Mass Effect 3 ending SPOILERS!

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boag

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Texas Joker 52 said:
Like a lot of the posts I've seen here, the only really bad part seems to be the endings, which were overwhelmingly depressing and made me feel like the majority of the game was spent preparing for war, only to have it wasted.

I got the Turians and Krogan to work together, managed to wrangle the Asari and Salarians on my side, not to mention assets from the Batarians, Hanar, Elcor, Volus, and Drell, the Terminus Forces are on my side and I didn't have to do too much that was stepping out of my Paragon leanings. Then I prepared the Citadel for attack, and got the Quarians and Geth to get along. Even with the 'Good' Ending where you can destroy all synthetics, EDI and the Geth are screwed. Synthesis seemed too vague for me, and I wasn't willing to stoop so low as to control the Reapers.

Personally, I am only a little upset that Shepard ends up dead no matter what, but galactic change on that scale? How can they make any more Mass Effect games that feel like Mass Effect still? Either the Geth are gone entirely, the Reapers are around still and possibly even messing around with everything, or everyone is fused to some sort of machine. That, along with the loss of all the Mass Relays and the Citadel? I'd love to see how Bioware reconciles this.

Don't get me wrong, I love the ending, but I would definitely have preferred an ending similar to Mass Effect 2's, only more intense and grander in scale. This... Just makes me sad, disappointed, and feel like Shepard went through all of that for nothing.

[EDIT]: After having started my Fem-Shep play-through, I think I realized the key to why the endings were so dissatisfying: They don't feel like they belong in Mass Effect. That, along with the dreams with the kid in the forest felt out-of-place.
They feel like something From a Final Fantasy game.


This is hilarious, notice how it says X event is very important to the game end scenario and when the choices and events are listed every end game scenarios has more in common than anything. And worse yet the Galaxy changing event doesnt even change.
 

Valok

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Well, I don't agree with the end(s), but I'm not gonna comment on it since a lot of ppl have already showed what seems wrong.

So I guess I will just drop this here...

http://filesmelt.com/dl/Big_list_of_copy.jpg
 

Eddie the head

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MrSuperman said:
Why are people moaning about a downer ending? I'm happy there's an actual downer ending. It beats the usual romp of Hollywood and other industry giants just giving deus ex machina endings or having a happy ending when really, there shouldn't be. At least Bioware isn't stuck to outside rules in having to change things to make the majority happy like with 'Terminator: Salvation'.
It's how they did it. I loved Infamous 2 (Good) ending because you died. It's just how they did it there is no sense of closure I guess. I was going to replay ME2 to see what happens if a few people die, but now I am not going to.
 

teknoarcanist

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synobal said:
teknoarcanist said:
This Matrix Architect starchild bullshit is a slap in the face. Besides being immature, poorly-written, would-be-tragedy; besides being vague, alienating, impenetrable, and unsatisfying; besides all that, it invalidates every choice you've ever made throughout all three games. It renders every decision moot.

And we all know the reason.

It's railroading shit together to set up for DLC, an MMO, or both.

No it wasn't, you should really look a bit deeper into the ending. It wasn't dropped out of no where, there was a lot of subtle hints in regards to how the game was going to end and the choice you would have to make.

I think perhaps Bioware are suffering a bit from their own success, back in the day they use to only hit a very small target audience of people who seriously enjoyed RPGs and fantasy/scifi literature.

But Mass Effect really did a good job of crossing and blending the genre lines and so we have this Massive influx of people who are not well versed in story telling.

Please resist your knee jerk reaction to the endings people and look a bit deeper, maybe read some really good science fiction works and then come back and really look at the Mass Effect story across all three games. I think you'll find it was really very well done in the end.

