Total Biscuit wrote...
The vast majority of humans, easily 95% plus, vastly prefer happy endings, and overwhelmingly happy endings at that.
It's most likely genetic. We learn through stories, and we are genetically programmed to pay attention and like stories that tell us how to get a happy life and succeed in our goals. As we've evolved, and become both mentally and socially more advanced, so have our stories, but still, we want to hear about people we can relate to getting the girl/guy, saving the day, and generally being awesome.
There's exceptions of course, but far and away the most popular stories have happy, satisfying endings, where the protaganist achieves their goals, that's a universal truth.
And Mass Effect had us 2 and 9/10's of a series that had just that, which is a major factor in why they are so incredibly loved.
Pissing that away in an attempt to be clever and different is amateur, teenage rebellion levels of artistry, doing something shocking and unconventional not because it's going to be enjoyed or because it's a good idea, but simply to stand out. It's annoying when teenagers who don't know any better do it, and damned infuriating when a profesional writer does it, especially when they're completely blind to how unpopular and clichéd doing so is.
Personally, I'd have been ok wih heroic sacrifice if Shepard had achieved what they were supposed to. Saved the universe, got the characters we're told to care about through it safely, allowed everything the game tells you you're fighting for to come to pass and killed the big bads once and for all.
Even then, the vast majority would think its not good enough, since Shepard would be dead.
Bioware royally screwed up by forgetting that they were writing this game for the general public, not patsys and jaded reviewers who've lost sight of what's actually enjoyable amongst the see of generic bad writing that infests gaming, assuming they even saw the endings, as most didn't of course.
Anyone with even a basic knowledge of popular media would have, SHOULD have known that you have to damned well earn any ending that's less than totally happy and have it go down well with a large customer base, especially when you've made those customers expect happy endings with the previous products. Acting like its only a minority that will be unhappy is stupid, because they should know they deliberately made something most people don't like, even before they started down the clarity and closure route.
Well said
Retour en haut
for me. Then in Destroy Shepard might live and maybe reunite with crew in EC but Mass Relays gets destroyed and geth and EDI dies. Choosing Destroy after achieving peace between geth and quarians just makes me feel bad. So there doesn't seem to be fully happy ending for me 
