7052 réponses à ce sujet

[Mygunufac3]

 First time posting on here.  



First thing's first, I don't find anything
terribly wrong with the ending. I don't think the conclusion of Mass Effect
could have lived up to many of our expectations in no small part due the
passion and commitment that we have had over the trilogy of our favorite
series.



However in hindsight of that, there are flaws in
this game and small gripes I would like to see rectified. 






The only valid complaint in the ending I can find myself believing is the plot holes left unexplained
(joker leaving with Normandy, Etc..) in saying that, I don't believe in
any circumstances that Bioware should modify the ending they already gave
us. In doing so would endanger their integrity as game developer and
 would encourage other devs to follow suit should they cave to consumer
pressure. I do believe however that they can do no wrongdoing in adding to
the ending that they have already constructed. Add the little things in
that give the ending more congruency to the storyline. An ending that
doesn't require the player to conjure fabrications to understand. That is
what I believe Mass Effect 3 will benefit from most.

Another gripe I have with the game is while the third installation of the Mass Effect universe has the
most dialogue of the series, the dialogue in actual cutscenes has been
severally diminished. Personally I enjoy watching the animations of the
character I am conversing with and how their facial expressions will reciprocate
in response to my actions. It seems Bioware went for the quantity over
quality development plan, very uncharacteristic of Bioware to make that decision.

And finally Mass Effect 3 did little justice to the dozen companions that were your squad that was Mass Effect
2. For example, Jack was the most intriguing love interest in the second
installment, I will spare you the details of my reasoning but in short I
was disheartened after spending no more than 10 minutes with Jack in the latest installment. That’s not to insinuate
that I was disappointed by my other LI such as Liara, truly though I believe
Bioware gave us a choice: rekindle your relationship with an original Mass
Effect LI or remind yourselves what appearance our Mass Effect 2 squad
would make; a cameo.
[/list]

In retrospect of all this, I’d like to thank Bioware for what has become my
greatest gaming experience to date. Thank you for allowing me to get lost in a
world that gave me an experience like no other.

Modifié par Mygunufac3, 22 mars 2012 - 08:54 .

[Megakoresh]

Are you saying you are able to read 177 pages of feedback?
I doubt it. I think the idea with the poll, like you have for the ending, is a much more viable form of collecting feedback.

Modifié par Megakoresh, 22 mars 2012 - 10:13 .

[Bahoogasmif]

Dear Bioware, this series is obviously something special in that it makes people care about what happens to their companions. it makes you feel like they are right there next to you.
Now having said that, I believe we should not only see our war assets in action, but have the option (only if you do well and have enough assets.) to say for instance, help tali build that house on rannoch. just give us the option to help rebuild the galaxy.
Thank you for listening to your fans bioware. it means the world to us.
ps. deleting the godchild woud do wonders.
 

[campozx6]

The indoc theory should stand. This is a crucial part of the MEU. It brings the reapers to life, the fact that people played all 3 games to destroy the reapers and end up being indoctrinated themselves by not choosing the destroy option. That whole sequence after the laser hit makes perfect sense if indoc theory stands and thus do not need any further changes or explanations. In fact it will show just how creative the bioware team was by using their own codex explanations to 100% effectiveness.

Here is my suggested ending dlc:

If people chose the other two choices over destroy they would have been indoctrinated. So pick it up from where shep wakes up indoctrinated after the laser hit in london but injured so can't really do anything to stop hammer team, then the player can maybe continue as Anderson, (while sheps team mates rush shep back to the shelter of the buildings with him rambling on about they should not destroy the reapers, he can conrol them or join them and save earth( depending which option of the 2 the player chose)

Anderson can then face off with TIM in a very similar way to ending that played off in sheps head. Anderson can open the citidel push a button and the reapers are destroyed. Shep wakes up from the indoctrination and mass effect ends with various decision driven ending scenes with all your team mates.

If the destroy option was taken, then shep can just replace Anderson in my ending above mentioned. Again the game can end with decision driven(choices made over the whole trilogy) ending scenes.

Modifié par campozx6, 22 mars 2012 - 09:41 .

[GodChildInTheMachine]

I know some people thought the ending elevated the narrative with grand themes... but I really don't. I feel like it really isn't very thoughtful or philosophically valid, especially when taken in context with the empirical evidence and exposition that the rest of the trilogy focuses on.

The Space Racist Demiurge presents to you an argument which is actually quite philosophically and morally bankrupt. His supposition is that diverse forms of life are motivated purely by their physical composition and not by self determination. One of my favorite things about the rest of the three games was the theme of cultural intermingling and the cooperation of diverse peoples.

The synthesis ending is particularly bad... nevermind how a magical space beam is going to fuse all organic and synthetic life into a hybrid singularity. You actively destroy diversity and violate the rights and free will of literally every being in the galaxy in order to create a eugenicised master race. That is pretty far out there.

His logic is flawed in other areas as well. Why didn't they just create this master race to begin with if it would create galactic peace, instead of coming by every 50,000 years to wage an inefficient holocaust on advanced races in a war that could take centuries as it did with the Protheans?

Really my biggest problem with the endings is that there are far too many holes like this in their logic. The number one change that I would like to see if you absolutely have to keep the Space Racist Demiurge is at the very least the option to tell him to shove it because he's literally nothing more than some kind of racially motivated space warlord that ethnically cleanses the galaxy every aeon because he's too dumb to have thought up a better way to bring order given the millions of years he's had to think about it.

Thank you for listening, BioWare, it really does mean a lot.

p.s. Please don't shoehorn in a happy ending. Just make a good one that doesn't force me to question its logical validity, even if you have to trick me to do so.

[DarthSyphilis59]

Don't know if I already posted this:

[Skyvale]

Dear Bioware,

As you requested, here's my constructive criticism on the Mass Effect 3 endings.

My criticisms can be divided into two categories--my issues from a storytelling standpoint, and from a business standpoint.  I'll address those from a business standpoint first.

The broken promises--why I bought the game, and why the product I paid for wasn't delivered.

Bioware, if you regard only one part of this letter, let this be it.  Here's several quotes given by Bioware staff in interviews prior to ME3's release, that explain exactly why we are dissatisfied with the endings:

"As Mass Effect 3 is the end of the planned trilogy, the developers are not constrained by the necessity of allowing the story to diverge, yet also continue into the next chapter.  This will result in a story that diverges into wildly
different conclusions based on the player's actions in the first two chapters."
--Casey Hudson

"We wouldn't do it any other way.  How could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and then be forced into a bespoke ending that everyone gets?  But I can't say any more than that..."
--Mike Gamble

"Whether you're happy or angry at the ending, know this: it is an ending.  Bioware will not do a 'Lost' and leave fans with more questions than answers after finishing the game."
--Mike Gamble

"Pretty much everything that people want to see wrapped up, or to be given answers, will be."
--Dr. Ray Muzyka

"I’m always leery of saying there are 'optimal' endings, because I think one of the things we do try to do is make different endings that are optimal for different people."
--Mike Gamble

“For people who are invested in these characters and the back-story of the universe and everything, all of these things come to a resolution in Mass Effect 3. And they are resolved in a way that's very different based on what you would do in those situations.”
--Casey Hudson 

"[The presence of the rachni] has huge consequences in Mass Effect 3. Even just in the final battle with the Reapers."
--Mac Walters

"You'll get answers to everything. That was one of the key things. Regardless of how we did everything, we had to say, yes, we're going to provide some answers to these people."
--Casey Hudson

"Of course you don’t have to play
multiplayer, you can choose to play all the side-quests in
single-player and do all that stuff you’ll still get all the same endings and
same information, it’s just a totally different way of playing." 
--Casey Hudson

"Mass Effect 3 is all about answering all the biggest questions in the lore, learning about the mysteries and the Protheans and the Reapers, being able to decide for yourself how all of these things come to an end.”
--Caseuy Hudson

(Emphasis mine.)

I, and many others, purchased or preordered the game because of the promises made.  These promises were
not delivered.  In fact, not only that, but it seems in most cases their exact opposite was what we received.  The most egregious and telling quote is this one:

"This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff.
It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C... The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them.”
--Casey Hudson

(Emphasis mine.)

What's particularly insulting about this quote is that this is exactly the kind of ending we received--where we were forced to pick between option A, B, or C (red, blue or green).  More, these options bear an uncanny similarity to those given at the end of Deus Ex, which I found to be incredibly disappointing.  But in the end, even these choices don't matter, a point which I'll get to in a moment.

The players were explicitly promised these features, and these were features that were very important to us.  Clearly, if the staff were expounding upon these features being available in the interviews, they were very much aware of this--which is why it's so baffling that we, the paying consumers, received exactly the opposite of this when we paid $60-$80 or more for the game. Instead of the sixteen "wildly different" endings that we were explicitly promised, we were given three endings that different almost only in color, and beyond that, in trivialities
and only in ways that are noticed when watching the endings side-by-side for comparison.

