989 réponses à ce sujet

[Valmar]

Shepard has only once been in a worse condition than during the ending, and died that time. Passing out from pain/blood loss is not a good sign for long-term survival....

 

In my mind the crux of the problem is that it feels like an "out" for the developers. I am being completely honest here, and it might sound crazy (probably is);

 

I think they wanted Shepard dead. For story reasons, and because Mac Walters wanted the character out of the way. What to do? Create an ending where tropes, not logic, decide the fate of the character. That way they can write ME4 with Shepard out of the way, and fans (those who felt it was important) happy in the belief that he/she lived.

 

Same applies to Tully Aucklands post linked earlier here. "There is hope they will be reunited"... like Iakus mentioned, hope=/= certainty. I would think a reunion would be absolutely certain, unless Shepard ...somehow... dies before it happens.

 

 

I've been obsessing over this for too long now

 

What about Arrival DLC? If Shepard doesn't 'survive' the fight with all the waves of mechs and enemies then he goes down 'for reals' (no reload). This wasn't a "game over, try again" state clearly in this situation Shepard taking too much damage and passing out was considered a lore-possibility. Him taking so much damage that he passes out has happened before, it doesn't mean this is his last days.

 

Look at some of the background histories for Shepard. One has him surviving a thresher maw attack that wiped out the rest of the squad (Tombs not withstanding),  The other has him apparently being the sole reason that Elysium is still standing. Shepard has a long history of doing the impossible and, most importantly, surviving things that should 'logically killed normal people.

 

Why do you place so much logical scrutiny on the breathing scene? Tropes > logic has been around in the Mass Effect series since the start. Sure, Shepard surviving all that doesn't necessarily seem like the most logical of outcomes... but then again nor does anything else in the damn game. If you're going to put on the scientist goggles and go around sneering at every little moment in the story that isn't logical or realistic like a vulcan then you'd come up with a insanely long list of complaints, not just Shepard surviving. If we're able to suspend-belief for all the other crazy, non-logical stuff that happens in the game I don't see why this is has to be special. Especially when, viewed from a lore-perspective, Shepard surviving isn't even all that illogical.

 

Maybe it is because I always played with the renegade scars so I'm just more aware of it than others but Shepard is NOT a normal human. We cannot look at the situation from the perspective of "oh wow no way a human can survive this" and expect it to be an accurate way to judge rather or not Shepard could survive. A normal human can't fire some of the gun's Shepard can, a normal human can't  do a lot of **** Shepard does. Shepard is a grade-A action-hero badass. Even before the cybernetics were put into place. Him surviving shouldn't be viewed as such an impossibility.

 

Honestly if you want to use LOGIC to dictate rather or not Shepard is alive then that logic should say: of course he is alive. Because, logically, why else would there be a breathing scene at all if not because he survived. That doesn't mean one has to be happy with the execution of the survival scene, of course. Though to act like it means anything less than Shepard surviving is just letting your emotions cloud your judgement, imo. I loath the fact that all we get is a lousy, depressing breath scene under a bunch of rubble. I wanted a happier outcome than that, believe me. However that doesn't  take away from the fact that clearly Shepard survived. The very existence of the scene is proof of that.

 

 

The anger I've seen isn't based on "this doesn't make sense" but more "I FEEL BETRAYED!" which I haven't been able to understand. The outrage is more emotional than logical.

 

If you actually are interested and want to understand why people feel betrayed I suggest you read this (it'll only take a minute of your time and will give you a greater perspective):

 

http://forum.bioware...ase-statements/

 

Given that we were directly and explicitly promised one thing and (objectively, factually) got something completely different or even exactly something they promised WOULDN'T be there... yeah...

 

I should also mention that the above link actually only includes SOME of the promises that turned out to be absolutely false. There were more out there. I should know, I followed ME3 news religiously before the game launched. Since I was/am still such a fanboy.

 

It is not at all surprising that someone would feel betrayed, is it? When you trust someone and they tell you something is going to be one way, you expect them to be telling the truth. Because you have faith in them and, well, trust them. When they then turn around and break those promises, how are you supposed to feel? Fulfilled, happy? Like someone you put your faith in didn't just lie to you? It sounds harsh to call it betrayal but, objectively speaking, that is what it is.

[sveners]

Outrage is only emotional. No feeling is rational or logical, since emotions aren't rational. You can say certain emotions are logically linked to certain events. That would make the ending outrage very logical. Since people saw the universe they fought to save for 6 years gone, and the protagonist they controlled die.

