Disclaimer: This whole post should be considered spoiler alert. I will as such not bother putting spoiler tags around everything.
This will be subjective, feel free to disagree.
Alright, with that out of the way, let's start this thing.
I went into the EC with the lowest possible expectations. It exceeded those expectations, and as such this thing will probably have a fairly positive tone.
General thoughts: The first and most obvious observation is the fact that you can argue with, and question Godkid, admittedly not as extensively as I would've wanted, but it's irregardless an improvement, and a fairly major one, seeing how the lack of dialogue was probably my biggest issue with the original ending.
The whole idea of the ending, Extended Cut or not, is that of the technological singularity pretty much ruining everything. I would recommend everyone that have an interest in the future of technology to go look that up, it's a rather deep and complex idea, one that could've been really good as an ending to Mass Effect if they hadn't just duct-taped it on in the last few minutes. Yes the EC expends a bit on it, but not nearly enough.
It should have been introduced to the game way earlier, not just thrown in at the very end. Introducing an entirely new direction for the plot the last 15 minutes is just bad writing.
While before Godkid was just a giant glowing Deus Ex Machina, now it actually feels like something worthy of paying some semblance of attention to. What I almost immediately thought was that he/it ended up rather close to the Borg Queen; not in control of the collective (or the Reapers in this case) but rather an avatar of the collective. The thing that brings order to chaos, which is paraphrasing from one of the Borg Queen's lines, and oddly appropriate for the Catalyst.
Furthermore while the Borg Collective as a whole is completely inhuman, follows only cold logic and being rather intangible, the Queen acting as the face of the collective was her own character, and displayed emotions.
To me the parallels between the Borg and their Queen compared to the Reapers and their catalyst are rather obvious.
I still think that having TIM being indocrinated was the wrong thing to do, and feels out of place and tacked on.
The extra cutscene where Hackett orders all ships to retreat as the Crucible is charging up; such a minor thing, that had such importance. No longer do the Normandy leave for no reason what so ever and randomly gets hit by space magic, but rather there's a reason for it, and a reasonable one at that.
No matter the path you take, the relays survive, albeit heavily damaged. Same thing goes for the Citadel to varying degrees depending on your choice. This is huge, for the very simple reason that the original ending implied that they were outright destroyed, meaning that; Congratulations, you just destroyed the galactic community!
Final point before going on to the specific endings, Normandy not being stranded in the ass end of nowhere. Another of my major problems before the EC. So the crew is saved, but now they're stranded in a jungle where Garrus and Tali will starve to death...
Instead we have a clip of the crew in front of the memorial wall, with Anderson's name on it, followed by Normandy taking off. That addition felt great. And that is a massive understatement.
With the general points that applies across the board, onwards to each of the three options:
Red Ending: The one I felt being the most bittersweet one. You did what you set out to do, but at great cost. I played mostly paragon, it being what I feel the most comfortable with. The red ending felt very renegade to me; Victory at all costs.
Hackett's speech only reinforces the bittersweet feeling, talking about the victory that came at the cost of the death of those you fought besides.
It felt very much like a "default ending", and aside from Hackett reading a speech in his awesome voice, it didn't make me feel much.
That is until seeing Garrus holding the plate for the memorial wall bearing Shepard's name, not putting it up on the wall, followed by Normandy taking off. That scene together with Shepard drawing a breath was powerful. It added some much needed sweet to the otherwise rather bitter ending.
And seeing Zaeed sitting in a deckchair with a drink actually made me smile.
In total it felt like it was worth all the loss, but only just.
Green Ending: Without hesitation the "happiest" ending. Also the one that was the most space-magic-y.
The green ending is what I would put as the opposite to the red one; you saved everyone, ended the problem of the technological singularity. You still lost people, good people, but you ultimately succeed. I don't have much more to say about it, it was a fairy tale ending, where even immortality is within grasp of the people of the galaxy.
Blue Ending: This is the one that resonated the most with me.
Where the other two were clearly Renegade and Paragon (somewhat ironically paragon was green, rather than blue), as I perceived it, this option truly felt like 'a third option'.
I freely admit that my opinion of the blue ending was probably coloured by my feelings on one of the three endings to another game entirely, that being the Helios ending for the original Deus Ex. The Helios ending is my favourite ending to one of my favourite games ever, and as such I suppose it's only natural to assume that my feelings on the blue ending was coloured by this.
