Mass effect 3 Endings

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When I got mass effect 3, I was so psyched I nearly had a heart attack. Over the course of th this week, I played it in literally every spare moment. I never cunted how many hours, since I didnt really care. The game was fantastic. I have loved videogames all my life, and let me tell you, ME 3 is... well I could try to describe it, but i would fail. Its indescribable. Its THAT GOOD. EXCEPT!! ! for the ending. Having been through it all, and given how amazingly incredible the entire game was, I really felt betrayed by the ending. The last 10 minutes of the story managed to RUIN EVERYTHING (not that I didnt get the best ending, I meant in a immersion sense) I was expecting some form of big reveal, but that was absolutely rediculous. hell, it didnt even make that much sense!

I feel a bit like I have some kind of PTSD or something. I was so immotionally invested in the amazing story, that the ending screwed with my head so badly that now I'm just kinda dazed.

How could they do this?

To me they wanted a reset button for the whole franchise and thus they created one.

My problem with is, is the same as the one I had with SOE pulling the CU and NGE in SWG. It's not that they did it, its what doing it did. In SWG all the effort you had put into the game until that time was rendered moot and was for all intents and purposes pointless on anything that wasn't a social level. With the ME3 ending they rendered so much of what you did, in ME3 and the other games within the trilogy moot. Not to mention the entire deus ex machina they pulled renders every choice you've made in the trilogy pointless as they all culminate in the same event. The theory presented by said deus ex machina is not even logical within the existence of the deus ex machina itself.

It's not a bad ending because it's not a medals on chest, praise to everyone, god bless us every one ending, its a bad ending because its poorly written, not consistent with the story of the rest of the trilogy and takes a crap on the concept of the importance of a players choice. More importantly the player's ability to shape Sheppard into the hero they wanted him to be, to have the team they would want to have and so on.

This ending is the equivalent of The Force manifesting itself into a physical being and destroying the Forest Moon of Endor in a massive energy release while Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie and countless other characters we'd bonded with were celebrating.

as a few people have been mentioning. Its like sitting down to watch starwars and right at the point luke fires in to the exhaust port hes magically transported in to the last 5 minutes of 2001.

it left me shocked to be honest although i suspect there will be more comming to finish things off. its got a feeling of what bioware did with "shepards dead"with mass effect 2

I know I'm showing my age here, but whatever happened to just beating a game just for the sheer pleasure of saying "Yeah, I beat INSERT GAME HERE"? Graphics aside, the endings of Contra and Ghosts & Goblins weren't anything spectacular. But given their difficulty you felt like you were the man after beating the game, even more so if you could do it without a code or cheat. Whenever I could beat a game back in the day, I couldn't care less how lame the ending was. I just felt a sense of satisfaction knowing I had just climbed a virtual mountain.

Now I haven't played any of the ME games, but I have read about them and watched clips on YouTube so I'm aware of the cinematic scope of the series and that they're well-loved games, but to me, dissing it for the ending is kind of like climbing to the top of Mt. Everest only to be completely disappointed by the view from the summit. But that's just the opinion of an old-timer in the gaming world.

I liked it, I have no idea why everyone is so angry about it, I found it very fitting. Since the beggining it has been a battle of decisions, not in shaping the universe, but for defining Shepard, and the fight between the creators, and the created, and about the fact that true balance requires a mix between organics and synthetics. The Reapers made it very clear that if things just went on the universe would be put into chaos, or worse a cold calculated final destination with no change at all, the Reapers were created as a means to keep the universe from developing to the point that development could not be stopped.

I don't believe the idea of it being a deus ex machina, the middle ending was placed right in the lore, more specificly in the Asari main belief of everything being conected. The choices Shepard made up to the point were not meant to be what made the difference, they were meant to define who the shepard was, the way s/he saw things: Was it victory at any cost, or was it peace no matter how difficult? Was it to play it safe, or was it to place faith in others? was it to place their will on everyone else, or to choose a path you barely understand but seems like the right one?

I haven't played any of the mass effect games but I have watched let's plays of them on youtube. If you want to know why the ending is disappointing to a lot of people, watch the following video from one of my favorite let's players. He also gives a theory on the ending that makes a lot more sense to me than anyone else on youtube.

