The first red flag for me was Origin and "canon" femshep. Seiously, wut? Canon Shep is maleshep. That is the kind of logic making this game? Uh oh. I figured I could suffer through Origin though and it wasn't a deal breaker in and of itself. I just figured I would wait for reviews and see how it goes down.
Then "From Ashes" was announced and I didn't like that at all. Mostly because it was heavy exploitation of its fans, not because it was essential but it did run that risk. After watching most, if not all, of the content in the DLC there are nuggets that make the end not seem to come out of left field from nowhere. Basically, From Ashes makes the end do a 120 degree turn instead of a 180. The previous games from the very first mission in the very first game posed the question "Who are the Protheans?" You want the answer to that question that they dangle in front of you parallel to the main plot for 2(3) full games? Shell out. It's dirty. Perfectly legal and because its moral, is perfectly debatable. But this was when my personal outlook was, I won't be buying it new on principle.
Then the game came out. News of Tali's reveal came out and I facepalmed even though I am not even a Tali fan. That was such a half ass job and disservice to the fans especially considering how much they hyped that damn reveal. Maybe the reveal hyped itself but they bled it out there and then didn't deliver a reveal so much as a half ass image. This worried me and made me question the content in the game.
Finally, the controversy over the ending came out and forced me to watch it online. I slowly began watching more and more videos of the gameplay online until eventually just sitting through most of a playthrough. This is what took me from "pick it up for $30-40 later" to "Don't worry about picking it up at all." I actually prefer the ending of Mass Effect 2 where everyone dies over this ending. That is more akin to an open ending than ME3 is claiming to be. It's just a better end to Shepard's tale in general IMHO. I don't know if I ever will end up owning Mass Effect 3 but if I do, it will be for a $20 bill or less if they don't do something with that thing they call an ending. As it is, it is a story that starts out good and just plain out deflates the entire experience at the end.
I didn't buy it on launch and I am happy because it turned out it was a great product to boycott. They stuck it to me a little bit with Dragon Age 2. Glad I didn't get stuck twice.