 

When someone you know dies, you feel sad. Even in a fictional universe. My ex threw "A Dance with Dragons" into the wall and cried when Jon Snow was stabbed. That's an emotional, and logical, reaction. If you have no reaction, you aren't really immersed in the universe.

 

Shepard's death/revival in ME2 was discussed and ridiculed, it just wasn't a great point of concern. Because the rest of the game was stellar. When people are happy and satisfied with the product they received, they are very rarely likely to complain. Most people enjoyed ME2, so most people didn't complain.

 

Also, when you are truly dissatisfied with something, you will look for any opening to support that dissatisfaction.

[congokong]

@Valmar

 

lol The players should know they're being lied to when a developer says all your decisions will matter. I remember Heavy Rain promised similar BS and nothing really mattered until near the end of the game. And the rachni actually mattering in the final battle... ? Maybe they got a new script.

 

Besides that, most of those quotes seem technically correct. We did get different endings and we did get our questions answered; at least I did.

[sveners]

What about Arrival DLC? If Shepard doesn't 'survive' the fight with all the waves of mechs and enemies then he goes down 'for reals' (no reload). This wasn't a "game over, try again" state clearly in this situation Shepard taking too much damage and passing out was considered a lore-possibility. Him taking so much damage that he passes out has happened before, it doesn't mean this is his last days.

 

Look at some of the background histories for Shepard. One has him surviving a thresher maw attack that wiped out the rest of the squad (Tombs not withstanding),  The other has him apparently being the sole reason that Elysium is still standing. Shepard has a long history of doing the impossible and, most importantly, surviving things that should 'logically killed normal people.

 

Why do you place so much logical scrutiny on the breathing scene? Tropes > logic has been around in the Mass Effect series since the start. Sure, Shepard surviving all that doesn't necessarily seem like the most logical of outcomes... but then again nor does anything else in the damn game. If you're going to put on the scientist goggles and go around sneering at every little moment in the story that isn't logical or realistic like a vulcan then you'd come up with a insanely long list of complaints, not just Shepard surviving. If we're able to suspend-belief for all the other crazy, non-logical stuff that happens in the game I don't see why this is has to be special. Especially when, viewed from a lore-perspective, Shepard surviving isn't even all that illogical.

 

Maybe it is because I always played with the renegade scars so I'm just more aware of it than others but Shepard is NOT a normal human. We cannot look at the situation from the perspective of "oh wow no way a human can survive this" and expect it to be an accurate way to judge rather or not Shepard could survive. A normal human can't fire some of the gun's Shepard can, a normal human can't  do a lot of **** Shepard does. Shepard is a grade-A action-hero badass. Even before the cybernetics were put into place. Him surviving shouldn't be viewed as such an impossibility.

 

Honestly if you want to use LOGIC to dictate rather or not Shepard is alive then that logic should say: of course he is alive. Because, logically, why else would there be a breathing scene at all if not because he survived. That doesn't mean one has to be happy with the execution of the survival scene, of course. Though to act like it means anything less than Shepard surviving is just letting your emotions cloud your judgement, imo. I loath the fact that all we get is a lousy, depressing breath scene under a bunch of rubble. I wanted a happier outcome than that, believe me. However that doesn't  take away from the fact that clearly Shepard survived. The very existence of the scene is proof of that.

 

 

Damn it Valmar, why did you have to write so much? ^^

 

You are right about everything you're saying. There really shouldn't be any doubt about Shepards survival. I know I should just let it go. But I can't.

 

I'm not sure how I can put this... Yes, Shepard is a bad-ass, yes Shepard is indeed beefed up with cybernetics etc. Shepard was also in a lot of pain, and did pass out on the way up to the Catalyst. And we know Shepard has died before, so can do so again.

 

Logically, yes that final scene should quite simply be taken as "Shepard lives".

 

I just can't wrap my head around it. Do you know what I mean? How does Shep get down from the Citadel? Who would, as their first concern, have checking ground zero for survivors on the top of their to-do-list? Also coupled with the injuries, how long can Shep survive?

 

Add to that the "hope" line from Tully Auckland, and some other developer saying at a convention somewhere that "it could have been Shepard's last breath, we don't know"... oh, and Mac's desire to never write Shepard again..

 

Well, it feels like they went for the option where they could have Shep dead in any scenario, while letting fans who wanted the character to live, believe that.