My Criticisms of the Narrative

My--and it seems a large majority of other's--greatest issues lie with the broken promises I just showed you, and this is, indeed, the heart of the issue.  That is largely the reason why we are so dissatisfied.  But
I also can't ignore the severe drop in narrative quality in the last five minutes of the game, and since you asked for constructive critique of the endings, I want to give exactly that.

The endings to Mass Effect 3 fly in the face of the tone and themes established since the very first game, and emphasized throughout the second and third.  In the last five minutes, the themes that the series was built upon--those of heroic triumph despite impossible odds, unity and diversity, tolerance and acceptance--were disregarded.  Instead, a message of fatalism, predestiny, and Lovecraftian cosmicism was introduced that was the literal opposite of the previous 100+ hours of gameplay.  The synthesis ending, especially--the
"best" ending one can receive--is especially in violation of this, because it says that the only way for there to be galactic peace is to homogenize every living thing in the galaxy by force.  Even Javik mentions that homogenization was the reason for the Protheans' demise.  But instead of celebrating diversity, and proving that despite diversity we can have peace across an entire galaxy--as Shepard has done throughout all three games--the only solution is, apparently, to eliminate it entirely. 

Furthermore, Mass Effect is a narrative established around the Hero's Journey, with a classic narrative structure of Introduction, Rising Action, Climax, and Denouement.  This was established in the first two games, and the third adhered to this structure as well--until the very end.  I never felt like the climax was truly reached.  In the first game, the climax was the fight with Saren.  In the second, it was the fight with the human Reaper.  In the third, it felt like the Illusive Man was leading up to a final fight... and then we encounter the Starchild.  Instead of having a final fight like we expected (my money was on fighting Harbinger), we were instead shown that the climax was, in fact, the confrontation with the Illusive Man.  (Which felt like a distilled version of the Saren confrontation in ME1, but without even a fight that followed, which made it feel especially unsatisfactory.)  What followed, then, was supposed to
be the conclusion... except it wasn't.  In the "conclusion," we were introduced to an entirely new character,
who--by designer choice--provided absolutely no answers to the questions we were promised.  We were then
asked to make a choice based on its incredibly flawed logic.

And then the story was over.  We received no closure, only a cryptic and irrelevant scene of Buzz Aldrin's voice
talking about "the Shepard" to a child, in a setting that looks like it was ripped from the "Winter on Mars" desktop image, and then a prompt telling us to buy DLC to experience more of Shepard's story.  We were not even treated to Dragon Age-style epilogue slides explaining what happened to the characters we have come to love and cherish over the last five years.  The writers instead decided it was more important to include an "artsy" scene with Buzz Aldrin's voice that addressed absolutely nothing, and added absolutely nothing to the story.  Instead of reaching the climax and the following denouement, where we were supposed to receive a resolution and answers to all the questions we had, we instead received new information, and were introduced to a new character never before alluded or foreshadowed to.  This was not just a violation of the reader-writer contract, but of the story's core narrative structure.  Eliminating the climax and denouement of a story built upon this premise doesn't feel "artsy" or "cerebral."  It definitely does feel unexpected, but not in a good way.  It feels incomplete, rushed, and hackneyed--to call it artistic is not an excuse for an incomplete and logically flawed ending.  This is a large reason as to why the ending feels so jarring and out of place. 

The Plotholes

There's two major points I'd like to bring up here, so I'll break it down
further.

The Mass Relays

This is the one that gets to me the most, because it has the biggest and most negating impact on our choices and the Mass Effect setting as a whole.

In every option the Starchild gives us, the destruction of the mass relays is always a result.  The
problem: in the Arrival DLC and the Codex, it was made extremely clear that the destruction of a mass relay wipes out the nearby solar system.  When Shepard picks any choice the Starchild offers, all of the mass relays are destroyed... wiping out every solar system attached to one, and all life within them.  Shepard effectively wipes out more organic life in five minutes than the Reapers ever even intended to every 50,000 years, simply for picking a color.  The galaxy would literally have been better off if Shepard just stood there until the Crucible was destroyed.  Many would have died, but less would have.

Even if the destruction of the mass relays is hand-waved as being "a different kind of explosion" (which it really shouldn't be--this would cheapen the narrative, as the consequences for destroying a mass relay were made
abundantly clear and no alternatives were ever foreshadowed), this really doesn't make things better.  The
problem is that even if life miraculously survives these explosions, billions of aliens are now stranded above a ruined Earth--every race's military, their leaders, and the entire quarian race.  Even if Earth was completely healthy and fully functioning, it couldn't support the full human population on its own, let alone billions or trillions of
aliens.  Even if the victory fleet were to somehow find a colony that, coincidentally, is close by that could, miraculously, still support life, it couldn't support all of them.  And to say that they miraculously did manage to work around this problem by finding miraculously well-stocked colonies that somehow weren't ruined by the Reapers would further cheapen the narrative.  And even if this did happen?  There's not only that, but the fact that not enough of the each race, except for the quarians and asari, are present to create a viable and genetically diverse
population to perpetuate their existence.  Furthermore, the quarians and turians stand absolutely no chance, being unable to consume human food.  Everyone that Shepard gathered to fight against the Reapers would starve to death (or be eaten by the krogan) before anyone was able to reverse-engineer a dead mass relay that exploded into who knows how many pieces and be able to travel back to their home planets.

So simply for picking one of Starchild's choices, Shepard wipes out most all organic life in the galaxy. There really is no way to write around this, and any conceivable excuse is just going to sound really cheap and seem like
the product of "space magic."  I'll get into the lack of choice problem, but this is a big one, because even with
our "red, green, blue" options, we really only get one ending... which is the obliteration of organic life in the Milky Way galaxy.

Jokers and the Normandy

How did Joker escape?  The only way he could have is if he fled the battle--which is extremely out of character for him.  I don't think it's a stretch at all to say he'd sooner sacrifice himself in the final fight than turn and run before the mass relays even started exploding.  Admiral Hackett wouldn't have called for a retreat at any point, especially not when Commander Shepard had only just reached the Crucible and hadn't yet fired it.  But even if Joker did flee, how did he manage to pick up several of your squadmates, all of whom were on Earth and with you?  The cutscenes that follow your choice show that destruction of the mass relays happens virtually immediately after you make your choice, so it's simply impossible that he not only makes it to the Charon relay in time, but that he also picks up your squad along the way.  I simply cannot see how Joker managed to do this, unless Transporter technology was suddenly added to the Normandy and nobody knew about it.  Again, any attempt to explain this is
inevitably going to sound like the product of "space magic."

The jungle planet the Normandy crashes on isn't so much a plot hole as it is a cheap narrative allusion that comes way out of the left field.  Especially in the synthesis ending, it's implied that the crew that lands becomes the Adam and Eve of this new planet, which has long since passed into "discredited trope" territory.  To say that Adam and Eve endings are bad writing is like saying McDonald's is low quality food--maybe not every single person will agree with you, but you'd have a hard time arguing that it isn't.  To see a game series with such spectacular and clever writing throughout resort to this kind of discredited and cheap literary tactic was disappointing, to say the least.

The Starchild and its Logic

I know I'm not the only fan who thinks that "we need to create synthetics that kill organics in order to keep organics from creating synthetics that kill organics" is a ridiculous notion.  In that case, why don't the Reapers only intervene when synthetics start killing organics, and kill the synthetics?  Why not use their stopping power to
eliminate that threat, instead of destroying organic life that might create synthetics that might rebel against their creators at some point in the future?

The synthetics vs. organics theme was always present in Mass Effect, but it was not the most prominent theme--more, the inevitability of synthetic/organic war is subverted by EDI, and by a Shepard that unites the quarians and geth.  The themes of heroic triumph, unity, and diversity were always far stronger and far more important.  So why is it that in the last five minutes we're treated to a Battlestar Galactica-style lesson on the inevitability of war between humans and machines?  This alone came out of nowhere, and added to the Starchild's circular logic, none of it makes sense.

From what I've seen, many players would have preferred that the Reapers' intentions remain mysterious and unexplained.  I'll admit I was looking forward to finding out what it was the moment it was foreshadowed by the dying Reaper on Rannoch, but I find leaving it unexplained a far more preferable alternative to the explanation we were given, which makes no sense whatsoever.  More, the thought of the Reapers being the creations of the Starchild cheapens their existence and turns them from mysterious, unfathomable forces of unimaginable power that seem to be straight out of a cosmic horror story into pawns in an AI's illogical and vengeful
vendetta against organic life.  It makes them petty and laughable, rather than awe-inspiring and intimidating
villains.

The Starchild's existence, too, creates a plot hole that renders the entire plot of the first Mass Effect invalid--because if the Starchild is the Citadel, then why would it need anyone else to activate the Conduit for it?

