Evolution cannot be given. It has to be achieved...

[Apollo45]

Can I just say that I love it when the other side can't be bothered to try to provide a counterargument and instead squeals "GTFO troll"?

My dear, from your very first post you've been needlessly hostile, something the OP mentioned at the very beginning that he didn't want in this thread. Of course, this is a free forum and you're entitled to do what you want with your posts, but the fact remains that he was looking for a decent discussion on the endings, and to try and add something to the conversations with his own thoughts. You, on the other hand, took three posts to even address his thoughts and instead just called him a liar from the start. That's not something that will ever get people to discuss things calmly with you. Furthermore, you continue to insist on being relatively hostile towards people who disagree even slightly with your opinion. It's not the worst I've seen, but it's pretty bad. You generalize those that think the ending was poor as idiots, and you've done the very thing that you've said you hated (making claims that take less than a minute to disprove). Your arguments have some validity to them, and I'll go through them and make my own claims in a minute, but I wanted to preface this with an attempt to let you know that you're being a tool, and if you want people to discuss things with you in a friendly manner you should treat them more kindly than you did. Anyway, on to the topic.

To hell with it, I'm just going to rip this apart to make it clear just how flawed the OP's line of thought it.

DLC sales bombed compared to previous ones

Which is why Leviathan was one of the top downloads the week it was released?

Second, compare Leviathan with the previous story driven DLC, Lair of the Shadow Broker.

Don't you mean Arrival?

It took me less than a minute to confirm that. You really couldn't spare the time?

Being one of the top downloads in the week it was released isn't difficult. I personally can't find any sales numbers, and maybe that's just me being shitty at using Google, so would you mind dropping me a reference link to where you got your numbers?

BSN Mass Effect page suffered a massive withdrawl from members

The reason Mass Effect fans decided to leave the BSN was because ending-bashers decided that the BSN belonged to them and that every thread should be derailed into the topic they wanted to whine about. All of my experience with ending-bashers (heck, BioWare-bashers in general) make it obvious that they try to make an environment as hostile to actual fans as they can, simply so they can drive away everyone who disagrees with them and then proclaim that their opinion is the only opinion.

Just because your experience with ending-bashers is negative doesn't mean you've met everyone who dislikes the ending, or even most of them. My experience with ending-bashers has been generally positive. Sure, you get the group that will make things hostile, but you also get the group on the other side that makes everything hostile by doing things like calling people liars without adding any context, or using the words "Entitled" and "Artistic Integrity" and whatnot liberally with little to no actual meaning. Frankly, my experience with the ending-defenders has been worse than with the bashers, simply because the majority of those I've talked to don't want to discuss is rationally, ignoring comments about the writing quality as "opinion" despite generous evidence to it being shitty and pulling stuff as ridiculous as the Indoctrination Theory out of their asses. I'm not by any means saying that you're like that, or that all of the Defenders are like that, but I am saying that those people are on both sides and neither one covers the entire group.

As an ending-basher myself, I left the BSN because the ending was horrible and nothing meaningful was going to be changed about it. There was no point in arguing for the series that I had loved any more; those who made the game didn't care, and there was nothing left to discuss. The place is as toxic as it is right now because those who were arguing rationally left a long time ago when there were no results, leaving only those on both sides who are simply toxic people. Either way, however, they lost a ton of their most dedicated fans in the debacle.

rushed Deus Ex Machina

Beginning of game: "Shepard, you need this in order to resolve the conflict." End of game: "Shepard, you can use this to resolve the conflict."