Also: all those militaries stranded in Earth orbit with FTL travel? Yeah they're going to fucking destroy one other, vying for land and resources. I give it a few decades before the Krogan have wiped everybody else out and resort to cannibalism to offset overpopulation.
We really don't know that anyone was stuck on earth or that those fleets didn't get away. I know it is tempting to assume that the cut scene showed the crucible going off in real time but we don't know that for sure after all the Normandy got away and they apparently had time to pick up your squad mates off earth for extraction.

Oh and the Krogan didn't bring their females to earth, they are to precious to risk losing still.
It was NOT well-done. I'm not even complaining about the substantive material of the ending. I have no problem making difficult, seemingly-impossible ethical choices; in fact it's why I play these games at all. I don't care that it's not happy; I LIKE unhappy endings. Tragedies are my favorite kind of story.

What I have a problem with is the fact that it was poorly-written, ill-conceived, haphazardly presented bullshit. The ending didn't leave me emotionally exhausted, it left me going, "Wait.......what? That's it? It's just over? That was fucking stupid." It provides no sense of closure. No sense of finality. No understanding of the broader implications of the decision you've just made. I barely have any idea what even happened.

An all-powerful secret badguy who's more powerful than all the other badguys and was never mentioned before showing up in the last five minutes to dump exposition and force a false dichotomy on you is not good writing. It's very, very bad writing. It wasn't deep, or moving. It doesn't stand alongside Dhalgren as a postmodern science fiction dilemma that makes me question the very nature of reality. It's just idiotic, nonsensical, and badly written.

It's also tonally inconsistent -- it felt more like Deus Ex than Mass Effect. Why has Shepard spent the entire game marshaling forces to battle the reapers, only to go "Oh okay" and submit in the last five minutes? Shepard from Mass Effect 1 and 2 would have told that kid to shut the fuck up, pointed to the united armada above him, and delivered a stirring speech about how we're all working together and that proves the cycle wrong. And then he would have blown the whole damn Crucible the fuck up, and it would have worked out for him.

It even fails thematically. Mass Effect isn't ABOUT the conflict between organic and synthetic life! It never has been! That's a VERY small part of it, with the Quarians and the Geth, but the themes of Mass Effect are and always have been the scars of war, the disparity between foreign cultures, the anger bred from ignorance, the thin line between right and wrong, the difficult decisions that arise when dealing with war on a galactic scale -- that "ruthless calculus" Garrus was talking about. Again, it felt more like Deus Ex than Mass Effect. It was entirely out-of-place.

Mass Effect is a rollicking space opera. It didn't need a 2001 -style "sudden left turn" in the last five minutes. It needed a stirring finish. It failed to achieve that. And considering that the hours preceding it -- the siege on London, the last push to the beam, the choked goodbyes of all your former squadmates -- are some of the most dire, emotionally-fraught emotional peaks in gaming history, the ending fails to render that peak into a corresponding valley, or slowly bring us down from the gut-wrenching finality to tie things off with a bow. It just jumps off a cliff. You look at the last hour of Return of the King for an ensemble epic resolutely concluded. You look at the last five minutes of Matrix Revolutions for a similarly misguided cop-out.

And I'll reiterate that the rest of the game was absolutely pitch-perfect. Everything right up until Hackett tells you the Crucible isn't working and you get raised up on that platform was absolutely fantastic, emotionally-stirring, heartstring-tugging, thought-provoking stuff. It's amazing how they could possibly have dropped the ball so hard so close to the end.

Not sad or upsetting. Not powerful or thought-provoking. Not even interesting.

Weak, lazy, and disappointing.

Hackett out.
 

mehh1293

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I'm with the majority of people on this thread, the ending was a horrible failure, and successfully managed to ruin a wonderful franchise in little more than 2 minutes. But I think there may be a bit of hope. Anyone else noticed how all the videos of ME3 endings posted on youtube are quickly being made private? Not just individual videos posted by fans, but the ones sponsored by big gaming sites such as IGN as well. Hopefully this is a sign that bioware has gotten the message and has begun trying to clean up the terrible mess they've made.
 

