Agayek said:
I have to say that while you're mostly correct about the ending, you're dead wrong about it being a functional ending. It is quasi-consistent thematically, but that's really the best one can say about it. It was one of the most poorly handled examples of Deus ex Machina I've ever seen, and at least one half of the pair in the scene was acting rather inconsistent with their previously established character. I get the impression Shepard acting strangely was intended, but I can't say for sure.
When I say functional, I simply mean it serves its purpose without explicitly violating any of the important things that were established. That doesn't mean I
like it. It serves a purpose to bring it to a close. Even going the route they went though there are a dozen more interesting things they could have done.
For example, the Deus Ex Machina itself
was the Reapers or at least their driving intellect. While I understand
why it was a kid (if memory serves, its the same kid you see on Earth and in each of the three dream sequences), there were certainly
better ways it could have gone. Something as simple as regularly shifting its image to various species they have destroyed would have been slightly more satisfying. Moreover, the end itself was facilitated by a mcguffin that it turns out no one species in particular invented. While the reasonable guess is to assume the device itself was part of the whole Reaper experiment, it is never explicitly mentioned that I recall. It is a more interesting notion that you made it to the catalyst simply because the catalyst
wanted you to get there.
While the end does not
explicitly require an explanation or exploration of the why's and the wherefores in order to be functional, it is obvious most thing it needs something
more to be satisfying. Some wanted long montages detailing all the minutiae they accomplished over the course of the game. Others want to know how the big stuff turned out. The former simply isn't possible outside of a Fallout style montage while the latter undermines their capacity to further capitalize on the franchise as they eliminate options. Simply put, if they
tell you how things worked out in
your game, the fact that they'd have to come up with a canon ending in order to make it feasible to actually make a game set
after ME3 ensures further rage from anyone who dared stick around for another installment. If they'd instead simply taken a few minutes to better explain the why's and the wherefores and avoided obtuse symbolism, at least functional could have been upgraded to potentially satisfying.
Lots of the things people point to about the ending, like stink people have raised in this very thread about how your crew made it back aboard the Normandy are things that
legitimately do not matter yet could have been resolved with 2 seconds of video. Yet even if
those things were resolved, the problem people have wouldn't go away. Because the problem with the ending really isn't the fault of the ending but rather that the story they told up to the end made it all but impossible to actually do anything satisfying.
Agayek said:
OT: Meh. I can't work up the energy to be bothered by ME3 anymore. It was like a punch to the gut when I first played it, but after a couple of days, I just couldn't work up the energy to be upset about it anymore. It did prove to be the final nail in the coffin for me though; I now refuse to buy Bioware games. The series of complete clusterfucks that were DA2, TOR and ME3 simply proved that who/whatever made Bioware great in the past has left, and they won't make anything I'd want to play again.
This more or less hints at a part of what I think made the ME3 discussion possible. Up until Dragon Age Origins, people were pretty damn satisfied with Bioware and stopped just short of outright worship of the company. ME2 made changes to the formula which elicited an outcry that they were dumbing it down (an argument I didn't find particularly valid but
that is a debate for a two year old thread). DA2 came out and left many people who wanted another game similar to the first but with a new story and characters out in the cold. TOR did much the same. The reaction to ME3 far more negative than it would have otherwise been I think because of the various perceived offenses of Bioware's recent work.