The Cricuble isn't what we're talking about, or at least it's not what I consider to be a Deus Ex Machina in the course of the game (although if you take it in the course of the series then it could most certainly be seen that way). The Crucible is a MacGuffin, an item that drives the plot forward more than anything else. Those aren't bad things, although this could've been done so much better. MacGuffins are part of many excellent narratives, and when used right they add to the story instead of detracting from it. The Deus Ex Machina lies in the Catalyst himself, and it's clearly a poorly thought out one. This kid, who has never been seen before in the game, never been referred to, lives in the Citadel and apparently is the mastermind behind everything. He controls the Reapoers, he can stop them whenever he wants to. He is, essentially, a God as far as the Reapers are concerned, and he can apparently control everything in the galaxy by waving his hand. Sure, the Crucible opened up some additional options for him, but that's a sketchy reason at best to refuse to call him a Deus Ex Machina. It's essentially like finding a Genie in a bottle at the very last second of a story and wishing for your problems to go away. If you want another excellent example of a Deus Ex Machina in a science fiction universe, look at Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy. It's a similar situation, with a god character that is literally coming from a machine being introduced at the last minute to solve all the problems, which is exactly what happens in both situations.

There are many problems with the Catalyst as a character though. For one, he is essentially the Citadel, and is able to observe everything going on in the Citadel. So, knowing that, when Sovreign showed up in the first game why didn't he just open up the Citadel Relay himself to bring the rest of the Reapers in? Why did he even need Sovreign in the first place when he could observe the development of the Galaxy by himself? There are plenty more reasons that the Catalyst is both a Deus Ex Machina and an idiot, but most of those have been said already and I'm guessing you're tired of them.

The galaxy time and time again met their demise by choosing to walk the layed road, instead of trying to construct theirs. By doing so, using the infrastructure given to them, they locked all other paths they could have taken, they were uplifted, they didn't evolve.
...
We can also see the consequences of toying with technology we are not ready to handle. How could we be, if we weren't the ones who created it?

And how convenient that you overlook all of the benefits from the technology that galatic civilization inherited. Numerous valuable assets are gained from Reaper tech: Thanix cannons, the Reaper IFF, and EDI. Without the advanced technology gained from the previous cycles and the Reapers, galatic civilization would have had little chance against the Reapers.

True, but contrast that with other Reaper/Prothean tech that was left around. Beacons that ended up nearly scrambling Shepard's brain, derelict Reapers that managed to indoctrinate entire crews of people that were trying to control it, even EDI herself who posed the risk of turning against her creators and, in the end, did exactly that when she betrayed the Illusive Man. Hell, look at the Relay system and the Citadel, both of which were created with the express purpose of guiding civilization to make it as easy to destroy as possible. There are plenty of situations where technology left behind helped the galaxy, but in most if not all of those situations the users had a working understanding of the tech before they used it. Thanix cannons weren't super-highly advanced. The characters knew what they were and how they worked. The Reaper IFF was gained after knowing what it was and fighting through the Reaper itself to get to it. EDI was a huge risk that managed to pay off because Shepard took the time to earn her loyalty one way or another. The message here is more that technology acquired through no work of your own - and therefore having little understanding of it - is not a good thing. But when it's acquired through hard work, even if part of that work is "standing on the shoulders of giants", since you understand it you can use it.

Uplifting, hey? What a familiar word.

Yes, the uplifting of the krogan turned out badly. But let's look to another race that had been uplifted. This race turned out for the better due to their uplifting; in fact, they became one of the largest and most powerful races in the galaxy. As you learn on Thessia, the asari were uplifted by the Protheans. Worked out well for them, wouldn't you say?

The asari's uplifition was ultimately their doom. Even when the Reapers attacked, they refused to give the beacon to other races/letting them study it, and thanks to that Thessia fell. Yeah, ended up pretty well.

So in other words, it wasn't because they were uplifted, it was because they were stupid.

Again, it's a matter of teaching versus gifting. The Krogan were handed all the weapons in the world and allowed to run free. The Asari were taught about those things and developed them themselves. They figured things out and understood the consequences of what they were being given because they were patiently taught about the technology, allowed to develop much of it themselves, where the Krogan were handed the keys to a car without any lessons on how to drive. That's where the uplifting, and not walking your own path, seems to doom a civilization.

The fact that we all admit this shackled AI is flawed in its previous assesment and logic, but still use its solution spits on this concept.
...
Because we were told we couldn't build our own path, that it was all a lie, that in the end, a greater being will have to decide what we can choose, what roads we can take. Destroy, Control, Synthesis, all the "successful" endings consist in taking the path the AI created, in following its logic, its reasoning, its perspectives in our evolution.

