Poll: So this whole ME3 ending thing.... [WARNING: ENDING SPOILERS]

[42]

So this thread is for all the non-fanboys but they can post if they want to i suppose free world. Just let me ask this. Is it because of the actual endings or was it because you didn't get the ending you wanted?

is it really THAT bigger a deal? i mean this was the exact same reaction everyone had when Dragon Age II came out and all its fans cracked the shits because it changed to much from the previous game, and everyone wanted to shiv Bioware a new one. and now everyone is upset over an ending? ok day 1 dlc is outrage i sympathise with, no one likes forking out 800 MS for something that could've been included in the core game. or maybe it could've been free, but to get upset over the fact you didn't get the ending you wanted is preposterous. thats like getting upset with the ending of battle royale and wanting an ending where all the students live happily ever after. Nah sorry it aint going to happen. and i give props to bioware for giving Mass Effect 3 that kind of ending. and by the whole general tone of the series, i could tell it was going to end that way. with shepherd making the ultimate sacrifice. which i think was a good ending.

As for me personally, I'm currently getting through Mass Effect 1's awful vehicle sections and stiff combat, but I'm enjoying it overall. Yes I may have spoiled the ending for myself but thats because I just wanted to know why the bioware fanboys were cracking the shits.

 

[RJ 17]

So this thread is for all the non-fanboys but they can post if they want to i suppose free world. Just let me ask this. Is it because of the actual endings or was it because you didn't get the ending you wanted?

is it really THAT bigger a deal? i mean this was the exact same reaction everyone had when Dragon Age II came out and all its fans cracked the shits because it changed to much from the previous game, and everyone wanted to shiv Bioware a new one. and now everyone is upset over an ending? ok day 1 dlc is outrage i sympathise with, no one likes forking out 800 MS for something that could've been included in the core game. or maybe it could've been free, but to get upset over the fact you didn't get the ending you wanted is preposterous. thats like getting upset with the ending of battle royale and wanting an ending where all the students live happily ever after. Nah sorry it aint going to happen. and i give props to bioware for giving Mass Effect 3 that kind of ending. and by the whole general tone of the series, i could tell it was going to end that way. with shepherd making the ultimate sacrifice. which i think was a good ending.

As for me personally, I'm currently getting through Mass Effect 1's awful vehicle sections and stiff combat, but I'm enjoying it overall. Yes I may have spoiled the ending for myself but thats because I just wanted to know why the bioware fanboys were cracking the shits.

It's not so much that people wanted Shepard to ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after with the space-mate of their choice, the biggest complaint seems to be from people believing that the endings make absolutely no sense when contextualized with the rest of the series, and as such we get things like the topic about "It was all an indoctrination dream!" despite the fact that there's nothing but speculative evidence to support such a claim. Personally I think that the endings are perfectly fine if you place even a little bit of thought to them. Could they have been hashed out more to give more closure for specific characters and races? Sure. But at the same time, the relays are all destroyed so it's not like they could have a text description of "Garrus returned to Palevan and helped rebuild his homeworld." At least for the time being, everyone is stranded in the system they were in when the relays kerploded. As such there's not mmuch immediate closure to be had in the first place.

 

[dreadedcandiru99]

Is it because of the actual endings or was it because you didn't get the ending you wanted?

If by "you didn't get the ending you wanted," you mean "you didn't get an ending that made sense," then yes, I'm upset because I didn't get the ending I wanted. I went into the Citadel fully expecting that Shepard would die to stop the Reapers; after losing Thessia, I'd decided that she was perfectly okay with that. What I did not expect was a mountain of plot holes and characters acting out of character, a total lack of closure, and that in the end, every choice I'd made throughout the series would be ignored in favor of "what color do you want your Space Magic to be?" If the ending had been a three-minute clip of Martha Stewart discussing meatloaf recipes, that would've been as satisfying.

I'm sure eventually I'll replay the game. But I think I'll just turn it off after the final encounter with the Illusive Man and make up my own ending.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

So this thread is for all the non-fanboys but they can post if they want to i suppose free world. Just let me ask this. Is it because of the actual endings or was it because you didn't get the ending you wanted?

