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[Vazgen]

 

Well it's not just Dark Energy itself,like you mentioned, is only exposed during Talis mission, but the genetic diversity of humans which is very prelevant through out the game which is why the Collectors harvested them which is an important plot point to the whole dark energy mumbo jumbo.

While the organics vs synthetics theme absolutely is there and is an important part, but it's a reoccuring theme, it never comes of as something part of the grand plot since, it's not part of the main mission while Dark Energy is(The Reapers use genetic code to solve the dark energy problem, humans are unique in their diversity and beacuse of this get targeted by the Collectors to find "the sollution")

 

But i agree with you that the problems in ME3 started in ME2 or even earlier, i'm not so much critezing ME3's writing, overall, i acually think it's story telling, pacing and dialogue is the best in the series. Where the other 2 games made me decide who or what lives or dies, ME3 made me wonder what makes a person and whether or not i could consider a robot alive, and the organics vs synthetics theme is familiar enough for the ending to sort of work even if it might have not been fantastic.

 

I'm more critizezing them for not writing a more cohesive trilogy. They knew what it should consist of but they didn't really seem to be able to decide how to put it together and made it up as they went along.

I feel that since the Collector/human genetics/dark energy plot shouldn't have been simply abandoned. Maby it wouldn've have been better to never introduced it at all and had "man vs machine" take a bigger part in ME2's plot(hell i'm surprised they didn't since Shepard is half synthetic at that point), but since they did i think they should've built on it.

With the time passed, new market demands, new team members arriving and old ones leaving (lead writer included), new technology, time constraints etc. it would've been a hard thing to do, to keep all three games thematically closer to each other. And I don't know much about game development but I think that the possibility of a sequel is tied to the success of the original game. If ME1 failed we might not have seen ME2 at all. On his site Drew explained how the Bioware approached the trilogy. I'll link it instead of quoting, it's a bit too large for a comment section  Link (check the final part)

And I can't agree more on Shepard's implants. They could've created a great basis for Synthesis with those but in the end we got nothing. Shepard became Adam Jensen but instead of "I never asked for this" we got "I got better". 

 

I'd argue that Overlord and Rouge VI  show the success of human synthetic relations more than anything. Overlord wasn't ultimately man v. machine, it was man destroying itself. The kid was actually getting along quite well with the Geth up until his big brother tried to turn him into a weapon. And while the Rouge VI is "a synthetic which killed its master," it was used to make EDI, who seems to be perfectly peaceful.

 

Obviously, the Geth/Quarian conflict can support the organics vs. synthetics argument, but it was completely resolved. Resurrecting it alone is a weird move, but making it the central conflict just doesn't make any sense.

 

More than that I don't think organics vs. synthetics can even be the central conflict. Sure, it emerges intermittently throughout the series, but it's never been the driving force. It doesn't tie everything together. What about the Genophage arc or the Rachni? What about humans vs. aliens? What about co-operative bureaucracy vs. effective individualism? If your main theme doesn't encompass or weave together every major arc in the game, how can it be considered central? To me, the ending feels out of place and completely isolated from the core of the story. I blame part of that on poor characterization of the Reapers, but I also blame it on the near complete disregard for more than a few thematic pillars of the franchise. I don't need an ending that wraps up every single thread in a nice bow, but ME3's ending barely makes an attempt to tie things together at all.

 

Rogue VI I mentioned is in ME2 (N7: Wrecked Merchant Freighter → N7: Abandoned Research Station → N7: Hahne-Kedar Facility). Geth/Quarian conflict is only one aspect of organic vs synthetic theme. That aspect was resolved but a larger one was still present. Overlord DLC is also an aspect of a conflict, though it's more related to the Synthesis part. As I said, the Reapers themselves are a part of the conflict and they are the only driving force that is present throughout the trilogy. Tying their motives and origins to the organic/synthetic relations we experienced throughout all three games was quite a clever move. 