The thing is, not only does the ending not follow logically from your choices but it doesn't follow logically from any previous events in the game and is completely disconnected from it. You are also not shown the consequences of whatever ending you choose. It's not that people want a happy ending, they just want one that makes sense and offers closure. At the same time, the rest of the game and trilogy was still excellent, so people shouldn't let the ending spoil everything that came before it. Please watch this video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbWoCOOCUtc&context=C4e533a1ADvjVQa1PpcFOyQQLinNnVOxKRiTlgdiie7F23ejyCIWs=[/youtube]

Just finished it. Did everything there was to do in it. Enjoyed every bit of it but the ending....I don't get it :/ Is Shepherd the new Jesus? and what happened to Garrus!? >:o

I think the last part of the ending with the kid and his grandpa going on about "The Shepard" was interesting. I think of it as an illustration about how extraordinary but, mortal men (or women I was a femshep) who pull off great feats become mythic and almost godlike figures as time goes on.

As for the ending overall, I didn't find too much wrong with it. Heck, to me the series over all was so amazing that they would have had to have tried to come up with the worst ending on purpose in order to ruin it for me. Heck, the right before the ending when Liara merged her mind with shepard for that last moment together...well to me that was the most beautiful moment in any form of storytelling I have ever experienced.

Yeah that sounded a bit sappy, but well, that's my experience.

If the endings had a face I would punch it.

That said, WHYYYYYY!! !!

I would gladly dedicate weeks of my time to come up with a better ending, use a few of the choice flags and alter the scene a bit? Why the heck not?

To me, the endings symbolize a gigantic letdown. The mako got destroyed, I charged into that fight. I held the line.

And then it was over. No party, no what happened on board as the reapers repo'ed the citadel, no status of anything.


And why not>??

Watch me bioware:

(Note: reapers are destroyed in crucible choices. shepard says "no" and "im going to finish what we started" and blows them up. Kid tries to stop him but shepard hits the destroy option.) Relay blow, all races stranded, normandy stranded, shepard dead, there you are.

Now for the real ending:

Bad bad-If you didn't unite the races, they panic and tear each other apart. Human style war for no reason but fear. Lack of resources etc. The survivors hide or flee into space, too few to continue population.The scene with the normandy shows your squad living out their final days, in harmony at least. hoping help will come. Noone shows. Rip joker.

Cut to scene of fish crawling out of water, or some kind of sentient life emerging again far in the future.

sorta bad-You did unite some (amount x) a certain fleet takes off from the others enraged, and persuades the rest of the non united to follow. They leave with them if you dont pass a check. Either way the race leaves and tries to make a run for their homeworld. some not making it die to starvation etc? They steal the records by force or by stealth/ salarians probly stealth. And make a break for it with all the data. /One ship is shot down and slams into the crucible, damaging it badly./ Leaving the rest to die.

The rest unite on earth, rebuilding centers and such. The end shows all races working together minus the ones that left. Planning tables show a glimpse of a mass relay schematic.

Cut forward, and people are celebrating, although a bit aged- as the new mass relay comes online in the sky like a glowing moon, glasses are raised- "to shepard" they say in unison. Your team is rescued and they arrive to join the party, some with beards to show some time has past. It took longer. Tali has a mustache but you cant see it.

A ship heads toward it, on its way home. Camera pan to follow as the relay activates, in gigantic letters \SHEPARD/ is written on the relay. Ship goes through. Fade to credits.

By the goddess end-

The races mourn their dead on earth, all races together. Up overhead ships buzz frantically- salvaging relay bits. The crucible and citadel are even stripped for parts, only skelitons are left.

A mass relay is contructed using the newfound knowledge of the crucible, not stolen this time. Parts are all there.

A similar scene plays out, toasts are made. A statue of a mass relay is made to honor those lost. The extra resouirces helping.

The normandy crew gets rescued years quicker this time and age is less apparent. Joker has no cane in this one.

All across the galaxy ships return home, you see expressions of joy in the families of salarians and krogans alike. Mass effect relays are being duplicated every day the news reports.