SajuukKhar

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Valok said:
Well, I don't agree with the end(s), but I'm not gonna comment on it since a lot of ppl have already showed what seems wrong.

So I guess I will just drop this here...

http://filesmelt.com/dl/Big_list_of_copy.jpg
The reason why the "ME3 copied Tengen Toppa" doesn't work is because

1. Tengen Toppa didn't make up that plot, saying ME copied TTGL is like saying RAGE is a copy of Fallout. Just because TTGL is popular doesn't mean it was the first to use that story/ending type.

2. The anti-Spirals in TTGL wanted to kill all spiral life, PERMANENTLY, The Reapers only want to kill advanced life so future life can live. Two entirely different reasons, and methods of execution of those reasons.

mehh1293 said:
I'm with the majority of people on this thread, the ending was a horrible failure, and successfully managed to ruin a wonderful franchise in little more than 2 minutes. But I think there may be a bit of hope. Anyone else noticed how all the videos of ME3 endings posted on youtube are quickly being made private? Not just individual videos posted by fans, but the ones sponsored by big gaming sites such as IGN as well. Hopefully this is a sign that bioware has gotten the message and has begun trying to clean up the terrible mess they've made.
The only 'mess" Bioware made was releasing a game to a bunch of people who don't understand what the series was about, or what its themes were.

everyone I know who actually payed attention in the series has liked the endings.
 

Fappy

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SajuukKhar said:
Valok said:
Well, I don't agree with the end(s), but I'm not gonna comment on it since a lot of ppl have already showed what seems wrong.

So I guess I will just drop this here...

http://filesmelt.com/dl/Big_list_of_copy.jpg
The reason why the "ME3 copied Tengen Toppa" doesn't work is because

1. Tengen Toppa didn't make up that plot, saying ME copied TTGL is like saying RAGE is a copy of Fallout. Just because something is popular doesn't mean it was the first to use it.

2. The anti-Spirals in TTGL wanted to kill all spiral life, PERMANENTLY, The Reapers only want to kill advanced life so future life can live. Two entirely different reasons, and methods of execution of those reasons.

mehh1293 said:
I'm with the majority of people on this thread, the ending was a horrible failure, and successfully managed to ruin a wonderful franchise in little more than 2 minutes. But I think there may be a bit of hope. Anyone else noticed how all the videos of ME3 endings posted on youtube are quickly being made private? Not just individual videos posted by fans, but the ones sponsored by big gaming sites such as IGN as well. Hopefully this is a sign that bioware has gotten the message and has begun trying to clean up the terrible mess they've made.
The only 'mess" Bioware made was releasing a game to a bunch of people who don't understand what the series was about, or what its themes were.

everyone I know who actually payed attention in the series has liked the endings.
I honestly like the concept of destroying the Reaper's technology to create your own path. I see how that theme was laid out throughout the entirety of the franchise. The problem is that, in the end, none of your prior decisions matter, your enemy tells you what to do and you can't even attempt to argue his flawed points. Good idea. Poorly executed.
 

SajuukKhar

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Fappy said:
I honestly like the concept of destroying the Reaper's technology to create your own path. I see how that theme was laid out throughout the entirety of the franchise. The problem is that, in the end, none of your prior decisions matter, your enemy tells you what to do and you can't even attempt to argue his flawed points. Good idea. Poorly executed.
Yes because

-Letting the Rachnai live or not
-curing the genophage
-Killing the geth/quarrians or making peace with them

is negated by the ending?

That was a trick question, because they aren't.
 

teknoarcanist

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Fappy said:
The problem is that, in the end, none of your prior decisions matter, your enemy tells you what to do and you can't even attempt to argue his flawed points. Good idea. Poorly executed.
Agreed. As I said above, you spend three games telling Elder Gods and Space Racists to shove their false dichotomies and work together, and then in the last five minutes you go "My only options are genocide or a dark age? DAAAAAAAAAAAAA OKAY, WHATEBBA YOU SAY MISTER GUARDIAN SIR"

Shepard from Mass Effect 1 and 2 would have told that kid to shut the fuck up, pointed to the united armada above him, and delivered a stirring speech about how we're all working together and that proves the cycle wrong. And then he would have blown the whole damn Crucible the fuck up. And it would have worked out somehow.

