Diana Kingston-Gabai said:
To use Rannoch as a further example: while Tali tells you what will likely happen should the quarian and geth fleets accept a truce, that closure is apparently invalidated given that all endings strand said fleets in the Sol system. There is no manifestation of your own preference here: if you chose to eliminate the Reapers (and thus sacrifice the geth), does that have any effect on the quarians? Does Synthesis allow them to immediately remove their suits?
Actually, what Tali tells me isn't what WILL happen, it's what IS happening, or was at that very moment. She was reading off reports from Rannoch that she was getting that very moment, at which point you can safely assume that not all Quarians were still present on their fleets and some, msot likely the civilians, had relocated planetside. The synthesis ending as a whole was poorly explained, and that's one of the flaws I found with the ending. And destroying the geth probably would have an effect on the quarians, but I'm not convinced that's something that needs to be shown in the ending, or even in-game at all. The Mass Effect trilogy ending does not immediately mean that entire fictional universe ends, and there's always opportunities for more stories and more games (which bioware themselves hinted at in a news article a while back), so not everything needs to be wrapped up with a neat little bow. Very rarely will any work of fiction leave absolutely every issue, and every possible issue, resolved.
Again, it comes down to feeling that your choices had an impact. And the reason the ending is coming under so much fire - why this has gone above and beyond any backlash in recent memory - is because the rest of the game already employs this device. Help Steve through his grief and he'll survive the shuttle crash. Get through to Ashley/Kaidan and you can recruit them again. Force Javik to use the echo shard and he'll plan his eventual suicide, or don't and he'll tell you he wants to explore the galaxy. These scenarios unfold at the player's behest, as a mechanism that has been consistent throughout the trilogy.
See, you said yourself that the rest of the game already does this, so I still don't see what the ending NEEDS to show that isn't already shown. All there is is the choice made in the ending itself, the impact of which is so vast the ending would need to be at least an hour long at least to show the effects of it. I don't see it as a massive crime to leave something up to the individual's imagination.
Except for the ending. In which nothing you do matters, no actions you take can change the outcome (since even the Control ending results in the loss of the relays and the crashing of the Normandy), and nothing more is told of your crew, of the story's protagonists, past apparently being marooned on an unknown world.
Except stuff you did DOES matter. Collect enough war assets and Shepard survives the Destroy ending. Whether you even have 1, 2, or 3 options is dependant on how many you get, and whether Earth is completely ravaged or still has some resistance left to cheer after the reapers fall is dependant on it as well, and your war assets are determined by the choices you make. Mass Effect 3 by itself has so many different choices to make, so many different variables, that tailoring the ending for each one would cost a huge amount of time and development resources, and that's before you add ME1 and 2 to the mix. And if you cherry pick which decisions to show have an outcome on the ending, which ones do you pick, and how do you choose them? Which ones still have something worth showing in the first place?
And then, go back to ME1 and ME2, and tell me how the decisions you made throughout those games affected the ending, and then tell me how ME3 is any different. ME1 had one choice that affected the ending, save or sacrifice the council. In ME2, the only decisions that mattered were Save or destroy Collector Base (and you got the same cut scene either way, just a different conversation with the Illusive Man), and whether or not you do your squad mates loyalty missions. With the exception of Tali and Zaeed, the decisions you made during their loyalty missions didn't even matter, so long as you did them. In this regard, I don't see how ME3 is any different.
Also, for the record, if you contrast directly, the Mass Relays in the control ending never outright explode the way they do in the Destroy and Synergy endings, which seems meant to imply they're merely damaged and not impossible to salvage.
And that's a categorical misunderstanding of what Mass Effect is: a variable experience, even beyond the Paragon/Renegade morality spectrum. Ten players may have had ten different stories unfold within the general narrative framework. But unlike novels and films and every other medium this has been compared to, it is broadly possible to satisfy a large number of people in this specific instance, simply by allowing the ending to flow from the choices you, the player, have made. Even if the differences are cosmetic - the Council lives/the Council dies, Alistair is king of Ferelden/a Grey Warden/a wandering drunk - these would still be facets of the ending determined by the actions of the player. That's why the naysayers aren't able to comprehend what's being asked of BioWare here, because they're making comparisons to J.K. Rowling changing the ending of the Harry Potter books and those comparisons just aren't valid.
Except I believe asking for those variables to be reflected is unrealistic. Unrealistic in terms of time, and cost, and even the narrative. Ten different people may have had ten different stories unfold, but they all unfolded along the same basic path. Shepard always rescues Liara on Therum, always sacrifices a squadmate on Virmire, is always killed by the Collectors, revived by Cerberus, fought the Collectors for the first time on Horizon, defeats the Human-Reaper Larva, etc. The story always progresses in the same basic direction, right up to the same basic ending. There is no precedent for anything different, because the previous 2 games were the exact same, and I think expecting something different was naive.