Genophage arc? Resolved. Rachni? Resolved (though their inclusion is one of my biggest gripes with ME3). Humans vs aliens? Resolved (all the galaxy goes to liberate Earth). Co-operative bureaucracy vs. effective individualism? Not sure if I understand that correctly but isn't the united galaxy a resolution to this theme? ME3 does resolve a lot of themes through its course, before the ending. And ending focuses on something that is the main theme of the trilogy - the Reapers. It explains their motives and ties them to the organic vs synthetic conflict a player has observed in all three games. 

I do think, however, that the execution is lacking and it could've been much better. And it's not only limited to the ending but each game of the trilogy. 

 

[Vazgen]

And that's exactly what I'm trying to say. And that's why i mentioned the dark energy plotline. As in the dark energy plot line, This reaper behavior was explained because synthetics could not manipulate dark energy,  So they needed organics. Therefore they controlled evolution or its process to use organics for the harvest. It also explained why they needed the human reaper. Surely, There're other questions that needed to be more thoroughly addressed in the dark energy plotline, But it's still MUCH better than what we have., And technically, It was just a preliminary concept as i was trying to say. Even still, It fitted the storyline of mass effect a hell lot better than the catalyst's storyline. The Leviathan DLC's plot gets it though. It addresses where the reapers came from thoroughly and with much details, Answering many of the player's unaswered questions. It even hinted at the Thorian and Rachni involvement in the process of the cycles, But nothing more than hints.

 

The verdict is, The Reapers concept isn't as many people think it is, It's different and it deserves a better and stronger storyline.

I don't get how can you claim for a preliminary concept to be better than the finished ending. For all we know, dark energy theory could've been much worse if fully developed. Two things are not comparable. 

 

Source

Drew Karpyshyn, ex-BioWare developer and lead writer of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, has revealed in detail how his original idea for the trilogy's ending could have played out.

The potential plot focused on the spread of Dark Energy - a fact alluded to by several characters in Mass Effect 2 but then never mentioned again.

Karpyshyn departed from the Mass Effect team shortly before the conclusion of Mass Effect 2 and was replaced by Mass Effect 3 lead writer Mac Walters.

Despite describing the plot thread as "something that wasn't super fleshed out", Karpyshyn was still able to give gaming radio show VGS a detailed summary of how the storyline might have developed.

Tali's recruitment mission in Mass Effect 2 centred on a star affected by Dark Energy.

"Dark Energy was something that only organics could access because of various techno-science magic reasons we hadn't decided on yet. Maybe using this Dark Energy was having a ripple effect on the space-time continuum."

"Maybe the Reapers kept wiping out organic life because organics keep evolving to the state where they would use biotics and dark energy and that caused an entropic effect that would hasten the end of the universe. Being immortal beings, that's something they wouldn't want to see.

"Then we thought, let's take it to the next level. Maybe the Reapers are looking at a way to stop this. Maybe there's an inevitable descent into the opposite of the Big Bang (the Big Crunch) and the Reapers realise that the only way they can stop it is by using biotics, but since they can't use biotics they have to keep rebuilding society - as they try and find the perfect group to use biotics for this purpose. The asari were close but they weren't quite right, the Protheans were close as well.

"Again it's very vague and not fleshed out, it was something we considered but we ended up going in a different direction."

The plot thread has become popular among hardcore Mass Effect fans as an example of a better solution than the widely-derided original ending, championed by Walters, the series' new lead writer. But Karpyshyn was keen to point out that his idea would likely have displeased some fans too.

"I find it funny that fans end up hearing a couple things they like about it and in their minds they add in all the details they specifically want," he explained. "It's like vapourware - vapourware is always perfect, anytime someone talks about the new greatest game. It's perfect until it comes out. I'm a little weary about going into too much detail because, whatever we came up with, it probably wouldn't be what people want it to be."