And here is the part where you demonstrate your complete and utter ignorance of Mass Effect 3.

Destroy and Control are not the Catalyst's options. Destroy is the option that the rest of the galaxy took; Control is what the Illusive Man sought. The Catalyst's option is Synthesis - this is the only option it introduces, the only option where it doesn't refer to the people who have sought this option. In fact, the Catalyst explicitly tells you that Destroy is not a solution to its problem - nothing will prevent future generations from creating new synthetics. When you actually acknowledge its logic, its reasoning, and its perspectives, it becomes obvious that the option it provides to you - the option it wishes you to take - is the one option that provides a guaranteed solution to its problem. Synthesis.

You are delusioned if you think Control and Destroy aren't the Reapers' options. Control is only possible because the Reapers decided it would be possible. Destroy is only possible because the Catalyst decided you could blow up that energy lock. They are literally controlling your path.

Explain how the Reapers decide that Control would be possible. Explain how the Catalyst gives you the ability to shoot something. The Catalyst is telling you how you can carry out the options that you were told by others could be possible through the Crucible. The Catalyst does not decide "yes, you can do that"; the Catalyst tells you "yes, you can do that".

The Catalyst decides everything in this situation. He lets you up on the platform, he decides what your options are. The Catalyst is the Citadel, and the RBG stations are a part of the Citadel. They might have only formed after the Crucible connected, but they are nevertheless a part of what the Catalyst decides you can do. They are, in the end, what he allows you to accomplish, since he could allow you to do anything at that moment. If he chose to he could stop the Reapers from attacking without you blowing up a glowing-red glass tube. He could hand over control of them to you without you being electrocuted. The only one he can't do without you is Synthesis, so really that's the only one that is partially your choice. I personally have problems with forced "evolution" like that, but that's just me. In every case, however, you're only allowed to choose those because he lets you, which is further proved by him decided to get all pissy when you put a bullet through his holographic face in the EC ending. If he doesn't want you to do something, you won't do it. You, in fact, were never told by others that something would be possible through the Crucible. Throughout the entire game, right up until the point where the Catalyst appears, you and the rest of the galaxy including the Reapers have no clue what the Crucible is going to do.

Then why should I let someone else, my enemy, my nemesis, my executor tell me which way to go?

Because a character who wants to help you, is willing to help you choose an option that it condemns, is your "nemesis".

You choose your own path all throughout Mass Effect. But you are never in a clearing where you can walk in whatever direction you choose. You are always presented with a set of doors you can choose to go through, and which doors you go through is up to you. Those doors are the options available to you, and whining and wishing there were more doors is not reason for more doors to appear.

Lack of victory with absolute freedom - the ability to make whatever choice you wish and still win the war, regardless of everything you'd been told previously - is not a total lack of freedom. You decide Shepard's path in the end. Merely because you do not have the option to walk through a wall does not change that fact.

What the endings represented were a reality where no one decided to even try to jump over it, and instead went around it, only to fall into a mousetrap.

Where's the mousetrap, then? A not-perfectly-happy ending? All of the options bring an end to the Reaper cycles, the entire point of the Crucible and the main goal of the series. There's no "jumping over walls" because there's no reason to assume there's anything on the other side of the walls, that there's no reason to believe that there are other options for the Crucible to bring an end to the cycles.

While your points here are true to an extent, they end up boiling down to shitty writing on the part of the writers. They throw out all of the themes and options you were given throughout the series in order to have you walk through one of three doors. That's where the difference between this choice and all of the other choices in the games lie. Regardless of what happens after you choose Red, Blue or Green, during the scene you're only given three choices that don't change no matter what you did in any of the previous games. The highlights of all three games have come when you're given a few choices, but if you did things right you were given that extra choice to do something awesome. That presents itself in the first game when you can use your influence to save Wrex in what is the highlight of that game for many people. In the second one it comes in many places, but the highlight is the Suicide Mission, where if you've earned your squadmate's loyalty and make the right choices you can choose to save everyone. In the third game it comes during Mordin's sacrifice, where you're given more and more options based on what you've done in all the previous games. You can stop him or you can let him go. Or you can inform him of the danger, or you can hide what you did, and so on. All of those things come in to play, and all of those things are based on what you did beforehand. The ending gives you exactly three choices (four technically, if you could shooting the kid) every time, no matter what you did or how you acted. Three choices. If the choices were decent ones that felt earned then it wouldn't be bad, but they're not so they end up being an example of some really poor writing and not much more.

