3214 réponses à ce sujet

[pie is so good]

As Kai Leng might say, "now it's fun!"

[FatalX7.0]

Avernius wrote...

You can't polish a turd. What part of "Your Ending Sucks" didn't you understand, Bioware?

Ugh. Way to fail on a rare second chance.

Mythbusters would like to talk to you.

[Sphynxian]

I wonder if the Extended Cut will be even remotely as good as this fan project:

http://shannon.users...net/masseffect/

[Spartan_472]

Straight from the horses mouth:

"So there you have it. Are we proud of the game we made and the team that made it? Hell yes. Are we going to change the ending of the game? No. Do we appreciate the passion and listen to the feedback delivered to us by our fans? Very much so and we are responding."

I do believe I'm done with Bioware and most likely EA once and for all.  The rest of you have my sincerest gratitude.  I could not have asked for such a large consumer movement to display our disapleasure with this entertainment industry entity.  Sadly, they have yet to understand the entire picture we've been trying to paint for them for some time. Good luck in all you do.  I'll be forever holding the line by witholding my purchases.  PAX is going to be interesting...

-Always Hope

Modifié par Spartan_472, 06 avril 2012 - 11:48 .

[apieros]

liquiddemon wrote...

Give them a chance.

I gave them a chance... with DA2.

I gave them a chance... with Mass Effect 3.

I gave them a chance... with the careful, thoughtful feedback on what was wrong.

They screwed up all of these.

I am giving them one more chance, with the DLC.

But why should I assume that the same company which produced mediocre games and made disastrously bad decisions, then defended them by condescending to and insulting their fans, will get it right "this time for sure"?

They had my trust. They squandered it. They want my trust back? Earn it.

Until they prove themselves, they do not deserve my trust. They especially do not deserve me blindly assuming they will get it right this time, especially after the several succeeding debacles of the last few years. 

Holding my wallet.

Modifié par apieros, 06 avril 2012 - 12:04 .

[Bludger133]

Are there going to be more/different endings or ending DLCs in the future?
No. BioWare strongly believes in the team’s artistic vision for the end of this arc of the Mass Effect franchise. The extended cut DLC will expand on the existing endings, but no further ending DLC is planned.[/list]

Can someone please explain to me how ripping off Eidos' work (ie copying Deus Ex endings) equates to "artistic direction"?

Perhaps someone in Bioware needs to look up "plagiarism".  Hint: it does not mean artistic direction.

[luzburg]

we cant be picky at this point . i say destroy+ ME3 DC has hope!

[Hussain_2012]

Why do I have the feeling that exteding ending will be full of plot holes? For instance, I can't understand how will they explain survival of Shep's last squad members in the Normandy , the reality is their ending has plot hole, such as heaven eleveator; sorry could find another term to describe it XD which takes Shep to the Cruicibel , I wish best luck BW in the creating the extending ending .....

[MeepZero]

I'm hopeful for the epilogue DLC, but I'm not giving Bio / EA a penny for anything else until it arrives.

[Uriko128]

Bludger133 wrote...

Are there going to be more/different endings or ending DLCs in the future?
No. BioWare strongly believes in the team’s artistic vision for the end of this arc of the Mass Effect franchise. The extended cut DLC will expand on the existing endings, but no further ending DLC is planned.[/list]

Can someone please explain to me how ripping off Eidos' work (ie copying Deus Ex endings) equates to "artistic direction"?

Perhaps someone in Bioware needs to look up "plagiarism".  Hint: it does not mean artistic direction.

[Beti88]

"We listen to fan feedback (if it's positive) and choose to ignore it, because we can do no wrong and we know better! This horde of entitled, whiny, simpleton gamers can not comprehend the majestic artistic vision of ours!"

This is pretty much what they said.

[Thornquist]

I for one is optimistic. I dont think Bioware have ever worked so hard exclusivly on a ending before, and I think the end result will be great.

Have some faith people!

[I am Sovereign]

Thornquist wrote...

I for one is optimistic. I dont think Bioware have ever worked so hard exclusivly on a ending before, and I think the end result will be great.

Have some faith people!

KOTOR, DA Origins, Jade Empire, ME1, ME2 ALL had better endings than that failed abortion BiowarEA calls the "artistic" conclusion to the Mass Effect trillogy. Casey Hudson and Mac Walters locked themselves in a room away from the input of the rest of the writing staff, barely ANY effort was made.

[SirBob1613]

Avernius wrote...

You can't polish a turd. What part of "Your Ending Sucks" didn't you understand, Bioware?

Ugh. Way to fail on a rare second chance.

[Velocithon]

I really wish Bioware could explain more in-depth, if they know, what they plan to do.

- These cinematics, are they just for the end? Or will they be inserted throughout the game?
- The epilogue, is it just cutscenes still or will there be gameplay?
- Are we going to have any interaction with this DLC on any level?
- Will this DLC reflect the choices we made that did not get shown in the current end (like the Rachni, or ME2 squad mates fighting?)

If I knew more I'd be a lot more optimistic about this. As it stands now, simply "more cinema tics and an epilogue" is just so so vague. It literally could be nothing at all to look forward to, or everything.

[TheCinC]

I have at least seven reasons why I am disapponted, ordered as a response to the official announcement...

Reason number1: the condescending tone in the announcement:

"Since launch, we have had time to listen to the feedback from our most passionate fans [...]"

Are only the most passionate fans turned off by this ending? Judging by the numbers here on this forum alone, I don't think so.

Reason number 2: the use of 'artistic vision' to defend an Deus ex Machina ending that doesn't fit with the three games we've played and doesn't fit with the promises made to us before release:

The ending isn't anything like what was promised, so it can't be true that this was the 'artistic vision' of the writers all along. Even if it is, then  that vision is irrelevant, because it isn't what we were promised. But I highly doubt the writers who gave us all those choices spread over  three games would leave us with a choice between red, green and blue.

Reason number 3: we don't want explanations or answers regarding the current ending:

The current ending does not need to be explained to us, like we were  children unable to grasp what we've seen. We want Shepard to either die  in the field because we made a mistake, or dust him/herself off and get  back into the fight and keep fighting until the bitter end. That way we  can go back and try again, making different choices, buy and download DLC to give us new characters, weapons, equipment, allies, you name it.

Reason number 4: we don't want "additional cinematics and epilogue scenes" because we want to be able to make real choices and decide through those choices how Shepard's story ends.

The three choices we get are simply not choices Shepard could live with.

1) Kill all synthetic beings, including the Geth (in many cases now our allies, which would mean betraying them and would make Legion's sacrifice pointless) and Edi (now a crewmember and love interest of another  crewmember, Joker) despite all the evidence that quite possibly synthetic and biological beings -can- live together. Not an option, especially not for a Paragon, possibly not even for a Renegade as it would mean genocide.

2) Take control of the Reapers, not knowing for a fact that this could work, risking being overwhelmed and not
accomplishing anything but help the Reapers getting rid of Shepard. But even if Shepard remains in control, then what? Take away the freedom of choice for an entire race, no matter how heinous their crimes? Enforce peace throughout the Galaxy by using the Reapers as the ultimate 'big stick'? Sending the Reapers into the nearest star? It doesn't seem like much of a solution to me, much more like a dangerous gamble at best.

3) Fuse all organic and synthentic life, without anyone else having a say in this matter. Yeah, that seems like a nice thing to do to people, nevermind the implications of 'space magic' that really come with that.

In all cases, you furthermore: a) unquestionably accept the premise of the Star Child and of everything he is telling you and  condemn all races to being stranded where they are by blowing up the mass relays. Not every system is going to recover from that in time, no matter how that is solved in the end, millions if not billions will die.

Of course, if the three choices are a fakeout and Shepard really dies or becomes indoctrinated, then all of this is moot anyway.

Reason number 5: it feels like something to keep us quiet:

"Currently the Extended Cut DLC is planned for this summer, no specific date has been announced at this point."

Although I have to admit, getting new content on short notice would probably be far worse, as it would then be of very low quality due to the time constraints, the combination of the statements made regarding the shape of new content and the long lead time, combines to give us something which does not deliver on earlier promises, does not address our concern and may simply be intended to shut us up. Maybe they hope that with this, enough of us will quiet down, at least until summer.

Reason number 6: their stated goal is not to deliver on what we have been promised and on what we want:

"The goal of the DLC is not to provide a new ending to the game, rather to offer fans additional context and  answers to the end of Commander Shepard’s story."

So they clearly state there will not be even a single additional ending to the game, they will just take what we have
and provide some more clarity. So, we can't even hope that they will, in the end, deliver on their promises.

Reason number 7: I paid for this game based on the promises which were made and the quality of ME1 and ME2

I paid full price for a Collector's Edition of ME3, which I preordered. I then expected, at minimum, a full fledged game, with an ending that a) makes sense and  ties up any loose ends. In that respect, ME3 did not deliver. Furthermore, we were promised a whole lot more and EA/Bioware did not deliver on those promises. For an overview of some of the promises made, see here.



Are we asking for too much? No, we are asking for what we were promised and what we paid for. Is this an impossible thing to do? Can anyone think of so many different endings? Yes we can.

Is this a viable option for EA/Bioware? If they want to save a franchise which has made them a lot of money? Sure it is. Is it a viable jumping off point for further content? Of course it is. So why the hell not? Why dig in their heels using 'artistic vision' as an excuse? As a writer myself, yeah, I might be miffed if I wrote an ending which was profound and people didn't 'get it' and started trashtalking it. But that is not what happened. Again, as a writer myself, I'd jump at the chance at showing my creative genius and get to work drawing up several different endings.

They know what they promised, now they know what we want, they made their move, but I don't see how that is to their advantage. I'm still hoping someone at EA/Bioware will see that what they are doing right now is counterproductive and take steps to alter their plans.

Modifié par TheCinC, 06 avril 2012 - 02:03 .

[mulder1199]

this is as helpful as a poop flavored lollypop

[cuzsal]

jojimbo wrote...

Ahms wrote...

Dead_Meat357 wrote...

Mass Effect: In with a Bang out with a Whimper

Why the upcoming DLC cant’ fix the ending to Mass Effect 3. 

There are a lot of opinions and thoughts about the ending of Mass Effect 3. The announcement this morning may fill some with hope, but not me. Instead I’m filled with sadness and dread at the realization that BioWare’s artistic vision is for everyone to die at the end and to leave behind a Mass Effect universe in which the galaxy would have been better off if Shepard had let Saren succeed in ME1.

I’m going to try and minimize the talk about EA commercializing the crap out of these games, being evil, or BioWare being a bunch of sellouts, or even Casey Hudson and Mac Walters going off the rails.
No, instead I’m going to make some predictions and throw out my $0.02 and say that BioWare made a lot of mistakes, backed themselves into a creative corner, pulled a BSG/Lost, and pretty much guaranteed no good return to the Mass Effect universe going forward. While there are some overlapping complaints I’ll make here addressed by others pointing out things in the indoctrination theory or just statements concerning how broken the ending is from a lot of different angles, I hope to address a couple new ones or at least things that are down played and ignored.

This is all full of spoilers. Many of you who haven’t completed the game heard the ending sucks, but I urge you to finish it and make your own conclusions. You should probably even do so before the updated ending comes out so you can make your own judgement as well as see the differences added should you replay it with the DLC.

The Ending Sucks But we Already Knew That

First, there is a lot of talk about how the ending to Mass Effect 3 sucks. It does, you’ll get no arguments from me. It’s full of plot holes, contradictions, it ends abruptly and paints your choices in a confusing light. It doesn’t have the same feel that the rest of the series has. Nothing about it is familiar and it all feels “off” and unfamiliar. Not only does it contradict the nature of the series itself, but it goes against statements made by Casey Hudson himself in interviews. (You know, about the whole A,B, and C thing not being what they were going for.) The worst part is that all your choices essentially all have the same results. I’ll say that I’ve got no clue why a low EMS results in only the destroy ending being available or why the destroy ending is the only one that allows Shepard to wake up in the rubble in London after everything goes to hell.

Implications………….unpleasant.

The Final Mission Sucks and the DLC isn’t Addressing That

But what I rarely see is talk about how the final mission, specifically Priority: Earth sucks so bad. Up until then the game is easily the best of the three in my opinion. Not only graphically or game play wise, but in the way missions and the story are handled. Plotlines from earlier installments are brought to clean and satisfying resolution. The whole game up until the Priority: Earth mission is actually a well crafted masterpiece. Excellent set pieces and backdrops, a sense of urgency, family, and team are all fostered here. I loved seeing all my favorite characters again and the interactions with them are by far the richest and most fulfilling in the whole series.

Before you can understand why the final act sucks so bad you have to understand why the first games had epic conclusions which were not only satisfying, but had you at the edge of your seat the entire time.