You can always kind of tell the quality of a thread/post, and poster, when they start off using "fanboy" non ironically. Why this idiotic insult isn't subject to moderator attention I'll never understand, but whatever. Moving on.

is it really THAT bigger a deal? i mean this was the exact same reaction everyone had when Dragon Age II came out and all its fans cracked the shits because it changed to much from the previous game, and everyone wanted to shiv Bioware a new one.

Dragon Age 2 took shit for a lot of reasons, some of it justified, some of it completely overstated. I don't recall anyone ever attacking DA2 because the ending was bad, though. I suppose some people were so excited to throw it under the bus they probably would've tossed the ending in too, but for the most part DA2's detractors attacked the GAME PLAY, not the story elements.

ok day 1 dlc is outrage i sympathise with, no one likes forking out 800 MS for something that could've been included in the core game.

No, the DLC outrage was and continues to be idiotic.

...but to get upset over the fact you didn't get the ending you wanted is preposterous.

It's not preposterous at all. From an article on the writer-reader contract:

That there?ll be good ending, a primarily source for an emotionally satisfying experience. A multitude of errors will be forgiven if a great ending is provided. And what qualifies as a great ending? The release of tension that come from the sense of rightness, the feeling that this is the way things should?had?to be, whether bittersweet or happily-ever-after.

ME3's ending actually violates the writer-reader contract on a number of levels, but this is the most pertinent. Bioware is certainly free to write whatever narratives they want to, and we're entitled as fans to tell them what we think about them. If fans "don't get the ending they want", or at least an ending they can understand, they will likely cease to be fans, which really isn't in anyone's best interests.

thats like getting upset with the ending of battle royale and wanting an ending where all the students live happily ever after. Nah sorry it aint going to happen. and i give props to bioware for giving Mass Effect 3 that kind of ending. and by the whole general tone of the series, i could tell it was going to end that way. with shepherd making the ultimate sacrifice. which i think was a good ending.

Did you read ANY of the other 8 million threads on this subject before you barn stormed the forums and decided to make your own? I don't know if anyone is unhappy that the ending was downbeat. I fully expected, and anticipated, a downbeat ending. If I'd gotten some pat ending where everything turned out hunky dory I would've been disgusted. I expected Shepard to die. I expected many of my beloved crew mates to die. I expected the scale of sacrifice to be ENORMOUS. I also expected an ending that MADE SENSE. Instead I got some muddled, quasi-mystical rubbish, and a weird cutscene loaded with logical incongruities, and then some bad voice acting in a saccharine epilogue. It wasn't Fallout 3 bad, but it was such a bizarre departure in theme and tone, and so rushed and devoid of any real sense of closure or catharsis, that I'm honestly surprised the fans aren't MORE irritated.

As for me personally, I'm currently getting through Mass Effect 1's awful vehicle sections and stiff combat, but I'm enjoying it overall. Yes I may have spoiled the ending for myself but thats because I just wanted to know why the bioware fanboys were cracking the shits.

Ah, great. It's good that you weighed in like this on a game you haven't played yet, which was the final chapter of a series you're halfway the through first game of. You've clearly got some keen insight to bring to the table.

 

[mattttherman3]

None of your decisions really affect the outcome as the reapers cant win, you can't not get the minimum amount of forces, I tried. Sure if sone of your squad died there are differences in the story(in me2 I have a save where only the dlc characters survived) but really those differences are big in some instances but would have greater ramifications after the end of ME3.

 

[TaL0s]

The ending, as most people have already stated, completely ruined it for me.It was not disappointing because it was not the triumphant heroic end that everyone wanted for their commander Shepherd, but because it didn't fit with the context of the rest of the story. Also, the endings(all of them) are full of plot holes and inconsistencies.

Spoiler

First off,the child(machine god), states that the reapers are there to preserve organic life from being destroyed by synthetic life. Now this is the first time this has ever been introduced in the series. Yes there was the war between the Geth and the Quarians but that could be resolved and through that mission they go to state the opposite, that it was the Quarian who wished to destroy the Geth, but the Geth had not gone after the Quarians. So this being the main struggle of the game seemed foreign and contradictory. It also seemed very ironic that the solution to the problem of synthetic life destroying organic life was to create giant synthetics(Reapers) to pretty much wipe out organic life. The concept of the reapers up until that point was that they were there to reap the advancement of the galaxy for themselves and keep it under their control, but now in the last 10 minutes of the game we are somehow supposed to be ok with that?