Choice in Mass Effect was centered around the choices you made before. The aftereffects were all well and good, but when you were given a choice that you wouldn't have been otherwise had you done different things, that's what made the series feel great. The ending laughed in the face of that, and was worse off for it. The writer's made a whole bunch of poor decisions, and they all came back to bite them in the ass at the end of the series. The writing was demonstrably not good by generally accepted standards, with extraordinarily poor pacing, glaring plot holes, and what is both literally and figuratively a Deus Ex Machina popping out of nowhere at the end. OP managed to present another very well-written point - one that I had never heard before - to the argument, further strengthening that side.

At any rate, I'd love to discuss this further with you, but I'd like to do it rationally and calmly. I've got more I'd like to add, but this post is long enough as is and I'm damned hungry. Hopefully this is a decent addressing of your points, and if you see anything I got wrong please point it out. I wrote this fairly quickly, so I may have missed a few things.

 

[ThriKreen]

And here is the part where you demonstrate your complete and utter ignorance of Mass Effect 3.

Destroy and Control are not the Catalyst's options. Destroy is the option that the rest of the galaxy took; Control is what the Illusive Man sought. The Catalyst's option is Synthesis - this is the only option it introduces, the only option where it doesn't refer to the people who have sought this option. In fact, the Catalyst explicitly tells you that Destroy is not a solution to its problem - nothing will prevent future generations from creating new synthetics. When you actually acknowledge its logic, its reasoning, and its perspectives, it becomes obvious that the option it provides to you - the option it wishes you to take - is the one option that provides a guaranteed solution to its problem. Synthesis.

Ding. Someone gets it.

People seem to have missed the part where the Reapers themselves admitted they hit a dead end and could not advance anymore and solve their problem - even if you take the various alternate problems and endings: synthetics, dark energy, whatever - thus the cycle to maintain the status quo. Until something was found.

Until humanity. Until Shepard.

 

[ThriKreen]

They throw out all of the themes and options you were given throughout the series in order to have you walk through one of three doors.

Why must the choices be resolved at the end in some dénouement? They came full circle during ME3 - the genophage, the geth, the rachni. And they still influenced the ending slightly via the EMS value for their completion.

 

[Atmos Duality]

(Note: This discussion is about Mass Effect 3...)

And with that, this discussion has already lost all merit and value.
Not solely on the account of the subject matter, but on account of what I've seen the Escapist community's response to ME3.

A shame, because the initial premise of the topic title seemed genuinely interesting.

"Abandon all Hope Ye Who Enter Here"

 

[Nieroshai]

You miss another point then. You have never had more choice than you had at the end. There was three in the beginning. There was three throughout. And there was three in the end. You took three steps to get here, had three choices at every stop, and only three of you ever forged the path at any one time.

In the end what you fail to see is that there were only ever three choices on the table. The Reapers must be destroyed somehow, or else disabled... but where's that final corner of the sacred triangle? Oh right, your third choice: take initiative and level the playing field.

You honestly don't know what Deus Ex Machina is. It is when a plot gets so out of control and hopelessly tangled that the writer steps in at the very end and makes everything resolve itself or else, without explaining why. The Crucible wasn't just some last minute revelation. It was the focus of the entire game, and the Protheans and prior civilizations gave their lives to contribute to it. Not only wasn't it a last minute miracle, it existed before the story even started.

 

[LetalisK]

To this day I like to cling to Indoctrination Theory. I know it's not canon and it never will be, but it makes the story and ending so much more interesting to me. That and its grimness seems appropriate.

Not that I had a huge problem with the endings besides that it felt really rushed.