It makes no sense to remove that agency from the player. There should have been a fourth choice which engages if you refuse to choose, or if -- as was the case with me -- your response was to turn around and fire angrily at The Guardian.

SajuukKhar said:
Fappy said:
I honestly like the concept of destroying the Reaper's technology to create your own path. I see how that theme was laid out throughout the entirety of the franchise. The problem is that, in the end, none of your prior decisions matter, your enemy tells you what to do and you can't even attempt to argue his flawed points. Good idea. Poorly executed.
Yes because

-Letting the Rachnai live or not
-curing the genophage
-Killing the geth/quarrians or making peace with them

is negated by the ending?

That was a trick question, because they aren't.
Well yeah, they ARE negated by the ending because they don't factor into it in any way.
 

SajuukKhar

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teknoarcanist said:
Agreed. As I said above, you spend three games telling Elder Gods and Space Racists to shove their false dichotomies and work together, and then in the last five minutes you go "My only options are genocide or a dark age? DAAAAAAAAAAAAA OKAY."

Shepard from Mass Effect 1 and 2 would have told that kid to shut the fuck up, pointed to the united armada above him, and delivered a stirring speech about how we're all working together and that proves the cycle wrong. And then he would have blown the whole damn Crucible the fuck up. And it would have worked out somehow.

It makes no sense to remove that agency from the player. There should have been a fourth choice which engages if you refuse to choose, or if -- as was the case with me -- your response was to turn around and fire angrily at The Guardian.
Except that ending doesn't free galactic civilization from the endless technological and socetal enslavement because of their dependance on Reaper tech.

Your ending makes zero sense with the story and doesn't solve the biggest problem in the series.
 

teknoarcanist

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SajuukKhar said:
teknoarcanist said:
Fappy said:
SajuukKhar said:
The problem is that, in the end, none of your prior decisions matter, your enemy tells you what to do and you can't even attempt to argue his flawed points. Good idea. Poorly executed.
Agreed. As I said above, you spend three games telling Elder Gods and Space Racists to shove their false dichotomies and work together, and then in the last five minutes you go "My only options are genocide or a dark age? DAAAAAAAAAAAAA OKAY."

Shepard from Mass Effect 1 and 2 would have told that kid to shut the fuck up, pointed to the united armada above him, and delivered a stirring speech about how we're all working together and that proves the cycle wrong. And then he would have blown the whole damn Crucible the fuck up. And it would have worked out somehow.

It makes no sense to remove that agency from the player. There should have been a fourth choice which engages if you refuse to choose, or if -- as was the case with me -- your response was to turn around and fire angrily at The Guardian.
Except that ending still doesn't free galactic civilization from the endless technological and socetal enslavement because of their dependance on Reaper tech.
Sure it does. They've broken free from the cycle of technocratic violence and come together as brothers, fighting to survive. That what I just spent 30+ hours doing.
 

N7 Ruiz

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First I think Bioware got a little too kill happy in this game with Characters i will say this Halo 3 had a better ending and that game you are playing a man who says less than a page in dialog...thats sad. And what is with that kid its like shepard was a pedophile. Look this is like the episode I of star wars in the mass effect series you could not fuck it up and yet they had to be omg im original. look its a good game its just the most horrible ending ever like BSG ending and if you like it your a moromon. Killing off characters that we know are going to die thats ok Klling off characters for the sake of shock factor no that not rainbow sprinkles in my book. and that cut scene with the old man so what Mass effect is a childrens tale its like when ST DS-9 introduced Benny (sisko) in the 1950's (they were going to make DS-9 and I guess all of star trek a story stuck in a writers head) The point that im trying to make is this IT was not the ending we deserived and why does shepard have too die in all the endings its so terrible and its retarded its like We will make our players Cry how out of sadness that we are special and not in a good way