 

 

Of course, I'm probably very much in the minority about this train of thought

[Reorte]

This is actually the only valid way to read any scene in the game. Sure, we're usually wrapped up in the moment at any given point, but it is all contextualized by the story, depiction, medium, contemporary references, etc etc. Dissatisfaction from not doing this, or analyzing the scene to find something that was clearly not meant to be communicated (ie Shepard is alive but screwed), is not really the fault of the developers.

No, other scenes have to stand on their own merit and content. If there are others that resort to making references at the expense of reliably conveying their information then they are badly done scenes too. The breath scene relies entirely on reference and convention.

[Reorte]

The anger I've seen isn't based on "this doesn't make sense" but more "I FEEL BETRAYED!" which I haven't been able to understand. The outrage is more emotional than logical.

Wow, you don't understand emotional reactions to a work of fiction, something which pretty much exists for emotional reasons when it's not a fable or parabal?

[Obadiah]

...
The breath scene relies entirely on reference and convention.

But that's not really true either. The reason it is a trope is that, in and of itself, the scene can usually be understood. Audiences understand that they're being told/shown a story, not being shown an extended ending to the character to leave a bit of mystery (perhaps as a story to be told another day, but not necessarily), and that, as a work of fiction, and especially as the end of a piece of fiction, it wouldn't be put in there by the storyteller just to lead them astray.

[Valmar]

@Valmar

 

lol The players should know they're being lied to when a developer says all your decisions will matter.

 

Lol I know right? What idiots believe someone just because they trust them not to lie to their face. Should had known better. It's not the devs fault if they lied, its the fans fault for believing the lies. Morons, got what they deserved I say. Hurray for big business, hurray for money!

 

 

 We did get different endings and we did get our questions answered; at least I did.

 

After a few months and some paid DLC (Leviathan), sure!

 

Like I said, there are a lot more things they said that were objectively, factually wrong that are not mentioned in the topic. One of my favorites is the statement they made saying that the player won't just find a "reaper off switch 10 minutes in the game".

 

I guess if you want to be technical it probably did take a little longer than 10 minutes to find the reaper off switch.

 

 

Damn it Valmar, why did you have to write so much? ^^

 

Pff, that was nothing compared to some the talks I've had about the leviathan theory.

 

I'm not sure how I can put this... Yes, Shepard is a bad-ass, yes Shepard is indeed beefed up with cybernetics etc. Shepard was also in a lot of pain, and did pass out on the way up to the Catalyst. And we know Shepard has died before, so can do so again.

 

Within that time I would be surprised if his armor hadn't already injected him with medigel and his magical super body already is going to work to repair him. T'is only a flesh wound. Shepard also was 'only' a human when he died the first time (that couldn't wrestle out of the one-handed grip of Saren) and it took crashing into a planet from space to kill him off... which wasn't even enough to completely destroy his body and his brain was still intact through the amazing power of plot armor. Now he's some kind of cyberneticaly enhanced super-soldier firing bone-shattering weapons with casual ease, headbutting krogan and punching down Yahg. Let's just look at some of the upgrades we can get for The Shepard:

 

Heavy Bone Weave

Shepard takes -50% Damage to health from melee attacks

By reinforcing the skeleton with a synthetic weave, bones can be made almost unbreakable. In the event of bone trauma, medi-gel conduits allow for bone regenerations in a matter of days.

 

Heavy Muscle Weave

Shepard does +25% Melee damage.

Perforating the muscles with micro-fibers increases overall strength and decreases the potential for muscle damage from exertion.

 

Heavy Skin Weave

Shepard gains +10% Health per upgrade (maximum of %70!)

Strong synthetic fibers can be woven through the skin, dramatically reducing damage taken from most attacks. These fibers also act as a medi-gel conduit, improving healing.

 

Shepard is a damn war machine. Frankly I would be shocked if he COULDN'T survive the events of high-ems destroy ending. I mean jeeze look at the guy (or girl, whatever) he's the ultimate weapon. Nothing's been able to keep him down. Everyone keeps trying to kill him but nothing sticks. He always manages to come out on top. In the first game, even as a mere human he survived having a reaper crash on him. He limped a little, sure, but he still pulled through. You think a little rubble and something as petty as an explosion to the face is going to take him out? Garrus wouldn't let him hear the end of it if he was killed that easily. You know, the turian that survived a ship rocket to the face and was up walking fine the next mission.