In the original Mass Effect, one of my favorite parts of the game is going outside the Citadel tower and making my way to the council chambers with Sovereign in the background with Geth and Krogan trying to stop me. You come face to ugly face with Saren and learn that he’s a tragic figure and not necessarily the evil man you believed him to be earlier. He shoots himself if your paragon or renegade score is high enough, and it seems like it will be the end of him. But you don’t want to ignore the body, you want to make sure it’s not a trick. And of course it doesn’t and you have to fight what Saren has truly become. A tool of Sovereign. Nothing more, nothing less. Once he’s defeated the feedback causes Sovereign to lose control of his shields, then the order is given and the combined Alliance and Citadel fleets destroy the Reaper sending pieces of it all over. The music, the dialog, the battle, the cinematics are all well done here. From Ilos on the game is all about your goals and the story. Some of the best looking and most well thought out segments of the game are in the final act.

In Mass Effect 2 one of my favorite parts of the game is assaulting the Collector base and choosing who leads the second team, who goes into the vents, and literally who will live and die. The long walk music playing in the background really adds ambience to it. I liked fighting within the biotic barrier and cutting down bad guys. While the Reaper battle itself could have been done differently and a whole lot better, all the cinematics and choices in the final act are great.

In Mass Effect 3 I dread everything after the assault on the Illusive Man's base. The Priority Earth mission just sucks on so many levels.

The Good Bye Sequence

You get to Earth and things fall apart. In fact almost everything after the attack on the Cerberus base is pretty much terrible. We get a nice fulfilling and interesting good bye to Liara, especially if you romanced her. Then you proceed and say good bye to the rest of the survivors of your teams from 1 and 2. These are a bit of a mixed bag. I found many compelling and moving, with some of them feeling a little forced and flat. I think my fondness for some characters makes some more bittersweet than others. All of them are generally pretty good but the entire sequence seems out of place. There is this calm base in the worst area of fighting in which you’ve got time to do all of this? Seems tacked on at the last minute. Though it sets a tone in which Shepard seems to lose hope. The dialog delivered lacks a certain fire after that. Shepard’s own commentary contradict his or her nature from the first two games and even the third up until Thessia.

Shepard almost seems prepared to fail. I think they were going for an effect in which you can finally see the events of all three games taking their toll on the Galaxy’s greatest hero and soldier. Depending on how you look at it, this is either well done or completely out of character. This segment is essentially the calm before the storm.
And here is the point where the train really leaves the tracks. It happens well before the games controversial and lackluster ending.
Problematic……………….

Who Needs Rails?

You gather with all your allies one last time and head to where Anderson is planning the final assault to drive the Reapers back and deliver the Crucibal. I had this silly expectation that they’d at least give us what Mass Effect 2 did and outline objectives in which we’d decide which team members did the deeds. Choosing correctly would lead to success, and choosing poorly would lead to character deaths at the very least. I was sure that we’d probably lose some no matter what being the final game and experiencing so much loss already. While it was just an action set piece, we still had an RPG element to it. In that regard Mass Effect 2 triumphed over the first game.

But sadly, in Mass Effect 3 none of that happened. We had one objective, and Shepard just picked two people to go with him or her and that’s it. All you do is fight wave, after wave, after wave of frustrating enemies. The same five to be exact. Marauders, cannibals, husks, banshees, and brutes. No where in this mess did we see Krogan protecting our flank, or Asari bombing the enemy positions. We saw no Salarian commandos blowing up Reaper assets in the background. We don’t even see the Mass Effect Allstar team which showed up to help us in our final push do anything. They fade away into the background like common soldiers. Hardly fitting or satisfying. You are told you have one objective. Reach the conduit. A Reaper destroyer comes into sour that plan. The only hope? Thanix missiles. OK, but Shepard once again has to be the one to do this. So you set out to reach the missiles and you fight the endless horde to do it.

And it is endless. In fact once you are given the go to launch, just run to the truck and do it. Ignore all the enemies at that point. They’ll disappear once you’ve launched the missiles. Yeah, that’s right. You don’t have to wait for a break in the fighting because you won’t get one.

The run to the conduit itself is almost identical to the one in Mass Effect 1, except that we don’t do it in a Mako and we have Harbinger or another Reaper shooting at us. You run in only to get shot anyway before reaching your final objective. Now again I don’t want to argue for indoctrination theory at this point. I’ll just say that the imagery gets confusing, things feel off and out of place, and everything is abrupt and just out of character for the universe. Shepard in no way seems to question the validity of what the proclaimed Reaper creator says. That last part is important. So far Shepard has never accepted anything anyone has said and went his or her own way knowing what the goal was all along and never losing sight of that objective. To do what needs to be done. Sometimes via compromised morals or an ends justifies the means stance, depending on your choices, but always in the pursuit of a noble goal that is abandoned in the final minutes. 
 
The DLC Won’t Likely Address the Citadel Content

Other plot holes aside, I’m uncertain how any of the endings themselves could be changed or have added context based on new cinematics. The choices still suck and are presented in a haphazard and akward way with no context really being given, no questions being asked, and nothing profound happening. So without interrupting before Shepard waking up and explaining how Anderson and the Illusive Man ended up there, we won’t get clarity on this at all. Maybe after the choice is made, but the choices are still presented in an amateur hour kind of way. Far sub-par to the way every other choice has been presented to us before.

This is not to say that every decision in Mass Effect can be made the first play through with an idea of what the consequences will be. I wasn’t sure what the right call to make with the Geth heretics or the with Keji’s greybox. But these choices are presented with context that is easy to follow and more importantly, allow some conjecture on your part which helps you to make a good decision. When I was told my three choices by the Catalyst and it’s some 14 lines of dialog, I really wanted to go back and have it repeat everything because I wasn’t sure I heard everything. Again it’s a huge decision but there is no context as Shepard can’t really ask any questions.

So the Reapers aren’t Sentient?

One point I fail to see get addressed in forum posts and articles is the fact that this Catalyst AI Starchild thing contradicts the idea that the Reapers are sentient on their own. Sovereign and Harbinger, as well as the unknown Reaper on Rannoch are all clearly sentient. Yet this AI Catalyst supposedly created them? How will the Crucibal force them to do anything? In just a few lines of dialog the conversations with Sovereign and Harbinger become meaningless. It diminishes the Reaper threat by making them into machines which follow the machinations of this other being we know nothing about. We just met him in the last 10 minutes.

DLC Won’t Address Shepard’s Complete Trust in the Catalyst

And if it created Reapers, you can trust him. I won’t put complete faith in someone trying to sell me a car, Shepard is distrustful of the Illusive Man who brought him/her back from the dead but this master of the Reapers is totally trust worthy. The fate of the galaxy and trillions of sentient lives are at stake and there is no reason to be sure and ask questions before you do anything.

Not only does Shepard fail to ask questions here for clarification, but Shepard really does take everything presented at face value. The catalyst AI starchild thing tells Shepard that his or her choice will destroy the mass relays. Since Shepard already blew up one, you’d think that would be a point of concern and discussion given what happened the last time. (I would imagine the Batarian legal suit would have still been pending were it not for being wiped out by the Reapers.) Shepard should have taken a lesson from James T. Kirk who never feared to ask anyone anything he wanted an answer for. Important questions which address poor or logically fallible arguments. Questions like; “What does God need with a starship?”

Often times Shepard hasn’t liked the paths laid out for him or her by others and takes new direction. This was evidenced in all three games a lot of times. Yet this attitude is suspiciously absent in the final moments of the game. Most people would have said on Manae that there was no way to get the Krogan to help the Turians but Shepard never said that. When the new Primarch asked, Shepard made it happen. The catalyst would have you believe that these three ridiculous choices are the only options you have. Why should Shepard accept that?
The Catalyst is part of the Crucibal and this is the same being who supposedly made Reapers to harvest organics every 50,000 years. Yeah, let’s go with what he says.
 
The Endings are Screwed up Before the Cinematics really Start and BioWare isn’t Addressing That

We all know the part about the Mass Relays blowing up whole star systems, stranding races in places without enough resources to survive and all that. But each ending has its own issues and its own added consequences. I will endeavor to deal with them individually and from the perspective of how the choice is presented and some of the differences vs. the others.

Control

In the control ending we are led to believe that apparently the Crucibal doesn’t have a real switch and Shepard needs to complete a circuit or something rather than get what he or she needs from the Presidium Commons market or raid the Keeper’s tool box for something which could be used as a switch. So Shepard has to grab these two glowing rods and whilst being vaporized think happy thoughts and wish the Reapers away.
The biggest issue I have with this is that the Reapers aren’t sentient or are really retarded for not doing something about a back door command signal. Essentially in 50,000+ years no one patched out this critical security flaw? And again if they were truly sentient and were able to rebel against their creators, why are they listening to this Catalyst, and again why does this device compel them to do anything? I also find it odd that the Catalyst endorses this and that Shepard’s eyes look exactly like the Illusive Man’s in the final moments just before disintegration. I’m not advocating indoctrination, but the symbolism of this can’t be ignored. We may lack context, but it’s something you should think about. Something BioWare needs to address.  Interestingly enough, the Citadel is also not destroyed in this ending as I recall. I don’t know what that means. I can only speculate.

Synthesis

I’ve often heard of this being referred to as the good ending or the best ending. In truth this is nothing of the kind. It’s essentially the ending to Star Trek the Motion Picture, but more convoluted. This isn’t a movie you really want your story to emulate. Fan fiction and non-cannon fiction basically credits this as the rise of the Borg race, despite being somewhat unlikely based on statements made in the series. This choice bugs me because it’s already what the Reapers do anyway. The catalyst confirms that’s how organics live on. As Reapers. This also forces Shepard to go back on what is said a minute earlier. “We’ll keep our form thanks.” Or something to that effect. This is a unilateral decision in which organic and inorganic fusion should be forced on all beings in the galaxy. As another person pointed out I think in one of the Youtube videos, the solution to diversity is mediocrity? Really? I can’t believe anyone supports this ending. It’s the worst.

Shepard also never asks what this will do to his or her companions and if anyone’s identity will remain intact. Could you imagine waking up and all of the sudden seeing bioluminescent circuitry all over your body. I’d probably freak out and kill myself. Especially if everyone I saw around me looked the same. So Shepard is going to make a unilateral call for the whole galaxy with no context and no questions? Please. At least My Shepard’s don’t do this. And again Shep’s eyes look like the Illusive Man’s just prior to being disintegrated.

Destroy

This is probably the least offensive ending and the most difficult to understand in some ways. The Starchild presents this ending as “oh by the way, you can destroy us if you want, but you are partly synthetic, so don’t do that.” The Starchild also adds that the Geth and EDI will be destroyed with this choice. Now this is the kind of choice that Shepard is used to making. Shepard sacrificed Batarian colonists to delay a Reaper invasion. It would also keep the Quarians, Salarians, Krogan, Asari, Hanar, Drell, Humans, and anyone else I’m missing alive. While Shepard may not like these types of decisions, I think this is the easiest one to take and the most sensible. It’s the only decision that would ensure that the Reaper menace would stay gone.

But there is a catch. If the EMS score is high enough Shepard wakes up gasping for air in a pile of rubble clearly in London. This tells you that Shepard didn’t die, and that everything above was a lie. Indoctrination theory or not, this tells you that the ending here can’t be taken at face value. In fact it brings into question all of them. Also in this ending Shepard’s eyes do not change. It is the only one where they don’t.

Cornered

Many others have outlined all the plot problems and arguments for why the ending to Mass Effect 3 sucks from a literary perspective and a plot perspective. There are tons of great videos about that out there to view on Youtube. I won’t even dive too far into the fact that the Mass Effect universe is essentially destroyed as we know it. This too has already been said many times. What I will say is that this paints the creative team into a corner. A happier ending, or an ending which left Mass Relays intact or left the Reapers OK to return down the line at least gives you options even if you never used the Reapers again as an enemy.

Semi-Optimistic Viewpoint

If we want to be optimistic about the ending, (which is hard to do given the implications of the endings) then we take believe that the Mass Relays didn’t blow up like the one in the Arrival DLC did and they explode “nicer.” Though the Normandy running from the explosion tells us that’s likely not going to work. Still, even if true at best all the races are stranded in the Sol system. Assuming you didn’t blow up the Citadel and chose the control ending, then there are some resources there, but Turian and Quarian fleets may have shortages of food and supplies. Remember they can’t eat what’s on Earth. Earth, if not totally ruined won’t have the infrastructure to support the vast ships and people that will need to most likely call Earth their home for a time. With standard FTL drives it would take some time for any of the races to make it to a nearby inhabitable system. Palaven is one of the closest planets, but it could still take decades or more to reach it. So that’s one major issue that must be dealt with.
Assuming that the Krogan, Humans, and Salarians can all get along, there will be population concerns with the Krogan now free of the genophage. Assuming they have access to females. Otherwise they’ll simply die out. Salarians and Humans would most likely end up dominating the planet in light of that. Which the humans already do, so there is that. But again even with the death tolls, the people left on the fleets will have to go somewhere and a ruined Earth supporting everyone, even with the Citadel’s assistance (assuming it didn’t blow up given your choices) may be difficult. But let’s say for the sake of argument that it can be done and the peace can be kept in the long run. Still the problem of colonizing other worlds and how to get there has to get addressed. Eventually there will be population concerns if cultural problems don’t cause open war on Earth first.