 

Even this brief summary has a bunch of lore-breaking facts. 

[Vazgen]

You've never been on a creative project, Have you? A preliminary concept is something that doesn't really make much sense, And full of plot-holes that's yet to be developed properly. I've read these quotes from Drew before, And it perfectly portrays my point. Good concept, But still wasn't developed. But it still feels like mass effect, It feels consistent with the atmosphere and major details of the world. Then you tame it to fit into the whole lore. I've been saying this since my first post, But for some reason you guys don't seem to get it.

 

I'd like to address another issue here, The ending's choices. The original ending's choices were quite amazing really, I'm a big fan of synthesis myself, And have always wanted something like this to make its way into the mass effect universe. But unfortunately, They were also poorly executed in this needless emotional finale.

I didn't say anything about plot holes. I mentioned lore-breaking facts. These are independent of a project state, unless, of course, they planned to change lore to fit that idea which is a wrong path to follow IMO. And organic vs synthetic theme feels as much like Mass Effect as dark energy, if not more.

I agree that the execution of the endings is lacking and said that in the previous posts. But the overall idea and theme is quite good and certainly better than the idea of dark energy theory IMO.

[dreamgazer]

What happened to the dark energy foreshadowing?

Considering what Karpyshyn had intended, which includes everything certain people didn't like about ME3's ending dialed up a few notches, the (entirely avoidable) dark energy nonsense was smartly ignored.  Along with the idea that Shepard was actually an alien and didn't know it. 

[Rittmeister64]

The catalyst is exposition. I don't see anybody hating on Vigil. Who served the same exact role. Some people just didn't like what the catalyst had to say.

PS. please don't quote this comment with the picture! thank you.

PPS. this "if Bioware wrote Lord of the Rings" needs a bit updating for the Extended Ending DLC, but basically applies still.

PPPS. The Destroy Ending for LotR would also include - killing off all Dwarves for no reason at all and killing Gandalf. (Geth, EDI).

[Rittmeister64]

The Catalyst gives cold hard facts regarding the Reapers, who they are and why they do what they do. 

Their motives are quite easy to understand.

 

The Catalyst is just an extreme fail at concluding a story, for several reasons.

 

1. It makes the ending to a huge percentage of players very unsatisfying.

 

2. many hate to even replay the game series now and just want to forget about it because of the Catalyst (and a decent happy ending option).

 

3. Catalyst creates plotholes and makes parts of the story just dumb. Like - why would previous generations come up with a Crucible that requires a Catalyst when nobody ever knew what the heck the Catalyst is. Makes as much sense as NASA building an FTL drive without knowing how to power it. - Or, why would the Catalyst leave the relays in place after a harvest? If all he wants is protect life from destroying itself by creating synthetics, leaving the Mass-Relays intact for the next cycle civilizations to utilize just means the Catalyst actively supports organics with technology and needs to harvest them in shorter cycles... pretty dumb, honestly, and it just shows that the Catalyst "lies" (aka is badly written and thought out).

 

4. "cold hard facts" - more like totally made up speculation presented as fact by Mac Walters "synthetics will always destroy organics". Sorry, but I don't buy that, just because Mac Walters tells us it is so.

 

5. If the harvesting was just a means to secure biological life, the Catalyst could have come up with a less cruel, dehumanizing, faster way to harvest - like harvest people 1000 years before they even develop synthetics, and maybe do it less obvious than creating total war.

 

6. Does Mac Walters get a personal kick out of making tons and tons of players feel bad and sick in their stomach? Mass Effect is a story in the tradition of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Lord of the Rings, etc. It basically calls for a decently happy ending possibility. You can keep the "bad" endings in the game but you definitely need to supply the possibility (super high EMS, all the "right" choices") to create a satisfying outcome as well. The writer simply failed to do that because he put his own desire to create something special over the narrative of the story. This is not "artistic integrity", I would call it more a failed wish to write something epic and not seem like he just retold the typical heroes journey - a wish that badly failed and backfired, because the writer simply beat us over the head with presenting "Transhumanism" as the ideal solution instead of delivering a decent ending.

