Mass Effect 3 $$(ENDINGS SPOILERS)$$

[Skywalker]

I think one of the things that have been raised and that bugged me was that I was not given a option in regards to dialogue to show that synthetics and organics could live side by side.

That and the destruction of the mass relays is what ticked me off the most.

I still picked the 'destroy' option anyway. Until/unless a better option becomes available, I choose to pretend that the Crucible fires before Hackett says anything to Shepard, shuts down all the Reapers throughout the galaxy, and leaves the relays intact while doing so. Shepard dies, but the rest of the galaxy survives and begins rebuilding. The end.

 

[FPAlpha]

I think one of the things that have been raised and that bugged me was that I was not given a option in regards to dialogue to show that synthetics and organics could live side by side.

That and the destruction of the mass relays is what ticked me off the most.

I still picked the 'destroy' option anyway. Until/unless a better option becomes available, I choose to pretend that the Crucible fires before Hackett says anything to Shepard, shuts down all the Reapers throughout the galaxy, and leaves the relays intact while doing so. Shepard dies, but the rest of the galaxy survives and begins rebuilding. The end.

Try not to take this personal but i don't like that.. it feels too Hollywood like, the perfect ending (maybe apart from the hero dying which Hollywood mainstream wouldn't do) and that feels lame to me. I'd rather have a controversial ending, an ending people will talk about and something i didn't see coming. I want to be surprised and i was.

Now the actual quality of the ending is debatable and judging from the reports on the web the majority is not satisfied (and not because it's not a typical Hollywood happy end but due to the inconsistencies) but i like that Bioware did this.. they may have failed and they may try to correct it with a DLC but at least they tried to think outside the box.

 

[superdeluxe]

I think one of the things that have been raised and that bugged me was that I was not given a option in regards to dialogue to show that synthetics and organics could live side by side.

That and the destruction of the mass relays is what ticked me off the most.

I still picked the 'destroy' option anyway. Until/unless a better option becomes available, I choose to pretend that the Crucible fires before Hackett says anything to Shepard, shuts down all the Reapers throughout the galaxy, and leaves the relays intact while doing so. Shepard dies, but the rest of the galaxy survives and begins rebuilding. The end.

Except you just committed mass genocide with the geth.

Its redonkolous.

 

[Skywalker]

I think one of the things that have been raised and that bugged me was that I was not given a option in regards to dialogue to show that synthetics and organics could live side by side.

That and the destruction of the mass relays is what ticked me off the most.

I still picked the 'destroy' option anyway. Until/unless a better option becomes available, I choose to pretend that the Crucible fires before Hackett says anything to Shepard, shuts down all the Reapers throughout the galaxy, and leaves the relays intact while doing so. Shepard dies, but the rest of the galaxy survives and begins rebuilding. The end.

Try not to take this personal but i don't like that.. it feels too Hollywood like, the perfect ending (maybe apart from the hero dying which Hollywood mainstream wouldn't do) and that feels lame to me. I'd rather have a controversial ending, an ending people will talk about and something i didn't see coming. I want to be surprised and i was.

I'd prefer a typical Hollywood ending over a bunch of random bullcrap thrown in at the last second because the writers thought it was "deep" and "profound."

The only thing people are talking about is how stupid the endings were. There's nothing that's worth speculating about except what exactly Mac Walters and Casey Hudson were smoking when they came up with this, and where the rest of us can get some of it.

 

[superdeluxe]

Try not to take this personal but i don't like that.. it feels too Hollywood like, the perfect ending (maybe apart from the hero dying which Hollywood mainstream wouldn't do) and that feels lame to me. I'd rather have a controversial ending, an ending people will talk about and something i didn't see coming. I want to be surprised and i was.

do we really want a ending where they made confusing ON PURPOSE just so it can generate chatter and confusion? Great way to have people talk about your product tho.

 

[Reverend]

That and the destruction of the mass relays is what ticked me off the most.