Where did the Normandy and her crew end up? Well let’s assume that Joker picked up your squad mates. Where did they go? Obviously they are in another star system, but unless Liara gets busy cranking out babies, everyone is doomed. There isn’t enough genetic diversity on the Normandy crew to create a viable colony. Since Asari don’t actually need sex as we understand it to reproduce, and use other species to randomize their genetic material it’s possible that she could create a large enough base for an Asari colony. Javik comments on genetic modification to the Asari, and it’s possible that this was a gift of their genetic manipulation so let’s be generous and say that a colony of Asari are incoming. Still it would be hundreds if not thousands of years before we could see anything space fairing again. And most likely, much of the Normandy’s regular crew died in the crash and even Liara herself could be killed long before a viable colony can be built.

In which case many of the crew will die miserable and alone. The stargazer part of the ending shows some kind of colony rose up there eventually. We don’t know how long it took or even what race they are. The fact that the voice of Buzz Aldrin can be heard tells us that the person there is a male. So it’s not likely an Asari colony. So this is yet another plot hole to deal with.

On the bright side, the Protheans created the conduit, and Matriarch Atheyta did talk about recommending the Asari build new Mass Relays indicating that this is possible. Depending on how well Thessia held out during the final stages of the Reaper invasion, in a couple hundred years or so, this might be possible. If so then we could see a new Mass Relay network form. This is of course good news and lends credence to the idea of sequels based on this series at a later, far off period.

Though from a literary standpoint they run into the same problem BioWare ran into with KOTOR. The problem is that you have to keep the technology and style cues of the existing mythology so that you get the right feel out of it. The issue with that is you have to explain technological stagnation. I don’t know what the accepted explanation of it is in Star Wars, though it seems to be at least in the novels and games that the problem is due to constant war. This is of course a sharp contradiction from reality.

Our technology surged many times in history because of war. Not in spite of it. War creates a necessity for bigger and badder weapons. It creates the need for faster propulsion, more power, long lasting provisions, new technologies for killing, detecting enemies, stealth, etc. Jet propulsion was all a result of rocketry. Again the airliners today wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the need for higher flying bombers, and hard hitting missiles. So technology remaining stagnant as a result of war is really just not a well thought out excuse for covering the problem.

So if the story of the next Mass Effect is to take place hundreds or thousands of years from now, maybe even in another cycle, then it has to address technological stagnation. Or BioWare has to revamp everything and create new technology. At that point you might as well create a new IP and let Mass Effect die because that’s about what you’ll get in the end.
 
Negative Viewpoint

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if the relays do explode like they did in the Arrival then everyone is pretty much screwed. Even the Normandy, the fastest ship there couldn’t outrun the blast. More than likely every ship and the major inhabited star systems around the galaxy were destroyed.

Can the galaxy even survive hundreds or thousands of supernovas happening all at once? Who knows. But let’s say it can. We still have the problem of everyone dying except perhaps the Normandy crew which I addressed above. Races will go extinct. Many colonies won’t be able to sustain themselves without being able to reach major ports like the Citadel and any outlying pockets of survivors or colonies won’t have the ability to go somewhere else. Ships in Mass Effect do have FTL drives, but they only allow for movement in local clusters at best. Not all of them have inhabitable planets. Many people will run out of air or food and simply die.
Sure some life in the galaxy will survive and any pre-spaceflight populations like the Yahg may actually even flourish, but who knows whether or not they’ll ever find a solution without mass relays. Which if the relays destroyed star systems that had them, then the Asari and Prothean data most likely is lost and won’t ever lead to the construction of new relays. So what’s next? Hyperspace or Warp? Again you end up practically reinventing the entire IP. Specifically because this one revolved around the Mass Effect and the relays. So why do that?

And as I said before, the galaxy in this state isn’t worth the trouble. Shepard would have been better off grabbing all his potential love interests and creating a harem on some tropical planet and leaving the galaxy to fend for itself. At least they could have put things in motion to give the next cycle a shot at beating the Reapers. Which Liara tried to do anyway. But with all the relays destroyed, and many inhabitable worlds being gone, what’s there to save? The death toll is likely higher than it would have been had Shepard just give up earlier.

And I almost forgot. No one seems to mention this, but if the Citadel blew up and the relays didn’t destroy the Sol system, then you’ll have huge chunks of the Citadel raining down on Earth. Given the size of the thing, that’s a huge problem even for small pieces of it. The Citadel dwarfs Reapers by a massive amount. Pieces of it would almost certainly render the planet uninhabitable.

Sequels and Prequels

I’ve touched on the fact that sequels and prequels will have to deal with certain problems. A sequel will have to work within the confines of the endings of Mass Effect 3. The problems with this are harder to pin down taking the positive viewpoint but, most likely such a sequel would have to take place a few centuries after ME3. That is unless you want every planet to look like Tuchunka in ME2 and ME3 and limit yourself to a very small section of the galaxy that is reachable by standard FTL. In doing that the scale and scope of the first three games is totally lost.

So you have to take the idea of the Asari or someone else bouncing back with a new relay network. It would most likely have to take place thousands of years later to allow the Mass Effect universe to look anything like what we have seen in the earlier games. Though this will force totally new political situations, possibly new races, and of course we will lose all potential for reoccurring characters. We may be able to have one or two get frozen like Javik or something, but that’s about it.

Even if the sequel is a couple hundred years or more later, we can at least see Grunt an Liara again. But again the further you push out the timeline the more you have to adequately explain technological stagnation. If technology is simply lost and reinvented then you have to reinvent the look of everything even if it resembles what came before. So all weapon models, armor designs, and ship designs have to pretty much get thrown out. This is one thing if BioWare is going to use an updated engine and do all new graphics for the next series to target the next generation of consoles or computers.

If they are going to essentially use the framework of ME2 and ME3 with new stuff, seems like a waste in both time and money to do it. And again if you don’t nail this stuff exactly right it won’t feel like Mass Effect anymore, and you’ve hurt the fans even more than if you had let it die and gone with a new IP entirely.

Now obviously taking the more negative viewpoint and going with the galaxy exploded is even worse. This doesn’t really leave a universe you want to revisit and one you almost feel guilty in helping to create.

Prequels have their own sets of problems.

The first and foremost problem with doing a prequel is that you need a human protagonist. This limits the prequel time frame to a 30 year window, part of which had humans at war with the Turians and of course Batarians were hostile as well. This almost forces you to deal with them as enemies. The Geth are out because the Geth weren’t seen past the Veil until 2183 when Shepard found them in Mass Effect working with Saren. The Reapers weren’t known as anything other than a myth either. So even if you use them, you can only do so much story wise. The same is true of Collector’s and anyone else.

And if you confine the game to such a time period, you are basically stuck with a story that can never be as epic or as large as the current one.

Now, I know some of you are probably pissed off and wondering why I said what I said about needing a human protagonist. Many will disagree with me on this point, and while it will work with some people I don’t think the masses will like being painted into that corner as a general rule. For one thing I don’t want to play a Turian in a game where my romance options are basically Asari. Because Turian females are likely hideous and you won’t be able to identify with them. Salarian females look pretty much like the males. Krogan females? Eve tells you all you need to. So Asari it is. Maybe Drell, but I doubt I could get over the face and those weird Rosewell Gray alienesque eyes.

People tend to identify with and get more attached to protagonists they can identify with. Shepard is deeply customizable which is part of what makes the unique your own. It’s why you can identify with the character. I don’t know that the same effect can be had with a Turian. We all like Garrus, but I don’t know if I would want to play an entire series based on Turians. Non-human characters that are well liked are often anthropomorphized a great deal. Asari, Twi-Leks and any number of attractive females in games and movies are generally regarded as attractive because they still resemble humans. Their subtle differences in a lack of hair or skin color ultimately makes them exotic, and therefore desirable, but them being more or less human is a key component in making them appealing.

There is fan art out there showing nude Asari and Twi-Lek’s. Basically the science fiction genre of porn, but you won’t really find this with Turian, Salarian, or Krogan females. So not having an option for a human protagonist in the series limits them further. It may limit the ability of people to identify with the role as much. Being an RPG game primarily and a shooter second this doesn’t bode well for the future. Prequels and DLC involving other established characters take the customization out of the equation because you are again working within existing confines. So while a DLC giving us a few hours of game play showing Aria taking back Omega from Cerberus could be cool, it wouldn’t justify an entire series.

Oh wait, if the Citadel explodes then that won’t work either. She was most likely there when the thing blew up. There goes that idea.

What BioWare Failed to Understand

Now understand that BioWare’s reactions and commentary on everything is highly suspect. For one thing, BioWare hasn’t always been entirely truthful with us. The game and it’s mechanics contradict things said by Casey Hudson. So take anything they’ve said with a grain of salt. Clarification of the ending may simply be something like validating the indoctrination theory. So a simple cinematic would change our perception of the game’s current ending without them actually doing much of anything.

The main problem isn’t that we need clarity. Either the ending can be taken at face value or it can’t. Taking it at face value makes the ending depressing on multiple levels which is the reason why it’s hated.

Americans culturally speaking don’t generally like movies with sad or bad endings. There are some people that do, but as a rule the masses don’t like it. We are an optimistic people I guess. We’ve invested over 100 hours in the three games and came to know and love many of the characters and the universe. Even if Shepard had to die, we wanted a good life and a good outcome for the galaxy and our team members who stood side by side with us through the difficult times. We wanted to have the possibility to meet them again with a new character in Mass Effect 4, or to see books and movies based on their actions later on. Watching them get screwed over, blown up, turned into cyborgs, or whatever else was hard to handle.

Shepard’s death isn’t what I wanted to see, but I would have understood it if it was necessary, but Shepard needed to die preserving something that resembled the galaxy we knew. Shepards actions and death had to be worth something. The way it is now, the entire struggle is almost invalidated and it is certainly diminished. What makes these games so great is the characters and the replay value. A, B, and C variants of the same sad and crappy ending which occur regardless of your choices makes replaying the series something you don’t want to do.

The ending as it is now is painful. The last chapter in fact is painful and it isn’t bittersweet. Just bitter. Because of that the game is somewhat traumatic and not something you want to repeat.
Commercially this hurts BioWare and EA in a number of ways they probably haven’t seen coming. Not only does it sour our expectations and desires for another entry into the series, but the lack of quality in the final chapter shows us that EA’s meddling has once again destroyed a great development studio. They had things right with ME1 and ME2, then dropped the ball here.

I have no desire to buy merchandise or media involving Mass Effect because it’s nothing more than a painful reminder of ME3’s ending. All that time and emotional investment for what? A big screw you and a “Buy DLC” message at the end?

No BioWare, just no.

So while Mass Effect came in with a bang it’s certainly likely to die out with a whimper. Not because EA forced them to develop sequel after sequel until the creative keg was tapped, but rather because someone decided to confuse profound with dark and intellectual with satisfying. What we got isn’t what Shepard and the crew of the Normandy deserved, and it’s not what we as consumers were promised, nor what we deserved.

The Short Version for the ADHD

Honestly given the implications of the ending, if it's not a total rewrite it will either confirm the indoctrination theory or confirm that what we've already seen is to be taken at face value.

The latter will just make us feel worse as it will crush all hope of deeper meaning and a brighter future as a result. It will confirm the horrible fates of Shepard and the crew of the Normandy. It will most likely invalidate the entire journey and kill replay value in all three because your choices ultimately won't matter. The galaxy as it stands with the way the third game ends really isn't worth saving. One could argue that it is worse off than it would have been had the Reapers just been left to do what they do unchallenged. At least the Mass Relays and star systems would be intact. With a few well placed warnings like Liara’s time capsules, if found soon enough, there would be ample time to develop far enough to challenge the Reapers more.  

Implications.............unpleasant.

Sweet Mary, mother of Jesus, I read ALL of that! This post deserves its own thread. brb.

excellent post, especially this bit...

"The ending as it is now is painful. The last chapter in fact is painful and it isn’t bittersweet. Just bitter. Because of that the game is somewhat traumatic and not something you want to repeat."

sad thing no one from Bioware will read that, and i dont think they care. it seems they are just gona add a few new vids to the ending to try and shut us up.

[cuzsal]

TheCinC wrote...

I have at least seven reasons why I am disapponted, ordered as a response to the official announcement...

Reason number1: the condescending tone in the announcement:

"Since launch, we have had time to listen to the feedback from our most passionate fans [...]"

Are only the most passionate fans turned off by this ending? Judging by the numbers here on this forum alone, I don't think so.