[Ithurael]

Not to mention the catalyst acts as a blatant retcon on the reaper lore. And opens up some...un happy questions regarding Mass Effects main story.

 

It is almost as it...well...it is as if the ending was never peer reviewed or something. You know...to keep it consistent with the already established lore.

 

But hey...with enough headcanon we can make ANYTHING WORK!!!

[Rusted Cage]

Changing writers ruined Mass Effect for me.  Mac may be really good at character writing, but it is obvious that the storyline of ME 3 could have been done a lot better (at least in my little view of it all).  What part did he have in all of that?  I'm not sure.  I will say that I have my doubts if he is on board and in that much control of the final product.  He is flippant, arrogant, and thinks very highly of himself.  Frankly, I think the series would have been better off if he had not been given the promotions he got.  Good writers left, and the damn character writer ended up taking the reigns (Can you say FUBAR train wreck?).    If ME: Next is as badly done storyline wise as ME 3, I will not be getting it.  While there were moments in ME 3 that were amazing, making a device capable of generating unquantifiable levels of destruction, but then having to use it with Reaper-Tech with it stinks of stupidity and poor writing.

 

I play video games to have fun, and ultimately win.  ME 3 had no release for me, no "win". 

Putting the endings aside, what is so terrible about the story and structure of ME3 that makes it worthy of being singled out from the previous two titles as an example of bad writing?

[Ithurael]

Putting the endings aside, what is so terrible about the story and structure of ME3 that makes it worthy of being singled out from the previous two titles as an example of bad writing?

I can think of a few:

Dialog

- "This isn't about strategy or tactics!!"

- "We fight or we die"

-"I was born in london" *glances oddly to the right

-"STEEEEEEEVE" 

-The TIM, Anderson, Shep scene. Though while being a poor dialog exchange it was - to be very honest- very very well designed with dialog choice, persuasion options, and inturrupts

- Autodialog (though this is more of a design gripe)

 

Missions

- Citadel Coup (i mean...wft)

- The intro

- Priority Earth

- Priority Thessia

- Citadel: The Return

 

Characters

- Kai Leng....

- Geth doing a 180 because.,..reasonz

 

 

I can think of more...just give me time

[dreamgazer]

Putting the endings aside, what is so terrible about the story and structure of ME3 that makes it worthy of being singled out from the previous two titles as an example of bad writing?

 

If we're talking railroading, broken science, plot holes, OOC moments, and retconning, ME2 has ME3 beat by a rather significant margin. 

[Mcfly616]

The Catalyst is just an extreme fail at concluding a story, for several reasons.

 

1. It makes the ending to a huge percentage of players very unsatisfying.

 

2. many hate to even replay the game series now and just want to forget about it because of the Catalyst (and a decent happy ending option).

 

3. Catalyst creates plotholes and makes parts of the story just dumb. Like - why would previous generations come up with a Crucible that requires a Catalyst when nobody ever knew what the heck the Catalyst is. Makes as much sense as NASA building an FTL drive without knowing how to power it. - Or, why would the Catalyst leave the relays in place after a harvest? If all he wants is protect life from destroying itself by creating synthetics, leaving the Mass-Relays intact for the next cycle civilizations to utilize just means the Catalyst actively supports organics with technology and needs to harvest them in shorter cycles... pretty dumb, honestly, and it just shows that the Catalyst "lies" (aka is badly written and thought out).

 

4. "cold hard facts" - more like totally made up speculation presented as fact by Mac Walters "synthetics will always destroy organics". Sorry, but I don't buy that, just because Mac Walters tells us it is so.

 

5. If the harvesting was just a means to secure biological life, the Catalyst could have come up with a less cruel, dehumanizing, faster way to harvest - like harvest people 1000 years before they even develop synthetics, and maybe do it less obvious than creating total war.