 

Coincidentally it is because of all this history of being this cliche badass superhero action star that does the impossible that makes it extra annoying that there is no cheesy happy ending. Instead you get people complaining that having a cheesier ending would take away from the story or somehow be out of place. You know, because Shepard's character and the events in the series have always been so anti-cheese, super gritty, dark and uber-realistic. No cliches to be found here.

 

 

I just can't wrap my head around it. Do you know what I mean? How does Shep get down from the Citadel? Who would, as their first concern, have checking ground zero for survivors on the top of their to-do-list? Also coupled with the injuries, how long can Shep survive?
 

 

You're assuming he's not on the Citadel still. Yeah, it looks more like London rubble but it isn't like Bioware haven't borrowed art assets before. Given that they knew THE Commander Shepard was up there I imagine that sending a search-and-rescue mission there would be one of Hackett's top priorities. If not just to check to see if he is alive then to get some answers as to what happened. In the first game Anderson didn't waste much time before getting squads over to Shepard to make sure he was okay despite there being PLENTY of other things to take care of at that moment. It isn't out of place to think Hackett would show Shepard some priority. 

 

As for the seriousness of the injuries this is lurking in headcanon territory. You're assuming they were bad or serious. All we know is that Shepard is hurting but alive, passes out for a moment but then is back on his feet doing okay. He was able to get the strength to endure running, facing down an exploding tube and endure the pain of grabbing two electric currents. Shepard is a boss like that.

 

Honestly, given how generally passive Shepard's behavior is in the star brats conversations I'd say its likely he's a bit numb and loopy from all the medigel the suit injected. Though that certainly is headcanon material. Lol.

 

If it makes you feel any better I struggle with these types of questions on pretty much everything starting at the beam rush. Why doesn't Harbinger shoot the Normandy? Why is Anderson there first? When did TIM get there? Did Shep's armor just resuscitate him? Why does the star brat help you? If the reaper god has been on the citadel the whole time what was the point of the first game?

 

I could go on for hours. The endings as a whole bring up so, so, so many questions. Shepard's survival, however, imo, isn't worthy of that level of scrutiny. It, unlike nearly everything else, doesn't feel completely out of place. Shepard is a big goddamn hero, afterall.

[Vazgen]

Technically, there is no reaper off switch. If it was present there the outrage would've been more tame. The Destroy switch destroys not only the Reapers, but also the geth and EDI

[Valmar]

Semantics. It's still a reaper off switch. It just isn't so absolute and literal in its definition that only effects the reapers. The big bad reapers were all defeated by shooting a tube. Rather anticlimactic, really. Watch out Harby, Shepard's gonna shatter the glass and ruin your day. Oh noes.

[congokong]

Wow, you don't understand emotional reactions to a work of fiction, something which pretty much exists for emotional reasons when it's not a fable or parabal?

Emotional reactions need to have a good logical basis if you want to make a case that the work was actually bad. Just saying "I don't like it because I wanted something else" in a tantrum isn't a compelling argument.

 

Lol I know right? What idiots believe someone just because they trust them not to lie to their face. Should had known better. It's not the devs fault if they lied, its the fans fault for believing the lies. Morons, got what they deserved I say. Hurray for big business, hurray for money!

 

 

 

After a few months and some paid DLC (Leviathan), sure!

 

Like I said, there are a lot more things they said that were objectively, factually wrong that are not mentioned in the topic. One of my favorites is the statement they made saying that the player won't just find a "reaper off switch 10 minutes in the game".

 

I guess if you want to be technical it probably did take a little longer than 10 minutes to find the reaper off switch.

 

Bioware certainly shouldn't have made stupid statements like "all your choices will matter" that, when you think about it, you know would not be true. The "reaper off switch" thing is funny because that's pretty much exactly what happened. Yesterday on this thread I mentioned how it was ME3's beginning that bothered me rather than ending; specifically this.

 

Perhaps I don't hate ME3's ending largely because I don't have the emotional bias of betrayal fans got who read the gossip before the game was released. I didn't.

[congokong]

Technically, there is no reaper off switch. If it was present there the outrage would've been more tame. The Destroy switch destroys not only the Reapers, but also the geth and EDI

This is one of the complaints that people give about the ending that makes these fans act like children. People were upset about the "destroy" option because it would include the geth and precious EDI. Grow up people. Wars have casualties and considering the magnitude of the enemy in this case losing the geth/EDI is a fair trade-off.