The Lack of Choice, and Impact of Choice

The whole scene with the Starchild felt extremely out of place for a Mass Effect game, namely because of the complete lack of choice.  We aren't given options to investigate or ask the questions that we're dying to have the answers to--and what amazes me is that excluding this was a conscious choice by the writers.  Have they played the rest of the games?  Furthermore, we couldn't even ask the Starchild to repeat its options, when we could in nearly every other Mass Effect conversation that we had.  I had the game paused for so long while I agonized over my choices that I'd completely forgotten which color was which.  Then I decided it didn't even matter, because it the end, all the choices resulted in the deaths of almost every living thing in the galaxy anyway, and so I picked at
random.  I then reviewed the outcomes of the other choices I could have made on Youtube.  I realized I hadn't been wrong--my choices really didn't impact anything at all.

And why couldn't my Shepard refute the Starchild's logic?  I was amazed there wasn't an Interrupt option, or an Intimidate/Charm option available to me at all.  If I didn't buy the Starchild's logic, then why in the world would Shepard?

But it isn't just about the Starchild, but about the war assets we had gathered too.  We were promised that
things such as the rachni queen would have a noticeable impact upon our game. However, despite all the war assets I had gathered and all the choices I had made, the final battle remained the exact same as everyone
else's.  I expected to see krogan warriors charging, quarians and geth fighting side-by-side, the rachni queen and her children taking the Reapers head on.  We saw none of this.  Our war assets amounted to nothing beyond a score--a score cut in half if you didn't participate in multiplayer, and a score that amounted to identical endings anyway.  After all the time I and other fans spent fostering the peace between turians and krogan, between the quarians and geth, I at least expected a couple seconds of footage that showed them actually participating in my battle.  All we are treated to, however, is the sight of humans in London seeing either red, green, or blue explosions.  Depending on how many war assets you gathered, they may or may not raise their arms, and Big Ben may or may not be destroyed.

We were promised sixteen "wildly different" endings.  The media is making a huge fuss about how we're upset that we didn't get a happy ending, but I hope I and others have made it clear that this isn't about that.  But with the amount of potential there is for the story to branch off in "wildly different" directions, I was expecting endings that ranged from Shepard riding off into the sunset with Garrus to retire on a beach and live happily ever after, to bittersweet "Armageddon" style endings where Shepard sacrifices themself for the greater good, to endings where we see a Shepard VI or one of Liara's time capsules warning the next spacefaring civilization 50,000 years in the future about the Reaper threat.  It's not that we didn't get a happy ending--it's that we didn't get to choose our ending, happy or sad, bittersweet or miserable, when we were told that we would be able to.  We don't even get the satisfaction of seeing how our three choices affected the galaxy in the end (that is, before everyone eventually died off), because we weren't given a conclusion.  Buzz Aldrin's voice, apparently, was far more important than finding out what happened to the characters we've cared about for five years.

And of course, like I mentioned before, any and all choice is negated in the end by the annihilation of organic life caused by the destruction of the mass relays.  Our choices aren't just not taken into account--they're completely undone.

What I Would Like to See Bioware Do:

I'd like to see a DLC released that gives us exactly what we were promised before the game's release--the sixteen "wildly different" endings we were promised, that don't contain plot holes so big they make what happened in the endings we were given downright impossible and render the first game's plot invalid.  I want to see
closure, for which the absolute least that could be done would be Dragon Age-style epilogue slides, though I think most preferably, I and other fans would like to see some cinematics showing us what's happened to the people and places we care about.  I want to see the choice we were promised, and I want to see it impact the story
in a significant way.  I want all of my questions answered--not "lots of speculation"--again, like we were promised.

In Summary:

The first 99% of Mass Effect was a wonderful, beautiful game.  The last five minutes, however, not only failed to deliver the promises made about the ending and variety of choice, but directly subverted them.  I and many others feel that we were misled by these promises and did not receive the product we paid for.  Additionally, the ending we were given felt very sub-par in comparison to the rest of the game because of its glaring lore issues, plot holes, and narrative flaws.  I do not feel like I received my money's worth because I bought the game based on the promises the developers made that were clearly not kept, and I would like to see each of these issues
addressed and remedied.

The "this is our artistic choice" defense is not a valid argument.  The story has clear and damaging narrative flaws.  According to the setting's own internal logic and lore, the franchise cannot possibly continue to
exist after Shepard makes their final choice.  The ending could not have possibly happened the way it did.  To
defend a rushed, flawed, and illogical ending that disregards the promises that were made to the paying consumers by saying "this is art and must therefore be held sacred" is simply an invalid excuse.  We are paying consumers.  If Bioware would like to see themselves as artists, then understand that by promising to deliver a customer a portrait and then instead handing them an abstract painting is not good business practice, or defensible by saying "but this is my artistic choice."  As an artist, I fully understand the desire to defend your artistic integrity, but the moment you start making promises to your customers, you are bound to deliver exactly what you promised, regardless of your "artistic vision," lest you be held culpable for your actions and are--rightly--asked that you change your product to fulfill your promises.

I paid $80 for this game based on the promises you made to us, and then broke.   This is the crux of the issue.  The fact that these promises were broken in order to give us a sub-par, illogical, broken narrative is just icing on the cake at this point.  Regardless of how different fans feel about the current endings, there is no denying Bioware's promises have not been delivered.

Thank you for your time,
Rebel Mel/Skyvale

[Erathsmedor]

xX_VMH_Xx wrote...

Now for suggestions. In the final battle, it will be cool to see more of your decisions matter. Did you save the Rachni queen and Grunt lived? Show a scene where Rachni pull reapers off of Grunt to save him. Did Mordin cure the Genophage? Show a Krogan smacking a reaper off of a Salarian STG. Did the Quarians and Geth make peace? Show a Geth taking a bullet and sacrificing itself to save a Quarian. Did you get the Batarian fleet? Show the humans and the batarian ships fighting side by side against a reaper in a cutscene. These are just suggestions, but scenes such as that will make major decisions and the Effective Military score actually mean something more.

Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes!

[LetoII]

I finished ME3 a week ago and as many others I've been quite disappointed by the ending. I enjoyed the game, even if it felt a bit shorter than ME2 and I was expecting a bigger subplot with the Asaris, but it’s nothing compared to then ending disappointment. What disappointed me has already been reported by others but I felt I had to voice it myself. I’ll try to be as constructive as I can and that’s why I waited so long before contributing to feedback.

First the battle for earth sequence, even if it has flaws, was quite enjoyable until the point where Shepard tries to activate the crucible and collapse in front of control console. Then all starts to fall apart with the events inside the crucible.
The whole dialog seems to have been put here only for the sake of having a last minute plot twist and surprise the player. It felt so artificial. Shepard can only listen to the catalyst, she/he can't even argue or disagree. At the end of the dialog, I just didn't care anymore about what was happening, I just picked one of the available options to end the game. I think it was too late in the game to introduce the catalyst as a character. Moreover, at this point of the game we're so deeply entangled in the conflict that the Reapers motives aren't that important any more, we just want to get rid of them.

Regarding the last cut scene, there's definitely some thing missing regarding the Normandy crash, what Joker was trying to achieve? Wasn't he supposed to be part of the orbital fight? When did he pick up the crew? Especially the ones who were on the battle field with Shepard.

Finally, perhaps the worst thing, the ending killed all desire I had to go through the game with another character. Why should I bother as at the end my only choice is "with which color will you blow up the galactic civilization"? Of course those ending have an impact on the future of the galaxy, but who cares? During the three games we came to care about Shepard and her/his companions and at the end we don’t know their fate, except for three of them. Who lived? Who died in the final battle? We don’t know.
Then one of the dialogs with the Salarian councilor came back to my mind. I chose to cure the Krogans, and the Salarian councilor told Shepard she’ll have to live with the consequences of her choice. Well obviously not, no one cared to envision those consequences and show them to the player, there’s no “perhaps I should not have done this”, just a stargazer in the distant future and a promise of DLC that will not matter more that what we did in the other games.  Last point regarding epilogues, or lack of: ME3 was supposed to be the end of Shepard’s story, fine. However, when you destroy the Reapers and have sufficient war assets, you've got this little cutscene of what seems to be Shepard breathing. How is this supposed to be a conclusion? Why teasing us? Either she/he lives or dies but clearly state it. Why at the end of what should have been the trilogy conclusion we are completely left in the dark?

Modifié par LetoII, 22 mars 2012 - 10:24 .

[kalamity116]

Quite honestly, I think that the amount of rage that the ME3 ending has generated is a clear sign that Bioware has crafted a story throughout ME1, 2 and 3 that really got people to care. To get so many players to care this much about what is ultimately just a fictional universe? That takes a lot of work and talent. They should be proud of that.

I think an overwhelming majority of the community agrees that the current ending is not up to Bioware quality. Why it's a bad ending has been discussed already, so I'll dispense with that. However, it is a sentiment that I personally believe may be quietly shared among many BW employees as well; being the game developer they are, I think they expect as much from themselves as we expect from them--which is a lot.