Where as the previous two options had Hackett and EDI do the narration respectively, this one has Shepard herself do the narration. Just a couple of words in and I was instantly reminded of the Helios end to Deus Ex. Looking back at the blue ending as a whole only reinforces my feelings that these two ends to two very different games are basically the same.
In this ending, and in this one alone, the Citadel is portrayed as being completely intact, Reapers are shown rebuilding a Relay.
To me it felt like the positive ending I wanted, without it being "Let's solve everything with space-magic!". One could of course argue that all the colours are just different flavoured space-magic, and probably rightly so. In any case though, I feel it was handled far better than printing green glowy circuits on everything.
And towards the end of the blue ending came one of the most emotionally powerful moments in a game for me since... a long time ago;
Shepard's speech starts grand, almost outright states how she became a god, sacrificing everything for the power to make things better for everyone, and how the woman she was knew it was the right thing to do.
As the speech draws to an end you see your crew in front of the memorial wall, mourning the lost. And as Garrus walks up to the wall putting up the Commander Shepard nameplate, the 'ascended' Shepard, who's voice have been sounding, well, more like a Reaper than a human, or has the final words of JC after the merge with Helios,as the camera close in on the memorial grows more and more human, and finally her last few words as all you see is Garrus's hand over the plate, sounds exactly as Shepard did as a human.
I nearly cried.
Would it have been as powerful if my brain hadn't been drawing parallels to one of my favourite game endings ever? Probably not, but there you have it; my thoughts on the Extended Cut.
Closing comments: I just felt like doing this after going through the EC, I had no forethought, and basically winged the whole thing, so my apologies if it comes off as pointless ramblings.
Again, I wish to stress the fact that this whole thing is completely subjective.
If you haven't played Deus Ex: go play Deus Ex, it is an amazing game.
Godkid says something about not being happy to be replaced by you for the blue ending, so hey, that's anothe plus for blue; you kick Godkid out of office.
Last minute edit: Yeah, I didn't say anything about the refusal ending, for two reasons:
1) I didn't do it.
2) Having watched it, I don't have anything meaningful to add, other than possibly the fact that I consider it being pretty much the exact same thing as what I like to call the "fuck everything option" in Deus Ex Human Revolution. It was appropriate in that game, and I don't feel that it is in Mass Effect.
This will be subjective, feel free to disagree.
Alright, with that out of the way, let's start this thing.
I went into the EC with the lowest possible expectations. It exceeded those expectations, and as such this thing will probably have a fairly positive tone.
General thoughts: The first and most obvious observation is the fact that you can argue with, and question Godkid, admittedly not as extensively as I would've wanted, but it's irregardless an improvement, and a fairly major one, seeing how the lack of dialogue was probably my biggest issue with the original ending.
The whole idea of the ending, Extended Cut or not, is that of the technological singularity pretty much ruining everything. I would recommend everyone that have an interest in the future of technology to go look that up, it's a rather deep and complex idea, one that could've been really good as an ending to Mass Effect if they hadn't just duct-taped it on in the last few minutes. Yes the EC expends a bit on it, but not nearly enough.
It should have been introduced to the game way earlier, not just thrown in at the very end. Introducing an entirely new direction for the plot the last 15 minutes is just bad writing.
While before Godkid was just a giant glowing Deus Ex Machina, now it actually feels like something worthy of paying some semblance of attention to. What I almost immediately thought was that he/it ended up rather close to the Borg Queen; not in control of the collective (or the Reapers in this case) but rather an avatar of the collective. The thing that brings order to chaos, which is paraphrasing from one of the Borg Queen's lines, and oddly appropriate for the Catalyst.
Furthermore while the Borg Collective as a whole is completely inhuman, follows only cold logic and being rather intangible, the Queen acting as the face of the collective was her own character, and displayed emotions.
To me the parallels between the Borg and their Queen compared to the Reapers and their catalyst are rather obvious.
I still think that having TIM being indocrinated was the wrong thing to do, and feels out of place and tacked on.
The extra cutscene where Hackett orders all ships to retreat as the Crucible is charging up; such a minor thing, that had such importance. No longer do the Normandy leave for no reason what so ever and randomly gets hit by space magic, but rather there's a reason for it, and a reasonable one at that.
No matter the path you take, the relays survive, albeit heavily damaged. Same thing goes for the Citadel to varying degrees depending on your choice. This is huge, for the very simple reason that the original ending implied that they were outright destroyed, meaning that; Congratulations, you just destroyed the galactic community!
