~~"Not another ending thread!"

The first time through the ending to mass effect 3 made me feel more empty then it did violated, angry or miserable. The indoctrination theory didn't particularily strike me as an amazing posibility but rather a series of questions relating to plot holes and overall design choices. The game on the whole remained a worthwhile experience, and well worth the money spent. The gameplay was fun, I enjoyed different classes, the plotarchs, the emotion and acting throughout the game. And I can say that I enjoyed it all again when a month ago I booted up the game on my laptop and decided to give it another go on my downtime while I was visiting relatives. The experience remained overall the same, up until the ending, it was different this time through oddly enough.

I concluded that I don't actually hate any of the endings, and that all three of them are perfectly reasonable ways to conclude the series. The closest thing we have to a happy ending is synthesis, true enough, so long as you're willing to abide by the heroic sacrifice as being a part of a happy ending. Though when you think about it, the imaginative posibilities for any of the three endings are boundless and amazing. Be it the totalitarian feel of having a reaper armata commanded by a formerly human AI hovering out there in the galaxy through control, the galactic dark age that would lead the mass effect universe into a sci-fi more closely resembling firefly, with beacons of scattered civilization advancing in a sea of forming chaos. Or the future evolution, the advancement of the galaxy.

The reason I note that none of these seem bad to me, is that all of them do resolve the main plot. They all remove , negotiate or negate the reapers as a threat to galactic civilization. Even the epilogues are told from the perspectives of characters, so you could even arguably take each of them with a grain of salt. There's nothing saying that the Synthesis ending results in a true, lasting utopia for instance.

For an imaginative individual, the endings are glorious, and present endless bounds of posibilities for the future of the mass effect universe.

My problems though, because I did have more then one. Was everything leading up to the final choices. Everything, right down to how you make those decisions.

Priority: Earth was a sad copout compared to the other priority missions throughout the game. There was little emotion, much of it felt forced, big guns were handed over to add spice rather then true level depth. Ultimately, the planet which I'd been fighting for from the begining, felt the least important. There was only one mission, and that was strait to the heart of the problem. Which may have been realistic but it left little room for me to develop feelings for this world. Ranoch, Thessia or Tuchunka felt more like Earth then Earth did for me. The sequences were bland, they didn't even offer much more then token nods to small choices I'd made at earlier stages of the series. (Krogan or Salarian speach for instance).

I didn't even need a big sequence of awesome cutscenes with my favorite old characters or war assets fighting reaper stuff, having some of them show up, randomly selected from a pool of my collective assets would have been more then enough to make me happy or at least negated any ache I had regarding this.

I did enjoy commander Shepard's speach to his/her bro's just before the end though, and the individual pep talks, they were all imaginative and offered life to the mission on the whole. Particularily with EDI, Garrus and Liara (Hater's gunna hate).

Then came the reaper-face-off and the final run. Enjoyed em both once again, got my heart pounding with the towering behemoth lumbering toward me with lasers fireing and banshee's all over the streets. Brutes crashing in from everywhere and my Shepard, getting worn out with the end in sight scrambling breathlessly to ensure his allies that they got this. The final run, the EC addition adding much needed sugar to what I thought was already a good scene.

And then Tzeentch hits...

No really, it's like getting hit with Harbinger's laser is litterally Shepard getting tossed into the warhammer 40k universe. My science fiction is replaced with science fantasy.

This isn't the conclusion I came to the first time, even with all the forums ablaze with shouts of space magic and whatnot. But when I played through it again I really felt it, perhaps a little colored by my viewing of things like the indoctrination theory. Though I've come to accept that the ending's are real so far as video game reality goes. But it's odd, everything about it seems like a dream sequence, not even refering to the earlier dreams in the game. But rather things just don't add up, the illusive man has powers over shepard and anderson to which I don't recall any previous precident being set. I don't mind the idea of it, I agree that the best way to confront the Illusive man should have been through the dialog wheel. Though the guy seems more like some mad sorcerer at this point then a intel-specialized genius.

