I mean imo the ending is only part of why ME3 is terrible...Although it does represent everything that's wrong with the game in general...in that its a rushed, unfinished, lazy under-cooked mess..That for me sums up ME3 nicely. It's hard to believe that the same company that made the great KOTOR, ME1 & 2 could produce something so lack-lustre, half assed, half-baked and non-sensical.
Its a shame cuz there are moments of brilliance during the game(pretty much notably Tunchunka & the Rannoch arcs, combat & sound design), those are well written and actually take your choices from previous games into account. But outside of that the rest of game just fails hard. From the rushed beginning with the trial that never was, the waaaaay to sudden/early Reaper attack(should've happened in the middle and made Earth a hub world imo), that awful Palavan moon level, Kai lame(space ninja's don't belong in Mass Effect ffs), Thessia....A major gripe Cerberus/The Illusive man being used as filler, a crappy plot device and turn't into a bunch of saturday morning cartoon villains who just happened to be indoctrinated too*sigh* (just for once it'd been nice to have a force opposing Shepard that wasn't a indoctrinated Reaper puppet), Priority Earth which is all kinds of bad/underwhelming and of course the ending etc etc...So much wrong with it.
Plus like the side missions were just fetch quests...go here scan bring back. What happened to having a landing party n actually going down on the planet to find and explore?..So awful a step back imo. Only one Hub World with the Citadel(I remember how I thought we'd get to go to Volus home of Irune & the Elcor homeworld Dekuuna amongst many other old and new locations)which made the galaxy feel so much smaller, the contrived Deus Ex Machinna crap with the Prothean super weapon/Crucible(How convenient
), the way ME2 chars were reduced to crap cameos, extortionate ripped from the main game DLC, broken quest journal, far to much auto dialogue, *Action, RPG, or story mode option/screen* before you start the game(i found that a bit insulting tbh), the way in alot of the cutscenes Shepard suddenly became an incompetent idiot, the unnecessary multiplayer, then single player areas used as maps etc.. I could go on but i'll stop, i think already summed what was wrong with the game.
But i digress..So much potential wasted, 90% of the game was not great. It could've & should've been so much better but all those issues with the game...It turn't out to be a huge disappointment imo. I think its partly because alot the writers(or more so the key ones) that wrote ME 1/2 no longer worked on ME3 they had a number of new writers(Though with regard to Mac Walters whilst a great character writer, he is way outta his depth as sole lead imo. It didn't help that Mass Effect wasn't planned out from the start and they were making it up as they went)...plus EA's greed and stupid deadlines also played apart in ME3 being ****. Sadly i think ME4 will be the same. BW have lost their touch now, The rEApers have assumed direct control
.