Secondly, the scene with the normandy fleeing the blast of the was utterly rediculous. Where was Joker going and how did he get there when the normandy had just been in the battle and how did the crew members who had all been with you in London end up on the ship. Not to mention the fact that its a wave of light catching up to them while traveling FTL.

I know some people will say, but not every story can have a good ending. But there is something that feels intrinsically wrong with a sour ending to a game because no matter how artsy a game gets it is still a game. And a game must be able to be won and nothing about those endings felt like a win. In the end it felt like the reapers won, or at least lost on their own terms. And a concession is no victory.

 

[Madkipz]

So this thread is for all the non-fanboys but they can post if they want to i suppose free world. Just let me ask this. Is it because of the actual endings or was it because you didn't get the ending you wanted?

is it really THAT bigger a deal? i mean this was the exact same reaction everyone had when Dragon Age II came out and all its fans cracked the shits because it changed to much from the previous game, and everyone wanted to shiv Bioware a new one. and now everyone is upset over an ending? ok day 1 dlc is outrage i sympathise with, no one likes forking out 800 MS for something that could've been included in the core game. or maybe it could've been free, but to get upset over the fact you didn't get the ending you wanted is preposterous. thats like getting upset with the ending of battle royale and wanting an ending where all the students live happily ever after. Nah sorry it aint going to happen. and i give props to bioware for giving Mass Effect 3 that kind of ending. and by the whole general tone of the series, i could tell it was going to end that way. with shepherd making the ultimate sacrifice. which i think was a good ending.

As for me personally, I'm currently getting through Mass Effect 1's awful vehicle sections and stiff combat, but I'm enjoying it overall. Yes I may have spoiled the ending for myself but thats because I just wanted to know why the bioware fanboys were cracking the shits.

Well, the outrage from DA2 was significantly different. We kinda knew it was just a prologue to a greater story. That's why it stops when things get interesting and has the whole Chantry seeker interrogation and Varric telling the story going on.

Mass effect 3, is the end. It was advertised as a trilogy and by far the greater share of people expected Shepard to die in the end, but the problem the arises when the ending you get does not match up with what has built up until that point.

1) you broker peace with the geth and the Quarians yet the reaper VI boss insists that all synthetics are evil so he is going to kill you with his own synthethics what?

2) you don't get any help from any race and spend entire london segment nearly alone besides a one dialogue per character kind of thing. The next you see from them is that the Normandy crashes on an island what?

3) The choices, outside destruction ends with Shepard dead, but we don't even get to see our "Assets in combat" sort of speaking.

 

[Aircross]

It's beyond "not getting the endings you want."

You go through ME1, ME2, and ME3 and make hundreds of galaxy changing decisions only to have it all wind up to what?

An Endingtronic 3000 with 3 buttons, one for each ending.

That's right, all the choices you made beforehand no longer matter. It's just down to selecting one of three buttons and pressing it.

 

[Skops]

I don't get the ending rage. Really, if 99% of the game is outstanding, why is everyone up in arms about a cutscene?

Personally I think the biggest problem is that my Francois Shepard DOES NOT LOOK MY FRANCOIS SHEPARD!!

 

[GloatingSwine]

I don't get the ending rage. Really, if 99% of the game is outstanding, why is everyone up in arms about a cutscene?

Two words: Blue Balls.

The ending to a story is supposed to be the point of emotional release, it needs to be a payoff to everything that the story has promised up to that point. If the ending is not a payoff to anything in the story, and is in fact completely at odds with everything the audience has been invested in up to that point in the story (in the case of Mass Effect, uniting the galaxy in common cause against an implacable enemy had no effect because their contribution went unseen and you pressed a button for space magic that made the problem go away) then there is no emotional release, the audience leaves unsatisfied. Blue Balls.