I still picked the 'destroy' option anyway. Until/unless a better option becomes available, I choose to pretend that the Crucible fires before Hackett says anything to Shepard, shuts down all the Reapers throughout the galaxy, and leaves the relays intact while doing so. Shepard dies, but the rest of the galaxy survives and begins rebuilding. The end.

Try not to take this personal but i don't like that.. it feels too Hollywood like, the perfect ending (maybe apart from the hero dying which Hollywood mainstream wouldn't do) and that feels lame to me. I'd rather have a controversial ending, an ending people will talk about and something i didn't see coming. I want to be surprised and i was.

Now the actual quality of the ending is debatable and judging from the reports on the web the majority is not satisfied (and not because it's not a typical Hollywood happy end but due to the inconsistencies) but i like that Bioware did this.. they may have failed and they may try to correct it with a DLC but at least they tried to think outside the box.

I think you're both correct, which is really the root of the problem. It's not that the ending wasn't Hollywood enough or it was too "profound" it's that after being promised a wide variety of endings determined by the thousands of compounded choices we've made over the years, instead we get *one* ending with sixteen utterly trivial variations.

Reducing it down to those three fairly abstract "choices" and then failing to show how the one you pick interacts with all of your other choices totally undermines what's made these games good from the very beginning. I don't care that the ending killed my Shepard. I knew going in that there was a fairly good chance of that. I *do* care that all that really matters in the end game is how many points I've saved up, not what I had to go through to get said points.

So yes, I want the "Hollywood hammy ending", but I also want the "oh shit, everyone's dead ending", the "Reapers went away but will be back for the next cycle" ending, the "Reapers are dead, but so is Earth" ending, etc. etc. etc.

 

[Skywalker]

So yes, I want the "Hollywood hammy ending", but I also want the "oh shit, everyone's dead ending", the "Reapers went away but will be back for the next cycle" ending, the "Reapers are dead, but so is Earth" ending, etc. etc. etc.

Right, I agree with that. There should have been a lot more variables with the endings to better fit the various choices you can make. Not a "one size fits all" ending with three barely distinguishable choices that don't particularly fit any choices you've made.

 

[FPAlpha]

So yes, I want the "Hollywood hammy ending", but I also want the "oh shit, everyone's dead ending", the "Reapers went away but will be back for the next cycle" ending, the "Reapers are dead, but so is Earth" ending, etc. etc. etc.

Right, I agree with that. There should have been a lot more variables with the endings to better fit the various choices you can make. Not a "one size fits all" ending with three barely distinguishable choices that don't particularly fit any choices you've made.

On that i can agree too after having read and saw a bit more on the endings today.. i still say that ME3 was one of the greatest gaming experiences i had but it could have been better. Maybe there's truth to that that the ending is so unsatisfactory because Bioware ran out of time and were under pressure because of the leak.. time will tell.

 

[TheGodBen]

My problem with the ending was that I just didn't buy what the star child was saying and wasn't allowed to say so. Up until now the ME games have been good at allowing me to say and act as I feel, and while that's not always the case, it usually is. But at the climax of the trilogy I'm told a load of demonstrably false crap by some magical machine being and I'm only given one dialogue option that doesn't change a damn thing. I'm told that organics and synthetics can never live in peace, which flies completely in the face of EDI and Legion's characterisation, and rather than being allowed to point that out I'm given three choices that fail to reflect my Shepard's journey. It's made worse by the fact that all three choices end up practically the same way anyway.

The last five minutes of ME3 no longer felt like a Mass Effect game. It felt like something that was tacked on because they wanted to do something unexpected.

 

[throwback]

And the ending contradicted the canon.

The canon states clearly:
1.) the Reapers destroy all complex life forms on a planetary surface - the loss of respiring animals leads to massive firestorms that destroy much of the remaining floral and fauna (ex. Helyme, Ilos)
2.) the destruction of so many ships in orbit would result in eezo cores crashing into the planetary surface, resulting in mass extinctions (ex. Eingana)
3.) the radiation emitted by the destruction of a mass relay would irradiate the planets in a system (ex. codex Desperate Measures)

Considering that all three events happen in the Sol System, the planet Earth is a post-garden world, and is no longer capable of supporting life.