[voteDC]

I don't consider it really ambiguous, but it's not very satisfying.

 

 

From what I understand, Arcturus Stream is only a few days journey from Sol via FTL. Anyway, the death-and-disease ending doesn't really occur in the epilogue. Of course, we don't know what happens between the end of the war and when things are rebuilt, but they obviously get over it. In the original ending it would've been something left to nag us, but the DLC pretty much got rid of that.

Well to paraphrase a line I was often told by a friend who liked the shipped endings "you're meant to think on what happens yourself."

Essentially if speculating on what happened after the shipped endings is part of their strength, then surely the same would hold true for the time in between using the Crucible and the resolutions the Extended Cut shows us.

So moving back to showing Shepard clearly alive, why could we not speculate on death and disease after that. I mean it is quite clearly going to happen so there really isn't a lot of speculation for everyone.

As to Arcturus Stream, it is I believe around 37 light years from Earth. Do we know how much faster than light the FTL drives in the Mass Effect universe are? Even if it were thirty times faster than light that would still be over a year away, that's putting aside that they'd need to stop regularly to discharge their drive cores.
 

[Linkenski]

 

This is one of the complaints that people give about the ending that makes these fans act like children. People were upset about the "destroy" option because it would include the geth and precious EDI. Grow up people. Wars have casualties and considering the magnitude of the enemy in this case losing the geth/EDI is a fair trade-off.

 

No, that's another misconception. Fans didn't dislike destroy for sacrificing the Geth and EDI because they didn't want them to die. They hated it because there's no clear reason why in particular the Destroy option kills the Geth and EDI. There's no real explanation as to why the Crucible has the capability to specifically target synthetics only (and why do we shoot a tube to do so). If you're going to sacrifice characters, especially ones that fans love, do it with care. Clearly the destroy option kills the Geth and EDI too just so it makes it a harder choice.

 

There's a headcanon that makes sense though, and I prefer to use that. Both EDI and the Geth (if they survive the Rannoch war) have software that uses Reaper-tech/codes and it makes sense that Destroy then targets them but not minor stuff like computers and stuff.

 

A big issue I think most have with Destroy is how it supposedly destroys "all synthetics" but the Normandy can still fly, and if the Normandy's systems work, then why is EDI (who's just part of the normandy based in the AI core, not the robot body) then not alive too? It puts into question what exactly it is that defines when something is "synthetic" and it's so selective in what is qualified that it becomes this big contrived asspull choice.

 

The second they introduced the Crucible, especially in the way they did it, I knew it was gonna have some kind of super-contrived functionality, but I was at least hoping they would use the time throughout the game to deepen what we knew about the device to best build up its inevitable activation, but instead they almost told us nothing and then saved everything for that final exposition-dump/cop out where they didn't even tell us anything. So in the end we got these 3 choices that serve no purpose other than to be deus ex machina switches and to make arbitrary moral ambiguity.

[KaiserShep]

This is one of the complaints that people give about the ending that makes these fans act like children. People were upset about the "destroy" option because it would include the geth and precious EDI. Grow up people. Wars have casualties and considering the magnitude of the enemy in this case losing the geth/EDI is a fair trade-off.

Deaths are not really a problem so much as the reasons why. Like, imagine you decided to destroy the reapers, but the asari go extinct because they're a biotic species, but all other species, including their biotics, are spared. Why is this happening? Pass the red sand, man. It's essentially the same thing with the "synthetics" and all other technologies. Reaper code is a nice fan theory, but it's just far too flimsy and makes zero sense.

Basically, this choice takes these characters hostage in order to push the idea that it's all or nothing with synthetic kind, but it's not assembled sensibly.

[Fandango]

This is one of the complaints that people give about the ending that makes these fans act like children. People were upset about the "destroy" option because it would include the geth and precious EDI. Grow up people. Wars have casualties and considering the magnitude of the enemy in this case losing the geth/EDI is a fair trade-off.

I think people were less upset by the genocide and murder of destroy than they were absolutely disgusted congokong. I wonder if Patrick is reading this thread!

[von uber]

Might be interesting in my point of view as someone being late the party: my first playthrough of the trilogy (and the first time i really paid Mass Effect any attention) was last year - ME1 - 3 straight through over the period of a week, non stop.