 

[boag]

So this thread is for all the non-fanboys but they can post if they want to i suppose free world. Just let me ask this. Is it because of the actual endings or was it because you didn't get the ending you wanted?

is it really THAT bigger a deal? i mean this was the exact same reaction everyone had when Dragon Age II came out and all its fans cracked the shits because it changed to much from the previous game, and everyone wanted to shiv Bioware a new one. and now everyone is upset over an ending? ok day 1 dlc is outrage i sympathise with, no one likes forking out 800 MS for something that could've been included in the core game. or maybe it could've been free, but to get upset over the fact you didn't get the ending you wanted is preposterous. thats like getting upset with the ending of battle royale and wanting an ending where all the students live happily ever after. Nah sorry it aint going to happen. and i give props to bioware for giving Mass Effect 3 that kind of ending. and by the whole general tone of the series, i could tell it was going to end that way. with shepherd making the ultimate sacrifice. which i think was a good ending.

As for me personally, I'm currently getting through Mass Effect 1's awful vehicle sections and stiff combat, but I'm enjoying it overall. Yes I may have spoiled the ending for myself but thats because I just wanted to know why the bioware fanboys were cracking the shits.

The Game is full of awesome little tidbits, Every conversation with the Main cast is awesome, even better is when they start moving around the ship interacting with each other. When I walked into Joker and Garrus telling Racist jokes to each other I almost laughed a lung out.

The entirety of the game is payoff to everything you did in ME1 and ME2, and up until the very end when Shep confronts the AI it was Great, those moments with Anderson were fuckign Heartwrenching...... but then the Deus EX HR ending gets in the way.

Instead of Confronting Harbinger, you get this shitty kid AI, and all it does is shoe horn you into a decision that kills off any choices you made and leaves you with a myriad of questions, the next 15 minutes of the game from this point, no matter what choice you make completely alter the Galaxy and you are not shown any of it.

In the end my disappointment with the game stems in 3 major areas.

Thematically, it clashes with the overall aspect of the Game, instead of it being a struggle for survival it turns into a philosophical play.

Interactively, your choices are all the same, Reapers are no longer a threat and Galactic Civilization gets boned, no matter what you choose.

From a story telling perspective the ending lacks an Epilogue that explains what happens after the final decision you make completely fucks up the entirety of the Galaxy.

This final decision makes everything you have done completely moot, since it doesnt give you a payoff, and possibly invalidates anything you might have done.

Krogan genophage? Yeah good luck sustaining those fuckers if you cant find suitable worlds for them to colonize.

Quarians and Geth? Well I hope you guys didnt fuck up all those Live Ships cause its going to take a fuckton of time to get back to Ranoch.

Rachni Alive or Dead? Space Spiders dont give a shit either way, they can settle in Venus since they thrive in toxic enviroments.

Asari? these bitches are now the de facto salve whores of the Galaxy because not only did they keep their Protean info a secret and used it to lord it over the rest of the species, but they also FAILED to do anything good with it for more than 1k Years, while their little sluts went off to whore themselves around the Galaxy, so if they like being little whores, then they will have no problem being the fuck toys of every other species.

The Salarians would surprisingly come out of this shit pretty ok, since they only sent their fleet to fight, and Surkesh didnt get fucked over by reapers.

But anything I say now is just wild speculation because we have no Epilogue to tell us what the fuck happens after I make Sheppard use the Mcguffin.

That is why I dislike the ending so much.

 

[AD-Stu]

Obviously it is "that big a deal" for some people - I'm not going to go overboard repeating what other people have said above, but I think it's fair to say that some of the complaints are legitimate (others less so) and, more importantly, people are entitled to their opinions.

What's interesting is that you're making this post without having played through all the games, or having played all the way through to the ending yourself. I'd be interested to see how big a deal you think it is once you finally get there for yourself.

 

[42]

Obviously it is "that big a deal" for some people - I'm not going to go overboard repeating what other people have said above, but I think it's fair to say that some of the complaints are legitimate (others less so) and, more importantly, people are entitled to their opinions.

What's interesting is that you're making this post without having played through all the games, or having played all the way through to the ending yourself. I'd be interested to see how big a deal you think it is once you finally get there for yourself.

Well thats the thing I'm not going to make it a big deal. It is after all a game, and like any other forms of entertainment it comes and goes. and within the next year there will probably be something else that will come along that will have everyone just as intensely interested. I'd even compare the reaction to how people reacted to the end of Star Wars Episode 6.