Absolutely. Here is the information about it: https://www.nexusmods.com/masseffect3/mods/66/ It's not fully perfect, but for a mod, it's very sweet. It gets rid of that whole "star brat" Catalyst, and Shepard is re-united in with the crew - that is if your EMS is high enough. If not, it doesn't quite go that well.
Eww. I mean seriously, a "happy ending" mod? On the one hand sure, people can mod their games and have whatever experiences they want to, but on the other this just demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what was functionally wrong with not just that last scene, but the Earth campaign in it's entirety from conception to execution. You shouldn't be going into an apocalyptic war story filled with death and sacrifice expecting to have it all end with rainbows and the Wayne's World mega-happy ending denouement. You should expect something coherently put together, that actually makes sense, gives the various character a sense of agency, and makes all the major decisions feel like they added up to more than just a literal number.
The original ending was kinda crappy, but A) A saccharine perfect happy ending isn't necessarily better, and B) I don't understand when people say a bad ending retroactively ruins the journey. Stuff like that is if The Magnificent Ambersons came out the way it was originally intended, and then the changes the studio made that ruined it came out as a mod.
A. The "Happy Ending Mod" is NOT a saccharine happy ending filled with rainbows, blah blah blah. You should have a look at it before you start bashing it. B. The big thing is that all your decisions at the original intended game come out to ultimately nothing. Your options are to royally screw everyone in the galaxy in the primary colors of light. The original intention which destroys (which is later retconned into simple damage in the extended cut they released a few months later) the mass relays screws up just about all the sentient races in the galaxy, and when you think about it, they're condemned to a slow and nasty death. It also mirrors "Lost" in some ways, which the writers of the game say they wouldn't do; they lied about that. You basically do all that work in the three games to be told by some celestial star brat that your only options screw the galaxy. OK the mod doesn't fully rectify this, but it does get rid of that awful star brat character. Seriously, he makes Jar Jar Binks look good.
What were people expecting decisions like keeping Wrex alive, saving the council or not killing the Rachni queen to have on the ending decisions exactly? I thought the extended cut ending was perfectly fine tbh. Didn't get 'star brat' vibes from the kid at all, I thought it was quite clever and there being more going on than met the eye was interesting. It was all building up to something like that after conversations with defeated reapers, Leviathan etc.
Well, the extended cut outcomes did improve things considerably, that much I know for certain. That being said, there are many who still despise "star brat," including me.
I will agree that the whole “Magic wave that destroys all robots” thing made no sense. But just making everything reductively happy is not the answer. Just getting it back on genre would be fine. A legit sci-fi ending instead of a fantasy one. I ran into a bug in ME1. The Mako got trapped inside a ramp in the highway on Feros. It couldn’t move. I thought I’d have to reset but luckily it thought it was on solid ground so I could leave. Unfortunately at the time an armature was firing bullets at me that OHKO on foot, and the moment I left the Mako teleported to the level ground above the ramp but disappeared from the minimap so both my allies got killed before I found it and made it back. I’m also finding that in narrow passages Wrex constantly blocks my line of sight.
The thing is, in order to "fix" the ending, you'd have to pretty much redo everything from the Kai Leng fight onwards, making the whole Earth campaign like the suicide mission again, but writ large with every major character and asset gathered playing at least *some* role across several missions, not just a shooting gallery followed by horde mode...which is of course FAR beyond the scope of any sane mod to execute properly. Just cutting out the Catalyst exposition and his colour coded space magic, instead have Shepard just equally magically "win" (against an unstoppable force that's been wiping out WAY more advanced civilizations for a billion years, no less) isn't going to cut it.
Well, to each is their own. However here's an article that reflects my way of thinking about it: https://levelskip.com/action-adventure/Mass-Effect-3-2012-Why-Fans-Hated-the-Ending
It made no sense whatsoever that there existed in this world a magic weapon which fundamentally changed the nature of all living beings. But I'm not sure I'd want a strictly fan pleasing ending either. Some of the best stories ever told have sad or bittersweet endings. And Mass Effect had a theme of having to make moral tradeoffs, having to sacrifice some to save others. Like maybe it comes down to saving what's left of Earth or saving a larger number of aliens and destroying the reapers for good.
For me there are two main issues with the ending, a gameplay problem and a thematic one. As has been said the gameplay issue is around the London mission and the lack of consequences from your decisions in the trilogy. They did it really well in some of the other missions like Rannoch but it falls apart here. It needed to be the suicide mission on a larger scale. The thematic problem is with the Star Child and the false choice about humans and AI. It makes no sense in a world where you could have just ended a generations long conflict between the Quarians and the Geth, yet that doesn't even get meaningfully referenced. I wonder if it would have worked better if you had destroyed the Reapers in the Citadel and then their controlling AI would have instead given you choices about what to do with their technology. Destroy it, safest but makes it hard for the galaxy to recover; share it with allies, but risks one of them becoming Reaper like in the future or keep it for humans which essentially means humanity will become the Reapers at some point. At least those choices are more in keeping with the games wider theme about humanities relationship with other races. In terms of Shepards survival and what happens to the Normandy, that was badly presented in the original cut but improved enough later on. It also helped when Citadel was released as that gave you all the heroic moments and farewell with your team that the London mission lacks.
I would agree that ME3 should have been the suicide mission at a higher scale. However, I guess the programmers couldn't do something on that magnitude. One of the big problems was that Bioware actually lied to the gamers about "Mass Effect 3" and how it was going to conclude, and not to mention going out of their way to insult their own fanbase over their mistake (then again, there are other franchises that do this too, hint hint).
Coding the variables isn't the issue since the game already tracks all of that information; it's just a dataset. What they were lacking was the extra time they'd need to plan and execute what would have amounted to a much more substantial series of missions. And this isn't pie in the sky wishful thinking either. There's plenty of evidence by way of cut content still present within the game files (including recorded dialogue) to indicated that something like this was precisely the plan. What we got was a massively abbreviated and rushed re-write of the entire final act...and they still couldn't deliver it on time without hacking out even more chunks making the original ending a weird, confusing mess.
I know all the questions asked are done for the sake of the player, but anyone as clueless about other species as Shepard would not be up for Spectre.
https://kotaku.com/bioware-reveals-...091.672071735.1635907475-576523676.1635743052 More data released about the gamers who played Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. Among them: 15% don't even recruit Garrus! 82% Fist gets killed by Wrex. 85% nominate Anderson for the council. 97% let Diana Allers onboard the Normandy. 45% choose to end all synthetic life.
Ugh!!! I can't stand Diana Allers why would you let her onboard? Did they remove the option to deck her in the first game?