That of course, runs up against pride. The product has already been released. Altering some sort of gameplay issue a bit might not be as big a deal--but it's the main story we're talking about, so it's understandable that they may have some reservations about going back and changing the it. It also may seem to make them look weak, bowing to fan pressure like that. Taking measures based on user feedback *can* be a slippery slope, but when we're talking about fixing what was supposed to be a climactic conclusion to the ME story, retroactively fixing the ending would help Bioware more than it would hurt them--they for sure would win back a lot of fan respect.

Look at Blizzard--a company that I personally held in very high regard. Until their successes got to their heads, they stopped listening to feedback at all, and their product quality went down the sewer. As soon as they figured out that there were better ways of making money than making good products, quality took a nosedive on their list of priorities--and it shows in their latest games. I sure as hell am not buying any more of their stuff. This is definitely a chance for Bioware to set themselves apart from other game developers, to make all the BSN forum-goers proud of the company they support, and secure confidence that future Bioware works are something to look forward to.

And honestly, they owe it not just to their countless fans, but also to themselves, to close out this magnificent trilogy with an ending that befits the grandeur of everything that came before it. It sure would leave fond memories for years go come--to both those who created it and those who experienced it.

So make us proud. Make yourselves proud.

[worldwide]

There are a number of things about the ending that I would like to bring to you're attention

1) When you took control of the reapers which spared all synthetics it made no sense to me that the mass relays   were destroyed when everything else made by the reapers, including the reapers themselves and the citadel, which in mass effect 2 it was told to us that the citadel itself was a giant mass relay.

2) I would like an explanation as to why the normandy was running and with crew members who got hit by harbinger with me

3) This one is probably a minor grip but I would like it clarified how Shepard was standing on the outside of the citadel in space with shot up armor and no helmet

4) When Shepard collapses in the citadel and the platform rises up it clearly is a rectangular shape to it and shepard was lying along the width rather than the length of it but I didn't see any dangling feet. Minor I know but it kind of ruined the semi-realism of it

A few things I would like added/included/changed
1) The possibility of a super happy ending where Shepard is alive, relays aren't destroyed, etc, etc.

2) The normandy crashing on some random planet

3) Show what happened to the crew you guys have made us fall in love with. Maybe something like if Shep died show Garrus raising a glass to Shep or like the LI with Shep's child if they were capable of it maybe of LI looking at a Shep statue and sighing or crying...etc

Oh and I wanted to thank you guys at Bioware for listening to your fans, truly respect you guys for it, as well as thanks for making great immersive games and one more thing apart from the ending Mass Effect 3 was THE best game I've ever played even made me shed a few mantears lol


Edit: this guy has what I would really love to have had

Modifié par worldwide, 23 mars 2012 - 05:52 .

[R3MUS]

More Reaper conversations. Having Harbinger return to have conversations with would be most appreciated.

But overall, more Reaper conversations.

[Pvan]

 I made a post in this thread already (I think it was about page 96) which lists my full thoughts and some ideas for perhaps altering and improving the ending.

One of the main critisisms that seems to be being pushed of the Catalyst is that it appears to be inconsistant with predetermined themes and information that has occured previously ingame.

If any new ending is to suceed at resolving mass effect, it too should come from in-game information and themes that have already been part of the series (eg. if the ending is determined to be 'happy' it would be with shepard overcoming insurmountable odds to preserve the friends and races of the galaxy that have supported him; if the ending is to be mindcrushingly sad then it should be the reapers implacably annhilating and harvesting all before them).

I had some thoughts that a really great way to make an epilogue for the game that would not only wrap up loose ends but also show the effect of players choices, would be to use Liara's time capsule.  Rather then having an external narrator tell you about what race x is doing, or how character x is raising a family; have the fate of the galaxy and the effects of your choices narrated by Liara, with cutscenes visuallising the narration.  At the end showing Liara burying or sending the time capsule into space would be a fitting conclusion to all that you have done in the series, and it makes sense from information that has already occured in game.

The other benefit to this is that it could work with any number of endings.  If the reapers win, the narration could be voiced as a warning, detailing what species held out or were destroyed based on your choices; if Shepard dies, it could be a memorial for all the good he/she did; or if a happy ending is created, it could be voiced as a message of peace and hope for future generations.

Modifié par Pvan, 22 mars 2012 - 10:34 .

[Kudas]

 Hi I have some suggestions I will like to post for "Priority Earth"'s final battle for BIoware's staff peruse.

1. I hope that further add-on can enhance the scale and scope of the mission. I believe many supporters of the game may find that the impact of their war assets are quite underwhelming. Unlike Mass Effect 2, the efforts of gathering all the powerful war assets are not seen (be it in cinematics or in game scenes). Hence I was hoping that the mission can be added with additional cutscenes or characters talking about visible results of the war on Earth according to the amount of War Assets the player has brought along. Also, throughout the war, I believe it would be great to see the War Assets you have brought along in action, like the Krogans charging the reapers, turians spec ops provding support in the background and asari creating barriers and biotic attacks, also it would be awesome for the old cast from ME1 and 2 to be present, like Jack crushing reapers with a shockwave, Wrex roaring "I AM KROGAN!" and leading Grunt and the krogans to tear the husks or ravagers to pieces (or even take on a brute single-handedly!) etc as Commander Shepard charges across the battlefield to the next stage. I believe this will greatly enhance the scale and impact of a FINAL BATTLE as ALL CHARACTERS fight for the survival of the galaxy against a common enemy.

Also, I was hoping for greater interactions between crew members on board the Normandy like in ME2, where there are cutscene conversations. I was hoping also for incentives for players to initiate these conversations. For example, James always uses a pull-up bar at his spot. Maybe Commander Shepard can join him via a mini0game and in turn boosts his weight capacity for weapons for example?

Thank you Bioware for your reception to Feedbacks!

[Yosh86]

One idea I have that would greatly increase variety in the ending would be to create some sort of scenario where Shepard decides how to employ whatever forces he gathered for the final battle. From playing the previous games, I knew that the game would consist of gathering forces for war against the Reapers. The trailers showed that Earth was in ruins and I knew that it would take an armada to fight them. I eagerly searched and did side quests to amass my forces. I expected to deploy them in a similar way as Commander Shepard’s assault on the Collectors after the Omega 4 relay but instead of choosing who to do what task it would be what fleet or units would accomplish military objectives in the final battle. Be presented with a cut scene and how the battle is playing out and then choose which assets to deploy in the fight. That didn’t happen so I’m wondering what the war assets are even for and felt like I wasted my time. I know that Commander Shepard is more of a tactical leader however most of his companions were promoted to strategic leaders and key advisors to their own species’ military. I felt Shepard would be an advisor to direct the battle. This idea allows the war assets to have a purpose and the readiness percentage would determine a level of success. So even if the proper unit for the job was selected for the right task, if the readiness wasn't high enough there would be a chance of failure. The outcome of the choices would determine the battle which in turn shows an epilogue to see how everything played out—good or bad.

[prolix_sintax]

Thank you for listening to our feedback on this. Before I get into my suggestions, I'd like to say that I think the team at Bioware did a fantastic job on everything leading up to the end. I've spent almost a hundred hours adventuring through the wonderful universe you've created in the Mass Effect series and look forward to the world you're going to share with us next.

Bearing this in mind, I am one of the people who did not like the conclusion of Mass Effect 3. Here are a few of my thoughts on possible changes to the ending; I'm sure many others have probably already made these suggestions and worded them much more eloquently, but here are my two cents anyways.

Eliminate the Catalyst/Starchild-thing completely OR give it a corporeal form so Shepard can have a renegade interrupt to punch it in the face:

I didn't like the Catalyst character coming out of nowhere at the very end of the game and dictating your only choices to you. At all. What's worse, instead of demanding more information and pointing out the flaws in its reasoning or arguing that organics deserve a chance to prove themselves, Shepard just says "well, okay I guess" and marches off to her death, no questions asked. I don't know who talks to the Catalyst at the end of the game, but it's definitely not any variation of the Shepard we've come to know and admire through three epic games. The introduction of this brand new character who orders you to choose one of its options without explaining anything is confusing and ultimately frustrating.

However, if the Catalyst has to stay in the game, let's take a closer look at what it says. The Catalyst admits that Shepard is the first organic to ever make it that far. Let Renegade Shepard say that she can lead the organics ever farther if the reapers are called off and galactic civilization is allowed to survive. The Catalyst says that synthetics will always rebel against their creators. Let Paragon Shepard point out the cooperation between the Quarians and the Geth as an example of its flawed reasoning. And above all, let the Catalyst have a body so there can be a renegade interrupt that lets Shepard punch the Catalyst in the face because my Shepard didn't take crap from anyone, and if she ever did, it certainly wouldn't be from a being who demanded the destruction of her and everything she knew and cared about.

The fact that Shepard dies doesn't bother me; it's the fact that she rolls over without a fight. Let her at least have the option to go down swinging.