 

[Apollo45]

They throw out all of the themes and options you were given throughout the series in order to have you walk through one of three doors.

Why must the choices be resolved at the end in some dénouement? They came full circle during ME3 - the genophage, the geth, the rachni. And they still influenced the ending slightly via the EMS value for their completion.

The choices don't all need to be resolved at the same point, and I don't think I said that (although it might have come across that way, so forgive me if it did), but they need to affect the ending. EMS value influences the cutscene at the end, sure, and to an extent the choices (although unless you speedran the game you'll get up to 2800 EMS without breaking a sweat), but that doesn't really affect what you're given. Whether you saved or cured the Krogans, except by showing an arbitrary number that can be overcome with ease, doesn't affect what choices you get at the end. If you killed the Rachni Queen or saved her, again except through an arbitrary number, it doesn't affect that there are only three doors you can go through. That was my point; in the other choices, if you earned a character's loyalty, if you did enough Paragon or Renegade options, if you chose correctly in the games/scenes beforehand, you would get a different option than you would otherwise. In the end, however, you don't really get that.

From very close to the beginning of the game, you're told that the Crucible has to be combined with the Catalyst in order to be used. The Catalyst is just as much a MacGuffin as the Crucible is, and ignoring the foreshadowing for something doesn't make the foreshadowing magically cease to exist.

While yes, they mentioned The Catalyst vaguely without any idea what it really is, except for after they thought it was the Citadel. That doesn't constitute a reference to the God-Child that is really the Catalyst. The mention of a random name that really doesn't mean anything doesn't constitute foreshadowing. Harbinger mentioning that he wasn't the leader of the Reapers, as was previously thought, would be foreshadowing. The research team finding references to another enemy, or how the Reapers seem to follow something that knows more about them than they should, or anything like that would be foreshadowing. Saying "The Catalyst!" isn't foreshadowing. Likewise, a MacGuffin is a plot device, something that drives the narrative forward. The God-Child isn't a MacGuffin because he doesn't drive the narrative forward, he ends the narrative with god-like powers that "solve" the problems of the protagonist. That is exactly the definition of a Deus Ex Machina.

Tell me this, then. If your options were completely up to the Catalyst and the Catalyst alone, why would it let you choose Destroy? Destroy not only undoes everything that the Catalyst achieved in preserving organic life in Reaper form (by destroying them), it also leaves the galaxy without any means to prevent galatic civilization from creating more synthetics which it believes would inevitably rebel against and wipe out their organic creators. Destroy isn't a solution to its problem. Control isn't much of a solution to its problem either, since it would be based entirely on Shepard's perspectives. The only option that actually resolves its problem is Synthesis.

The Catalyst does not say "I am the Catalyst! Here are my three options for you!" The Catalyst says "I am the Catalyst! I know you heard about destroying and controlling the Reapers, and that is indeed possible; not too big on Destroy myself, though. But I have a different idea: Synthesis!"

That's exactly the thing though; it doesn't have to let you choose it. It never had to bring you up to the platform in the first place, it never had to tell you anything. The thing is, quite frankly, an idiot. especially for an omnipotent AI. The ending paints the Catalyst in a much different light for me, which, again, is reinforced by it telling you to go screw yourself when you shoot it in the Extended Cut. He doesn't have to do anything, and while he is letting you choose, he's letting you choose his options. Why else would, when you decide to essentially not play half the game and get below 2800 EMS, you not get the option for Synthesis? With few exceptions, whether or not you have more ships or whatever doesn't affect that the Crucible does the same thing that it would do otherwise, does it?

If he chose to he could stop the Reapers from attacking without you blowing up a glowing-red glass tube. He could hand over control of them to you without you being electrocuted. The only one he can't do without you is Synthesis, so really that's the only one that is partially your choice.

And how do you know that? How do you know that the Catalyst has direct control over the Reapers? From the ending, nothing gives me that idea; rather, my impressions were that the Catalyst created the Reaper cycles to be fully autonomous, so the Catalyst itself has no power over it - it needs an outside force, Shepard, to put an end to the cycle.