 

Right up until the best seat of the house I was largely onboard; the evacuation scene was a bit 'er.. ok, let's roll with it' and I quite liked the part where you are dazed and walk to the beam. I found the mission before fairly bleh, just felt like an horde mode in a unimaginative way, not much variation or interest (an I laughed when I saw a red telephone box for the first time).

That was fine. The TIM confrontation was ok, harked back to Saren. Was slightly puzzled how Anderson was there, but again, rolled with it.

 

Anderson died, room got very dusty and I had to wipe it from my eye. Was fully prepared for Shep to either die alongside as the crucible fired or whatever. That felt right, the emotional feeling was bang on.

 

Then Hackett comes on the radio, and we go up the lift. My feelings changed to puzzlement, and a sense of having done something wrong. The resultant scene with the catalyst felt baffling, and I even accidentally chose refuse first time as I had no clue what was going on and kept seeing if there were other options rather than listen to this holographic child who had appeared from nowhere.

 

Swift reload later (which mean the resultant second play through had lost all it's tension and drama) I ended up choosing destroy, which is what I had wanted to do for the trilogy.

 

Cutscene rolls, music makes it pretty damn dusty again in the room. Fine, Shep is dead, can deal with that, saved the galaxy. Liara lives, marvellous.

 

And then, the breath scene. I stared at the credits thinking 'What the hell? I'm alive? But.. what.. how.. who..?!!'.

I actually joined up here to see if I had done something wrong or missed an extra bit of the ending. I couldn't believe that was how they were leaving the fate of this character I had poured 150 hrs into - a 20 second badly rendered FMV sequence.

 

I would not have minded if it had been clear that Shep had died, that would have been fine. It was the shittily done 'Easter egg' that got me, and this got me thinking back to the whole catalyst scene and I was reminded of how jarring going up the lift felt at the time. I therefore had two differing points where I was jerked out of the intended emotional setting which added to my disquiet, and that has made me analyse the game as a whole to a degree I probably wouldn't have done if Shep had died / lived next to Anderson.

 

I need to stress that for the above I knew NOTHING about the Mass Effect trilogy before playing the game, not even the basic plot outline.

 

Ah well, Jennifer Shepard, Soldier, Asari lover - still one of the best game playing experiences I have had, and that is worth something:

 

[Vazgen]

Reaper code is a nice fan theory, but it's just far too flimsy and makes zero sense.
 

Care to clarify?

[Linkenski]

Sounds kinda like my first playthrough, except I hope you had the Extended Cut... you do know about the Extended Cut, right? Cuz I played it at launch and once you started reflecting on everything it really fell apart back then. Which was a shame, because unlike you I even retained the sense of emotional engagement even after Anderson's death scene and when Shepard got liften up into La-la land. I think the reason why I was still at the edge of my seat and had this extreme sense of butterflies in my stomach at the Catalyst scene was because, I knew that in just 10 minutes my 90-hour journey would be no more and it was just really hard for me to grasp that "this was it!". I actually was happy to see that the Child reappeared as the Catalyst at first, because I was expecting it to follow up on those so-banal-that-it-can't-be-it dream-sequences from earlier on, so I liked it. The first point in which I thought "hey... this is NOT GOOD!" was right when the kid spelled out the line "Without us to stop it, synthetics would destroy all organics".

 

To me that was the line that "ruined the trilogy" with the added context of Extended Cut I can better digest the idea of the Reapers, the Catalyst and the history of synthetic singularity, but back then there was just not enough empirical material in neither ME3 nor ME1 or 2 to justfiy that "this was suddenly what it was all about, all along". Poorly done twist and such a shame because I rolled with it all the way until that line, even in the original endings when there were lots of other inconsitencies that further boggled down the ending.

 

I wanna clarify though, that I came into ME3 knowing that the endings were recognized to be terrible. I tried to keep myself spoiler-free but I had to check reviews so I saw Metacritic and saw how terrible the user-score was, and every single user review spelled out something about "Terrible endings". I arrogantly thought "Hah, probably fools who don't appreciate subtle and ambiguous storytelling" but once I had gotten a week to reflect on it I wasn't in doubt anymore after having seen it, that the endings just sucked, and to me it was all mostly because of that one line I mentioned but certainly also a lot because of the color-swap and the plot-holes. So for what it's worth, the Extended Cut did fix a lot for me.

[KaiserShep]

Care to clarify?