PS. Now Mass Effect has become literally 40K
 

Fappy

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SajuukKhar said:
Fappy said:
I honestly like the concept of destroying the Reaper's technology to create your own path. I see how that theme was laid out throughout the entirety of the franchise. The problem is that, in the end, none of your prior decisions matter, your enemy tells you what to do and you can't even attempt to argue his flawed points. Good idea. Poorly executed.
Yes because

-Letting the Rachnai live or not
-curing the genophage
-Killing the geth/quarrians or making peace with them

is negated by the ending?

That was a trick question, because they aren't.
Actually the Rachni thing is rendered completely moot because there is a Rachni Queen in ME3 despite whether you saved it on Noveria or not. The difference is like two lines of dialogue. The destroy ending invalidates the entire second act of the game. The sythesis ending comes out of fucking nowhere and addresses a problem already solved in act 2 (Quarian/Geth) while also invalidating their alliance. With the galactic community gone there is no point in making peace between these groups (Krogan/Salarian and Turians) if they can't even communicate with each other. Mordin said the Korgans would evolve out of the genophage... as they had already begun to do. If they are severed from the rest of the galaxy then they would ultimately adapt to the genophage naturally. The list of plotholes/meaningless decisions and such goes on...
 

SpireOfFire

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i didnt like it simply because it wasnt a happy ending, no matter what. but thats just my preference. i mean, here come the reapers, fuck shit up for EVERYONE, theres really no way to end this story on a happy note. no winners in war, only survivors, so to speak.

really the only thing about the ending that i really had a problem with was when the normandy crashed and joker, ashley, and vega pop out and it just kind of ends there. and im thinking "they are so fucked. no ship, no mass relay, no civilization around them. these guys are so fucked!" so those characters are essentially doomed to die and thats the one part that didnt sit well with me.

very grim ending, no matter what. but what else can you expect? this was the biggest war ever. every species was fighting for existence against a galactic and unstoppable menace.

was kinda hoping for my shepard and ashley to stay together.
 

SajuukKhar

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teknoarcanist said:
Sure it does. They've broken free from the cycle of technocratic violence and come together as brothers, fighting to survive. That what I just spent 30+ hours doing.
what you said has nothing to do with what I said.

The ultimate "problem" with civilization, as depicted in the series, is that they have become so dependent on Reaper based technology, i.e. the technology of the Mass Relays/Citadel, that they cant think for themselves.

As Sovereign said "we impose order on the chaos that is evolution".

Killing the Reapers and working together doesn't negate the technological dependance, and the ultimate dead end said dependence causes, as the reapers chosen path for civilization is a dead end, that was created by galactic civilizations use and dependency of the Mass Relays.

Galactic civilization can never be free as long as the reapers Mass Relays stood and were still needed.

Destroying the Reapers and not the Mass Relays would just make the galaxy slaves to a long dead slaver master, which is silly.
 

NM47

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I have some problems with the ending:

1. The ending take no account of Shepard's prior choices, even the huge ones (Genophage, Geth war, etc) instead only showing the last choice's effects. Given how this has THREE games building up to a conclusion, this ambiguity is infuriating

2. I can understand the Crucible annihilating all Reapers locally, but spreading across the entire galaxy?! That's a Deus Ex Machina if I ever saw one.

3. The philosophical undertones placed in the end were not consistent, the undertone of Synthetic life overtaking organic life rings hollow when the Geth and EDI want to work with organics right then. Hell, the choices that can be made by Shepard to mend this divide aren't even addressed!!

4. The post-credit scene with the child and parent is so out of place, it is less intriguing and more confounding. What is the point of it? Or is it some high-brow attempt at saying that 'This game is all a story being told by a parent to a child' and by saying that "most of the details have been lost to time" they can excuse themselves from inconsistencies in their next game?
 