Reason number 2: the use of 'artistic vision' to defend an Deus ex Machina ending that doesn't fit with the three games we've played and doesn't fit with the promises made to us before release:

The ending isn't anything like what was promised, so it can't be true that this was the 'artistic vision' of the writers all along. Even if it is, then  that vision is irrelevant, because it isn't what we were promised. But I highly doubt the writers who gave us all those choices spread over  three games would leave us with a choice between red, green and blue.

Reason number 3: we don't want explanations or answers regarding the current ending:

The current ending does not need to be explained to us, like we were  children unable to grasp what we've seen. We want Shepard to either die  in the field because we made a mistake, or dust him/herself off and get  back into the fight and keep fighting until the bitter end. That way we  can go back and try again, making different choices, buy and download DLC to give us new characters, weapons, equipment, allies, you name it.

Reason number 4: we don't want "additional cinematics and epilogue scenes" because we want to be able to make real choices and decide through those choices how Shepard's story ends.

The three choices we get are simply not choices Shepard could live with.

1) Kill all synthetic beings, including the Geth (in many cases now our allies, which would mean betraying them and would make Legion's sacrifice pointless) and Edi (now a crewmember and love interest of another  crewmember, Joker) despite all the evidence that quite possibly synthetic and biological beings -can- live together. Not an option, especially not for a Paragon, possibly not even for a Renegade as it would mean genocide.

2) Take control of the Reapers, not knowing for a fact that this could work, risking being overwhelmed and not
accomplishing anything but help the Reapers getting rid of Shepard. But even if Shepard remains in control, then what? Take away the freedom of choice for an entire race, no matter how heinous their crimes? Enforce peace throughout the Galaxy by using the Reapers as the ultimate 'big stick'? Sending the Reapers into the nearest star? It doesn't seem like much of a solution to me, much more like a dangerous gamble at best.

3) Fuse all organic and synthentic life, without anyone else having a say in this matter. Yeah, that seems like a nice thing to do to people, nevermind the implications of 'space magic' that really come with that.

In all cases, you furthermore: a) unquestionably accept the premise of the Star Child and of everything he is telling you and  condemn all races to being stranded where they are by blowing up the mass relays. Not every system is going to recover from that in time, no matter how that is solved in the end, millions if not billions will die.

Of course, if the three choices are a fakeout and Shepard really dies or becomes indoctrinated, then all of this is moot anyway.

Reason number 5: it feels like something to keep us quiet:

"Currently the Extended Cut DLC is planned for this summer, no specific date has been announced at this point."

Although I have to admit, getting new content on short notice would probably be far worse, as it would then be of very low quality due to the time constraints, the combination of the statements made regarding the shape of new content and the long lead time, combines to give us something which does not deliver on earlier promises, does not address our concern and may simply be intended to shut us up. Maybe they hope that with this, enough of us will quiet down, at least until summer.

Reason number 6: their stated goal is not to deliver on what we have been promised and on what we want:

"The goal of the DLC is not to provide a new ending to the game, rather to offer fans additional context and  answers to the end of Commander Shepard’s story."

So they clearly state there will not be even a single additional ending to the game, they will just take what we have
and provide some more clarity. So, we can't even hope that they will, in the end, deliver on their promises.

Reason number 7: I paid for this game based on the promises which were made and the quality of ME1 and ME2

I paid full price for a Collector's Edition of ME3, which I preordered. I then expected, at minimum, a full fledged game, with an ending that a) makes sense and  ties up any loose ends. In that respect, ME3 did not deliver. Furthermore, we were promised a whole lot more and EA/Bioware did not deliver on those promises. For an overview of some of the promises made, see here.



Are we asking for too much? No, we are asking for what we were promised and what we paid for. Is this an impossible thing to do? Can anyone think of so many different endings? Yes we can.

Is this a viable option for EA/Bioware? If they want to save a franchise which has made them a lot of money? Sure it is. Is it a viable jumping off point for further content? Of course it is. So why the hell not? Why dig in their heels using 'artistic vision' as an excuse? As a writer myself, yeah, I might be miffed if I wrote an ending which was profound and people didn't 'get it' and started trashtalking it. But that is not what happened. Again, as a writer myself, I'd jump at the chance at showing my creative genius and get to work drawing up several different endings.

They know what they promised, now they know what we want, they made their move, but I don't see how that is to their advantage. I'm still hoping someone at EA/Bioware will see that what they are doing right now is counterproductive and take steps to alter their plans.

I feel the same way , and i really wish that Bioware would listen to us, but it seems they will not. I still have no idea what or who that god child is I still do not understand how they can end such a amazing story with a brand new character doing all of the talking and telling you to pick red green or blue:wizard:

[TekFanX]

OK.
A free DLC, I won't complain about that.
As an optimist, I want to believe that it will make everything right.
Especially because I don't know what it will look like and if it will be able to fullfill its function.

But in all honesty: I'm sceptic.
Reaaaallllllyyyy sceptic.

Personally I think, clarifying the endings may be a bigger task than wrapping up a trilogy full of different choices.

So, from what I've read in these forums and on twitter-links, the endings may allow Shepard to reunite with the crew, the Relays may can be rebuilt and no one starves.
Speculating about it, this scheme seems to form:
Destroy:
-Destroy the Reapers.
-Sacrifice EDI and the Geth.
-Sacrifice the Relays and the Citadel. Completely destroying them.
-Get a chance to let your Shepard survive.

Control:
-Control the Reapers.
-Sacrifice Shepards human existence(To be turned into a control-program/ the new Reaper-hivemind?).
-Keep the Citadel and damaged Relays.
-Save all life, the synthetic life included.

Synthesis:
-Turn everyone and everything into a bio-synthetic organism.
-Sacrifice Shepard completely.
-Sacrifice the Citadel and the Relays.

OK...

Still, I can't imagine three things to become clarified:
1) Shepard surviving the explosion of the Citadel+Crucible, the destruction of his/her synthetic components, an atmospheric re-entry and the impact on earth.
2) Why is it neccessary for Shepard to be vaporized for controlling the Reapers?
3) Synthesis in itself:
How is an energy-wave supposed to decide what's to be changed?
Why is EDI's main-body, the Normandy, a dead piece of technology, while her new remote-controlled body becomes her main-body?
How does this affect the geth who are not uploaded into bipedal platforms?

If the Extended Cut answers those questions, without opening up new questions, okay.

I'm sceptic.

Edit: On a personal note:

I study engineering, specifically R&D.
After completing some constructions, I know how proud one can become, if it all stands there in front of you, like you have imagined.
But the most important thing I've heard several times is:
Never be too proud of your work.

If a part you are proud of is not up to the task, it's often the wrong choice to overhaul it, instead forget your pride, look at it with a fresh new view and make a new approach.

If you manage to overhaul the ending, congratulations.
But I'm sceptic.

Modifié par TekFanX, 06 avril 2012 - 02:25 .

[CasbynessPC]

Can't we all just wait and see. If people keep hating after this announcement it will solidify EA's paranoid view that all this protesting has been orchestrated by rivals. We need them to understand there really is a problem with the ending, so they can fix it in the Summer.

I just hope they don't try to release other DLC in the meantime, because I won't buy it until I see what the Extended Cut is like.

That's the one thing I'd find suspicious - a promise of a fix preceded by other new things to purchase should be met with a HUGE amount of healthy scepticism and cynicism, given prior PR statements. You don't buy a second car from someone who sold you a broken one and promises to fix it...juuuuust after you've paid for the next one...honest...

[Fenderbaum]

Dead_Meat357 wrote...

Mass Effect: In with a Bang out with a Whimper

Why the upcoming DLC cant’ fix the ending to Mass Effect 3. 

There are a lot of opinions and thoughts about the ending of Mass Effect 3. The announcement this morning may fill some with hope, but not me. Instead I’m filled with sadness and dread at the realization that BioWare’s artistic vision is for everyone to die at the end and to leave behind a Mass Effect universe in which the galaxy would have been better off if Shepard had let Saren succeed in ME1.

I’m going to try and minimize the talk about EA commercializing the crap out of these games, being evil, or BioWare being a bunch of sellouts, or even Casey Hudson and Mac Walters going off the rails.
No, instead I’m going to make some predictions and throw out my $0.02 and say that BioWare made a lot of mistakes, backed themselves into a creative corner, pulled a BSG/Lost, and pretty much guaranteed no good return to the Mass Effect universe going forward. While there are some overlapping complaints I’ll make here addressed by others pointing out things in the indoctrination theory or just statements concerning how broken the ending is from a lot of different angles, I hope to address a couple new ones or at least things that are down played and ignored.

This is all full of spoilers. Many of you who haven’t completed the game heard the ending sucks, but I urge you to finish it and make your own conclusions. You should probably even do so before the updated ending comes out so you can make your own judgement as well as see the differences added should you replay it with the DLC.

The Ending Sucks But we Already Knew That

First, there is a lot of talk about how the ending to Mass Effect 3 sucks. It does, you’ll get no arguments from me. It’s full of plot holes, contradictions, it ends abruptly and paints your choices in a confusing light. It doesn’t have the same feel that the rest of the series has. Nothing about it is familiar and it all feels “off” and unfamiliar. Not only does it contradict the nature of the series itself, but it goes against statements made by Casey Hudson himself in interviews. (You know, about the whole A,B, and C thing not being what they were going for.) The worst part is that all your choices essentially all have the same results. I’ll say that I’ve got no clue why a low EMS results in only the destroy ending being available or why the destroy ending is the only one that allows Shepard to wake up in the rubble in London after everything goes to hell.

Implications………….unpleasant.

The Final Mission Sucks and the DLC isn’t Addressing That

But what I rarely see is talk about how the final mission, specifically Priority: Earth sucks so bad. Up until then the game is easily the best of the three in my opinion. Not only graphically or game play wise, but in the way missions and the story are handled. Plotlines from earlier installments are brought to clean and satisfying resolution. The whole game up until the Priority: Earth mission is actually a well crafted masterpiece. Excellent set pieces and backdrops, a sense of urgency, family, and team are all fostered here. I loved seeing all my favorite characters again and the interactions with them are by far the richest and most fulfilling in the whole series.

Before you can understand why the final act sucks so bad you have to understand why the first games had epic conclusions which were not only satisfying, but had you at the edge of your seat the entire time.

In the original Mass Effect, one of my favorite parts of the game is going outside the Citadel tower and making my way to the council chambers with Sovereign in the background with Geth and Krogan trying to stop me. You come face to ugly face with Saren and learn that he’s a tragic figure and not necessarily the evil man you believed him to be earlier. He shoots himself if your paragon or renegade score is high enough, and it seems like it will be the end of him. But you don’t want to ignore the body, you want to make sure it’s not a trick. And of course it doesn’t and you have to fight what Saren has truly become. A tool of Sovereign. Nothing more, nothing less. Once he’s defeated the feedback causes Sovereign to lose control of his shields, then the order is given and the combined Alliance and Citadel fleets destroy the Reaper sending pieces of it all over. The music, the dialog, the battle, the cinematics are all well done here. From Ilos on the game is all about your goals and the story. Some of the best looking and most well thought out segments of the game are in the final act.

In Mass Effect 2 one of my favorite parts of the game is assaulting the Collector base and choosing who leads the second team, who goes into the vents, and literally who will live and die. The long walk music playing in the background really adds ambience to it. I liked fighting within the biotic barrier and cutting down bad guys. While the Reaper battle itself could have been done differently and a whole lot better, all the cinematics and choices in the final act are great.

In Mass Effect 3 I dread everything after the assault on the Illusive Man's base. The Priority Earth mission just sucks on so many levels.

The Good Bye Sequence

You get to Earth and things fall apart. In fact almost everything after the attack on the Cerberus base is pretty much terrible. We get a nice fulfilling and interesting good bye to Liara, especially if you romanced her. Then you proceed and say good bye to the rest of the survivors of your teams from 1 and 2. These are a bit of a mixed bag. I found many compelling and moving, with some of them feeling a little forced and flat. I think my fondness for some characters makes some more bittersweet than others. All of them are generally pretty good but the entire sequence seems out of place. There is this calm base in the worst area of fighting in which you’ve got time to do all of this? Seems tacked on at the last minute. Though it sets a tone in which Shepard seems to lose hope. The dialog delivered lacks a certain fire after that. Shepard’s own commentary contradict his or her nature from the first two games and even the third up until Thessia.

Shepard almost seems prepared to fail. I think they were going for an effect in which you can finally see the events of all three games taking their toll on the Galaxy’s greatest hero and soldier. Depending on how you look at it, this is either well done or completely out of character. This segment is essentially the calm before the storm.
And here is the point where the train really leaves the tracks. It happens well before the games controversial and lackluster ending.
Problematic……………….

Who Needs Rails?