The Catalyst references itself as the "collective intelligence of all Reapers". Now, that might at first sound like it just has the knowledge that the Reapers do, but knowledge and intelligence are two vastly different things. What the Catalyst is saying is that it is the brains behind the entire Reaper operation. It consistently refers to the Reapers and itself as "We", meaning that he is an active part of the cycles that he created.

And how does it "throw out all of the themes"? You are aware that there are options presented?

Of course. Destruction, which is what they were going for in the first place, albeit with more precision than a massive wiping-out of all synthetics and part-synthetics in the galaxy. But the entire series continually reiterates how controlling them doesn't work, much like controlling other species/races rarely works for the long run. The Catalyst's solution runs counter to that huge part of the series. Likewise, the Synthesis choice feels like it runs counter to the rest of the freedom presented in the game. It's a game about choices, and that solution deliberately takes away all the choice that the rest of the galaxy has. I find that rather disturbing, frankly.

Regardless of what happens after you choose Red, Blue or Green, during the scene you're only given three choices that don't change no matter what you did in any of the previous games.

And I'm guessing you have no clue that if you don't manage to unite the galaxy sufficiently, you don't get the "Green" option? And potentially neither the "Red" or "Blue" option?

Yes, your Effective Military Strength impacts the final outcome. It influences how much damage the galaxy takes from the activation of the Crucible, if any. It influences the fate of the Normandy's crew. It determines whether the squadmates you take with you on the run to the beam survive or are killed by Harbinger. It determines how many options are available to you in the end. And it even determines if Shepard can survive one of the options.

And what determines your Effective Military Strength? All of the choices you've made in the series. Past choices influence which War Assets you can obtain in ME3, can grant you additional War Assets, or even have a negative impact on your Effective Military Strength. The ending sums up how well you managed to unite the galaxy and gather an army to fight for the Crucible based on the choices you've made throughout the series.

That's true, but I was referring to the three choices in themselves. As I said before, getting 2800 EMS involves playing through the game and doing a couple of extra missions, nothing difficult at all, and in that it's about as much of a choice as deciding whether you're going to move around over the course of a day. If you're exceedingly lazy you can probably go without getting out of bed for a day or two, yes, but unless you're writing this from bed you've moved around today, and it's the same way with getting up to that much EMS. You'd have to actively try to get as little as possible to eliminate the blue ending, and even eliminating the green one is a chore. So as far as "choices" go, getting to relatively low arbitrary number isn't as much a choice as playing the game, and in my mind that doesn't change my argument.

In the third game it comes during Mordin's sacrifice, where you're given more and more options based on what you've done in all the previous games. You can stop him or you can let him go. Or you can inform him of the danger, or you can hide what you did, and so on.

[quote[Other than dialogue differences (which don't have any impact on the outcome), there's three ways that Mordin's scene at the end of Priority: Tuchanka can go. Two of those options - letting him cure the genophage and shooting him - are invariably available to you. Only one outcome requires you to have made specific choices in the previous games.[/quote]

Those dialogue options make much of the difference though, especially since they center around a storyline and a group of characters that I actually care about. We get to see the resolution of three games of work in that moment. We see how Mordin reacts depending on your choices, we get to see the aftermath in the Krogan's reaction depending on what you did. That those dialogue changes, along with the third option, are extremely well written and meaningful to someone who's gone through all three games with the Genophage at the back of their mind only adds to that. That's an example of good writing and good choice direction. Having your choices based off of, again, an arbitrary number system isn't good writing or choice direction.

I'm going to finish off on this quote, because it demonstrates the two main reasons that people complain about the ending:

1. ignorance (as I've already explained how your EMS affects the ending); and
2. the fact that none of the options are perfect, sunshine-and-flowers outcomes.

Here's where I get annoyed with people who are defending the ending. Discussing this with you isn't bad, but it's when people simply jump to conclusions.