The shepard vi salutes avina as the citadel is reactivated, the crucible used up in the process.

Krogan women are being wheeled into the maternity ward. A turian is a krogans godfather, happy things of that sort. The firstborn are all named shepard on the baby name tags. In a way that is better than the mass relay. Shepard fought for survival- and what better than organic beings being names after him intead of some piece of machinery. Its not as cool, perhaps but more meaningful.

In a museum, with a class of children of all races being led by a salarian teacher. Artifacts from the battle are shown. Shepard is shown. The kids ask "Why did the reapers try to exterminate all organics?" The salarian thinks for a bit and then answers "They were afraid of us, unaccepting of our way of life... but mostly, reapers hate organics fashion sense."

The game ends, as it should. With faunts music. On rannoch with tali in the new home shepard has just built/

[b]See bioware: was that so hard?? [b]

Point being, I COULD have wrote a better ending. Im not being egotistical either- its a fact. WTF do they get payed for?

The endings blow, and by all means you can use anything I have written bioware!

AFTER you apologize, to me as a customer, as a fan, and as a kid at heart.

Rant OVER.

watch this if you didnt get the ending. i didnt either, until id seen it explained.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ythY_GkEBck&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]


http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/ ... nes-heads/

Mass Effect 3 didn't have any endings; just one final choice to make. The "endings" didn't even explain the consequences of that choice, let alone any previous choices from ME1, ME2, or even ME3. The developers repeatedly promised that Shepard's every decision would tie in to the ending, but not a single one did. Doing enough side quests in ME3 will add a new choice to the final decision but you'll never be shown what happened to any of the characters or locations apart from Shepard, the Citadel, and the mass relays. You just get a brief cutscene confirming the choice you made, showing you what the Crucible told you would occur should you make that choice. In fact, the cutscenes are hardly distinguishable from one another except for the color of the blast from the Crucible.

Most of the backlash doesn't even come from the ending being completely insubstantial and apparently slapped effortlessly together at the last minute. It comes from the developers having explicitly and repeatedly promised an epic ending that would explain in detail the fates of every character and the consequences of everything you did or didn't do throughout the series. They even promised that the choice of whether to spare or exterminate the Rachni would play an immense part in the progression of ME3, but the only consequence is that sparing them adds a pretty insignificant number of points towards unlocking the third option.

There is no ending. Neither the final game in the series, nor the series itself, is over. Nothing's been wrapped up. Everything is left open to interpretation. It's as though the writers just walked out halfway through the game's beginning and everyone else just went on without them.

I said to myself, "Okay, game's done. Gotta beat Deus Ex: Human Revolution now".

That's a great game; I beat it without killing any non-boss characters and that was amazingly satisfying. Coincidentally, the ME:3 ending controversy reminds me of DE:1, where the only choices that matter are made in the last 10 minutes of the game and everything else was irrelevant.

I'm quite fond of the indoctrination theory regarding the ending. I hope it has an element of truth to it as it would go a long way to explaining the circumstances surrounding the story's outcome

I can only accept the Indoctrination Theory if Bioware's ending update includes Shepard waking up, and being presented with a series of choices and actions stemming from the choice made at the end. Otherwise, as mentioned before, all the choices made before, everything you've done in all three games, is rendered moot by a deus ex machina that claims organics and synthetics can never coexist in peace, even if you've left the quarians and geth cooperating in rebuilding Rannoch. You saved the quarian fleet, saved the geth, gave them all a homeworld? That's nice. Now destroy all high technology. Or just destroy interstellar travel. Because we can only survive if we abandon all this "technology" stuff and live as simple farmers, passing down history as an oral tradition, right?

Feh.

I think the writers are just suffering from a bad case of Frankenstein Syndrome. I've tried drawing their attention to David Brin's story >Lungfish<, in hopes they'll learn from what Seeker calls "this strange solution to the Maker Quandary".

I thought of Deus Ex: Human Revolution when I first saw it. It's the same right down to the set of choices being explained by some AI you barely know and their whose results not really being shown (because telling you that something was the "right" answer defeats the purpose, whatever it is).