You gather with all your allies one last time and head to where Anderson is planning the final assault to drive the Reapers back and deliver the Crucibal. I had this silly expectation that they’d at least give us what Mass Effect 2 did and outline objectives in which we’d decide which team members did the deeds. Choosing correctly would lead to success, and choosing poorly would lead to character deaths at the very least. I was sure that we’d probably lose some no matter what being the final game and experiencing so much loss already. While it was just an action set piece, we still had an RPG element to it. In that regard Mass Effect 2 triumphed over the first game.

But sadly, in Mass Effect 3 none of that happened. We had one objective, and Shepard just picked two people to go with him or her and that’s it. All you do is fight wave, after wave, after wave of frustrating enemies. The same five to be exact. Marauders, cannibals, husks, banshees, and brutes. No where in this mess did we see Krogan protecting our flank, or Asari bombing the enemy positions. We saw no Salarian commandos blowing up Reaper assets in the background. We don’t even see the Mass Effect Allstar team which showed up to help us in our final push do anything. They fade away into the background like common soldiers. Hardly fitting or satisfying. You are told you have one objective. Reach the conduit. A Reaper destroyer comes into sour that plan. The only hope? Thanix missiles. OK, but Shepard once again has to be the one to do this. So you set out to reach the missiles and you fight the endless horde to do it.

And it is endless. In fact once you are given the go to launch, just run to the truck and do it. Ignore all the enemies at that point. They’ll disappear once you’ve launched the missiles. Yeah, that’s right. You don’t have to wait for a break in the fighting because you won’t get one.

The run to the conduit itself is almost identical to the one in Mass Effect 1, except that we don’t do it in a Mako and we have Harbinger or another Reaper shooting at us. You run in only to get shot anyway before reaching your final objective. Now again I don’t want to argue for indoctrination theory at this point. I’ll just say that the imagery gets confusing, things feel off and out of place, and everything is abrupt and just out of character for the universe. Shepard in no way seems to question the validity of what the proclaimed Reaper creator says. That last part is important. So far Shepard has never accepted anything anyone has said and went his or her own way knowing what the goal was all along and never losing sight of that objective. To do what needs to be done. Sometimes via compromised morals or an ends justifies the means stance, depending on your choices, but always in the pursuit of a noble goal that is abandoned in the final minutes. 
 
The DLC Won’t Likely Address the Citadel Content

Other plot holes aside, I’m uncertain how any of the endings themselves could be changed or have added context based on new cinematics. The choices still suck and are presented in a haphazard and akward way with no context really being given, no questions being asked, and nothing profound happening. So without interrupting before Shepard waking up and explaining how Anderson and the Illusive Man ended up there, we won’t get clarity on this at all. Maybe after the choice is made, but the choices are still presented in an amateur hour kind of way. Far sub-par to the way every other choice has been presented to us before.

This is not to say that every decision in Mass Effect can be made the first play through with an idea of what the consequences will be. I wasn’t sure what the right call to make with the Geth heretics or the with Keji’s greybox. But these choices are presented with context that is easy to follow and more importantly, allow some conjecture on your part which helps you to make a good decision. When I was told my three choices by the Catalyst and it’s some 14 lines of dialog, I really wanted to go back and have it repeat everything because I wasn’t sure I heard everything. Again it’s a huge decision but there is no context as Shepard can’t really ask any questions.

So the Reapers aren’t Sentient?

One point I fail to see get addressed in forum posts and articles is the fact that this Catalyst AI Starchild thing contradicts the idea that the Reapers are sentient on their own. Sovereign and Harbinger, as well as the unknown Reaper on Rannoch are all clearly sentient. Yet this AI Catalyst supposedly created them? How will the Crucibal force them to do anything? In just a few lines of dialog the conversations with Sovereign and Harbinger become meaningless. It diminishes the Reaper threat by making them into machines which follow the machinations of this other being we know nothing about. We just met him in the last 10 minutes.

DLC Won’t Address Shepard’s Complete Trust in the Catalyst

And if it created Reapers, you can trust him. I won’t put complete faith in someone trying to sell me a car, Shepard is distrustful of the Illusive Man who brought him/her back from the dead but this master of the Reapers is totally trust worthy. The fate of the galaxy and trillions of sentient lives are at stake and there is no reason to be sure and ask questions before you do anything.

Not only does Shepard fail to ask questions here for clarification, but Shepard really does take everything presented at face value. The catalyst AI starchild thing tells Shepard that his or her choice will destroy the mass relays. Since Shepard already blew up one, you’d think that would be a point of concern and discussion given what happened the last time. (I would imagine the Batarian legal suit would have still been pending were it not for being wiped out by the Reapers.) Shepard should have taken a lesson from James T. Kirk who never feared to ask anyone anything he wanted an answer for. Important questions which address poor or logically fallible arguments. Questions like; “What does God need with a starship?”

Often times Shepard hasn’t liked the paths laid out for him or her by others and takes new direction. This was evidenced in all three games a lot of times. Yet this attitude is suspiciously absent in the final moments of the game. Most people would have said on Manae that there was no way to get the Krogan to help the Turians but Shepard never said that. When the new Primarch asked, Shepard made it happen. The catalyst would have you believe that these three ridiculous choices are the only options you have. Why should Shepard accept that?
The Catalyst is part of the Crucibal and this is the same being who supposedly made Reapers to harvest organics every 50,000 years. Yeah, let’s go with what he says.
 
The Endings are Screwed up Before the Cinematics really Start and BioWare isn’t Addressing That

We all know the part about the Mass Relays blowing up whole star systems, stranding races in places without enough resources to survive and all that. But each ending has its own issues and its own added consequences. I will endeavor to deal with them individually and from the perspective of how the choice is presented and some of the differences vs. the others.

Control

In the control ending we are led to believe that apparently the Crucibal doesn’t have a real switch and Shepard needs to complete a circuit or something rather than get what he or she needs from the Presidium Commons market or raid the Keeper’s tool box for something which could be used as a switch. So Shepard has to grab these two glowing rods and whilst being vaporized think happy thoughts and wish the Reapers away.
The biggest issue I have with this is that the Reapers aren’t sentient or are really retarded for not doing something about a back door command signal. Essentially in 50,000+ years no one patched out this critical security flaw? And again if they were truly sentient and were able to rebel against their creators, why are they listening to this Catalyst, and again why does this device compel them to do anything? I also find it odd that the Catalyst endorses this and that Shepard’s eyes look exactly like the Illusive Man’s in the final moments just before disintegration. I’m not advocating indoctrination, but the symbolism of this can’t be ignored. We may lack context, but it’s something you should think about. Something BioWare needs to address.  Interestingly enough, the Citadel is also not destroyed in this ending as I recall. I don’t know what that means. I can only speculate.

Synthesis

I’ve often heard of this being referred to as the good ending or the best ending. In truth this is nothing of the kind. It’s essentially the ending to Star Trek the Motion Picture, but more convoluted. This isn’t a movie you really want your story to emulate. Fan fiction and non-cannon fiction basically credits this as the rise of the Borg race, despite being somewhat unlikely based on statements made in the series. This choice bugs me because it’s already what the Reapers do anyway. The catalyst confirms that’s how organics live on. As Reapers. This also forces Shepard to go back on what is said a minute earlier. “We’ll keep our form thanks.” Or something to that effect. This is a unilateral decision in which organic and inorganic fusion should be forced on all beings in the galaxy. As another person pointed out I think in one of the Youtube videos, the solution to diversity is mediocrity? Really? I can’t believe anyone supports this ending. It’s the worst.

Shepard also never asks what this will do to his or her companions and if anyone’s identity will remain intact. Could you imagine waking up and all of the sudden seeing bioluminescent circuitry all over your body. I’d probably freak out and kill myself. Especially if everyone I saw around me looked the same. So Shepard is going to make a unilateral call for the whole galaxy with no context and no questions? Please. At least My Shepard’s don’t do this. And again Shep’s eyes look like the Illusive Man’s just prior to being disintegrated.

Destroy

This is probably the least offensive ending and the most difficult to understand in some ways. The Starchild presents this ending as “oh by the way, you can destroy us if you want, but you are partly synthetic, so don’t do that.” The Starchild also adds that the Geth and EDI will be destroyed with this choice. Now this is the kind of choice that Shepard is used to making. Shepard sacrificed Batarian colonists to delay a Reaper invasion. It would also keep the Quarians, Salarians, Krogan, Asari, Hanar, Drell, Humans, and anyone else I’m missing alive. While Shepard may not like these types of decisions, I think this is the easiest one to take and the most sensible. It’s the only decision that would ensure that the Reaper menace would stay gone.

But there is a catch. If the EMS score is high enough Shepard wakes up gasping for air in a pile of rubble clearly in London. This tells you that Shepard didn’t die, and that everything above was a lie. Indoctrination theory or not, this tells you that the ending here can’t be taken at face value. In fact it brings into question all of them. Also in this ending Shepard’s eyes do not change. It is the only one where they don’t.

Cornered

Many others have outlined all the plot problems and arguments for why the ending to Mass Effect 3 sucks from a literary perspective and a plot perspective. There are tons of great videos about that out there to view on Youtube. I won’t even dive too far into the fact that the Mass Effect universe is essentially destroyed as we know it. This too has already been said many times. What I will say is that this paints the creative team into a corner. A happier ending, or an ending which left Mass Relays intact or left the Reapers OK to return down the line at least gives you options even if you never used the Reapers again as an enemy.

Semi-Optimistic Viewpoint

If we want to be optimistic about the ending, (which is hard to do given the implications of the endings) then we take believe that the Mass Relays didn’t blow up like the one in the Arrival DLC did and they explode “nicer.” Though the Normandy running from the explosion tells us that’s likely not going to work. Still, even if true at best all the races are stranded in the Sol system. Assuming you didn’t blow up the Citadel and chose the control ending, then there are some resources there, but Turian and Quarian fleets may have shortages of food and supplies. Remember they can’t eat what’s on Earth. Earth, if not totally ruined won’t have the infrastructure to support the vast ships and people that will need to most likely call Earth their home for a time. With standard FTL drives it would take some time for any of the races to make it to a nearby inhabitable system. Palaven is one of the closest planets, but it could still take decades or more to reach it. So that’s one major issue that must be dealt with.
Assuming that the Krogan, Humans, and Salarians can all get along, there will be population concerns with the Krogan now free of the genophage. Assuming they have access to females. Otherwise they’ll simply die out. Salarians and Humans would most likely end up dominating the planet in light of that. Which the humans already do, so there is that. But again even with the death tolls, the people left on the fleets will have to go somewhere and a ruined Earth supporting everyone, even with the Citadel’s assistance (assuming it didn’t blow up given your choices) may be difficult. But let’s say for the sake of argument that it can be done and the peace can be kept in the long run. Still the problem of colonizing other worlds and how to get there has to get addressed. Eventually there will be population concerns if cultural problems don’t cause open war on Earth first.

Where did the Normandy and her crew end up? Well let’s assume that Joker picked up your squad mates. Where did they go? Obviously they are in another star system, but unless Liara gets busy cranking out babies, everyone is doomed. There isn’t enough genetic diversity on the Normandy crew to create a viable colony. Since Asari don’t actually need sex as we understand it to reproduce, and use other species to randomize their genetic material it’s possible that she could create a large enough base for an Asari colony. Javik comments on genetic modification to the Asari, and it’s possible that this was a gift of their genetic manipulation so let’s be generous and say that a colony of Asari are incoming. Still it would be hundreds if not thousands of years before we could see anything space fairing again. And most likely, much of the Normandy’s regular crew died in the crash and even Liara herself could be killed long before a viable colony can be built.

In which case many of the crew will die miserable and alone. The stargazer part of the ending shows some kind of colony rose up there eventually. We don’t know how long it took or even what race they are. The fact that the voice of Buzz Aldrin can be heard tells us that the person there is a male. So it’s not likely an Asari colony. So this is yet another plot hole to deal with.

On the bright side, the Protheans created the conduit, and Matriarch Atheyta did talk about recommending the Asari build new Mass Relays indicating that this is possible. Depending on how well Thessia held out during the final stages of the Reaper invasion, in a couple hundred years or so, this might be possible. If so then we could see a new Mass Relay network form. This is of course good news and lends credence to the idea of sequels based on this series at a later, far off period.

Though from a literary standpoint they run into the same problem BioWare ran into with KOTOR. The problem is that you have to keep the technology and style cues of the existing mythology so that you get the right feel out of it. The issue with that is you have to explain technological stagnation. I don’t know what the accepted explanation of it is in Star Wars, though it seems to be at least in the novels and games that the problem is due to constant war. This is of course a sharp contradiction from reality.

Our technology surged many times in history because of war. Not in spite of it. War creates a necessity for bigger and badder weapons. It creates the need for faster propulsion, more power, long lasting provisions, new technologies for killing, detecting enemies, stealth, etc. Jet propulsion was all a result of rocketry. Again the airliners today wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the need for higher flying bombers, and hard hitting missiles. So technology remaining stagnant as a result of war is really just not a well thought out excuse for covering the problem.