That part concludes, you open the citadel, crucible docks and the next sequence starts. I won't waste my energy explaining my thoughts on the catalyst, as I'd be merely rehashing the same dead horse that's been beaten across this forum a million times over in the past year. I do have to ask why it couldn't have just been Harbinger honestly confronting you for the first time, instead of a child that's clearly used in a deceptive attempt to force emotions. I would have much prefered the final dialog in the game to have been with the ultimate antagonist since the collectors of ME2 then this child who Shepard has been chasing through the woods at night in his dreams. Again, it feels forced rather then honest. I don't even feel like much of the dialog would have had to have been changed to recognize this. The reaper's logic isn't intended to make sense to organic beings, so of course we'd still think him stupid. But at the very least this would have been presented in a straitforward and honest way, with a character that much of the hardcore fanbase was dieing to hear from again.

How you go about activating each of the endings is odd to, though I don't really need to explain why, I feel some more time being placed into the game into discovering the different aspects of the Crucible through some of your squadmates (Destory say being the default while you have to go to say Liara to get intel from Cerberus research into it on Control, or EDI to learn more about the potential to use it toward Synthesis).

Leaving players in the dark just leads to the shouts of marysue/deus ex machina, because as a character you feel like you really do have very little control in the final sequence. When in all reality it probably should feel like you've been handed the key's to the galaxy, choose which jet you're going to catapult the whole thing into the future in.

After all's said and done, as I mentioned earlier in my post, I again resigned into a state of relative happiness. I didn't hate the endings themselves, but I feel alot more could have been done to make Priority: Earth better, and make the endings more presentable as your ultimate choice, rather then us being allowed by the reapers to do within the confines of their agenda as we please. (I guess with exception to destroy, which doesn't really fit their agenda at all)

So, here's hoping that the next big trilogy that bioware decides to do as a spiritual successor has more time placed into its ending sequences. To me it has many positive ingredients baked at the wrong temprature, or mixed at the wrong time... So to speak... if you get what I'm saying.

Anywho, thanks for reading, mind my attrocious spelling. Most of my friend's have already moved on to other games so I just felt like I'd share my thoughts with a community that still actively chatters about the game.

Happy gaming!

OP, I see things the same way. I am reasonably content with the endings because I choose my ending for the outcomes, and I like the outcomes very much (yes, even (medium/low EMS) Destroy, in a detached way as an outcome I almost never choose, but which should absolutely exist as an option). How it all comes about, that leaves me....almost insulted. I can work with it but it's a horrible mess, with various storytelling elements that have long been on the list of the top 10 things I don't like in stories, above all the implied mysticism in Shepard's sacrifice, the Catalyst's pretensions to divinity and the fact that it - as a god-analogue and an antagonist - defines the framework of my decision.

The outcome is what counts most for me, so I'm ok, but I could cry when I think of what could have been, if this story had had a unifying vision from the start that led us naturally towards the same outcomes.

#1
Crasher027

Posté 16 février 2013 - 04:18

#2
noobcannon

Posté 16 février 2013 - 04:19

#3
MegaSovereign

Posté 16 février 2013 - 04:24

#4
Wayning_Star

Posté 16 février 2013 - 04:40

#5
Mastone

Posté 16 février 2013 - 04:53

#6
Wayning_Star

Posté 16 février 2013 - 05:07

#7
Mastone

Posté 16 février 2013 - 05:16

#8
Ieldra

Posté 16 février 2013 - 05:18

#9
Wayning_Star

Posté 16 février 2013 - 05:40

~~"Not another ending thread!"

#1 Crasher027 Posté 16 février 2013 - 04:18

#2 noobcannon Posté 16 février 2013 - 04:19

#3 MegaSovereign Posté 16 février 2013 - 04:24

#4 Wayning_Star Posté 16 février 2013 - 04:40

#5 Mastone Posté 16 février 2013 - 04:53

#6 Wayning_Star Posté 16 février 2013 - 05:07

#7 Mastone Posté 16 février 2013 - 05:16

#8 Ieldra Posté 16 février 2013 - 05:18

#9 Wayning_Star Posté 16 février 2013 - 05:40

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