overall, etc.

15. Dummies R Us- There were also incidents of awkward stupidity and such like the Rachni queen getting captured by the Reapers despite hiding from everyone and not being recorded in galactic records with a clear location, and specifically preparing to help fight and avoid the reapers and indoctrination, or the lack of Normandy equivalent stealth ships by the Turians, who helped design the SR1 stealth systems to begin with, when even the Quarians managed to patch some stealth ships together.

16. Not Quite Renegade- renegade options seem to have become simply paragon lite in this game, often being downright snuggly bunny fuzzy niceness compared to previous games, rather than ruthlessly fighting for survival and making the most pragmatic choices, rather than taking the hard but more moral path, renegade has become paragon but not quite as sure of it in broody red. To a lesser degree along the same lines, some of the paragon interrupts don't really feel like such, punching people out rather than interrupting people with nice arguments or just grabbing them or something, and weirder stuff in some cases. And Shepard seems to have become surprisingly meek and agreeable even to stupid ideas compared to the previous games, even Paragon Shepard who was relatively more agreeable is now tending to simply just agree with people, rather than challenge them to take the harder moral choice, because it is right, and explain the consequences of people trying to take other choices. We are also left in the situation where stuff like saving the Council didn't really mean much, it doesn't really help ensure the council races will help Earth, no, you do the same piddling side missions either way, that they apparently just can't do themselves, or at least not properly, even though you should have already earned their trust by now, and be working on finding ways to stop the reapers, or perhaps using the Normandy's stealth and your reputation to serve as a sort of mobile war and diplomatic center while you do so. The council freaking owes paragon Shepard their lives, and spent tons of time shutting him down and denying the truth, despite all the signs, and didn't even properly prepare as a contingency in case he was right, or in preparation for a potential larger conflict with the Geth or the Terminus, perhaps incited by Shepard blowing up a Batarian star system, or dissappearances of so many human colonies provoking humans to attack the terminus systems believing them to be at fault, and provoking a war, or sings the geth, who they still blame for the Citadel assault, are still around and a serious potential threat, or that Cerberus has become more dangerous and possesses ridiculous resources, and drove Aria out of Omega, and has thrown the Terminus into chaos, and driven the Shadow Broker on the run (at least the Asari higher ups know this from their spying on Liara).

17. Kakliosaurs- I didn't get to see my resurrected Kakliosaurs ridden by Krogans fighting reaper ground forces! *cries manly tears*... okay, number 17 is more of a joke, but it would have been awesome!

[Forgomoth]

While I like the idea of a story that allows for a lot of speculation at the end. The speculation should be about minor details. That's where I think ME3's ending fails. It's TOO amorphous. Players shouldn't be left wondering about everything. There's no closure, there's no fulfillment. It's just like KotOR 2 all over again.

On a side note: Am I the only one who thinks that the music supports the Indoctrination Theory?

[clipped_wolf]

I wanted to see Shepard Jr, both the asari and human when possible (Miranda is sterile).
Also, being able to use maxed moral score to tell Starchild that it's ideas are dumb and that alternatives exist. I mean, the thing is at such a loss it is willing to let Shepard kill it. Come on, even a dying Shepard should have a few better ideas than the destruction of civilization.

[Trojan_33]

I know this is shameless but what are y'alls thought on my harbinger boss battle idea on pg 156? It's so easy to get buried in these walls of text (it's only about a paragraph long)

[Avalon Aurora]

18. Oh, I forgot one! The big one!- So we heard you were (not) threatened with destruction by Synthetics, who (don't) always kill their creators, the organics, so we decided to create synthetics out of your corpses to kill you and create more of themselves, and those synthetics also happened to take your one peaceful group of synthetics and enslave them to kill more organics! YAY! Starchild has really stupid circular 'logic' that no machine or rational person would accept, filled with a ton of false assertions and values claims that don't make sense and are unquantifiable, like chaos vs. order and such, implying order is superior, and being vague about both organics and synthetics being problems, and attacking the organics rather than the synthetics when their claimed objective is to save the organics. It seems more like, especially given first game conversations with Nazara, that they simply don't want to let anyone become more advanced than them, so they set up tech-path traps with Mass Effect and relays and the citadel littering the Galaxy, and then wipe everyone out when they reach a certain tech point or after a certain amount of time. Even if his claims made sense, his methods don't compared to his stated goals, and often conflict with prior actions and claims of the Reapers. Shepard deserves a will save to disbelieve or Red or Blue powers to smack down his failtastic failness of fail.

[Bereman08]

In the spirit of the "Enjoyed X but felt ___ about A,B" type of feedback I'll keep this focused on my initial reaction born out of my initial play-through and the strongest part of my frustration at that time.

To say that I enjoyed the Shepard/Ash romance arc would be an understatement. She had quickly become one of my favorite characters in ME1, and the build-up over three games to a satisfying pay-off was well done, in my opinion. Seeing Ash learn to trust Shepard again and finally reaching the point where it really felt like "this is the one" felt like one of the few places of comfort as the galaxy went to hell, and all the way up to the end I kept telling myself that Shepard was going to come back to her, that they weren't going to lose each other again. For me, Mass Effect is very much about the relationships and friendships more so than the galaxy wide issues...

Then I played through the end...and saw Ash climb out of the Normandy, alive (and apparently not fazed by the fact that Shepard was likely dead)...

And in this initial time playing through, I chose to destroy the Reapers with 4k+ EMS...and discovered that apparently Shepard lives.

I felt defeated at that point. Shepard had just killed the Reapers but lost the now peaceful Geth and EDI in the process, obliterated the Mass Relays, seen his love interest climb out of the Normandy on a random, unknown planet after being on the ground with me in the final battle (while the Normandy fleeing is never even explained), and now is separated once again in what seems to be a permanent situation.

Confused, defeated, and deflated, because what should have been a good moment of "Holy crap, Shepard lived!" became a rather depressing moment. It was not at all the feeling that should have followed the awesome emotional rollercoaster of epic that I personally found the rest of the game to be.

[Sean]

The ending can be good if, and only if, it is extended and made into either a dream or attempted indoctrination.


The current ending is filled with many plotholes that goes against all of the Mass Effect Universe.