Let Kirrahe hold the line one last time:

When Kirrahe promised to help Shepard take back Earth, I was excited to see him in action once more. When the Geth offered their support in the fight against the Reapers, visions of Geth Primes crushing brutes and husks danced in my head. And when the Elcor threw their lot in with the rest of the galaxy, I thought to myself "this is going to be one epic final battle."

And then the final battle came along and it was just Shepard and crew dashing through some ruins.

I realize that not every ally would be able to participate in the ground operation on Earth (and it would be ridiculous to expect all of them to be personally involved in your final charge), but a cut-scene or two with a few of your war-buddies helping in that final push would have gone a long way towards making War Assets feel like more than numbers. Shepard is pinned down by snipers? Kirrahe and his men open fire on them from another building and cover your advance. Horde of Banshees blocking your way? A unit of Geth Primes busts through a nearby building and provides a distraction that lets Shepard slip through enemy lines. On the Citadel, my Shepard helped the Volus diplomat; I want to see those Volus bombers show up like he promised they would.

Right now, the final battle on Earth feels like just another fight. Let the War Assets make it into what it should: a culmination of all your preparation for the galaxy's last stand. You don't have to look far for an example of this sort of thing done right; you pulled it off perfectly with Mass Effect 2's suicide mission.

Joker is not a coward:

Given all that they've been through together and the way he's acted, Joker would not abandon Shepard and, even if he sustained morality-altering blunt force trauma to the skull and changed his mind, the rest of the crew would never let him. I'd rather see Joker and the Normandy go down in flames against the Reapers than see his personality pull a 180 by bugging out during the battle to decide the fate of the galaxy. Again, it's a testament to the quality of the storytelling of this series that I have strong feelings about what Joker would and would not do in this situation.

Please don't change Joker's character just so the Normandy can crashland on a jungle planet.

Eliminate the Catalyst and instead let us have an epic space opera videogame final showdown because the ending is the final showdown in an epic space opera videogame:

I mentioned getting rid of the Catalyst already, but I wanted to make sure the message sunk in.

So if there's no Catalyst, who/what does Shepard deal with at the end? How about Harbinger? Shepard has fought him before - why not have him be the final encounter? It could go something like this:

Shepard sits on the floor next to Anderson's body. Hackett radios Shepard and says the Crucible isn't firing. Shepard drags herself over to the controls and tries to figure out how it works. Something she does catches Harbinger's attention and he's all like "oh NO YOU DIDN'T" and Shepard is all like "oh YES I DID JUST WATCH ME" and Harbinger is all like "I'm gonna MESS YOU UP" and Shepard's all like "I'm gonna mess YOU up".

During this scintillating exchange, Shepard is desperately trying to pull the trigger on the Alliance's superweapon while the fleet tries to delay Harbinger as much as they can to buy Shepard a few extra moments to get the Crucible working. Whether or not she manages to do so depends on how much time she has to work which will depend on her effective military strength:

• If it's too low, Harbinger blows the Crucible to pieces, destroys the fleet, and the organics of the galaxy get harvested.
• If it's a bit higher, then Harbinger damages the Crucible and kills Shepard, but not before Shepard cripples Harbinger with a partially-powered crucible blast. Armed with this new weapon, the coalition fleet has a fighting chance against the Reapers.
• If the EMS is ever higher, then Shepard blasts Harbinger and the rest of the Reapers surrounding Earth out of space and gets to watch their drifting forms burn up in the atmosphere with a smile on her face before finally succuumbing to her wounds.
• And if the EMS is super-insanely high, your squad shows up and saves Shepard with some emergency medical care. Surrounded by her friends and comrades and in the arms of her loved one, they all watch as the Reapers flame out into oblivion. High-fives are exchanged.

I'll be the first to admit that this is probably not the most creative or intelligent alternative ending proposed. I will claim, though, that it's an emotionally satisfying one. Throughout the series, Shepard has been dealing with multiple shades of grey with everything except for the Reapers; simply put, the Reapers are the bad guys. Let Shepard take a shot at the bad guys. She doesn't have to come out on top, and she doesn't even have to survive. All I want is for the hero of the galaxy to have a chance at destroying the big bad.

And if she gets that chance and the galaxy is saved?...

If this is truly the end of Shepard's story, let us have some closure:

Technically, the final picture in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King, could have faded to black immediately after the One Ring melts in the fires of Mount Doom and Sauron is destroyed. After all, the bad guy is dead, so no need to continue, right? Imagine if that had happened. Wouldn't you, after having spent ten hours or so with those characters, be frustrated by that? Wouldn't you have walked out of that theater that day thinking "I'm glad Frodo and company saved the day, but I wonder what happened to the Hobbits? And Aragon and the Elves and everyone else in Middle-Earth? Heck, does Frodo even make it out of Mordor, let alone back to the Shire? Does anyone recognize his sacrifice or does he go back to being a regular dude?"

I feel like wondering about the fate of the characters is great for the middle parts of a story, but when it comes to the end of their tale, I don't want ambiguity; I want to know that they live happily ever after or died fighting for something they believed in or went on to have more adventures with their friends. I want to know how they affected the world around them and if the world even cares about what they did.

With the current ending as it stands, I'm actually okay with not getting specific closure because I can already predict what happens to everyone involved in the final battle: the assembled Earth defense fleet is now stranded due to the destruction of the mass relays and turns on each other over control of the limited resources remaining on the ruined planet below them. None of the newly brokered alliances matter because interstellar travel is impossible and Joker's entire skeleton shatters the next time he stumbles on a rock on his new jungle home that has no hospitals.

If the ending was changed, however, I don't think it would take anything too elaborate to wrap everything up; perhaps something like a scene in which Hackett/Shepard's love interest/Morgan Freeman is giving a speech at Shepard's funeral that is being broadcast across the galaxy saying stuff like "Shepard was the best the galaxy had to offer" and "Shepard was totally awesome and saved everyone and punched some people in the face who totally deserved it". While this speech is going on, your surviving friends and crewmembers pay their respects in person while people you helped in your travels watch on vidscreens whereever they happen to be. The Turians and Asari clean up the ruins of their cities. Some Rachni skitter about in a cave and continue to be gross. A Geth Prime helps a Quarian plant a row of corn. A Krogan shoots something. Epic music plays in the background.

And yes, I said Shepard's funeral. Of the many things that didn't satisfy me about the ending, Shepard dying wasn't one of them. As stated before, the problem I had with her death was that it didn't seem at all appropriate given what had happened up until that point. Letting Shepard die like she lived is something I think we can all accept, bittersweet as it may be.

... having said all that, a part of me still really wants to see her and Liara settle down somewhere and have those little blue babies, story integrity be damned.

In conclusion, please help me love the final 20 minutes of the Mass Effect series as much as I loved the first 5380:

Again, thank you so much for listening to our thoughts about the conclusion to this series. I don't think anyone - myself included - would take the time to offer this much feedback unless it was something that was important to us or touched us in some way. Throughout my almost twenty years of video gaming, I have never been moved enough by a video game to share my feelings about it with its creators until today, so you're obviously doing something right.

Some of the more negative posts I've read about this issue claim that you "owe" us a better ending. I wholeheartedly disagree; you've produced a series of wonderful games that I enjoyed 99.9% of. I don't think you "owe" us anything further. I do, however, feel like the story of Commander Shepard deserves a better ending than the one it got.

Please give Shepard's story the ending it deserves.

Modifié par prolix_sintax, 22 mars 2012 - 10:57 .

[Costello_Anasazi]

Up to the point of the ending the game was incredibly enjoyable but obviously there are some changes that I personally would like to see.

First is bring Miranda (or Jacob if he was romanced back). It seems crazy that people that could be such a big part of Shepards life in ME2 are so absent in ME3. Yeah they show up a little but going from major characters and romances to fleeting almost after thoughts seems crazy for the final part of ME.

Second the rachni, after what we learn in ME2 of them to have them taken over by the reapers seems crazy. While I appreciate it leaves an option open for Grunt or the Rachni I can't help but feel this was a strange choice and made what previously happened in ME1 less impactful than it could have been.

Third remove the dreams. I appreciate that if you changed the ending you might get rid of them anyway but to have a slow shepard running after a child was just boring and didn't add to the game.

Fourth allow me to save Mordin, his a great character and maybe his sacrifice is needed to end his story but so far in ME1 and 2 its all been about choice where as here he just lets himself be killed and Shepard just watches. If you have saved the data and done everything right it should be possible to get him out alive.

Fifth has to be unwinnable fights. This is the last enstallment of the game and rather than be able to go anywhere we get forced down a set road. Things like the Kai Leng fight where he can fly a gun ship straight in without the reapers noticing or the harbinger fight just getting blasted. The moment you force defeat on us it sucks.

Sixth and most importantly the ending. The ending should have been the battle for earth with the combined allied forces against the reapers and a real war ending of battle and the like. Not the matrix, deus ex, bizare ending we got that had nothing to do with the game or had any choice in it.

Modifié par Costello_Anasazi, 22 mars 2012 - 10:52 .