So if the story of the next Mass Effect is to take place hundreds or thousands of years from now, maybe even in another cycle, then it has to address technological stagnation. Or BioWare has to revamp everything and create new technology. At that point you might as well create a new IP and let Mass Effect die because that’s about what you’ll get in the end.
 
Negative Viewpoint

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if the relays do explode like they did in the Arrival then everyone is pretty much screwed. Even the Normandy, the fastest ship there couldn’t outrun the blast. More than likely every ship and the major inhabited star systems around the galaxy were destroyed.

Can the galaxy even survive hundreds or thousands of supernovas happening all at once? Who knows. But let’s say it can. We still have the problem of everyone dying except perhaps the Normandy crew which I addressed above. Races will go extinct. Many colonies won’t be able to sustain themselves without being able to reach major ports like the Citadel and any outlying pockets of survivors or colonies won’t have the ability to go somewhere else. Ships in Mass Effect do have FTL drives, but they only allow for movement in local clusters at best. Not all of them have inhabitable planets. Many people will run out of air or food and simply die.
Sure some life in the galaxy will survive and any pre-spaceflight populations like the Yahg may actually even flourish, but who knows whether or not they’ll ever find a solution without mass relays. Which if the relays destroyed star systems that had them, then the Asari and Prothean data most likely is lost and won’t ever lead to the construction of new relays. So what’s next? Hyperspace or Warp? Again you end up practically reinventing the entire IP. Specifically because this one revolved around the Mass Effect and the relays. So why do that?

And as I said before, the galaxy in this state isn’t worth the trouble. Shepard would have been better off grabbing all his potential love interests and creating a harem on some tropical planet and leaving the galaxy to fend for itself. At least they could have put things in motion to give the next cycle a shot at beating the Reapers. Which Liara tried to do anyway. But with all the relays destroyed, and many inhabitable worlds being gone, what’s there to save? The death toll is likely higher than it would have been had Shepard just give up earlier.

And I almost forgot. No one seems to mention this, but if the Citadel blew up and the relays didn’t destroy the Sol system, then you’ll have huge chunks of the Citadel raining down on Earth. Given the size of the thing, that’s a huge problem even for small pieces of it. The Citadel dwarfs Reapers by a massive amount. Pieces of it would almost certainly render the planet uninhabitable.

Sequels and Prequels

I’ve touched on the fact that sequels and prequels will have to deal with certain problems. A sequel will have to work within the confines of the endings of Mass Effect 3. The problems with this are harder to pin down taking the positive viewpoint but, most likely such a sequel would have to take place a few centuries after ME3. That is unless you want every planet to look like Tuchunka in ME2 and ME3 and limit yourself to a very small section of the galaxy that is reachable by standard FTL. In doing that the scale and scope of the first three games is totally lost.

So you have to take the idea of the Asari or someone else bouncing back with a new relay network. It would most likely have to take place thousands of years later to allow the Mass Effect universe to look anything like what we have seen in the earlier games. Though this will force totally new political situations, possibly new races, and of course we will lose all potential for reoccurring characters. We may be able to have one or two get frozen like Javik or something, but that’s about it.

Even if the sequel is a couple hundred years or more later, we can at least see Grunt an Liara again. But again the further you push out the timeline the more you have to adequately explain technological stagnation. If technology is simply lost and reinvented then you have to reinvent the look of everything even if it resembles what came before. So all weapon models, armor designs, and ship designs have to pretty much get thrown out. This is one thing if BioWare is going to use an updated engine and do all new graphics for the next series to target the next generation of consoles or computers.

If they are going to essentially use the framework of ME2 and ME3 with new stuff, seems like a waste in both time and money to do it. And again if you don’t nail this stuff exactly right it won’t feel like Mass Effect anymore, and you’ve hurt the fans even more than if you had let it die and gone with a new IP entirely.

Now obviously taking the more negative viewpoint and going with the galaxy exploded is even worse. This doesn’t really leave a universe you want to revisit and one you almost feel guilty in helping to create.

Prequels have their own sets of problems.

The first and foremost problem with doing a prequel is that you need a human protagonist. This limits the prequel time frame to a 30 year window, part of which had humans at war with the Turians and of course Batarians were hostile as well. This almost forces you to deal with them as enemies. The Geth are out because the Geth weren’t seen past the Veil until 2183 when Shepard found them in Mass Effect working with Saren. The Reapers weren’t known as anything other than a myth either. So even if you use them, you can only do so much story wise. The same is true of Collector’s and anyone else.

And if you confine the game to such a time period, you are basically stuck with a story that can never be as epic or as large as the current one.

Now, I know some of you are probably pissed off and wondering why I said what I said about needing a human protagonist. Many will disagree with me on this point, and while it will work with some people I don’t think the masses will like being painted into that corner as a general rule. For one thing I don’t want to play a Turian in a game where my romance options are basically Asari. Because Turian females are likely hideous and you won’t be able to identify with them. Salarian females look pretty much like the males. Krogan females? Eve tells you all you need to. So Asari it is. Maybe Drell, but I doubt I could get over the face and those weird Rosewell Gray alienesque eyes.

People tend to identify with and get more attached to protagonists they can identify with. Shepard is deeply customizable which is part of what makes the unique your own. It’s why you can identify with the character. I don’t know that the same effect can be had with a Turian. We all like Garrus, but I don’t know if I would want to play an entire series based on Turians. Non-human characters that are well liked are often anthropomorphized a great deal. Asari, Twi-Leks and any number of attractive females in games and movies are generally regarded as attractive because they still resemble humans. Their subtle differences in a lack of hair or skin color ultimately makes them exotic, and therefore desirable, but them being more or less human is a key component in making them appealing.

There is fan art out there showing nude Asari and Twi-Lek’s. Basically the science fiction genre of porn, but you won’t really find this with Turian, Salarian, or Krogan females. So not having an option for a human protagonist in the series limits them further. It may limit the ability of people to identify with the role as much. Being an RPG game primarily and a shooter second this doesn’t bode well for the future. Prequels and DLC involving other established characters take the customization out of the equation because you are again working within existing confines. So while a DLC giving us a few hours of game play showing Aria taking back Omega from Cerberus could be cool, it wouldn’t justify an entire series.

Oh wait, if the Citadel explodes then that won’t work either. She was most likely there when the thing blew up. There goes that idea.

What BioWare Failed to Understand

Now understand that BioWare’s reactions and commentary on everything is highly suspect. For one thing, BioWare hasn’t always been entirely truthful with us. The game and it’s mechanics contradict things said by Casey Hudson. So take anything they’ve said with a grain of salt. Clarification of the ending may simply be something like validating the indoctrination theory. So a simple cinematic would change our perception of the game’s current ending without them actually doing much of anything.

The main problem isn’t that we need clarity. Either the ending can be taken at face value or it can’t. Taking it at face value makes the ending depressing on multiple levels which is the reason why it’s hated.

Americans culturally speaking don’t generally like movies with sad or bad endings. There are some people that do, but as a rule the masses don’t like it. We are an optimistic people I guess. We’ve invested over 100 hours in the three games and came to know and love many of the characters and the universe. Even if Shepard had to die, we wanted a good life and a good outcome for the galaxy and our team members who stood side by side with us through the difficult times. We wanted to have the possibility to meet them again with a new character in Mass Effect 4, or to see books and movies based on their actions later on. Watching them get screwed over, blown up, turned into cyborgs, or whatever else was hard to handle.

Shepard’s death isn’t what I wanted to see, but I would have understood it if it was necessary, but Shepard needed to die preserving something that resembled the galaxy we knew. Shepards actions and death had to be worth something. The way it is now, the entire struggle is almost invalidated and it is certainly diminished. What makes these games so great is the characters and the replay value. A, B, and C variants of the same sad and crappy ending which occur regardless of your choices makes replaying the series something you don’t want to do.

The ending as it is now is painful. The last chapter in fact is painful and it isn’t bittersweet. Just bitter. Because of that the game is somewhat traumatic and not something you want to repeat.
Commercially this hurts BioWare and EA in a number of ways they probably haven’t seen coming. Not only does it sour our expectations and desires for another entry into the series, but the lack of quality in the final chapter shows us that EA’s meddling has once again destroyed a great development studio. They had things right with ME1 and ME2, then dropped the ball here.

I have no desire to buy merchandise or media involving Mass Effect because it’s nothing more than a painful reminder of ME3’s ending. All that time and emotional investment for what? A big screw you and a “Buy DLC” message at the end?

No BioWare, just no.

So while Mass Effect came in with a bang it’s certainly likely to die out with a whimper. Not because EA forced them to develop sequel after sequel until the creative keg was tapped, but rather because someone decided to confuse profound with dark and intellectual with satisfying. What we got isn’t what Shepard and the crew of the Normandy deserved, and it’s not what we as consumers were promised, nor what we deserved.

The Short Version for the ADHD

Honestly given the implications of the ending, if it's not a total rewrite it will either confirm the indoctrination theory or confirm that what we've already seen is to be taken at face value.

The latter will just make us feel worse as it will crush all hope of deeper meaning and a brighter future as a result. It will confirm the horrible fates of Shepard and the crew of the Normandy. It will most likely invalidate the entire journey and kill replay value in all three because your choices ultimately won't matter. The galaxy as it stands with the way the third game ends really isn't worth saving. One could argue that it is worse off than it would have been had the Reapers just been left to do what they do unchallenged. At least the Mass Relays and star systems would be intact. With a few well placed warnings like Liara’s time capsules, if found soon enough, there would be ample time to develop far enough to challenge the Reapers more.  

Implications.............unpleasant.

Brilliant.   +1

Bump.

[Gryphon7]

The level of irritation I'm getting from this is damn near palpable. Refusing to admit one's mistakes is just childish. PR can stuff itself.

That said, this is their last chance with me. I truly never thought I'd be saying this about Bioware, of all companies. Playing the first ME for days on end or KotOR as a kid, this wasn't where I thought it'd go.

They **** this up and I'm done.

And it's not even their fault, really! I firmly believe blame rests on the publisher. I mean, if Blizzard can merge with Activision and STILL have 12 year development cycles, then I'm somehow sure EA can let Bioware take another few months to get their **** straight.

...Raged out. Apologies. Haven't been this crestfallen about something internet/gaming related in about a decade. :/

Modifié par Gryphon7, 06 avril 2012 - 03:58 .

[Felis Menari]

Ahms wrote...

Dead_Meat357 wrote...

Mass Effect: In with a Bang out with a Whimper

Why the upcoming DLC cant’ fix the ending to Mass Effect 3. 

There are a lot of opinions and thoughts about the ending of Mass Effect 3. The announcement this morning may fill some with hope, but not me. Instead I’m filled with sadness and dread at the realization that BioWare’s artistic vision is for everyone to die at the end and to leave behind a Mass Effect universe in which the galaxy would have been better off if Shepard had let Saren succeed in ME1.

I’m going to try and minimize the talk about EA commercializing the crap out of these games, being evil, or BioWare being a bunch of sellouts, or even Casey Hudson and Mac Walters going off the rails.
No, instead I’m going to make some predictions and throw out my $0.02 and say that BioWare made a lot of mistakes, backed themselves into a creative corner, pulled a BSG/Lost, and pretty much guaranteed no good return to the Mass Effect universe going forward. While there are some overlapping complaints I’ll make here addressed by others pointing out things in the indoctrination theory or just statements concerning how broken the ending is from a lot of different angles, I hope to address a couple new ones or at least things that are down played and ignored.

This is all full of spoilers. Many of you who haven’t completed the game heard the ending sucks, but I urge you to finish it and make your own conclusions. You should probably even do so before the updated ending comes out so you can make your own judgement as well as see the differences added should you replay it with the DLC.

The Ending Sucks But we Already Knew That

First, there is a lot of talk about how the ending to Mass Effect 3 sucks. It does, you’ll get no arguments from me. It’s full of plot holes, contradictions, it ends abruptly and paints your choices in a confusing light. It doesn’t have the same feel that the rest of the series has. Nothing about it is familiar and it all feels “off” and unfamiliar. Not only does it contradict the nature of the series itself, but it goes against statements made by Casey Hudson himself in interviews. (You know, about the whole A,B, and C thing not being what they were going for.) The worst part is that all your choices essentially all have the same results. I’ll say that I’ve got no clue why a low EMS results in only the destroy ending being available or why the destroy ending is the only one that allows Shepard to wake up in the rubble in London after everything goes to hell.

Implications………….unpleasant.