The Reaper Space Brat directly damages the plot of Mass Effect 1. If that SpaceBrat (which is what I will always refer to that character as) is the Citadel then what was the point of Sovereign?

Why is it that there just happens to be a control the Reapers and a Destroy the Reapers option on the Citadel when it was said that the Crucible was designed after the Citadel and to be a part of it. Did the people who built the citadel know that they would need this?

Why did the SpaceBrat say that Shep was the first organic in that area? There are a few pieces of metal in that area with human characters (and English too).

The logic of the SpaceBrat is illogical since in that theory they are doing exactly what they said they are trying to prevent and it was made in ME3 that you can end the Geth vs Quarian battle and push for a romance between Joker and EDI. That "logic" that is said is then completely flawed. It isn't difficult to understand just idiotic.

Even the part right after the laser blast doesn't make sense, so if Shep, Anderson and the crawling soldier were both alive then why was it said that no one survived?

How did Anderson get ahead of Shep in the Citadel if he was behind him, there was only one path to the terminal?

Where did TIM come from?

In Arrival for ME2 it was made that if a Mass Relay explodes then the whole system is gone, so doesn't that mean that Shep just did mass genocide?

Casey Hudon lied, it wasn't an exaggeration or anything like that but it was a complete lie.
The ending was a choice between A, B, or C and they were all EXTREMELY similar except with a different color.

How did the squadmates I had on the last part of Priority: Earth somehow end up on the Normandy? That part really makes no sense and why was Joker leaving? How would he have known there was going to be a blast that destroyed the relays?

Even the Stargazer and Starchild bit completely devalued the story for all games.

That last dialogue pop up just seemed insulting, I understand that it wasn't made to be that way but that is just how I see it. I also know that is how many other people see it.

Even without all of that, the war assets seemed pointless. The Rachni never showed up and even the geth and quarians didn't do anything in the very last bit except when trying to get to Earth. There was no closure.

It was said that the ending would include the player's past actions going back to ME1 and there would be about 18 different endings. That did not happen. No choices were referanced post-laser blast.

I really hope a DLC will be out that is FREE, if it isn't then that is just wrong to do, that starts right when Shep wakes up under the rubble when choosing the Destroy option (why was that shown as red with Anderson, doesn't make sense) and then you can talk to Harbinger and do some more fighting and actually encounter TIM. Then end the game and have a choice that if you did everything right (like in ME2) you could come out of mostly intact.

If the ending stays how it is then that is really disheartening since I think Bioware is a great company and the ending really falls short on writing style. It has even been proven that 3 things in the game have been taken from other people's material. The ending is taken from Deus Ex include the color choices, the Starchild background is taken from a music video image, and even the Tali image is a reused Gettysburg stock image.

-------------------------

Most likely if there is a post-ending DLC that is made free then Bioware will be able repair the trust between it and its community. This would allow small item packs to be upped in price without anyone saying much about it since the ending was fixed for "free".


--------------------------------


Positives:

The rest of the game was great, a few other things like the fetch missions I didn't like so much but that was tolerable. The Conrad Vernor bit is one of my favorites since it referance many past ME missions and even the bug from ME2. Great job on that. It's just sad how so much of the good can be damaged by the bad.

Also, this is a very smalle thing but I think it's a bug. In my plotline I chose Liara. It seemed to import correctly even seeming to recognize the ending dialogue from Lair of the Shadow Broker, but close to the end it seemed to not recognize that and I had to choose the dialogue that "rekindled" it but it seemed to ignore the ending dialogue from LotSB. Just wanted to point that out.

More people would also be willing to buy from Bioware as they would see it as a brand that cares about its community.

Modifié par RX_Sean_XI, 21 mars 2012 - 12:28 .

[Ownedbacon]

This video does a nice job at showing what doesn't work with the ending
http://www.youtube.c...v=6M0Cf864P7E#!

Modifié par Ownedbacon, 21 mars 2012 - 12:24 .

[Jaraldur]

Avalon Aurora wrote...

I have numerous issues as well.

1. Reapers stealing the Citadel and taking it to Earth, everyone on citadel dead? Um, wasn't one of our war assets building up C-sec and the Citadel militia? Given how long the forces on earth held out, and how large the citadel is and how many people live there, I have a hard time seeing the Reapers taking the Citadel so easily, at least on ground level, I'm sure they'd beat pretty much any fleet guarding it so dominate at air level, but the Citadel is filled with tunnels and catacombs and buildings and stuff which would make it easy to evade reaper air support without forcing the Reapers to heavily damage, if not outright destroy the structure in order to get at everyone in a reasonable time-frame. There should have been survivors still fighting on the Citadel, or if there isn't, I'd like the game to show or explain to us why.

2. Multi-Player involvement, there is no good reason to force us to play multi-player to even help get better endings, I've heard claims that people have done checks and it is impossible to get the best endings without multi-player, but Bioware has claimed otherwise. I'd like to demand that they remove the whole Galaxy at War thing and make single player only reliant on Single Player, and multi-player be a totally separate thing, or at least that they really make sure and follow through that the multi-player isn't necessary for the best endings if they refuse to do that.

3. Challenging the star-child- I have no idea why the star-child was put in in the first place, or why we get given the Deux-Ex rip-off choices, especially the synthesis one, as I have no idea how Mass Effect's technology base would concieveably make that possible on a galactic scale as implied. I also don't know why the control or synthesis options cause destruction of any relays. But most of all, I have no idea why Shepard accepts the assertions of the star-child in the first place, there is just too much evidence to the contrary, at least depending on how your playthrough went, especially if you got peace between the Geth and the Quarians, the whole main argument of the star-child is nullified, if not reversed, meaning the Reapers or even any sort of 'solution' isn't neccesary. Worse, his whole chaos vs. order thing is total bunk IMO, there is nothing inherently wrong with chaos or order, although a balance between the two tends to be better than the extremes of either or, and he doesn't seem to get that, and you can't argue your points. Shepard has repeatedly challenged false-assertions of various people throughout the games, especially in ME1, then blandly accepts these ridiculous claims of the star-child at the end? It doesn't fit. None of the 'solutions' offered are even vaugely acceptable, my Shepard opposes the reapers partly because they don't just slaughter people, but they enslave many in the process and transform them and use indoctrination, she would in no way consider enslaving the reapers back to be an acceptable choice, even without the ridiculous side-effects of the destruction of mass relays, or worries about power corrupting, or the dubious nature of him likely dying to 'take control' of them, and who will control them afters he dies. The destroy option also destroys the Geth, who have proven to be great allies and innocent people with their own free will and sentience, worthy of being called life, even if that life is synthetic, this is even more unaccepable, and ties into why the Reapers are the enemy in the first place, because they have no respect for free will or the sanctity of life. The synthesis option is downright horrific in many ways, forcing this bizzare, questionable transformation on the galaxy, and from the sound of what the star-child claims before you actually see the ending, it sounds like everyone, synthetic and organic, would be wiped out, and new combo life would form in their wake created by the star-child, which I, and my Shepard, would never accept, plus, I don't trust the reapers, nor their creator, so why would I give them power to synthesize all life in the galaxy.