The EMS isn't a meaningful choice that leads you to the ending. There are thousands of combinations of things that you can do to get to 2800 EMS, and, as I said, it's almost more difficult to get below that number than it is to get above it, and it's not something that's meaningful to the series as a whole. It's just a number that you're shooting for as you play along, and over the course of the game you get more numbers to add to it. Contrast that with the choices at the end of ME2, where over the course of the game you're going through your crew's loyalty quests, learning more about them, and at the end that all resolves into choices you make as far as who you're taking along with you, who's going to go lead the second team, who's going to take the crew back to the ship (assuming you rushed straight through the relay after the Collector's boarded your ship), who's going to defend while you take out Reaper Jr, and so on. Those are meaningful choices that change based on whose loyalty missions you did, whether or not you rushed to save the crew or did other side missions, and so on. Earning "points" towards a nebulous goal isn't meaningful, it's busywork, and it's not much of a "choice".

As far as the sunshine-and-flowers, there is not a single place where I mentioned that I wanted everything to turn out all nice and dandy like nothing happened. I never even remotely mentioned how I would liked the ending to have gone, in fact. That's a conclusion you're jumping to because I don't like the ending, and it's another reason why the BSN forums are so toxic. I was fully expecting Shepard to die at the end, and I would have been happy with that outcome if it had been done right. If the relays ended up being destroyed, Shepard and the crew died, and everything is essentially going to hell I would have been more than happy with it if it was well written. The fact of the matter, no matter how much people may blubber on about "opinions!" (and I'm not saying you are, it's just something that I ran into a lot on the BSN forums), is that the endings were poorly written by any standards used in the modern world.

Hopefully all that makes sense. I'm a bit tired, so I might have gone on a tangent or two here and there, but I think the overall message is coherent.

 

[Ultrajoe]

Proving there are no holes in a plot is far from providing evidence that the plot was any good.

Just wanted that said.

 

[sanquin]

Proving there are no holes in a plot is far from providing evidence that the plot was any good.

Just wanted that said.

And even proving that there are no holes in the plot is impossible. As really, especially the ending, but all of ME3 is full with plot holes...

 

[sanquin]

To this day I like to cling to Indoctrination Theory. I know it's not canon and it never will be, but it makes the story and ending so much more interesting to me. That and its grimness seems appropriate.

Not that I had a huge problem with the endings besides that it felt really rushed.

Ever read the comic "Marauder shields" on Deviant Art? It basically partially goes on the indoctrination theory, and gives what I consider would be a far better ending for the game so far. It's still ongoing though so I don't know how the comic will end.

 

[sanquin]

Don't you just enjoy intelligent and meaningful contributions to a conversation?

The links to the very in-depth and well thought out series on why ME3 in general and the ending is so full of plotholes has been linked countless times on this website already. I'm a bit tired of searching for it time and again on youtube. >_>

 

[mr141177]

Just have to say, i'd hoped all the way through the game that the crucible would be the ultimate trap, one that sucks in all your resources and does nothing, nothing at all. Simply crushes your hope. I thought it would be an elegant way to lose.
But that's really not an ending that producers will ever likely approve for a large scale commercial release

 

[sanquin]

The links to the very in-depth and well thought out series on why ME3 in general and the ending is so full of plotholes has been linked countless times on this website already.

I've had numerous ending-bashers throw anti-ending videos and rants at me.

And every single one was full of inaccuracies and ignorance in the first five minutes/paragraphs.

Okay, watch smudboy and his 'bookends of destruction' series. Or at least 'the first five minutes' as you say it of a video or two. I've played through the game plenty of times and did research outside of the game as well, but I've not really found that many inaccuracies in his video's.

Or not, of course, if you don't feel like it. >.>

 

[romxxii]

rushed Deus Ex Machina

Beginning of game: "Shepard, you need this in order to resolve the conflict." End of game: "Shepard, you can use this to resolve the conflict."

I think he meant the star-child being a literal 'God from the Machine.' At least, I hope he did. That's what pissed me off about the ending, really. When Shepard was about to die next to Anderson, I thought, "damn, what a depressing but great ending to the series."

Imagine my disappointment when the credits didn't exactly roll after that point. Felt like a goddamned band that played one too many encore performances.