The Final Mission Sucks and the DLC isn’t Addressing That

But what I rarely see is talk about how the final mission, specifically Priority: Earth sucks so bad. Up until then the game is easily the best of the three in my opinion. Not only graphically or game play wise, but in the way missions and the story are handled. Plotlines from earlier installments are brought to clean and satisfying resolution. The whole game up until the Priority: Earth mission is actually a well crafted masterpiece. Excellent set pieces and backdrops, a sense of urgency, family, and team are all fostered here. I loved seeing all my favorite characters again and the interactions with them are by far the richest and most fulfilling in the whole series.

Before you can understand why the final act sucks so bad you have to understand why the first games had epic conclusions which were not only satisfying, but had you at the edge of your seat the entire time.

In the original Mass Effect, one of my favorite parts of the game is going outside the Citadel tower and making my way to the council chambers with Sovereign in the background with Geth and Krogan trying to stop me. You come face to ugly face with Saren and learn that he’s a tragic figure and not necessarily the evil man you believed him to be earlier. He shoots himself if your paragon or renegade score is high enough, and it seems like it will be the end of him. But you don’t want to ignore the body, you want to make sure it’s not a trick. And of course it doesn’t and you have to fight what Saren has truly become. A tool of Sovereign. Nothing more, nothing less. Once he’s defeated the feedback causes Sovereign to lose control of his shields, then the order is given and the combined Alliance and Citadel fleets destroy the Reaper sending pieces of it all over. The music, the dialog, the battle, the cinematics are all well done here. From Ilos on the game is all about your goals and the story. Some of the best looking and most well thought out segments of the game are in the final act.

In Mass Effect 2 one of my favorite parts of the game is assaulting the Collector base and choosing who leads the second team, who goes into the vents, and literally who will live and die. The long walk music playing in the background really adds ambience to it. I liked fighting within the biotic barrier and cutting down bad guys. While the Reaper battle itself could have been done differently and a whole lot better, all the cinematics and choices in the final act are great.

In Mass Effect 3 I dread everything after the assault on the Illusive Man's base. The Priority Earth mission just sucks on so many levels.

The Good Bye Sequence

You get to Earth and things fall apart. In fact almost everything after the attack on the Cerberus base is pretty much terrible. We get a nice fulfilling and interesting good bye to Liara, especially if you romanced her. Then you proceed and say good bye to the rest of the survivors of your teams from 1 and 2. These are a bit of a mixed bag. I found many compelling and moving, with some of them feeling a little forced and flat. I think my fondness for some characters makes some more bittersweet than others. All of them are generally pretty good but the entire sequence seems out of place. There is this calm base in the worst area of fighting in which you’ve got time to do all of this? Seems tacked on at the last minute. Though it sets a tone in which Shepard seems to lose hope. The dialog delivered lacks a certain fire after that. Shepard’s own commentary contradict his or her nature from the first two games and even the third up until Thessia.

Shepard almost seems prepared to fail. I think they were going for an effect in which you can finally see the events of all three games taking their toll on the Galaxy’s greatest hero and soldier. Depending on how you look at it, this is either well done or completely out of character. This segment is essentially the calm before the storm.
And here is the point where the train really leaves the tracks. It happens well before the games controversial and lackluster ending.
Problematic……………….

Who Needs Rails?

You gather with all your allies one last time and head to where Anderson is planning the final assault to drive the Reapers back and deliver the Crucibal. I had this silly expectation that they’d at least give us what Mass Effect 2 did and outline objectives in which we’d decide which team members did the deeds. Choosing correctly would lead to success, and choosing poorly would lead to character deaths at the very least. I was sure that we’d probably lose some no matter what being the final game and experiencing so much loss already. While it was just an action set piece, we still had an RPG element to it. In that regard Mass Effect 2 triumphed over the first game.

But sadly, in Mass Effect 3 none of that happened. We had one objective, and Shepard just picked two people to go with him or her and that’s it. All you do is fight wave, after wave, after wave of frustrating enemies. The same five to be exact. Marauders, cannibals, husks, banshees, and brutes. No where in this mess did we see Krogan protecting our flank, or Asari bombing the enemy positions. We saw no Salarian commandos blowing up Reaper assets in the background. We don’t even see the Mass Effect Allstar team which showed up to help us in our final push do anything. They fade away into the background like common soldiers. Hardly fitting or satisfying. You are told you have one objective. Reach the conduit. A Reaper destroyer comes into sour that plan. The only hope? Thanix missiles. OK, but Shepard once again has to be the one to do this. So you set out to reach the missiles and you fight the endless horde to do it.

And it is endless. In fact once you are given the go to launch, just run to the truck and do it. Ignore all the enemies at that point. They’ll disappear once you’ve launched the missiles. Yeah, that’s right. You don’t have to wait for a break in the fighting because you won’t get one.

The run to the conduit itself is almost identical to the one in Mass Effect 1, except that we don’t do it in a Mako and we have Harbinger or another Reaper shooting at us. You run in only to get shot anyway before reaching your final objective. Now again I don’t want to argue for indoctrination theory at this point. I’ll just say that the imagery gets confusing, things feel off and out of place, and everything is abrupt and just out of character for the universe. Shepard in no way seems to question the validity of what the proclaimed Reaper creator says. That last part is important. So far Shepard has never accepted anything anyone has said and went his or her own way knowing what the goal was all along and never losing sight of that objective. To do what needs to be done. Sometimes via compromised morals or an ends justifies the means stance, depending on your choices, but always in the pursuit of a noble goal that is abandoned in the final minutes. 
 
The DLC Won’t Likely Address the Citadel Content

Other plot holes aside, I’m uncertain how any of the endings themselves could be changed or have added context based on new cinematics. The choices still suck and are presented in a haphazard and akward way with no context really being given, no questions being asked, and nothing profound happening. So without interrupting before Shepard waking up and explaining how Anderson and the Illusive Man ended up there, we won’t get clarity on this at all. Maybe after the choice is made, but the choices are still presented in an amateur hour kind of way. Far sub-par to the way every other choice has been presented to us before.

This is not to say that every decision in Mass Effect can be made the first play through with an idea of what the consequences will be. I wasn’t sure what the right call to make with the Geth heretics or the with Keji’s greybox. But these choices are presented with context that is easy to follow and more importantly, allow some conjecture on your part which helps you to make a good decision. When I was told my three choices by the Catalyst and it’s some 14 lines of dialog, I really wanted to go back and have it repeat everything because I wasn’t sure I heard everything. Again it’s a huge decision but there is no context as Shepard can’t really ask any questions.

So the Reapers aren’t Sentient?

One point I fail to see get addressed in forum posts and articles is the fact that this Catalyst AI Starchild thing contradicts the idea that the Reapers are sentient on their own. Sovereign and Harbinger, as well as the unknown Reaper on Rannoch are all clearly sentient. Yet this AI Catalyst supposedly created them? How will the Crucibal force them to do anything? In just a few lines of dialog the conversations with Sovereign and Harbinger become meaningless. It diminishes the Reaper threat by making them into machines which follow the machinations of this other being we know nothing about. We just met him in the last 10 minutes.

DLC Won’t Address Shepard’s Complete Trust in the Catalyst

And if it created Reapers, you can trust him. I won’t put complete faith in someone trying to sell me a car, Shepard is distrustful of the Illusive Man who brought him/her back from the dead but this master of the Reapers is totally trust worthy. The fate of the galaxy and trillions of sentient lives are at stake and there is no reason to be sure and ask questions before you do anything.

Not only does Shepard fail to ask questions here for clarification, but Shepard really does take everything presented at face value. The catalyst AI starchild thing tells Shepard that his or her choice will destroy the mass relays. Since Shepard already blew up one, you’d think that would be a point of concern and discussion given what happened the last time. (I would imagine the Batarian legal suit would have still been pending were it not for being wiped out by the Reapers.) Shepard should have taken a lesson from James T. Kirk who never feared to ask anyone anything he wanted an answer for. Important questions which address poor or logically fallible arguments. Questions like; “What does God need with a starship?”

Often times Shepard hasn’t liked the paths laid out for him or her by others and takes new direction. This was evidenced in all three games a lot of times. Yet this attitude is suspiciously absent in the final moments of the game. Most people would have said on Manae that there was no way to get the Krogan to help the Turians but Shepard never said that. When the new Primarch asked, Shepard made it happen. The catalyst would have you believe that these three ridiculous choices are the only options you have. Why should Shepard accept that?
The Catalyst is part of the Crucibal and this is the same being who supposedly made Reapers to harvest organics every 50,000 years. Yeah, let’s go with what he says.
 
The Endings are Screwed up Before the Cinematics really Start and BioWare isn’t Addressing That

We all know the part about the Mass Relays blowing up whole star systems, stranding races in places without enough resources to survive and all that. But each ending has its own issues and its own added consequences. I will endeavor to deal with them individually and from the perspective of how the choice is presented and some of the differences vs. the others.

Control

In the control ending we are led to believe that apparently the Crucibal doesn’t have a real switch and Shepard needs to complete a circuit or something rather than get what he or she needs from the Presidium Commons market or raid the Keeper’s tool box for something which could be used as a switch. So Shepard has to grab these two glowing rods and whilst being vaporized think happy thoughts and wish the Reapers away.
The biggest issue I have with this is that the Reapers aren’t sentient or are really retarded for not doing something about a back door command signal. Essentially in 50,000+ years no one patched out this critical security flaw? And again if they were truly sentient and were able to rebel against their creators, why are they listening to this Catalyst, and again why does this device compel them to do anything? I also find it odd that the Catalyst endorses this and that Shepard’s eyes look exactly like the Illusive Man’s in the final moments just before disintegration. I’m not advocating indoctrination, but the symbolism of this can’t be ignored. We may lack context, but it’s something you should think about. Something BioWare needs to address.  Interestingly enough, the Citadel is also not destroyed in this ending as I recall. I don’t know what that means. I can only speculate.

Synthesis

I’ve often heard of this being referred to as the good ending or the best ending. In truth this is nothing of the kind. It’s essentially the ending to Star Trek the Motion Picture, but more convoluted. This isn’t a movie you really want your story to emulate. Fan fiction and non-cannon fiction basically credits this as the rise of the Borg race, despite being somewhat unlikely based on statements made in the series. This choice bugs me because it’s already what the Reapers do anyway. The catalyst confirms that’s how organics live on. As Reapers. This also forces Shepard to go back on what is said a minute earlier. “We’ll keep our form thanks.” Or something to that effect. This is a unilateral decision in which organic and inorganic fusion should be forced on all beings in the galaxy. As another person pointed out I think in one of the Youtube videos, the solution to diversity is mediocrity? Really? I can’t believe anyone supports this ending. It’s the worst.

Shepard also never asks what this will do to his or her companions and if anyone’s identity will remain intact. Could you imagine waking up and all of the sudden seeing bioluminescent circuitry all over your body. I’d probably freak out and kill myself. Especially if everyone I saw around me looked the same. So Shepard is going to make a unilateral call for the whole galaxy with no context and no questions? Please. At least My Shepard’s don’t do this. And again Shep’s eyes look like the Illusive Man’s just prior to being disintegrated.

Destroy

This is probably the least offensive ending and the most difficult to understand in some ways. The Starchild presents this ending as “oh by the way, you can destroy us if you want, but you are partly synthetic, so don’t do that.” The Starchild also adds that the Geth and EDI will be destroyed with this choice. Now this is the kind of choice that Shepard is used to making. Shepard sacrificed Batarian colonists to delay a Reaper invasion. It would also keep the Quarians, Salarians, Krogan, Asari, Hanar, Drell, Humans, and anyone else I’m missing alive. While Shepard may not like these types of decisions, I think this is the easiest one to take and the most sensible. It’s the only decision that would ensure that the Reaper menace would stay gone.

But there is a catch. If the EMS score is high enough Shepard wakes up gasping for air in a pile of rubble clearly in London. This tells you that Shepard didn’t die, and that everything above was a lie. Indoctrination theory or not, this tells you that the ending here can’t be taken at face value. In fact it brings into question all of them. Also in this ending Shepard’s eyes do not change. It is the only one where they don’t.

Cornered

Many others have outlined all the plot problems and arguments for why the ending to Mass Effect 3 sucks from a literary perspective and a plot perspective. There are tons of great videos about that out there to view on Youtube. I won’t even dive too far into the fact that the Mass Effect universe is essentially destroyed as we know it. This too has already been said many times. What I will say is that this paints the creative team into a corner. A happier ending, or an ending which left Mass Relays intact or left the Reapers OK to return down the line at least gives you options even if you never used the Reapers again as an enemy.