[Mastone]

Skyvale wrote...

Dear Bioware,

As you requested, here's my constructive criticism on the Mass Effect 3 endings.

My criticisms can be divided into two categories--my issues from a storytelling standpoint, and from a business standpoint.  I'll address those from a business standpoint first.

The broken promises--why I bought the game, and why the product I paid for wasn't delivered.

Bioware, if you regard only one part of this letter, let this be it.  Here's several quotes given by Bioware staff in interviews prior to ME3's release, that explain exactly why we are dissatisfied with the endings:

"As Mass Effect 3 is the end of the planned trilogy, the developers are not constrained by the necessity of allowing the story to diverge, yet also continue into the next chapter.  This will result in a story that diverges into wildly
different conclusions based on the player's actions in the first two chapters."
--Casey Hudson

"We wouldn't do it any other way.  How could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and then be forced into a bespoke ending that everyone gets?  But I can't say any more than that..."
--Mike Gamble

"Whether you're happy or angry at the ending, know this: it is an ending.  Bioware will not do a 'Lost' and leave fans with more questions than answers after finishing the game."
--Mike Gamble

"Pretty much everything that people want to see wrapped up, or to be given answers, will be."
--Dr. Ray Muzyka

"I’m always leery of saying there are 'optimal' endings, because I think one of the things we do try to do is make different endings that are optimal for different people."
--Mike Gamble

“For people who are invested in these characters and the back-story of the universe and everything, all of these things come to a resolution in Mass Effect 3. And they are resolved in a way that's very different based on what you would do in those situations.”
--Casey Hudson 

"[The presence of the rachni] has huge consequences in Mass Effect 3. Even just in the final battle with the Reapers."
--Mac Walters

"You'll get answers to everything. That was one of the key things. Regardless of how we did everything, we had to say, yes, we're going to provide some answers to these people."
--Casey Hudson

"Of course you don’t have to play
multiplayer, you can choose to play all the side-quests in
single-player and do all that stuff you’ll still get all the same endings and
same information, it’s just a totally different way of playing." 
--Casey Hudson

"Mass Effect 3 is all about answering all the biggest questions in the lore, learning about the mysteries and the Protheans and the Reapers, being able to decide for yourself how all of these things come to an end.”
--Caseuy Hudson

(Emphasis mine.)

I, and many others, purchased or preordered the game because of the promises made.  These promises were
not delivered.  In fact, not only that, but it seems in most cases their exact opposite was what we received.  The most egregious and telling quote is this one:

"This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff.
It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C... The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them.”
--Casey Hudson

(Emphasis mine.)

What's particularly insulting about this quote is that this is exactly the kind of ending we received--where we were forced to pick between option A, B, or C (red, blue or green).  More, these options bear an uncanny similarity to those given at the end of Deus Ex, which I found to be incredibly disappointing.  But in the end, even these choices don't matter, a point which I'll get to in a moment.

The players were explicitly promised these features, and these were features that were very important to us.  Clearly, if the staff were expounding upon these features being available in the interviews, they were very much aware of this--which is why it's so baffling that we, the paying consumers, received exactly the opposite of this when we paid $60-$80 or more for the game. Instead of the sixteen "wildly different" endings that we were explicitly promised, we were given three endings that different almost only in color, and beyond that, in trivialities
and only in ways that are noticed when watching the endings side-by-side for comparison.

My Criticisms of the Narrative

My--and it seems a large majority of other's--greatest issues lie with the broken promises I just showed you, and this is, indeed, the heart of the issue.  That is largely the reason why we are so dissatisfied.  But
I also can't ignore the severe drop in narrative quality in the last five minutes of the game, and since you asked for constructive critique of the endings, I want to give exactly that.

The endings to Mass Effect 3 fly in the face of the tone and themes established since the very first game, and emphasized throughout the second and third.  In the last five minutes, the themes that the series was built upon--those of heroic triumph despite impossible odds, unity and diversity, tolerance and acceptance--were disregarded.  Instead, a message of fatalism, predestiny, and Lovecraftian cosmicism was introduced that was the literal opposite of the previous 100+ hours of gameplay.  The synthesis ending, especially--the
"best" ending one can receive--is especially in violation of this, because it says that the only way for there to be galactic peace is to homogenize every living thing in the galaxy by force.  Even Javik mentions that homogenization was the reason for the Protheans' demise.  But instead of celebrating diversity, and proving that despite diversity we can have peace across an entire galaxy--as Shepard has done throughout all three games--the only solution is, apparently, to eliminate it entirely. 

Furthermore, Mass Effect is a narrative established around the Hero's Journey, with a classic narrative structure of Introduction, Rising Action, Climax, and Denouement.  This was established in the first two games, and the third adhered to this structure as well--until the very end.  I never felt like the climax was truly reached.  In the first game, the climax was the fight with Saren.  In the second, it was the fight with the human Reaper.  In the third, it felt like the Illusive Man was leading up to a final fight... and then we encounter the Starchild.  Instead of having a final fight like we expected (my money was on fighting Harbinger), we were instead shown that the climax was, in fact, the confrontation with the Illusive Man.  (Which felt like a distilled version of the Saren confrontation in ME1, but without even a fight that followed, which made it feel especially unsatisfactory.)  What followed, then, was supposed to
be the conclusion... except it wasn't.  In the "conclusion," we were introduced to an entirely new character,
who--by designer choice--provided absolutely no answers to the questions we were promised.  We were then
asked to make a choice based on its incredibly flawed logic.

And then the story was over.  We received no closure, only a cryptic and irrelevant scene of Buzz Aldrin's voice
talking about "the Shepard" to a child, in a setting that looks like it was ripped from the "Winter on Mars" desktop image, and then a prompt telling us to buy DLC to experience more of Shepard's story.  We were not even treated to Dragon Age-style epilogue slides explaining what happened to the characters we have come to love and cherish over the last five years.  The writers instead decided it was more important to include an "artsy" scene with Buzz Aldrin's voice that addressed absolutely nothing, and added absolutely nothing to the story.  Instead of reaching the climax and the following denouement, where we were supposed to receive a resolution and answers to all the questions we had, we instead received new information, and were introduced to a new character never before alluded or foreshadowed to.  This was not just a violation of the reader-writer contract, but of the story's core narrative structure.  Eliminating the climax and denouement of a story built upon this premise doesn't feel "artsy" or "cerebral."  It definitely does feel unexpected, but not in a good way.  It feels incomplete, rushed, and hackneyed--to call it artistic is not an excuse for an incomplete and logically flawed ending.  This is a large reason as to why the ending feels so jarring and out of place. 

The Plotholes

There's two major points I'd like to bring up here, so I'll break it down
further.

The Mass Relays

This is the one that gets to me the most, because it has the biggest and most negating impact on our choices and the Mass Effect setting as a whole.

In every option the Starchild gives us, the destruction of the mass relays is always a result.  The
problem: in the Arrival DLC and the Codex, it was made extremely clear that the destruction of a mass relay wipes out the nearby solar system.  When Shepard picks any choice the Starchild offers, all of the mass relays are destroyed... wiping out every solar system attached to one, and all life within them.  Shepard effectively wipes out more organic life in five minutes than the Reapers ever even intended to every 50,000 years, simply for picking a color.  The galaxy would literally have been better off if Shepard just stood there until the Crucible was destroyed.  Many would have died, but less would have.

Even if the destruction of the mass relays is hand-waved as being "a different kind of explosion" (which it really shouldn't be--this would cheapen the narrative, as the consequences for destroying a mass relay were made
abundantly clear and no alternatives were ever foreshadowed), this really doesn't make things better.  The
problem is that even if life miraculously survives these explosions, billions of aliens are now stranded above a ruined Earth--every race's military, their leaders, and the entire quarian race.  Even if Earth was completely healthy and fully functioning, it couldn't support the full human population on its own, let alone billions or trillions of
aliens.  Even if the victory fleet were to somehow find a colony that, coincidentally, is close by that could, miraculously, still support life, it couldn't support all of them.  And to say that they miraculously did manage to work around this problem by finding miraculously well-stocked colonies that somehow weren't ruined by the Reapers would further cheapen the narrative.  And even if this did happen?  There's not only that, but the fact that not enough of the each race, except for the quarians and asari, are present to create a viable and genetically diverse
population to perpetuate their existence.  Furthermore, the quarians and turians stand absolutely no chance, being unable to consume human food.  Everyone that Shepard gathered to fight against the Reapers would starve to death (or be eaten by the krogan) before anyone was able to reverse-engineer a dead mass relay that exploded into who knows how many pieces and be able to travel back to their home planets.

So simply for picking one of Starchild's choices, Shepard wipes out most all organic life in the galaxy. There really is no way to write around this, and any conceivable excuse is just going to sound really cheap and seem like
the product of "space magic."  I'll get into the lack of choice problem, but this is a big one, because even with
our "red, green, blue" options, we really only get one ending... which is the obliteration of organic life in the Milky Way galaxy.