4. The Crucible, what does it do? I think it was insane to try to create the Crucible without knowing what it does, especially in the face of an enemy like the reapers that can do things like indoctrinate people. There were so many times I wanted to have Shepard yell at people not to start building the damn thing until they knew what it does, because the whole thing could have been a trap left by indoctrinated agents for later cycles, which, in retrospect, it could very well have been, depending on your point of view of the current endings. Even if it wasn't something like that, if you don't know what it does, you can't properly control it tactically or safely deploy it, for all they knew it would blow up the entire galaxy using the mass relays to take the reapers out with them, or they needed to ensure all the reapers, or at least as many as possible, were present when it was used, as a one use weapon, or you might need to have some special weapons equipped on an accompanying fleet to rip through Reaper armor after it takes out the Reaper sheilds, and your own sheilds and eez0 based systems might be also taken out, not just that of the reapers, so you'd need redundant non-Eez0 reliant systems to take out the Reapers before they re-start their systems, or the thing may have killed all biotics and synthetics within range at the same time it kills the reapers, or it may cause the reapers to temporarily go berserk, so you'd want to use it in a system that has plenty of reapers, but is mostly unihabited with no fleets present, so that the reapers only destroy each-other rather than you. Whatever it is, you don't build technology like that when you don't understand it, this is related to many of the core lessons of the first game, and what Nazara tells you in the first game, and Legion in the 2nd game, regarding following tech paths set out by the Reapers.

5. The Crucible, the data has been sittin' there- this is perhaps even worse than the previous. I don't get how the data could still be sitting there undiscovered for so long. First of all, the reapers systematically wipe out evidence between cycles, so only evidence that they can't recognize or interpret and was placed after most of them left, like the beacons, should have remained, Illos was a secret hidden location, purged from Citadel records, Mars was not, the reapers specifically left humanity alone in the previous cycle, and should have purged the Mars databanks of anything related to the war against them. But worse than this, there is no reason why there would still be undecipherable Prothean data lying around still, especially anything vaguely technological, it is too valuable, and massive resources would have been put into recovering any technologies hidden in the databases, huge amounts of computing power and massive teams of scientists, and they would have made numerous back-ups as well, not just had it only in the original databanks like it was during the Mars mission, ready for Cerberus to steal. I don't care how many petabytes of data were in those archives, the installation wasn't big enough that they couldn't have found the worth of building even several larger installations to store backup copies in, and set up processing teams to datamine everything ASAP, especially while they are competing technologically with various Citadel races. Inability to accurately translate prothean can only go so far, given the universal aspects of schematic illustrations and mathematics. Something Liara could find within 6 months of searching... it just sounds too sketchy. The mars ruins were literally the biggest discovery of mankind basically... ever... they would have poured their full resources into understanding everything, especially after discovering the Citadel, competing races, and the suspicious fact that the Protheans are no longer around and nobody is quite sure what happened to them. Earlier implications from prior games was that the Mars base was only the simplest of scientific observation posts, relatively old in Prothean terms, used to observe early proto-humans, and all the data had already been extracted. I also seemed to have the impression from somewhere that the prothean language was used as a sort of universal language that helped initiate early translations and negotiations between humanity and the Citadel, as they both had the language at least semi-deciphered, it wasn't the prothean language that was the main hurdle of the beacon messages, but the Prothean mindset and culture and brain-wiring and brain-chemistry, as well as the fact that Shepard personally didn't know the prothean language, in fact, I seem to remember that Liara at least knows some Prothean as an archoeologist specialized on them and at Feros and Illos her being able to read and understand some prothean words, just not as well as Shepard who had the Cipher.

6. Stock Images and Multi-Colored explosions- this bespoke of serious laziness in development, Tali's face picture was like a big finger flipped off at the fans, she looked far too much like a human or space elf, rather than something more original, and had far too much hair for having been under that helmet, plus she seemed to be on Earth based on aspects of the background. The hand also didn't match Quarian proportions and form, instead looking like an awkward photoshop job (as it obviously was). They couldn't even bother to have actually set up a real face under her actual helmet, for us to see when she takes it off on Rannoch, instead only those who romanced her get the crappy photoshop stock photo thing. The idylic after-planet is yet another stock-photo based thing, and the multi-colored explosions were not only basically identical, but silly, demeaning from the solemnity of previous scenes like Anderson's death, and in the case of the Synthesis and control endings, it was questionable why any sort of explosion was involved, rather than just simple energy pulses, even if there was some sort of overload from the energy pulses, it couldn't have been too much effort to make it clear that it was an overload, and localize the explosions a bit more, as well as make them look more like explosions in space should, rather than the awkward ground based atmospheric looking explosions that many of them were, even from the Mass Relay.

7. Joker Joker, where is the Joker, Batman Batman, where is the Batman- Why is the Normandy fleeing from Random Explosion color A, and how did crew members X get on board before it attempts to do so? Why does joker have to go through dozens of menus to try to go faster? How do they safely 'crash?' land on mysterious garden world Z after this? Why does synthesis have trees that look like the leaves have large glowing circuit designs in them? How can crew members that presumably were killed in Harbinger's beam waltz out of the Normandy moments after the Crucible's explosion is done? Are there even any garden worlds within short conventional ME FTL range of Earth without using Mass Relays?