Semi-Optimistic Viewpoint

If we want to be optimistic about the ending, (which is hard to do given the implications of the endings) then we take believe that the Mass Relays didn’t blow up like the one in the Arrival DLC did and they explode “nicer.” Though the Normandy running from the explosion tells us that’s likely not going to work. Still, even if true at best all the races are stranded in the Sol system. Assuming you didn’t blow up the Citadel and chose the control ending, then there are some resources there, but Turian and Quarian fleets may have shortages of food and supplies. Remember they can’t eat what’s on Earth. Earth, if not totally ruined won’t have the infrastructure to support the vast ships and people that will need to most likely call Earth their home for a time. With standard FTL drives it would take some time for any of the races to make it to a nearby inhabitable system. Palaven is one of the closest planets, but it could still take decades or more to reach it. So that’s one major issue that must be dealt with.
Assuming that the Krogan, Humans, and Salarians can all get along, there will be population concerns with the Krogan now free of the genophage. Assuming they have access to females. Otherwise they’ll simply die out. Salarians and Humans would most likely end up dominating the planet in light of that. Which the humans already do, so there is that. But again even with the death tolls, the people left on the fleets will have to go somewhere and a ruined Earth supporting everyone, even with the Citadel’s assistance (assuming it didn’t blow up given your choices) may be difficult. But let’s say for the sake of argument that it can be done and the peace can be kept in the long run. Still the problem of colonizing other worlds and how to get there has to get addressed. Eventually there will be population concerns if cultural problems don’t cause open war on Earth first.

Where did the Normandy and her crew end up? Well let’s assume that Joker picked up your squad mates. Where did they go? Obviously they are in another star system, but unless Liara gets busy cranking out babies, everyone is doomed. There isn’t enough genetic diversity on the Normandy crew to create a viable colony. Since Asari don’t actually need sex as we understand it to reproduce, and use other species to randomize their genetic material it’s possible that she could create a large enough base for an Asari colony. Javik comments on genetic modification to the Asari, and it’s possible that this was a gift of their genetic manipulation so let’s be generous and say that a colony of Asari are incoming. Still it would be hundreds if not thousands of years before we could see anything space fairing again. And most likely, much of the Normandy’s regular crew died in the crash and even Liara herself could be killed long before a viable colony can be built.

In which case many of the crew will die miserable and alone. The stargazer part of the ending shows some kind of colony rose up there eventually. We don’t know how long it took or even what race they are. The fact that the voice of Buzz Aldrin can be heard tells us that the person there is a male. So it’s not likely an Asari colony. So this is yet another plot hole to deal with.

On the bright side, the Protheans created the conduit, and Matriarch Atheyta did talk about recommending the Asari build new Mass Relays indicating that this is possible. Depending on how well Thessia held out during the final stages of the Reaper invasion, in a couple hundred years or so, this might be possible. If so then we could see a new Mass Relay network form. This is of course good news and lends credence to the idea of sequels based on this series at a later, far off period.

Though from a literary standpoint they run into the same problem BioWare ran into with KOTOR. The problem is that you have to keep the technology and style cues of the existing mythology so that you get the right feel out of it. The issue with that is you have to explain technological stagnation. I don’t know what the accepted explanation of it is in Star Wars, though it seems to be at least in the novels and games that the problem is due to constant war. This is of course a sharp contradiction from reality.

Our technology surged many times in history because of war. Not in spite of it. War creates a necessity for bigger and badder weapons. It creates the need for faster propulsion, more power, long lasting provisions, new technologies for killing, detecting enemies, stealth, etc. Jet propulsion was all a result of rocketry. Again the airliners today wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the need for higher flying bombers, and hard hitting missiles. So technology remaining stagnant as a result of war is really just not a well thought out excuse for covering the problem.

So if the story of the next Mass Effect is to take place hundreds or thousands of years from now, maybe even in another cycle, then it has to address technological stagnation. Or BioWare has to revamp everything and create new technology. At that point you might as well create a new IP and let Mass Effect die because that’s about what you’ll get in the end.
 
Negative Viewpoint

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if the relays do explode like they did in the Arrival then everyone is pretty much screwed. Even the Normandy, the fastest ship there couldn’t outrun the blast. More than likely every ship and the major inhabited star systems around the galaxy were destroyed.

Can the galaxy even survive hundreds or thousands of supernovas happening all at once? Who knows. But let’s say it can. We still have the problem of everyone dying except perhaps the Normandy crew which I addressed above. Races will go extinct. Many colonies won’t be able to sustain themselves without being able to reach major ports like the Citadel and any outlying pockets of survivors or colonies won’t have the ability to go somewhere else. Ships in Mass Effect do have FTL drives, but they only allow for movement in local clusters at best. Not all of them have inhabitable planets. Many people will run out of air or food and simply die.
Sure some life in the galaxy will survive and any pre-spaceflight populations like the Yahg may actually even flourish, but who knows whether or not they’ll ever find a solution without mass relays. Which if the relays destroyed star systems that had them, then the Asari and Prothean data most likely is lost and won’t ever lead to the construction of new relays. So what’s next? Hyperspace or Warp? Again you end up practically reinventing the entire IP. Specifically because this one revolved around the Mass Effect and the relays. So why do that?

And as I said before, the galaxy in this state isn’t worth the trouble. Shepard would have been better off grabbing all his potential love interests and creating a harem on some tropical planet and leaving the galaxy to fend for itself. At least they could have put things in motion to give the next cycle a shot at beating the Reapers. Which Liara tried to do anyway. But with all the relays destroyed, and many inhabitable worlds being gone, what’s there to save? The death toll is likely higher than it would have been had Shepard just give up earlier.

And I almost forgot. No one seems to mention this, but if the Citadel blew up and the relays didn’t destroy the Sol system, then you’ll have huge chunks of the Citadel raining down on Earth. Given the size of the thing, that’s a huge problem even for small pieces of it. The Citadel dwarfs Reapers by a massive amount. Pieces of it would almost certainly render the planet uninhabitable.

Sequels and Prequels

I’ve touched on the fact that sequels and prequels will have to deal with certain problems. A sequel will have to work within the confines of the endings of Mass Effect 3. The problems with this are harder to pin down taking the positive viewpoint but, most likely such a sequel would have to take place a few centuries after ME3. That is unless you want every planet to look like Tuchunka in ME2 and ME3 and limit yourself to a very small section of the galaxy that is reachable by standard FTL. In doing that the scale and scope of the first three games is totally lost.

So you have to take the idea of the Asari or someone else bouncing back with a new relay network. It would most likely have to take place thousands of years later to allow the Mass Effect universe to look anything like what we have seen in the earlier games. Though this will force totally new political situations, possibly new races, and of course we will lose all potential for reoccurring characters. We may be able to have one or two get frozen like Javik or something, but that’s about it.

Even if the sequel is a couple hundred years or more later, we can at least see Grunt an Liara again. But again the further you push out the timeline the more you have to adequately explain technological stagnation. If technology is simply lost and reinvented then you have to reinvent the look of everything even if it resembles what came before. So all weapon models, armor designs, and ship designs have to pretty much get thrown out. This is one thing if BioWare is going to use an updated engine and do all new graphics for the next series to target the next generation of consoles or computers.

If they are going to essentially use the framework of ME2 and ME3 with new stuff, seems like a waste in both time and money to do it. And again if you don’t nail this stuff exactly right it won’t feel like Mass Effect anymore, and you’ve hurt the fans even more than if you had let it die and gone with a new IP entirely.

Now obviously taking the more negative viewpoint and going with the galaxy exploded is even worse. This doesn’t really leave a universe you want to revisit and one you almost feel guilty in helping to create.

Prequels have their own sets of problems.

The first and foremost problem with doing a prequel is that you need a human protagonist. This limits the prequel time frame to a 30 year window, part of which had humans at war with the Turians and of course Batarians were hostile as well. This almost forces you to deal with them as enemies. The Geth are out because the Geth weren’t seen past the Veil until 2183 when Shepard found them in Mass Effect working with Saren. The Reapers weren’t known as anything other than a myth either. So even if you use them, you can only do so much story wise. The same is true of Collector’s and anyone else.

And if you confine the game to such a time period, you are basically stuck with a story that can never be as epic or as large as the current one.

Now, I know some of you are probably pissed off and wondering why I said what I said about needing a human protagonist. Many will disagree with me on this point, and while it will work with some people I don’t think the masses will like being painted into that corner as a general rule. For one thing I don’t want to play a Turian in a game where my romance options are basically Asari. Because Turian females are likely hideous and you won’t be able to identify with them. Salarian females look pretty much like the males. Krogan females? Eve tells you all you need to. So Asari it is. Maybe Drell, but I doubt I could get over the face and those weird Rosewell Gray alienesque eyes.

People tend to identify with and get more attached to protagonists they can identify with. Shepard is deeply customizable which is part of what makes the unique your own. It’s why you can identify with the character. I don’t know that the same effect can be had with a Turian. We all like Garrus, but I don’t know if I would want to play an entire series based on Turians. Non-human characters that are well liked are often anthropomorphized a great deal. Asari, Twi-Leks and any number of attractive females in games and movies are generally regarded as attractive because they still resemble humans. Their subtle differences in a lack of hair or skin color ultimately makes them exotic, and therefore desirable, but them being more or less human is a key component in making them appealing.

There is fan art out there showing nude Asari and Twi-Lek’s. Basically the science fiction genre of porn, but you won’t really find this with Turian, Salarian, or Krogan females. So not having an option for a human protagonist in the series limits them further. It may limit the ability of people to identify with the role as much. Being an RPG game primarily and a shooter second this doesn’t bode well for the future. Prequels and DLC involving other established characters take the customization out of the equation because you are again working within existing confines. So while a DLC giving us a few hours of game play showing Aria taking back Omega from Cerberus could be cool, it wouldn’t justify an entire series.

Oh wait, if the Citadel explodes then that won’t work either. She was most likely there when the thing blew up. There goes that idea.

What BioWare Failed to Understand

Now understand that BioWare’s reactions and commentary on everything is highly suspect. For one thing, BioWare hasn’t always been entirely truthful with us. The game and it’s mechanics contradict things said by Casey Hudson. So take anything they’ve said with a grain of salt. Clarification of the ending may simply be something like validating the indoctrination theory. So a simple cinematic would change our perception of the game’s current ending without them actually doing much of anything.

The main problem isn’t that we need clarity. Either the ending can be taken at face value or it can’t. Taking it at face value makes the ending depressing on multiple levels which is the reason why it’s hated.

Americans culturally speaking don’t generally like movies with sad or bad endings. There are some people that do, but as a rule the masses don’t like it. We are an optimistic people I guess. We’ve invested over 100 hours in the three games and came to know and love many of the characters and the universe. Even if Shepard had to die, we wanted a good life and a good outcome for the galaxy and our team members who stood side by side with us through the difficult times. We wanted to have the possibility to meet them again with a new character in Mass Effect 4, or to see books and movies based on their actions later on. Watching them get screwed over, blown up, turned into cyborgs, or whatever else was hard to handle.

Shepard’s death isn’t what I wanted to see, but I would have understood it if it was necessary, but Shepard needed to die preserving something that resembled the galaxy we knew. Shepards actions and death had to be worth something. The way it is now, the entire struggle is almost invalidated and it is certainly diminished. What makes these games so great is the characters and the replay value. A, B, and C variants of the same sad and crappy ending which occur regardless of your choices makes replaying the series something you don’t want to do.

The ending as it is now is painful. The last chapter in fact is painful and it isn’t bittersweet. Just bitter. Because of that the game is somewhat traumatic and not something you want to repeat.
Commercially this hurts BioWare and EA in a number of ways they probably haven’t seen coming. Not only does it sour our expectations and desires for another entry into the series, but the lack of quality in the final chapter shows us that EA’s meddling has once again destroyed a great development studio. They had things right with ME1 and ME2, then dropped the ball here.

I have no desire to buy merchandise or media involving Mass Effect because it’s nothing more than a painful reminder of ME3’s ending. All that time and emotional investment for what? A big screw you and a “Buy DLC” message at the end?

No BioWare, just no.

So while Mass Effect came in with a bang it’s certainly likely to die out with a whimper. Not because EA forced them to develop sequel after sequel until the creative keg was tapped, but rather because someone decided to confuse profound with dark and intellectual with satisfying. What we got isn’t what Shepard and the crew of the Normandy deserved, and it’s not what we as consumers were promised, nor what we deserved.

The Short Version for the ADHD

Honestly given the implications of the ending, if it's not a total rewrite it will either confirm the indoctrination theory or confirm that what we've already seen is to be taken at face value.

The latter will just make us feel worse as it will crush all hope of deeper meaning and a brighter future as a result. It will confirm the horrible fates of Shepard and the crew of the Normandy. It will most likely invalidate the entire journey and kill replay value in all three because your choices ultimately won't matter. The galaxy as it stands with the way the third game ends really isn't worth saving. One could argue that it is worse off than it would have been had the Reapers just been left to do what they do unchallenged. At least the Mass Relays and star systems would be intact. With a few well placed warnings like Liara’s time capsules, if found soon enough, there would be ample time to develop far enough to challenge the Reapers more.  

Implications.............unpleasant.

Sweet Mary, mother of Jesus, I read ALL of that! This post deserves its own thread. brb.

It's hard to disagree with the points he made.