Jokers and the Normandy

How did Joker escape?  The only way he could have is if he fled the battle--which is extremely out of character for him.  I don't think it's a stretch at all to say he'd sooner sacrifice himself in the final fight than turn and run before the mass relays even started exploding.  Admiral Hackett wouldn't have called for a retreat at any point, especially not when Commander Shepard had only just reached the Crucible and hadn't yet fired it.  But even if Joker did flee, how did he manage to pick up several of your squadmates, all of whom were on Earth and with you?  The cutscenes that follow your choice show that destruction of the mass relays happens virtually immediately after you make your choice, so it's simply impossible that he not only makes it to the Charon relay in time, but that he also picks up your squad along the way.  I simply cannot see how Joker managed to do this, unless Transporter technology was suddenly added to the Normandy and nobody knew about it.  Again, any attempt to explain this is
inevitably going to sound like the product of "space magic."

The jungle planet the Normandy crashes on isn't so much a plot hole as it is a cheap narrative allusion that comes way out of the left field.  Especially in the synthesis ending, it's implied that the crew that lands becomes the Adam and Eve of this new planet, which has long since passed into "discredited trope" territory.  To say that Adam and Eve endings are bad writing is like saying McDonald's is low quality food--maybe not every single person will agree with you, but you'd have a hard time arguing that it isn't.  To see a game series with such spectacular and clever writing throughout resort to this kind of discredited and cheap literary tactic was disappointing, to say the least.

The Starchild and its Logic

I know I'm not the only fan who thinks that "we need to create synthetics that kill organics in order to keep organics from creating synthetics that kill organics" is a ridiculous notion.  In that case, why don't the Reapers only intervene when synthetics start killing organics, and kill the synthetics?  Why not use their stopping power to
eliminate that threat, instead of destroying organic life that might create synthetics that might rebel against their creators at some point in the future?

The synthetics vs. organics theme was always present in Mass Effect, but it was not the most prominent theme--more, the inevitability of synthetic/organic war is subverted by EDI, and by a Shepard that unites the quarians and geth.  The themes of heroic triumph, unity, and diversity were always far stronger and far more important.  So why is it that in the last five minutes we're treated to a Battlestar Galactica-style lesson on the inevitability of war between humans and machines?  This alone came out of nowhere, and added to the Starchild's circular logic, none of it makes sense.

From what I've seen, many players would have preferred that the Reapers' intentions remain mysterious and unexplained.  I'll admit I was looking forward to finding out what it was the moment it was foreshadowed by the dying Reaper on Rannoch, but I find leaving it unexplained a far more preferable alternative to the explanation we were given, which makes no sense whatsoever.  More, the thought of the Reapers being the creations of the Starchild cheapens their existence and turns them from mysterious, unfathomable forces of unimaginable power that seem to be straight out of a cosmic horror story into pawns in an AI's illogical and vengeful
vendetta against organic life.  It makes them petty and laughable, rather than awe-inspiring and intimidating
villains.

The Starchild's existence, too, creates a plot hole that renders the entire plot of the first Mass Effect invalid--because if the Starchild is the Citadel, then why would it need anyone else to activate the Conduit for it?

The Lack of Choice, and Impact of Choice

The whole scene with the Starchild felt extremely out of place for a Mass Effect game, namely because of the complete lack of choice.  We aren't given options to investigate or ask the questions that we're dying to have the answers to--and what amazes me is that excluding this was a conscious choice by the writers.  Have they played the rest of the games?  Furthermore, we couldn't even ask the Starchild to repeat its options, when we could in nearly every other Mass Effect conversation that we had.  I had the game paused for so long while I agonized over my choices that I'd completely forgotten which color was which.  Then I decided it didn't even matter, because it the end, all the choices resulted in the deaths of almost every living thing in the galaxy anyway, and so I picked at
random.  I then reviewed the outcomes of the other choices I could have made on Youtube.  I realized I hadn't been wrong--my choices really didn't impact anything at all.

And why couldn't my Shepard refute the Starchild's logic?  I was amazed there wasn't an Interrupt option, or an Intimidate/Charm option available to me at all.  If I didn't buy the Starchild's logic, then why in the world would Shepard?

But it isn't just about the Starchild, but about the war assets we had gathered too.  We were promised that
things such as the rachni queen would have a noticeable impact upon our game. However, despite all the war assets I had gathered and all the choices I had made, the final battle remained the exact same as everyone
else's.  I expected to see krogan warriors charging, quarians and geth fighting side-by-side, the rachni queen and her children taking the Reapers head on.  We saw none of this.  Our war assets amounted to nothing beyond a score--a score cut in half if you didn't participate in multiplayer, and a score that amounted to identical endings anyway.  After all the time I and other fans spent fostering the peace between turians and krogan, between the quarians and geth, I at least expected a couple seconds of footage that showed them actually participating in my battle.  All we are treated to, however, is the sight of humans in London seeing either red, green, or blue explosions.  Depending on how many war assets you gathered, they may or may not raise their arms, and Big Ben may or may not be destroyed.

We were promised sixteen "wildly different" endings.  The media is making a huge fuss about how we're upset that we didn't get a happy ending, but I hope I and others have made it clear that this isn't about that.  But with the amount of potential there is for the story to branch off in "wildly different" directions, I was expecting endings that ranged from Shepard riding off into the sunset with Garrus to retire on a beach and live happily ever after, to bittersweet "Armageddon" style endings where Shepard sacrifices themself for the greater good, to endings where we see a Shepard VI or one of Liara's time capsules warning the next spacefaring civilization 50,000 years in the future about the Reaper threat.  It's not that we didn't get a happy ending--it's that we didn't get to choose our ending, happy or sad, bittersweet or miserable, when we were told that we would be able to.  We don't even get the satisfaction of seeing how our three choices affected the galaxy in the end (that is, before everyone eventually died off), because we weren't given a conclusion.  Buzz Aldrin's voice, apparently, was far more important than finding out what happened to the characters we've cared about for five years.

And of course, like I mentioned before, any and all choice is negated in the end by the annihilation of organic life caused by the destruction of the mass relays.  Our choices aren't just not taken into account--they're completely undone.

What I Would Like to See Bioware Do:

I'd like to see a DLC released that gives us exactly what we were promised before the game's release--the sixteen "wildly different" endings we were promised, that don't contain plot holes so big they make what happened in the endings we were given downright impossible and render the first game's plot invalid.  I want to see
closure, for which the absolute least that could be done would be Dragon Age-style epilogue slides, though I think most preferably, I and other fans would like to see some cinematics showing us what's happened to the people and places we care about.  I want to see the choice we were promised, and I want to see it impact the story
in a significant way.  I want all of my questions answered--not "lots of speculation"--again, like we were promised.

In Summary:

The first 99% of Mass Effect was a wonderful, beautiful game.  The last five minutes, however, not only failed to deliver the promises made about the ending and variety of choice, but directly subverted them.  I and many others feel that we were misled by these promises and did not receive the product we paid for.  Additionally, the ending we were given felt very sub-par in comparison to the rest of the game because of its glaring lore issues, plot holes, and narrative flaws.  I do not feel like I received my money's worth because I bought the game based on the promises the developers made that were clearly not kept, and I would like to see each of these issues
addressed and remedied.

The "this is our artistic choice" defense is not a valid argument.  The story has clear and damaging narrative flaws.  According to the setting's own internal logic and lore, the franchise cannot possibly continue to
exist after Shepard makes their final choice.  The ending could not have possibly happened the way it did.  To
defend a rushed, flawed, and illogical ending that disregards the promises that were made to the paying consumers by saying "this is art and must therefore be held sacred" is simply an invalid excuse.  We are paying consumers.  If Bioware would like to see themselves as artists, then understand that by promising to deliver a customer a portrait and then instead handing them an abstract painting is not good business practice, or defensible by saying "but this is my artistic choice."  As an artist, I fully understand the desire to defend your artistic integrity, but the moment you start making promises to your customers, you are bound to deliver exactly what you promised, regardless of your "artistic vision," lest you be held culpable for your actions and are--rightly--asked that you change your product to fulfill your promises.

I paid $80 for this game based on the promises you made to us, and then broke.   This is the crux of the issue.  The fact that these promises were broken in order to give us a sub-par, illogical, broken narrative is just icing on the cake at this point.  Regardless of how different fans feel about the current endings, there is no denying Bioware's promises have not been delivered.

Thank you for your time,
Rebel Mel/Skyvale

A bit of a story in itself but you already sold me when you posted the quotes, when I finished the game I felt let down now I feel just ripped off ( never saw the quotes, just kinda thought it was obvious they would deliver)...not sure if I am happy with that though .

Some people who are saying that the ending shouldn't be altered because of some integrity issues are plain wrong, it would show some integrity, if they said it because they like the ending then that is of course their right to do so.

