How could you make the ending of Mass Effect 3 any worse?

[Grivahri]

The ending of ME3 has been considered by some one of the worst endings ever made (at least before the DLC). Obviously that is not true as long as people can put crap on paper. So how could this ending be any worse, how can you ruin your beloved franchise even more?

Maybe:

- Shepard gets sick during Mass Effect 3 and dies right before going to the Cerberus base.

- When the game is over he wakes up on the Normandy. During the time when he was knocked out by the prothean beacon he dreamed all of the events in the series.

- Shepard wakes up and realizes that the year is 2012 and that he dreamed about the entire idea of the future, space travel and alien races. He is a 14 year old teenager with no friends.

Putting them together:

Shepard gets sick during the war against the reapers. Still he manages to complete missions quite successfully. He is just about to go to the cerberus base and defeat them when he dies. On his death bed he declares his love for his LI and she says that they should just be friends. Credits roll for a minute.

He then wakes up on the Normandy after he got struck by the prothean beacon. He is not a spectre, the reapers doesn't exist and Saren is just crazy. They start looking for Saren, they find him but he manages to kill everyone except Shepard. Shepard lusts for revenge. He tracks Saren down once again. He defeats him and holds a gun to his face. Slowly but surely Saren is starting to transform into the god child. Shepard starts to realize that the boy is in fact his little brother and he has just woken up. The year is not 2183, it is 2012. Space travel does not exist, humanity is stuck on earth, and Shepard is nothing more than an unpopular teenager. He begins to weep furiously while beating the shit out of his brother. With his last ounce of energy he cries out "LIARA". Credits roll for real this time.

Epilogue:
We see Shepard in front of his computer crying while looking at recent posts at escapistmagazine.com. He starts writing about a new game idea.



It should be added that I was generally satisfied with the DLC ending. Write down your ideas.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Shepard is actually a butterfly living in a parallel universe and he's friends with time.

Spoiler

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Spoiler: Let's make that even more horrifying

Produced and co-directed by George Lucas

 

[number2301]

One word, Ponies. That would do a good job of making the ending worse.

Really though I'm not one of the people who thinks it was a terrible ending, just unsatisfying.

 

[blindthrall]

The only armor that can withstand Reaper indroctination is Kaiden's fursuit, since it's covered in a complex mat of alien spermazoa organisms that exist nowhere else in the universe. And the Starchild is replaced by John Romero's head on a stake.

 

[Nerexor]

Shepard is actually an RPG character being played by beings from the FOURTH DIMENSION. Oh wait, a game has actually HAD that plot twist before...

The conduit is actually a bomb and the entire game has been a futile waste while you run around trying to stop the reapers.

The reapers finish the indoctrination of all species... and then all the tech falls off, they revert to normal, and a giant APRIL FOOLS message is sent to all planets.

And of course the classic: It was all a dream, and Shepard is just some low ranked soldier in the alliance suffering hallucinations.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

When you get hit by the Reaper beam towards the end? Shepard dies there. The end.

 

[CoffeeBoy]

I haven't played third one and probably wont. Not because I am turned off by the available endings, but because I accepted the premise as set up in the first. There is a giant group of beings who have spent a billion years perfecting their control of organic evolution and the eventual annihilation of said newcomers. Every 50,000 years they decimate all other life forms and then return to stasis.

I don't understand their motivation, other than their acceptance that the eventual spread of another mass of life is inevitable. But I saw one individual, Sovereign, and a relatively small number of Geth, almost defeat the 5th fleet while focusing on a goal other than defeating the fleet. Had there been two Reapers present, the Conduit would have been activated and the reaping commenced.

I find it impossible to believe, given the disparity in power between the horde of Reapers and a coalition of the organic fleets, which included no more than 85 Dreadnoughts at its peak, that anything but the eventual destruction of organic life was a possible outcome.

While I understand that this is not necessarily the actual outcome of events, I am unmoved from my acceptance that a billion years of fine-tuning would not be undone by one commander's strong desire to live.

 

[Eddie the head]

When you get hit by the Reaper beam towards the end? Shepard dies there. The end.

No, no that would have made it much better. I would prefer "you fail" to a crappy Daniel rip off.

 

[Sassafrass]

Shepard yells "YOLO MOTHERFUCKAS, I BANGED A BLUE CHICK AND I'VE GOT MY VOICE OVER IN 58674 STORES GALAXY WIDE!", jumps in the Mako and proceeds to crash it into the remains of Big Ben, killing himself.

However, this makes the Reapers laugh so much, they decide to let us live because "Humans are a funny race." and watch fail compilations of us on Youtube 5 before they simply die from...whatever the Reaper equivalent of dehydration is.