8. All my choices... are just worth points to the endings?- why don't my choices actually cause specific things to happen during the endings? Why can't we see different races and ships we recruited fighting the the reapers, or even help direct them or call upon them to help at key moments, in order to aid in the final outcomes? Shouldn't we have to ask fleets to sacrifice themselves to protect the Crucible, or help us approach the transport beam, or distract Harbinger? Shouldn't it be like the ME2 ending where tons of factors affect the outcome, each loyalty is tested, you have to pick the right people for the right roles? Does it really all come down to just the number of points we have?

9. MAKO vs. Hammerhead vs. neither vs. new- we might not have been promised ground vehicles, but we at least thought that Bioware learned their lesson about completely eliminating it when they wound up releasing the Hammerhead through DLC content. There were numerous missions where it would have been awesome to be down there in some kind of vehicle, or get to control a certain vehicle were were down there in anyway, like the big tanks on Tuchanka. Bioware got close a few times, such as controlling Atlus Mechs or static turrets, but it wasn't enough, and it was awkwardly placed. Plus with all the gunships flying around, it would have been nice to try out one of those at some point.

10. Harbinger beam-o-undodgeable doom- I heard somewhere that the developers originally intended the beam to be avoidable if you had high enough stuff brought to the final battle, and this would have even made sense, but even without that, you dodged similar beams on Rannoch already. I wouldn't have minded if depending on your scores and fleets available it determined weather Shepard and how many of your squad-mates survive the beam. I'd also have loved to fight a Harbinger controlled TIM or a small reaper guard inside the Citadel, since the Reapers supposedly took over the location and those bodies are all over the place. Also, what happened to all Shepard's awesome implants from ME2, and herstocks of medi-gel? Can't she treat some of her wounds on the way up? Perhaps she'd still be in bad condition, but she shouldn't still be bleeding that badly. It felt like we were forced to take the Harbinger hit just so that they could excuse a lack of final boss, leaving Kai Leng the closest thing to one, which he utterly failed at. A final boss wasn't completely necessary, and might have been 'too video gamey' but the near complete lack of opposition on the Citadel didn't really make much sense, and the 'no matter what you get hit by this beam' aspect really ruined the significance of all your previous hard work to gather fleets and ground forces and prepare your squad, and your 2.9 games worth of combat experience and cybernetic upgrades, not to mention the ability of Vanguard Shepards to virtually teleport if needed in order to dodge. Your infinite ammo handgun after that was an even bigger joke... also, I accidentally shot at Anderson a few times in the back mistaking him for TIM at the end, so it might have been nicer if the lighting was a bit better and it was easier to tell who was there, not that it mattered since he was invincible, but it might have been nice for Shepard do do something like recognize him as Anderson as soon as she sees him, rather than having that awkward approach where you can actually shoot at him, if with no result.

11. Star-Child Avatar- why does that kid have such weird 'you can't help me' lines back on Earth before he dies, why does Shepard have wonky dreams about him throughout the game, as if he's the only person she'd ever seen die? Really, it would have made more sense to have dreams about your lost squad-mates from Virmire and/or the suicide mission, or recent missions in the game, such as Mordin, Thane, etc. would have been more respectful of their sacrifices as well. Then the star-child thingy looks like the kid, and Shepard doesn't even ask why it chose that form, or at least why she perceives it as such, I would have much preferred it appearing as your love interest or a trusted ally than nameless nightmare creepy 'you can't help me' kid. Was that kid a hallucination from the beginning and you were already somewhat in contact with the Catalyst? If so, it would have been nice if he told us that. If not, why the kid? It cheapens the death of that kid, IMO if the kid was real, the nightmares didn't do that much, but the star-child thingy did. I also raged at not having a paragon or renegade interrupt to grab the damn kid and pull him along with you to save him back on Earth, but I don't care about that excessively, and wouldn't have minded him dying anyway, I'd still have liked more options about dealing with him. Also, it would have made more sense for the kid to actually trust a heroic paragon shepard who was a hero in the last two games and built up a positive reputation. That would have been an excellent opportunity to reward people who played through the first two games, to have the kid trust you if you are a paragon, or if you are a renegade, have the option to scare him into running off to join people evacuating. He might have died anyway as his shuttle was blown up, still making it an emotional moment, but the 'you can't help me' line was weird and stupid, especially for a kid previously seen playing with a toy Normandy to be saying so soon after the reaper attack started, maybe a month or two into the attack, not less than an hour afterwards, hopelessness doesn't settle in that quickly.

12. What happened to everyone afterwards? I really would have liked to know, even if it is just brief text saying bits about each race that died or survived, perhaps talking about memorials for the dead and such, and how people are re-building, and maybe bits about some of the surviving people you knew, squad-mates and such, even if you can't animate them, at least a fragment of text for closure, and if they're all dead, say it, rather than, 'oh, and The Shepard was a legend' being told by some grandparent to some kid. Perhaps if you lost to the Reapers, have it show some random new alien race uncover one of Liara's time capsules in the next cycle.

13. Happily Ever After- I don't think there should be any ending where _everyone_ survives, but I think if you played really well, there should be some paragon and some renegade path where it is possible for Shepard to get their happily ever after with at least one of the potential love interests, or at least be knocking back a cold one with Garrus or Joker or someone, after surviving. It should be the hardest endings to get, requiring very high fleet resources and such, and excellent performance on the final missions, but I still think it should be possible if stopping the Reapers is possible at all.

14. Bioware declarations and promises, false advertising- the game failed to live up to so many claims, as has been pointed out by numerous others. In particular, we didn't get the many-branching freewheeling story possibilities where the game would wildly diverge based on choices in previous games, nor did we have proper separation from multi-player, nor did we have a proper continuation of themes and closure of various plot-holes and mysteries (if anything far too many new ones were opened up). We didn't have the array of red herrings chased about the galaxy of possible ways to defeat the Reapers they originally were speaking of, and never warned us that this was changed, no, we had one method, and one method alone, the Catalyst and Crucible, which we poured everything into for the whole game, despite having no idea what it does until the last moments, by which point it appears most of us are wishing we'd never built it in the first place, if we'd even wanted to. There were no other 'possible anti-reaper weapons' we chased after, at least not ones that didn't tie back into the Crucible and Catalyst, no groups of rogue scientists inventing new anti-reaper weapons, no secret Salarian or Asari research projects creating super-dreadnaughts to fight the reapers with, barely any cases of Specters tracking down and assassinating indoctrinated individuals, relatively few indoctrinated individuals involved in the plot overall, etc.