Final point before going on to the specific endings, Normandy not being stranded in the ass end of nowhere. Another of my major problems before the EC. So the crew is saved, but now they're stranded in a jungle where Garrus and Tali will starve to death...
Instead we have a clip of the crew in front of the memorial wall, with Anderson's name on it, followed by Normandy taking off. That addition felt great. And that is a massive understatement.
With the general points that applies across the board, onwards to each of the three options:
Red Ending: The one I felt being the most bittersweet one. You did what you set out to do, but at great cost. I played mostly paragon, it being what I feel the most comfortable with. The red ending felt very renegade to me; Victory at all costs.
Hackett's speech only reinforces the bittersweet feeling, talking about the victory that came at the cost of the death of those you fought besides.
It felt very much like a "default ending", and aside from Hackett reading a speech in his awesome voice, it didn't make me feel much.
That is until seeing Garrus holding the plate for the memorial wall bearing Shepard's name, not putting it up on the wall, followed by Normandy taking off. That scene together with Shepard drawing a breath was powerful. It added some much needed sweet to the otherwise rather bitter ending.
And seeing Zaeed sitting in a deckchair with a drink actually made me smile.
In total it felt like it was worth all the loss, but only just.
Green Ending: Without hesitation the "happiest" ending. Also the one that was the most space-magic-y.
The green ending is what I would put as the opposite to the red one; you saved everyone, ended the problem of the technological singularity. You still lost people, good people, but you ultimately succeed. I don't have much more to say about it, it was a fairy tale ending, where even immortality is within grasp of the people of the galaxy.
Blue Ending: This is the one that resonated the most with me.
Where the other two were clearly Renegade and Paragon (somewhat ironically paragon was green, rather than blue), as I perceived it, this option truly felt like 'a third option'.
I freely admit that my opinion of the blue ending was probably coloured by my feelings on one of the three endings to another game entirely, that being the Helios ending for the original Deus Ex. The Helios ending is my favourite ending to one of my favourite games ever, and as such I suppose it's only natural to assume that my feelings on the blue ending was coloured by this.
Where as the previous two options had Hackett and EDI do the narration respectively, this one has Shepard herself do the narration. Just a couple of words in and I was instantly reminded of the Helios end to Deus Ex. Looking back at the blue ending as a whole only reinforces my feelings that these two ends to two very different games are basically the same.
In this ending, and in this one alone, the Citadel is portrayed as being completely intact, Reapers are shown rebuilding a Relay.
To me it felt like the positive ending I wanted, without it being "Let's solve everything with space-magic!". One could of course argue that all the colours are just different flavoured space-magic, and probably rightly so. In any case though, I feel it was handled far better than printing green glowy circuits on everything.
And towards the end of the blue ending came one of the most emotionally powerful moments in a game for me since... a long time ago;
Shepard's speech starts grand, almost outright states how she became a god, sacrificing everything for the power to make things better for everyone, and how the woman she was knew it was the right thing to do.
As the speech draws to an end you see your crew in front of the memorial wall, mourning the lost. And as Garrus walks up to the wall putting up the Commander Shepard nameplate, the 'ascended' Shepard, who's voice have been sounding, well, more like a Reaper than a human, or has the final words of JC after the merge with Helios,as the camera close in on the memorial grows more and more human, and finally her last few words as all you see is Garrus's hand over the plate, sounds exactly as Shepard did as a human.
I nearly cried.
Would it have been as powerful if my brain hadn't been drawing parallels to one of my favourite game endings ever? Probably not, but there you have it; my thoughts on the Extended Cut.
Closing comments: I just felt like doing this after going through the EC, I had no forethought, and basically winged the whole thing, so my apologies if it comes off as pointless ramblings.
Again, I wish to stress the fact that this whole thing is completely subjective.
If you haven't played Deus Ex: go play Deus Ex, it is an amazing game.
Godkid says something about not being happy to be replaced by you for the blue ending, so hey, that's anothe plus for blue; you kick Godkid out of office.
Last minute edit: Yeah, I didn't say anything about the refusal ending, for two reasons:
1) I didn't do it.
2) Having watched it, I don't have anything meaningful to add, other than possibly the fact that I consider it being pretty much the exact same thing as what I like to call the "fuck everything option" in Deus Ex Human Revolution. It was appropriate in that game, and I don't feel that it is in Mass Effect.