 

6. Does Mac Walters get a personal kick out of making tons and tons of players feel bad and sick in their stomach? Mass Effect is a story in the tradition of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Lord of the Rings, etc. It basically calls for a decently happy ending possibility. You can keep the "bad" endings in the game but you definitely need to supply the possibility (super high EMS, all the "right" choices") to create a satisfying outcome as well. The writer simply failed to do that because he put his own desire to create something special over the narrative of the story. This is not "artistic integrity", I would call it more a failed wish to write something epic and not seem like he just reytold the typical heroes journey - a wish that badly failed and backfired, because the writer simply beat us over the head with presenting "Transhumanism" as the ideal solution instead of delivering a decent ending.

1. There's a huge percentage that are satisfied

 

2. Many people couldn't care less about a happy ending 

 

3. Wow. So you didn't list one plot hole here. Lets see, when previous cycles were designing the Crucible to integrate with the "Catalyst", they were referring to the Citadel. Not the Reaper AI that nobody knows about. Go back and have a chat with Vendetta.  Clearly you don't  know that organic civilizations were creating synthetics and destroying eachother before the Catalyst or the Reapers ever existed. Go back and chat with Leviathan. The relay network is left in place so that organics will reach that point sooner. It's a controlled experiment as it's looking for a solution. It'd take far too long without the relays.

 

4. Actually it's a fact of the game world. You can sit there with your fingers in your ears and tell yourself it's not real simply because you don't like it. But it is what it is. The Catalyst is the central consciousness of all Reapers. It is not speculating about where or what, when and how the Reapers came to be or what their purpose and motive is. It is them. It knows. Facts.

 

5. Riiight. The machines should've killed us with kindness. Good thing you weren't the writer. We might've had 25 false endings beginning with Shepard being rescued from the exploding Crucible as the Rachni queen swoops in to scoop him up.

 

6. Mass Effect is nothing like LotR. Period. And it didn't 'need' a happy ending. You just wanted one. "Decency" is subjective and =/= "happy"

[Tonymac]

I'm not going to keep beating the dead horse's dust.  

 

Even as Dreamgazer pointed out, ME 2 had its huge share of issues.  Yet I liked ME 2 the most.  I liked ME 2 so much because I felt like I controlled the ending - who lives, who dies - and I even found the "best possible perfect future" (Andromeda quote).

 

Both sides of this argument have valid points - I suppose it all boils down to who liked the third game, and who didn't.   I'm in the did not camp - as in at all.  I've seen these arguments fleshed out for years; nothing will change my mind.  I cannot re-play ME 3 because of how the endings worked.  I feel at a loss from everything past Marauder Shields.  I bought a game I can only play once, and I'm not happy.

 

It IS time to move on to ME: Next.  I hope that there were lessons learned on both sides of the fence - gamers and developers.  One thing I can see is that BioWare tried something new with the ME 3 grand finale.  We have to expect developers to try new things.  These new ideas may be great, or they may be not so great.  I hope that in the future when they end a game, as well as a series, that they test these new ideas out in a proper academic peer review process - a screen test if you will.

 

Lastly, its been good bringing up points with everyone in this thread.  We are many minds, looking at the same thing, yet we see different things.  However, we will not reach consensus on this issue.  That's a lesson for BioWare: win some, lose some - all in all we gamers are a fickle lot.  Do what you do - make the magic.  I'll be on board if its magical enough.  If not, well, Capitalism has a way of figuring these things out.  I do wish BioWare the best, and I wish all of you Forumites the best.

 

Its been good talking with you all, I hope you'll come out on election day.  