15. Dummies R Us- There were also incidents of awkward stupidity and such like the Rachni queen getting captured by the Reapers despite hiding from everyone and not being recorded in galactic records with a clear location, and specifically preparing to help fight and avoid the reapers and indoctrination, or the lack of Normandy equivalent stealth ships by the Turians, who helped design the SR1 stealth systems to begin with, when even the Quarians managed to patch some stealth ships together.

16. Not Quite Renegade- renegade options seem to have become simply paragon lite in this game, often being downright snuggly bunny fuzzy niceness compared to previous games, rather than ruthlessly fighting for survival and making the most pragmatic choices, rather than taking the hard but more moral path, renegade has become paragon but not quite as sure of it in broody red. To a lesser degree along the same lines, some of the paragon interrupts don't really feel like such, punching people out rather than interrupting people with nice arguments or just grabbing them or something, and weirder stuff in some cases. And Shepard seems to have become surprisingly meek and agreeable even to stupid ideas compared to the previous games, even Paragon Shepard who was relatively more agreeable is now tending to simply just agree with people, rather than challenge them to take the harder moral choice, because it is right, and explain the consequences of people trying to take other choices. We are also left in the situation where stuff like saving the Council didn't really mean much, it doesn't really help ensure the council races will help Earth, no, you do the same piddling side missions either way, that they apparently just can't do themselves, or at least not properly, even though you should have already earned their trust by now, and be working on finding ways to stop the reapers, or perhaps using the Normandy's stealth and your reputation to serve as a sort of mobile war and diplomatic center while you do so. The council freaking owes paragon Shepard their lives, and spent tons of time shutting him down and denying the truth, despite all the signs, and didn't even properly prepare as a contingency in case he was right, or in preparation for a potential larger conflict with the Geth or the Terminus, perhaps incited by Shepard blowing up a Batarian star system, or dissappearances of so many human colonies provoking humans to attack the terminus systems believing them to be at fault, and provoking a war, or sings the geth, who they still blame for the Citadel assault, are still around and a serious potential threat, or that Cerberus has become more dangerous and possesses ridiculous resources, and drove Aria out of Omega, and has thrown the Terminus into chaos, and driven the Shadow Broker on the run (at least the Asari higher ups know this from their spying on Liara).

17. Kakliosaurs- I didn't get to see my resurrected Kakliosaurs ridden by Krogans fighting reaper ground forces! *cries manly tears*... okay, number 17 is more of a joke, but it would have been awesome!

18. Oh, I forgot one! The big one!- So we heard you were (not) threatened with destruction by Synthetics, who (don't) always kill their creators, the organics, so we decided to create synthetics out of your corpses to kill you and create more of themselves, and those synthetics also happened to take your one peaceful group of synthetics and enslave them to kill more organics! YAY! Starchild has really stupid circular 'logic' that no machine or rational person would accept, filled with a ton of false assertions and values claims that don't make sense and are unquantifiable, like chaos vs. order and such, implying order is superior, and being vague about both organics and synthetics being problems, and attacking the organics rather than the synthetics when their claimed objective is to save the organics. It seems more like, especially given first game conversations with Nazara, that they simply don't want to let anyone become more advanced than them, so they set up tech-path traps with Mass Effect and relays and the citadel littering the Galaxy, and then wipe everyone out when they reach a certain tech point or after a certain amount of time. Even if his claims made sense, his methods don't compared to his stated goals, and often conflict with prior actions and claims of the Reapers. Shepard deserves a will save to disbelieve or Red or Blue powers to smack down his failtastic failness of fail. 

Great and complete feedback!, has all my doubts    +1 

[Valdimier]

As many people said before I would like to see the following.

1. Closer for my Shepard and my teammates.
2. And Yeah, I am a **** because I want the possibility of achieving a happy ending with my Shepard alive and with his crew an LI. Even if I have to play the crap out of this game.
3. I also want a really bad ending, when you play like ****. You know, where everybody dies and the Reaper win.
4. I want the feeling that whatever I did in all three games, even it is only the mayor decisions, had an impact at the outcome.

All this will follow the awesome final battle that will concur after Shepard wakes up after his inner fight against indoctrination

[Ytook]

This is partly copied then added to from a previous post of mine on a different thread, also my ideas are inspired by an excellent video which for the life of me I cannot find again, for which I am very sorry:

I personally feel that even if the ending had wildly different cutscenes the options given completly break away from what the series stands for both philosophically and structurally. Mass effect through all three games is about unity and the acceptance of difference, in 1 and 2 you are uniting your disperate crew for a common purpose and throughout 3 you are uniting the entire galaxy.

In the end this is completely thrown out the window, even if you ignore the plot holes, the three options you are given are to take a level of control you spent the first game stopping Saren from having and the next two doing the same to TIM. The synthesis option is unity through uniformity, which goes completely against the philosophy of the entire series (especialy the rest of 3), in many ways you could see the fight against the reapers as the ultimate expresion of the fight against unity through uniformity. Then the destroy option has you killing all synthetic life for no reason.

On top of all that the star childs logic and the justification for the reapers is hideously flawed, not only is it a circular argument to which his reaper solution is a self fulfiling prophacy anyway (don't forget that the only reason the Geth attacked Eden Prime and the citadel was because of the reapers), but the idea that synthetics will always inevitably turn on organics is proved completely false not only by every conversation you have with Legion and the Geth and the Quarians cooperation in the battle that is happening around you at that very moment but also by the conversation you have with EDI barely 5 minuets before that scene.

Add again the mechanical problems of giving people a deus ex type ending which the series has always avoided, or Shepard suddenly blindly following logic he/she know to proveably wrong.

Personally I feel the only way to fix the ending and retain what is already there is to follow the indoctrination theory, even if this was not planned, it fits perfectly and could easily then lead on to a different ending.

