canadamus_prime said:
Not having played either ME3 or Human Revolution I can't really comment on either ending, but I can say with certainty that just because YOU didn't like it doesn't mean they "cocked it up." Game developers don't make games specifically to please you, because you alone are not a large enough market to make it worth while.
Given that Mass Effect 3's ending is rather irrelevant to it's sales (since, well, people have to buy it to watch the ending most of the time), the market is irrelevant to this discussion. That, however, does not mean i can't critisize them for the ending.
If you go watch at Metacritic, ME3 is one of the games that is being reviewbombed [http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/mass-effect-3/user-reviews?dist=negative] currently by angry people. Now, i didn't participate in the reviewbombing, and i don't condone it either. But regardless of the immaturity of the reviewbombing itself, the complaints of the people who does this aren't to be dismissed lightly (most of them bought the game after all), and while many of their review complaints also center about stuff like Day 1 DLC (which can be debated to death) which i personally don't feel should weigh in for a game if the base experience is really good, many complaints - ironically just like me - is about the ending.
Why? Because it's terrible. I'm not going to give any spoilers, but to put it simple, it (or rather, they, because it's a multiple choice ending) counteracts pretty much EVERYTHING you've worked for throughout the entire game series. Nothing in the game series (all 3 games) previous ~60-80 hours of gameplay in any way implied the terrible twist in the ending. They just dropped it on us like a meteor and excepted us to swallow it after having lived through everything else, which is inevitably going to disappoint almost anyone who feel that they invested into the story with their actions. Like i said in my description above, it's like being invited to take a looong warm shower, only to have your host dumb ice cold water on you just before you're about to step out.
The problem is that it's a class example of writers bringing something into a story that doesn't need to brought in, but that they "felt" they had to bring in to make the story more special (unfortunately in the negative way). Without giving spoilers away again, the best way to explain it is that the writers brought in their own version of "Intelligent Design" into the story. That alone should be enough to indicate why it was a terrible decision, even if you haven't played the game
)
I still recommend the game though. It's of very solid construction, right up to the ending, and if you can suffer being heavily disappointed by the last 30 minutes of ME3 (or avoid investing any emotions into the story and characters, in which case the terrible ending won't matter so much).
I also expect Yahtzee to rip on the ending in Zero/Extra Punctuation in a few weeks.