Next the gamey vs art perspective, again I don't mind that they try something diffferent , but don't say it sounds/ is gamey, what I find gamey is filling up some coored bar ( renegade/paragon) to convince people one way or another or that galaxy readiness is dependend on the fact you played multiplayer or not ...that's gamey

[Seival]

There are some nice constructive feedback movies about why current ME3 endings are terrible and illogical:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUqAhKW7498&list=LLP_2LFeHwwYE8lmxp4Bb97Q&feature=mh_lolz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGZJC-nY4TA&list=FLP_2LFeHwwYE8lmxp4Bb97Q&feature=mh_lolz  

[maxlink]

 I wanna have more endingoptions.More bad one but also some happy endings.My favourite happy end would be "shepard and tali for ever on rannoch"Thats all i need for MY happy end. xD

[jarms48]

Where were the tanks the British officer continued to promise.

Stand Your Ground by Phoenix-06, for his upcoming Telikos Protocol

I would love to see some armoured engagements with tanks charging across open ground, main guns concentrating firepower on Reaper Destroyers, while the cupola and coaxial gunners shoot at assaulting husk ground troops. With Mako's and Hammerhead fast attack vehicles swerving and dodging incoming fire, Mako's barreling into terrain as Alliance and Turians dismount proceeding to neutralise hostile husk targets.

*****

It was also mentioned that the Reapers were targeting missile silos, they couldn't have destroyed all of them, Russia alone has over 50000 missiles. I want to see Quarian and Geth infiltrators uncloak behind enemy lines and guild down missile strikes with targeting lasers.

Impact by Phoenix-06, for his upcoming Telikos Protocol

*****

Continue the space battle if you unite the geth and the quarians show both fleets, with the Quarian Admiral and the Geth Prime reporting in. The use of fire ships, disabled vessels ramming into Reaper dreadnoughts as a defiant last stand. Broadside actions, boarding actions. Aria said the mercenary groups would fight dirty, have teams of batarians and volus fight their way to a reapers element zero core then fire all mighty cain into its core only for the team to make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of victory.

*****

Alliance soldiers and batarians sitting in trenches shooting at hordes of incoming reaper forces to only find themselves running out of thermal clips. A brave officer screams "Affix bayonets." (Or something along those lines) And we watch as the troops charge into a bloody melee.

*****

A Salarian STG team assaults a building to get cut down by a ravaging brute, a Krogan charges in and takes the beast down then offers a hand to a surviving Salarian. (If genophage is cured, if not STG team gets wiped out)

*****

We see each of our previous surviving squad mates leading assault teams, depending on EMS would determine there success.

Garrus leading a team of Turian snipers picking off hostiles in their concealed position. With low EMS they get overrun and we watch them battle reaper ground troops until their last breath. High EMS we watch as they continue to repel husk troopers from supporting forces. If Garrus is in final squad role is replaced by the Primark.

*****

Wrex and Grunt are in the thick of the battle they and numerous krogan troopers fight back husk enemies while a Krogan heavy weapon team prepare to fire a couple of Cains down a nearby Reapers throat. Low EMS the team get surround and we watch Wrex and Grunt fight back to back until the inevitable. High EMS, Genophage cured, Grunt and Wrex live in from previous installments the team is successful the heavy weapons hit there mark and the reaper goes down, the team begins extraction to nearby Mako's.

If Wrex died in ME1 role replaced by Wreave, if Grunt died in ME 2 role replaced by random Krogan Soldier. Did not cure the Genophage and/or killed Wrex only part of the team extracts. (Only with high EMS, low EMS all vehicles are destroyed by reaper laser along with occupants)

*****

Miranda, Samara, Kaiden, Jack and her team of biotics fight through a series of collapsed buildings fighting back banshees and other assorted enemies room by room. Low EMS the team in a attack role, a spot light emits over the team from a nearby window followed by a piercing scream and a reaper laser turning them into ash. Low EMS the team in support role, team makes a combined barrier successfully repelling the reaper laser but jack dies. High EMS team in attack role they successfully clear the building before they are spotted. High EMS support role teams combined barrier blocks reaper beam nobody dies.

Miranda, Samara, Kaiden and Jack will be replaced by miscellaneous biotics for each one of them that were killed.

*****

Space battle dog fights, ships moving through debris fields, commanders screaming orders, engineering teams attempt to repair vessels and put out fires. Continue skirmish battles.

*****

I will let the others finish their ideas, but I may add more tomorrow.

Modifié par jarms48, 22 mars 2012 - 11:37 .

[M2S SOLID JOSH]

what i want?...look at dragon age origins ending and you will get an idea. several endings including living or dying, an epilouge of all youve done in the galaxy, and that litle extra- a scene with your LI that differs which each character and prefrence ( shep/liara holding childs hand, shep/tali on rannoc, shep/jack getting laid etc ). also if ur not gonna take out the "starchild" ( i hate him sssoooo much though ) please explain y hes in the form of the dead kid if the theroy in not true. ty....though i highly doubt theyll actually read this >_>  i could get into more details but with so many ideas....yeah

Modifié par M2S SOLID JOSH, 22 mars 2012 - 11:47 .

[LBXZero]

Completing the game once with a military strength around 4,200, it left me with some thoughts that may help for suggesting what to do.

Going back to ME1 and ME2, the decisions over saving the Council and destroying the Collector Base feel like concluding decisions.  For how the Crucible is used in ME3 on the other hand, it felt like a climatic decision, not a concluding decision.  In meaning, using the Crucible from the way the game panned out, in my opinion, felt like a turning point in the game more than the end of the game.

Saying how I felt on it, it opens up a suggestion providing a Mass Effect 3.5 expansion that branches past the Crucible, as if the war is not over yet.  It is similar to Bomberman 64 on the N64, where beating the last stage in the 5th zone would end the game normally, but collecting all the gold cards from all zones, including the 5th zone, opens the final zone and reveals the truth.

Me personally, I view chaos not as a force of destruction but a force of balance.  In the roots of chaos is an overly complex, yet extremely simple, form of order.  When order is forced onto chaos, chaos will fight back, and will always win eventually.  As described in the final scene, each Reaper is an archive of a sentient race that was harvested to extinction before that race advanced enough to create the predicted synthetic race that would have the goal to exterminate all organic life.  It is an attempt to impose order on the chaos that is the universe.  In the end, the chaos, through the actions of Shepherd assisted by all the preceding cycles, breaks the cycle.  It may have taken millions of years, but chaos is patient.  To say, the reason why the reaper plan to maintain order fails is because the architect of the plan failed to respect some of the aspects of life, and thus a growing resistance forms that passes from one cycle to the next.

In conclusion, using the Crucible should not have been an ending decision but a climax putting Shepherd on a campaign to resolve the reprocussions from the tide turning event in the war against the Reapers.  I thought it was best to at least provide my few cents to assist in formulating a new ending.

[silverspirit2001]

Err, I think the people want ideas on how to finish the game, since a heroic boss fight is off the table...

Saying that, what I would suggest is

1. Ending one. Not enough war assets, the crucible splutters, and fails to work. No interaction with anyone. Screams of terror as the reapers continue their business.
2. Pure paragon option high EMS, ignore the star child ending, just have harbinger plead his case for the continued existence of the reapers, but quite arrogantly. press button, reapers die. Make it sound that Shepard will never understand the reapers purpose.
3. Pure renegade option high EMS, have harbinger offer to correct the mistakes of the past, (cure genophage, reveal has geth programs in storage). Tell the player, that they will be back in 100 years. Press button to kill reapers, at the cost of the relays, or accept offer.
4. Pure paragon, middling EMS. Have the paragon choose the destruction, but you see the harbinger attempting to escape. But in the attempt, harbinger crashes into the mass relay, destroying the relay, not before the signal to destroy all the reapers elsewhere is sent. The relay explodes, destroying earth and all fleets.
5. Pure renegade, middling EMS. Have harby offer Shepard immortality, as his own reaper unit in full control of facilities. If accepts, turns into husk, refuses scream of rage from harby, and attempts to flee the scene as per paragon middling ems above.
6. Non pure character. The voice of harbinger resonates through the citadel while Shepard is at the controls. Perhaps at the end on the ending we have already, with the threatening "assuming control". See Shepard, depending on choices turn into a husk. Else, depending on the EMS scores, offer the options of pure renegade or paragon options.

Just a few ideas, which though sharing resources should give better endings. Of course, on the high EMS endings, you can have the celebrations with the other characters, and an epilogue. The other endings, you just make clear, either you have failed, or that the earth and all the fleets were destroyed, but the rest of galatic civilization is saved.  

Modifié par silverspirit2001, 22 mars 2012 - 12:35 .

[a.m.p]

Dear Bioware.
Have written a long (probably way too long) post with suggestions and ideas for the endings:
social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10448290

Feedback other than that: everything that did not include Cerberus was amazing. Highlights would be the whole genophage storiline startting with Mordin's mission in me2, the geth-quarian conflict, Liara's time capsule project, and Grunt's mission. If you do actually change the ending, please let the people who wrote those bits do it.