I like the idea that the crucible was a trap all along, Shepards indoctrination and the crucible was a long game that the reapers played to get into the head of the leader that has united the galaxy (and the reapers were actually very scared of since your actions in me1 as the reapers know they cannot face a united galaxy, hence their use of the collectors in me2 to study humans and huridly bolster their forces, and of-course kill Shepard). All of it culminating in the complete indoctrination of that leader and the bringing of all the anti reaper resistance into one big death trap, where they could wipe out the forces of the galaxy and easily harvest what remains after demoralizing the fleet by taking Shepard.

After all the eapers are not indestructible, and Javik says the Protheans stood no chance because they were too divided and centred on Prothean dominance. For me personally I would have the end halucination decide whether Shepard lives or dies at the end, if you see through the deception and go for the destroy option you survive the final battle (possibley a boss fight against harbinger) after a few missions breaking the indoctrination if you went with synthesis or control, and some reuniting forces in London if not. There would be no big final choice (for reasons listed below) instead your war assessts and coices throughout the thre games effect what happens and how succesful you are (if at all). For example squad mates could die if you do not have the Rachnii to help at some point, or if the Geth and the Quarians don't unite. In the end you would defeat the reapers through your united military you spent the game building not through some illogical 'I win beam'. Then a conclusion that tells you what happens to the galaxy, and your surviving squad mates, this needn't be complex cgi or in game (though that would of-course be nice), text would do fine.

In my opinion I don't feel there needs to be a big 'choice', big end choices of epic scale naturally invalidate everything you have done before (unless pulled of perfectly) as its ramifications are so huge as to eclipse or literally eradicate everything you have done previously. I think it should come down to whether you defeat the reapers, how desisive that defeat was, how costly it was, whether squad members or shepard dies and then see the effect of this and your other choices on the galaxy and the many characters you have come to know and love. No big end choice but a culmination of your narrative.

I know all this has probably been said before, and thanks to anyone who gets to the end of this, and if there is anyone from Bioware reading this then an even bigger thankyou.

Edit: Found the video I mentioned 
  Obviously my idea differs with his a bit (I don't think you need to scrap the ending thats there just use the indoctrination theory) but watching it again it seems my ideas are more influenced by his than I imagined =P, so if you like the idea than be sure to thank him.

Modifié par Ytook, 21 mars 2012 - 12:43 .

[Abreu Road]

What I liked:

Pretty much everything, but most of all, Dr. Mordin Solus achieving redemption over his genophage "curse". IMO, that is one, if not THE most powerful moment in gaming history. Feeling sorry for not being able to study seashells and his last line (not the scientist salarian song, but) the "Genophage cured. Krogan free. New Beggining... to all of us" is simply fantastic.

Also:

- Tali finally meeting her homeworld

- Being able to help peace between Geth and Quarians

- "This unit has a soul?", "the answer is... yes, Legion"

- Urdnot Wrex rushing towards the enemies screaming his name and reclaiming his planet.

- Grunt holding the line for Shepard, taking out dozens of rachnis by himself and emerging alive from the cave

- "Square root of 906.01 equals to...", "30.1", "Commander Shepard?"

- Liara's time capsule

- Drunk Tali

- Drunk Tali teasing Javik

- Read a drell bible to Thane just to find that the prayer was intended to Shepard, not to him.

- The final joining between Liara and Shepard.

- Final confrontation between Illusive Man and Shepard is on dialogue whell, and not in battle.

- Helping EDI to understand how humans and organics think and act.

This last one is also one of the most fantastic themes in Mass Effect saga. Helping EDI and Legion to comprehend organic behaviour and watching them turning more and more "alive" every moment we talk to them. We can even see Legion shamed for confessing that "they" lied to Shepard. Watching EDI changing her own way of acting and thinking of self preservation to an atittude to preserve other life forms that she cared or loved, even if that means that she had to sacrifice herself.

This leads to what I did not like:

- After discussing for the entire game (and also, ME2) the difference between organics and synthetics, and helping achieve peace between them, also, let's not forget helping EDI and Legion fully understand the meaning of free will and being organic, we face a god like AI who tell us that synthetics always will atack organics for not being able to understand them... which we help they do the exact opposite few hours before.

Really, not giving the player to drop this argument to godchild was a total game breaker.

- Not being able to fight or at least confront Harbinger. He is mentioned just once in the game and 5 seconds later give us killer ray and drops off.

- Garrus and others Squadmates swearing to me that they will follow me to hell itself in this fight... just to abandon me and run away like chicken to the Normandy. Why did I've helped him with the salarian doctor on ME1 and his loyalty mission in ME2? Just to have him abandon me on the most crucial and important moment in galaxy's history?

Look Bioware, I dont even think that retiring and raising a dozen blue alien girls or settling in Rannoch with Tali is an decent or meningful ending to this series.

I can deal with Shepard sacrificing himself/herself to save the galaxy, but at least give us the oportunity to see what we did and choose in the entire series turned out to be in the ending. This entire journey with those characters, living a little bit of their lives, experiencing their fears and their hopes was just for what? War Assets?

What you did is reduce 5 years and hundreds hours of choices to Genocide Blue, Genocide Red and Genocide Green. 'Cause, you know, you told us about exploding relays and what happens to a system when they do that. And Normandy crew eventually dies on starvation (the dextro-aliens first, probably), unable to rebuild a civilization from just a few individuals and with only military ration for food. Virgil himself told us about that, after those few protheans blocked the signal on the Citadel Relay.

I dont know what is the worst, if the terrible endings or the fact that you destroyed the mythology yo've created yourselves.

Modifié par Abreu Road, 21 mars 2012 - 12:47 .