Reaper code is simply software. There is no meaningful change to the hardware whatsoever. EDI is a different case, but the geth get what is essentially an OS upgrade. It would be like a technomagical device wiping out only Windows computers with an energy beam.

[congokong]

Deaths are not really a problem so much as the reasons why. Like, imagine you decided to destroy the reapers, but the asari go extinct because they're a biotic species, but all other species, including their biotics, are spared. Why is this happening? Pass the red sand, man. It's essentially the same thing with the "synthetics" and all other technologies. Reaper code is a nice fan theory, but it's just far too flimsy and makes zero sense.

Basically, this choice takes these characters hostage in order to push the idea that it's all or nothing with synthetic kind, but it's not assembled sensibly.

Again, trying to balance logic with fiction can be tricky. The catalyst explains that all synthetics will be killed. Do you expect a scientific explanation for how this would work? You have to give the benefit of the doubt at times. There probably is some sort of scenario that would explain how the crucible would only target "living machines." I just rolled with it just like how we rolled with the very premise of the Mass Effect series where humans discovered Mass Effect relays that somehow shoot them across the galaxy to other bipedal species that conveniently look relatively "human" and can co-exist despite likely living on planets with different atmospheres, gravity, bacteria, viruses, UV intensities, temperature, etc. Somehow humans manage to jump into this galactic civilization in only a few decades, yet I've not a heard one complaint about this ever on the message boards. But you're going to go on about how the destroy option doesn't make sense?!

 

The second part to address is why the geth/EDI were included in the first place. That's easy. They wanted to give you three scenarios (barring refusal) where you'd have to choose the lesser evil as you saw it, and they did that beautifully considering how people's responses on the best ending are all over the place. If destroy only killed the reapers then why would Shepard ever consider the other scenarios unless they were actually going to listen to the creator of the reapers' logic about AI/organic coexistence?

[Malanek]

I wasn't at all worried about Shepard dying at all, quite keen to go down in a heroic sacrifice. I didn't like the ending for a few different reasons.

 

My main issue and what I felt was inexcusable was that it simply wasn't emotionally uplifting. I wanted to see what the extended cut showed the first time I played. If it had been in the original ending, I doubt there would have been a serious issue at all, even though there were still problems.

 

It also was very basic without any real cleverness or elegance to the writing. I was hoping there was something really well thought out behind the Reapers, their motivations and a clever way of defeating them or otherwise solving the problem...but there wasn't. The idea to use the crucible as the main plot device was very underwhelming.

 

I also wanted things to make sense and flow freely. With a bit more care you wouldn't have needed that silly pickup scene in the extended cut where the Normandy picks up an injured squad mate AND A FULLY HEALTHY ONE??? They simply shouldn't have even had that Normandy scene on an alien world.

 

Lastly I couldn't stand synthesis yet I felt the writer(s) were pushing it as the "best" outcome. I don't mind peace, if I could have locked the reapers away in a different dimension without destroying them I would  have considered it. But I found the it nonsensical, risky, and morally repugnant.

[Vazgen]

Reaper code is simply software. There is no meaningful change to the hardware whatsoever. EDI is a different case, but the geth get what is essentially an OS upgrade. It would be like a technomagical device wiping out only Windows computers with an energy beam.

I agree, Reaper code is software. But who said that the energy beam targets software? Energy beam targets nanites in husks, cannibals etc., destroys them, effectively disintegrating those abominations. Notice how Reapers themselves are not disintegrated like husks, they simply collapse. That's the destruction of Reaper central database (Reaper code) that both Reapers, geth and EDI use quite extensively.

[ImaginaryMatter]

This is one of the complaints that people give about the ending that makes these fans act like children. People were upset about the "destroy" option because it would include the geth and precious EDI. Grow up people. Wars have casualties and considering the magnitude of the enemy in this case losing the geth/EDI is a fair trade-off.

 

This really isn't an issue of maturity and to suggest though signals a misunderstanding of player's actual complaints and comes off as undeservedly condescending. The complaint is more to do with how arbitrary the inclusion and how the inclusion really only seems to be included for generating cheap drama. It stems from the same sort of disapproval as Legion's death. Player's have already accepted this casualty thing. If they didn't they probably wouldn't be playing.

[Obadiah]

I always liked the idea that we challenged a god, and the god gave us an ungodly choice. Why? Because when you challenge a god, the battle will probably not be on your terms.

Also, as we told the Illusive Man earlier, that he was playing with power he didn't understand and couldn't control, so were we.