[Iakus]

1. There's a huge percentage that are satisfied

 

2. Many people couldn't care less about a happy ending 

 

3. Wow. So you didn't list one plot hole here. Lets see, when previous cycles were designing the Crucible to integrate with the "Catalyst", they were referring to the Citadel. Not the Reaper AI that nobody knows about. Go back and have a chat with Vendetta.  Clearly you don't  know that organic civilizations were creating synthetics and destroying eachother before the Catalyst or the Reapers ever existed. Go back and chat with Leviathan. The relay network is left in place so that organics will reach that point sooner. It's a controlled experiment as it's looking for a solution. It'd take far too long without the relays.

 

4. Actually it's a fact of the game world. You can sit there with your fingers in your ears and tell yourself it's not real simply because you don't like it. But it is what it is. The Catalyst is the central consciousness of all Reapers. It is not speculating about where or what, when and how the Reapers came to be or what their purpose and motive is. It is them. It knows. Facts.

 

5. Riiight. The machines should've killed us with kindness. Good thing you weren't the writer. We might've had 25 false endings beginning with Shepard being rescued from the exploding Crucible as the Rachni queen swoops in to scoop him up.

 

6. Mass Effect is nothing like LotR. Period. And it didn't 'need' a happy ending. You just wanted one. "Decency" is subjective and =/= "happy"

1) And a huge percentage are not satisfied. 

 

2) So they should just shut up?

 

3) Prove it.  Without hearsay evidence.

 

4) Mass Effect needed an ending that fit with the story.  With over a thousand choices in the trilogy, that's a lot of stories.  It needed good and bad, happy and sad, and everything in between.  Not a half dozen or so polychromatic "bittersweet" (for a given value of bittersweet) endings.

 

But most of all it needed endings that weren't just mind-numbingly stupid.

 

5) Doesn't change the fact that the Reapers were totally incompetant with their cycles.  Especially this last one.  If they harvested earlier, no race would ever approach the point where they could be a threat after all.

 

6) That's like saying "Mass Effect doesn't need to satisfy anyone."

[Rittmeister64]

1. There's a huge percentage that are satisfied

 

2. Many people couldn't care less about a happy ending 

 

3. Wow. So you didn't list one plot hole here. Lets see, when previous cycles were designing the Crucible to integrate with the "Catalyst", they were referring to the Citadel. Not the Reaper AI that nobody knows about. Go back and have a chat with Vendetta.  Clearly you don't  know that organic civilizations were creating synthetics and destroying eachother before the Catalyst or the Reapers ever existed. Go back and chat with Leviathan. The relay network is left in place so that organics will reach that point sooner. It's a controlled experiment as it's looking for a solution. It'd take far too long without the relays.

 

4. Actually it's a fact of the game world. You can sit there with your fingers in your ears and tell yourself it's not real simply because you don't like it. But it is what it is. The Catalyst is the central consciousness of all Reapers. It is not speculating about where or what, when and how the Reapers came to be or what their purpose and motive is. It is them. It knows. Facts.

 

5. Riiight. The machines should've killed us with kindness. Good thing you weren't the writer. We might've had 25 false endings beginning with Shepard being rescued from the exploding Crucible as the Rachni queen swoops in to scoop him up.

 

6. Mass Effect is nothing like LotR. Period. And it didn't 'need' a happy ending. You just wanted one. "Decency" is subjective and =/= "happy"

Clearly you failed to even understand my points.

Like point 5:

The whole point of the harvest is to make sure organics don't get wiped out completely - portraying the harvest as "beneficial" and "essential" to organic survival.

This is totally debunked by the sheer cruelty and dehumanizing way the harvest is actually done.

You know we have something called "active euthanasia" - allow old and very sick people to die IN PEACE.

The AI could easily harvest civilizations before they even develop high-tech - like do it every 48000 years instead of every 50000.

That would be (in Earth terms) : around the time of Christ birth.

The AI could cook up an easy scheme - present the harvest as a religious event - everybody is allowed to go to heaven, or something like it, then lead the people in a nice room with nice music and kill them by giving them "food of the gods" or just make them all unconscious before the slaughter...