[jdtungsten]

I want to start my post off with giving some background on
my experience and feelings of the Mass Effect series because it should show why
I feel the way I do. I may be different than others on here as I started play
the Mass Effect series when the second game as it receive good reviews and I
needed some games for the X-Box I just bought. I bought both games so I could
play from the beginning. What I got in the first game was a game with great
world building and some interesting characters. Some of the gameplay was a
little tedious however the story that was going on made up for this because it
was very intriguing and made me want to know more. But my over all favor part
about the game had to be the alien races’ backgrounds specifically the Quarians
and Krogan. Which also lead to me like the alien crew more than the human crew.
So the first Mass Effect game for me turned out to be a good game with some
characters that were a little flat or underdeveloped but I liked it enough to
move on to the next game. Mass Effect 2 actually improved on the problems with
the game play being tedious which is good but the crowning achievement of this
series is what happens with the crew. With the loyalty missions the crew became
more developed than they were in the first game and many became friends to me
as the player. Also I started a romance with Tali believing I would lead to me
seeing her true face and during the wooing process I actually fell for Tali and
really cared more about her than what was behind the mask. We all this it was
sad when my crew did make it out the suicide mission without a causality as I
lost Mordin in the process which was sad and I never thought that a video game
would ever make you care so much about the characters in it to make you feel
real emotion for them. This is what I felt made things in Mass Effect 3 great
because I really cared about my crew mates and events on their homeworlds got
me a little emotion especially on Rannoch. The only way I can describe the
scene between Tali and Shepard, after he brings together the Quarians and the
Geth, is “hauntingly beautiful” as it was so beautiful it was haunting me in my
everyday life. Also that scene got me a little depress as I realized the game
will probably end with Shepard sacrificing himself to save the galaxy leaving
Tali, who has been through so much but getting back her homeworld, without the
person who she loves and got her through all this. These are the best things
about the game series and I feel transcends the medium.




However, the end (the end being scenes on the Citadel/Crucible)
of Mass Effect 3 is marred by what was great about the series in my opinion. I
did like aspects of the ending but it was rather flawed. Some of the flaws come
from the AI boy/Catalyst as he is very unreliable. First, he calls himself the
catalyst but a catalyst increases the rate of a reaction and all he does is
explain the choices. So this is either a misnomer or just bad writing because
Shepard is in fact the catalyst not the AI boy. On top this, the AI boy is unreliable
narrator as one of the first things he says, at least in my ending, “Perhaps I
control the reapers.” Thus making him vague and untrustworthy so everything he
says after that I don’t really trust for the most part. But the most flawed
part of the ending is what happens after the Crucible is set off. That’s when
the Normandy gets stranded on
some unknown jungle planet and with this there is no closure to their future.
And as I previously stated I care a lot for my crew so knowing their fates
means more to me than knowing Shepard’s. Also seeing a breath from what looks
to be Shepard’s body makes little sense if this is a literal ending but if it
turns out the ending was just a dream/indoctrination then this isn’t even an
ending at all and the player has to imagine their own ending.




So to satisfy myself and others with similar feelings I
present what I feel would be a simple fixed endings.




Reapers Win Ending: I feel there is a similar ending in the
game so maybe this change is not needed. But this is how I would have done it. The
Crucible is set off but the only thing that happen is the Crucible and Citadel
explode. Soldiers on the ground see the explosion and realize nothing happened.
There are scenes of individuals seem to lose hope and allow Reapers to
incinerate them. Then other retreat to ships to get away one being the Normandy
but all ships are cut down by the Reapers those completely this cycle. The End.




Bittersweet Ending: Shepard sets off the Crucible with an
explosion engulfing him. A signal is sent out that stops the Reapers. As the
Reapers fall, the united soldiers raise their arms in celebration but Shepard’s
crew notice the explosion of the Citadel/Crucible and they hang their heads in
sadness knowing Shepard was there. The next scene, will have two coffins both
with Alliance flags over them. The
camera zooms out, revealing a podium and behind the two coffins a picture of
Shepard and Anderson. In background, there are thousand of coffins and in the
foreground there is an audience of all different lifeforms. Admiral Hackett
approaches the podium and gives a long eulogy which encapsulates the events of
the Mass Effect series. The eulogy becomes a voiceover with scenes of all
present and former living crewmates are shown on there respective planets or
doing something that brings closure to them. These scenes would include Tali on
Rannoch building her home, Garrus on Palaven directing his people in a rebuild,
Liara aiding refuge Asari, Jack teaching her students more about using their
biotic powers, Jacob holding his child, Miranda and her sister happy together,
Wrex and Grunt help build a statue of Shepard and possibly Mordin out of Reaper
parts on Tuchanka, Ashley and James excepting there roles as Spectre and N7.
The final scene should be of the love interest having a longing look in the sky
to show mourning of Shepard possibly have a picture of Shepard in his/her hand.
In the case of Tali, she will have the rock she was given and close her hands
around it. The End.




Happy Ending: Shepard is about to set off the crucible but
hears a voice yell “SHEPARD!” It is Shepard’s love interest on the Normandy.
Shepard sets off the crucible and jumps into the Normandy.
Garrus then say the line “Always have to be the hero, Shepard” or something
like that. Cut of the Reapers deactivating and soldiers celebrating. The next
scene would have the present Normandy
crew being honored by the leaders of all the races and the Alliance.
In the crowd all living former crew members can be seen. Cut to a scene where
Shepard is looking at a wall of names or pictures of everyone who was died in
the conflict specifically Anderson,
Kaiden/Ashley, Thane, Legion, and Mordin. The love interest wraps his/her arm
around Shepard and the walk away. The scene should be love interest specific
and since the love interest in my game is Tali I will use her as an example. Shepard
and Tali look out at horizon of Rannoch behind them is a home. The camera zooms
into the home and on the desk is the rock Shepard gave Tali and a picture of
them as a couple. The End.




I hope this tells others why I feel the ending needs to be
change and what would be satisfying. I do hope my voice will be heard.   

Modifié par jdtungsten, 21 mars 2012 - 12:44 .

[MarqueAZ]

Why didn't Shepard simply opt to destroy the Citadel and preserve the relay network?

If the AI in the Citadel is controlling the Reapers, and the Reapers have already taken over the Citadel.. would a viable alternative to choosing one of the AI's paths would be for Shepard to order the fleets to destroy the Citadel? Wouldn't that have destroyed the AI controlling them?

I assume everyone in the Citadel is dead and/or indoctrinated, since the Reapers had the time to close it up and use the beam on Earth to move people inside there to be processed.

My suggestion for a "bittersweet" ending would be for Shepard to sacrifice the Citadel in order for the Reapers to lose their master, leaving them vulnerable. Then, depending on your EMS, they're able to sweep you off the Citadel before it's completely destroyed or you're left there to die, knowing that you saved the rest of the galaxy.

This would leave the Mass Relay network still available, allowing the survivors and remaining species to band together and build a new galactic hub to take place where the Citadel was? I think that would be an awesome closure to the game. I don't know if that would work.