Before the game was released, I was worried. The debacle over the novel Deception I felt may be a portent of what was to come. I thought then that the people responsible for this series weren't as emotionally invested in their product as the fans, and were ready to move onto other projects. I hate being right.

 

[PsychoPere]

Casey Hudson has posted some general thoughts regarding the game's conclusion on the BSN.

 

[TheGodBen]

I don't think that links where you think it links.

 

[superdeluxe]

Doesn't really mention post ending dlc

 

[PsychoPere]

I don't think that links where you think it links.

Hah, no, it definitely does not! I'm just glad it wasn't something... embarrassing instead. Corrected now.

Doesn't really mention post ending dlc

Why would it at this time? If Hudson were to mention post-ending DLC, he would be embarking into the spoiler territory that BioWare is quite rightly trying to avoid while the game has yet to be out for even a month yet.

 

[HotRod]

"This is not the last you’ll hear of Commander Shepard."

Hope?............Perhaps......

 

[TheGodBen]

I can just imagine the guys at Bioware sitting slack-jawed as they read the indoctrination theory and realising that it made so much more sense than the actual ending, then scrambling to make it reality while claiming that it was their plan all along.

But in the end we'll probably get some missions like ME2's Project Overlord and that will be the end of Commander Shepard. But even if they could patch the ending to add some scenes explaining why the Normandy was running from the fight and how the crew got off Earth, that would make the ending more acceptable. As is, it's barely coherent.

 

[superdeluxe]

"This is not the last you’ll hear of Commander Shepard."

Hope?............Perhaps......

Pre ending dlc I bet

 

[-Brett-]

Casey Hudson has posted some general thoughts regarding the game's conclusion on the BSN.

I understand that, for appearances sake if nothing else, Hudson is probably not going to say "Yeah, we were a little drunk when we wrote that. Sorry." but there's still something about that post that sounds suspiciously like "lol i dun get it i thot we did gud rofl".

 

[Reverend]

And the ending contradicted the canon.

The canon states clearly:
1.) the Reapers destroy all complex life forms on a planetary surface - the loss of respiring animals leads to massive firestorms that destroy much of the remaining floral and fauna (ex. Helyme, Ilos)
2.) the destruction of so many ships in orbit would result in eezo cores crashing into the planetary surface, resulting in mass extinctions (ex. Eingana)
3.) the radiation emitted by the destruction of a mass relay would irradiate the planets in a system (ex. codex Desperate Measures)

Considering that all three events happen in the Sol System, the planet Earth is a post-garden world, and is no longer capable of supporting life.

Before the game was released, I was worried. The debacle over the novel Deception I felt may be a portent of what was to come. I thought then that the people responsible for this series weren't as emotionally invested in their product as the fans, and were ready to move onto other projects. I hate being right.

Well obviously they don't destroy *all* complex life otherwise humans wouldn't still be around. Indeed nothing could evolve much past bacteria if it all started from scratch ever fifty millennia. Most of those examples you cite is probably just collateral damage from the Prothean and previous cycles. It's stated several times that the Prothean Empire was much more widespread than citadel space and they had colony and subject worlds all over the place, which is why it took the reapers centuries to finish them off.

So yes, I want the "Hollywood hammy ending", but I also want the "oh shit, everyone's dead ending", the "Reapers went away but will be back for the next cycle" ending, the "Reapers are dead, but so is Earth" ending, etc. etc. etc.

Right, I agree with that. There should have been a lot more variables with the endings to better fit the various choices you can make. Not a "one size fits all" ending with three barely distinguishable choices that don't particularly fit any choices you've made.

Precisely. NOTHING about Mass Effect has ever been "one size fits all", so why should the ending be any different?

 

[ATimson]

So yes, I want the "Hollywood hammy ending", but I also want the "oh shit, everyone's dead ending", the "Reapers went away but will be back for the next cycle" ending, the "Reapers are dead, but so is Earth" ending, etc. etc. etc.

There is a "Reapers are dead, but so is Earth" ending - you get it by not having enough points.