Shepard is declared a hero, given a statue in his honour but is swiftly forgotten about in about a fortnight, due to Joker suddenly becoming the next top model and gaining galaxy wide acclaim.

And that is how ME3 ends.
With Joker appearing topless in various magazines.

 

[The Wykydtron]

And it was all a draymuh. The End.

You could replace Shep's usual badass armour at the end with a pink balerina tutu, a matching crown and pigtails and with a face completely basted in make up. This is male Shep we're talking about by the way. Pretty sure it would fuck up FemShep's character as well but that's less disturbing and more cutesy.

There will be no cutesy on my watch! No sir!

You could also pull a Gainex and make Garrus randomly stab Shep in the back at the end with a snarky "sorry pal, I was with Cerberus the whole time"

PS&G style baybee!

They could then replace Joker with The Joker. Shit will be going down in that parallel universe.

I'm still a firm believer in that literally making Shepard pull Spiral Power into the ME universe would improve the ending significantly. It's a bit sad in that Shep pulling superpowers out of nowhere and valiantly killing the Reapers with a Mecha is more in line with the theme of ME3, namely sacrifice for the greater good, never giving up and sexy alien chicks.

Seriously, i'm down for Shepard punching the Space Child in the face, pointing straight up at the sky and making a badass speech complete with a cape and a mecha that was sitting in the Citadel for no reason.

 

[fuzz]

Rather than three different coloured explosions they're all beige.

 

[Terminate421]

Garrus dies
Tali dies
everyone dies

they all die off screen and being told, with shepard responding with "yep"
the ending is a multiplayer match.

The catalyst sticks to the citadel and confetti shoots out with the party buzzer.

You hear after the final line from hackett:


(I love Halo but that would have made the mass effect 3 ending far worse)

 

[Lalo Lomeli]

It would have been worse if I had payed the game and got invested

 

[PirateRose]

I remember before the game came out, on the BSN I got involved in a thread like this on how Bioware could ruin the series in the last installment. One of the posters successfully predicted that the Reapers really weren't the bad guys, they were trying to protect us.

Besides that, I would say that it ended by Shepard waking up after being zapped by the prothean beacon. Everything after Eden Prime was a dream she had while in a coma for a few years.

 

[William Dickbringer]

-SNIP-

nah I'm more partial to a evangelion like ending where laser hits and then it's just a white room where everyone who were your squad mates and anderson and the council all just stand around clapping saying congratulations (and the penguin) it would be just so abrupt and out of nowhere

 

[el_kabong]

Shepard comes to the realization that the conquering of earth has happened numerous times before and that he's the 27th Shepard to be born and attempt to save the universe. The Reapers are swiftly defeated when it's realized that water is like acid to them. But none of the events truly matter because Shepard has been dead the entire time. Then, Joker struts off the Normandy while lighting up a cigarette. He's picked up by the Illusive Man, who reveals that Joker is actually the mastermind behind Cerberus and all the events up until now. He then walks through a deserted aquaduct, accompanied by synthesizer music, and gradually joined by about 20 other people (including a cowboy). They eventually bid a tearful goodbye as he boards the boat to Valinor. Then, a Krogan pops up and says "That's all, folks".

 

[klaynexas3]

The mage woke from his nap, still in a deep haze from the strange and abnormal dream. He fears for what it could mean, but it shall have to wait. Today is the day he travels into the fade to fight a demon, and something of a Grey Warden coming to speak of a new and upcoming Blight. There was too much else going for him to care for his dream.

Considering the ending for ME3 was not nearly as god awful as people say(yeah, there is a lot that is stupid, but it's not bad either. Lazy, yes, but not entirely bad) there is left much room to work with to make worse of the ending.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

Shepard undergoes a trippy and surreal dream sequence and winds up in an alternate earth where him and his squadmates are all human high school students. After some unexplained antics, he winds up standing on a big blue ball in the middle of nowhere land for no reason, surrounded by all of his friends who are congratulating him. Also, his actions actually cause the Reapers to succeed and everyone in the universe is reduced to orange Kool-Aid.

Then you find out that this was the latest in a series of time loops instigated by a young girl who wishes to save the universe from its fate, though she has now been Kool-Aid-ified, as well. Her death means that the series must start anew, with a female Shepard, thus making both routes canon in the same continuity.

Then it turns out everything was just thought up by an autistic child. Eh, Steve! shows up to deliver his catchphrase, and then, without showing the credits, it just cuts to black in mid sen

 

[Bombchucker]

It turns out that Shepard is in a coma and that when he picks an ending and dies he wakes up in a gumdrop forest surrounded by talking doughnut people.