My random thoughts in summary: Why not just say "screw you Starchild!", ask the fleets to destroy the Citadel (instead of the Relays, which cripples the galaxies), have that event thus affect the Reapers in a way that allows the fleets to destroy them with greater ease, have Shepard able to escape/die depending on your EMS, and the closure is a ceremony that salutes those who sacrificed their lives to stop the Reapers and shows all the species pledging to rebuild the Citadel?

Modifié par MarqueAZ, 21 mars 2012 - 12:45 .

[DannieCraft]

Dear BioWare, Mass Effect Core Team, Jessica, Chris and everyone I have not mentioned,

I previously tried to compile a short list of what I think need changed, and how. I still stand by what I have written. I have some new points I'd like to write here though, rather than just giving suggestions to changes, suggestions to how to make closure for both fans that enjoy the current ending (yes, they exist!) and the ones that want the endings to change.

Simple answer is, optional ending DLC. Everyone is happy. I know that our feedback is helping you to determine what DLC to focus on. I think it is clear that an ending DLC is in the highest of demands from your audience right now.

My own suggestion is that you do not change the current ending, but add to it and fill out the gaps. Reason being that Casey have said that the game was meant to end this way, and I respect the Core Team. You have given me far more hours of enjoyable gameplay than any other game company. Mass Effect is part of me, it means that much, and that is also why it was so painful to see an ending to the greatest trilogy of all time that did not bring enough closure.

When I say closure, I do not necessarily mean that I wanted Shepard to settle down and retire on earth with Ashley and have 3 kids running around with Normandy model ships and Shepard running after them yelling "Hey, where'd you get those... that's from my collection!" (although I wouldn't mind any mini Shepards running around at all)... No, by closure I only mean that I want to see the effects of the choices I have made, not up to the point I make the final choice in the citadel, but after I make the choice in the citadel.

What happens to the citadel itself? was it destroyed, all life onboard? The funerals, the speeches, the emotions, the news reports, the rebuilds, people coming together, children in the streets, new generations, where the crew goes from there, what happens to the love interest. Your choices throughout can have had a major impact on all of these things. My counting, it is over 30 minutes of epilogue movie, or if Shepard survives, still playable and with "wheel"choices of conversation...

Sincerely

[MordinShepard]

I would honestly just enjoy closure in the ending. A way to look back and see what you did in the game mattered. I want to see the repercussions of your decisions after you defeat the reapers: Do the krogan takover the world, what happens to the geth/quarians after the fight with the reapers. Sure I would appreciate an ending where shepard lives and makes little blue babies with Liara but i agree with making it a difficult goal. Even if shepard dies i would like some cutscenes explaining what happened to everyone afterward on an individual scale and a galactic scale

[Nadtsat]

For me, indoc theory (indoctrination dream starting from Harbinger's laser blast to Shep's breath) is one of your only way of salvaging this without too much trouble. An ending from there on out would be satisfactory to most people I believe.

Because as pointed out by many others, if indo is not true, then the current ending doesn't make any sense when put in perspective with the whole series.

regards,

[Sabrestrikealpha]

Another person here on the new ending bandwagon. Unlike some, I don't have much of a desire for a perfect "happy" ending, since I basically went into ME3 assuming that Shepard was going to die anyway. I could see it working like DA:O. One option could provide a devil's bargain where Shepard survives when he otherwise wouldn't (like the Morrigan-child option in DA:O). If you don't pick that, then the choice is between Shepard dying or having one or more other squad members die in his place.

Basically, I want an ending that allows for the series to continue forward in some logical manner. I know that Bioware has said they want to do more in the ME universe, but the ending we have seems to foreclose that, since there are now 1) no mass relays and also potentially 2) everyone forced into some sort of organic/synthetic hippie commune.

The only way I could see to continue with the series at all after this is if they told stories taking place in the past and frankly, I'd really rather they not do that. They already did that with the KOTOR series and it would seem stale to do it again.

Other stuff I'd like to see in future content:

1. The return of film grain. 'Cause film grain is awesome.
2. A better quest log and/or inventory. Managing the minor quest items is a pain right now. I never know when I've found something that can be turned in or not.

[Ghost Pirate LeChuck]

To be honest, all the ending really needs is to cut the final scene with the Normandy's ridiculous escape and crash landing.  It's like Harrison Ford's absymal voiceover at the end of the original cut of Blade Runner - remove it, and the finished product is all the better for it.  Less is more.  You wanted people to be discussing/debating the ending, and had you cut that scene, that's likely what you would have achieved. 

However, here's how I would have ended it given everything that occured up to that point:
I already subscribe to the indoctrination theory, so I'd have had it that at the final point, the crucible is revealed in a final conversation with Harbinger (not the ghost kid) to be a machine that will pacify all intelligent organic life, thus allowing the Reapers to easily complete their cleansing of the galaxy.

The catalyst would be the most exceptional specimen of organic life: Shepard (which would also explain the lengths Cerberus went to to revive Shepard in ME2). But during the final moments, your love interest (or if you lack one, your best friend: either Garrus or Liara) manages to follow you up to the Citadel, and talk you into considering another option: Re-calibrating (Garrus is probably best for this! ) the Crucible to send out a pulse to destroy the reapers - much like you talk Saren into killing himself in ME1 ... but the catalyst, Shepard, is still required. Shepard sacrifices him/herself to save the entire galaxy, sharing his/her final moments with the person s/he cares most about; or s/he dooms the galaxy to another cycle of destruction.

Now, personally I'd stop there. But for many fans that may not be enough. So, post credits you could then cut to scenes of Liara as the Shadow Broker co-ordinating the revival of Thessia; the birth of Wrex's first child/brood; the Geth and Quarian working together to rebuild on Rannoch; and Garrus, alone at the bar, but with two drinks in front of him.  Or, if you gave in allowed the reapers to continue, you could show a scene about 30,000 years later depicting a new race 'discovering' the Citadel for the first time, followed by the camera zooming out to show a lone reaper observing from a distance, and reporting to to the rest of the reaper fleet.  The name of this reaper? Shepherd. 

Modifié par Ghost Pirate LeChuck, 21 mars 2012 - 01:04 .