Undead Dragon King

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I'll admit, the endings REALLY rubbed me the wrong way. As excellent as 90% of Mass Effect 3 was, the endings were big horrible blemishes on a series that defined my final years as a gamer.

So I wrote my own ending; an epilogue that's already swiftly approaching 20 pages, tweaking just a few things in the constraints of the choice presented to Shepard by the Catalyst. It's still bittersweet, but much sweeter than the endings that were handed to us by EA and BioWare.
 

SajuukKhar

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NM47 said:
I have some problems with the ending:

1. The ending take no account of Shepard's prior choices, even the huge ones (Genophage, Geth war, etc) instead only showing the last choice's effects. Given how this has THREE games building up to a conclusion, this ambiguity is infuriating

2. I can understand the Crucible annihilating all Reapers locally, but spreading across the entire galaxy?! That's a Deus Ex Machina if I ever saw one.

3. The philosophical undertones placed in the end were not consistent, the undertone of Synthetic life overtaking organic life rings hollow when the Geth and EDI want to work with organics right then. Hell, the choices that can be made by Shepard to mend this divide aren't even addressed!!

4. The post-credit scene with the child and parent is so out of place, it is less intriguing and more confounding. What is the point of it? Or is it some high-brow attempt at saying that 'This game is all a story being told by a parent to a child' and by saying that "most of the details have been lost to time" they can excuse themselves from inconsistencies in their next game?
1. Except those choices still affect those races regardless of if the relays are gone or not.

2. It was stated that the Mass relays use their element zero cores to enact your choice, it is explained in the game. To be a dues Ex Machina it would have no explanation.

3. You also forget they only work together because they have a common threat, once said threat is gone the likelihood of them remaining friends drastically diminishes, nor does it account for future synthetic life.

4. The kid was a defendant of the colony The Normandy survives founded, it existed to show that the crew survived.
 

teknoarcanist

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SajuukKhar said:
teknoarcanist said:
Sure it does. They've broken free from the cycle of technocratic violence and come together as brothers, fighting to survive. That what I just spent 30+ hours doing.
what you said has nothing to do with what I said.

The ultimate "problem" with civilization, as depicted in the series, is that they have become so dependent on Reaper based technology, i.e. the technology of the Mass Relays/Citadel, that they cant think for themselves.

As sovereign said "we impose order on the chaos that is evolution". Killing the Reapers and working together doesn't negate the technological dependance, and the ultimate dead end said depence causes, that was created by glactic civilazations use of the Mass Relays.
Well you're wrong though. "The problem" presented by the Guardian isn't that at all. It's that organic civilizations inevitably create synthetic life that outstrips them. That's what he tells you, explicitly -- that's the problem, and this whole cycle was his solution, and it didn't work, and now it needs to be addressed.

Which I thought was weird, considering I already fucking worked that out 12 hours ago by forging a lasting alliance between the Quarian and the Geth.

If they really wanted to do that ending up right, they should have presented all of the conflicts you solve over the course of the game as "The Problems" the guardian created the cycle for in the first place, just as the VI on Thessia talks about re-emerging patterns.

The Guardian could say, "It is inevitable that species with greater scientific understanding will rule over those beneath them."

To which Shepard goes, "Well, a Salarian cured the Genophage. This is me passing the 'scientific superiority' check."

The Guardian says, "Organics and synthetics cannot co-exist. Synthetics will overtake organics."

Shepard goes, "Well, I forged a peace between the Quarian and the Geth. This is me passing the synthetic/organic check."

The Guardian says, "The galaxy depends on reaper technology."

Shepard says, "Because you give them no other option. But look at how we and countless other species in the past have designed and improved upon the Crucible as an act of defiance. Look at how big my war asset score is. This is me passing the War Assets check. Now shut up and gimme that good ending."