But instead, we get a 100 year long planetary war, people getting terrified, locked into containers and being fully aware that they'll get liquified soon, etc...

This just makes ZERO sense at all from a logical point of view - which the AI is supposed to be: logical. But then, it's not really the AI, it's Mac Walters being illogical.

 

All your "debunking" of my points makes no sense and is flawed, because you try to debúnk real world logic and literary criticism by relying on the content of the work itself, the very thing that is being criticized here. Basically you're engaged in a circular logic mistake.

What you do is basically trying to debunk science by using the bible.

I say - "there's a billion galaxies up there", you reply - "no, the bible says that's all angels and the seat of the gods, you're wrong!".

[Rittmeister64]

 

6. Mass Effect is nothing like LotR. Period. And it didn't 'need' a happy ending. You just wanted one. "Decency" is subjective and =/= "happy"

 

Wrong again. There's an ancient concept called "the hero's journey" (also "monomyth") in literatur.

You may want to read up about it here: http://www.thewriter...o's_journey.htm

Mass Effect follows that concept from the very start (eg. Shepard comes from a criminal background on Earth or the likes) until close to the end, but then suddenly destroys it's own narrative and logic in the end. That's why so many people feel wronged about it, and rightly so.

It's like making a nice cake with strawberries and cream, and at the very end you pour a bottle of tabasco over it. It just doesn't fit.

Can you do that if you think you're some kind of avant-garde cook? Sure you can, but most people aren't going to enjoy the end-product.

[Andrew Lucas]

But Mass Effect will never satisfy everyone. I thought that this was already pretty clear. There's people who are satisfied with the ending and there's people that aren't, period. Geez.

[Rusted Cage]

If we're talking railroading, broken science, plot holes, OOC moments, and retconning, ME2 has ME3 beat by a rather significant margin. 

Absolutely agree. Yet ME2 is consistently held up as the best in the series and ME3 gets the most criticism.

[Iakus]

god that Lord of the Rings pic is so true it hurts..

it once again proves how nonsensical the last 15 minutes were damm it I thought I was over that..

 

And some will always like things that are hated by the majority just for the sake of it

Well, except instead of "The End" it should end with "SO BE IT" and the Fires of Mount Doom destroys Middle Earth because reasons.

[von uber]

Ha. The films by and large butchered the main themes of LoTR. A poor example to use.

And a further thing, the ending of LoTR is bitter sweet - Frodo never overcomes his pain and the loss of the One RIng and departs forever. The Men Of Numenor are forever diminished, as are the Elves.

Much is lost by the destruction of the Ring, but the protagonists do so willingly to enable future generations to live free. It's a tad analogous to the destroy ending to be honest.

[Rittmeister64]

And a further thing, the ending of LoTR is bitter sweet - Frodo never overcomes his pain and the loss of the One RIng and departs forever. The Men Of Numenor are forever diminished, as are the Elves.

Much is lost by the destruction of the Ring, but the protagonists do so willingly to enable future generations to live free. It's a tad analogous to the destroy ending to be honest.

a bit weak that analogy. the elves were already on decline before the story even started, as well as the Numenorans. Frodo leaving with the elves at the end isn't nearly as bad as ME3. If you want a better anology to the Destroy Ending, Tolkien would have to kill all the Dwarves because they always dig too deep (geth), and possibly Gandalf, Aragorn or Arwen (for EDI), as well as just stop writing after Mr. Doom and put in a slideshow of a few pictures instead of writing a long extensive ending that concludes the story.

Control Ending would be Frodo becoming the Fire of Mr. Doom and make Sauron and the Orks rebuild Middle Earth. What a JOKE.

And everybody in Middle Earth would be especially grateful for SYNTHESIS - when Frodo turns Elves, Dwarves, Men, etc. into Half-Orks, just so there wouldn't be danger of future wars...