Poll: What's so bad about ME3's ending?

[Kipiru]

I've said it before- there was nothing wrong with the ending, it simply didn't appeal to the tastes of some people. It is purely a subjective thing, so I feel the backlash towards BioWare was unwarranted. The ending was tragic, epic and presented the player with one of the toughest choices in the game. The fact that there was no scenario where Shepard lives only made the choice heavier. People are free to dislike the "character dies" approach as an end to the series and even say that BioWare chose poorly with that decision, but outcries of foulplay are simply ridiculous. Nobody has the right to ask of a creator to alter his creation, this is a story told and thus it ends, for better or worse. It's like asking for a rewrite of Romeo and Juliet, so they don't die in the end.

 

[bificommander]

I'd only played ME3 after I'd already heard that everyone felt the ending sucked. And when I played it... yeah, I could see where they were comming from. It wasn't good. After the fun and inovative handling of multiple endings in ME2, getting a poor man's version of the Deus Ex ending (the first one, mind you) was a disappointment. And Deus Ex managed it without gaping plotholes, a complete tonal shift, extremly forced drama and had some fun gameplay in the choice.

To elaborate on those points, well, I don't think I need to cover the plot holes, do I? The tonal shift is also big. Suddenly the big, overarching conclusion is that organics and synthetics cannot coexist? What the hell did we play ME2 and ME3 for then?

By forced drama I mean how the negative side effects of the choices seemed shoo-horned in. We established in ME2 that the Reapers aren't just ordinary synthetics, so why is there no way to destroy them without taking out all synthetics along with it? Plus, all choices end with Shepard dying, but for completely different reasons. Destroy the Reapers? Your synthetic parts will be destroyed and kill you (what, will all toasters cease functioning too?). Control the reapers? Ohh, too bad, we need to upload you consciousness in a way that'll kill you. Synthesis? Yeah, that needs to kill you too for some bizare reason. It's all so convoluted. If the Crucible had gotten damaged in the battle for Earth, so that any power surge would have resulted in the thing blowing up or something, it would have made more sense. Now the creators of the Star Child seem even stupider. Not only did they try to solve the problem of races being wiped out by their synthetic creations by building a synthetic creation and giving it complete control, but everything is designed to kill the user if you want to change anything.

And by gameplay in the choice, I refer to something the new Deus Ex screwed up as well. In that game as well as ME3, the choices are made with a single push of the button at the last second of the game. Okay, you need to walk a bit in ME3, but there's no gameplay involved. Quicksave, and play all endings one after the other. The first Deus Ex meanwhile made you work for the choice you made. Several character you meet tell you what they want you to do as you approach the last two levels and what it will result in. And once you've chosen, you need to travel through the last two levels completing different objectives. It makes the choice feel more organic, instead of the stupid idea of the villain's lair having a single machine with 4 buttons that lets you do exactly what you need to stop him.

The EC was better, but still ultimately dissapointing. Of special note is its attempt to fix some of the worst plot holes in the ending. But it did so badly. For example, the plot hole of how your companions end up on the Normandy. The EC, which was supposed to 'clarify' the original ending, showed the Normandy land and pick up your teammates right in front of you. Yeah, that's not a clarification, that's a retcon.

And it's a bad retcon, because it just introduces more plot holes. In no particular order: Why don't we just medigel that shit? The pickup scene only shows your two teammates of the last fight being picked up, but all your crew members were at the rallypoint with Anderson, so when did they get back? How does the Normandy get there so quickly from orbit? Why doesn't Harbringer blow up the easily recognizable ship of his Nemesis since ME2 when it's parked right in front of his deathrays for a full minute? If the Normandy can just fly down there so quickly, why doesn't it do so again after Harbringer leaves, letting those two useless marines quickly enter the teleport beam?

In other words, they didn't put much thought into this. It smells of desperation to give some justification to their original plothole-filled ending, so they just came up with a bad excuse as to why it totally makes sense for your teammates to be up there. We also get an extra scene telling Joker to retreat, because that's also something Angry Joe complained about. But why is he ordered to retreat? Shouldn't the fleet keep guard of the Crucible until they're done? And why is the Normandy the only ship in a Mass Relay jump, if everyone was retreating?

In short, EC or original, the ending is a dissapointment, not nearly up to the standards of the writing before this moment, even in ME3 itself. The sage deserved better.

 

[Delerien]

Honestly, I would have rather just gone with the Reapers being arrogant and cryptic instead of having their ludicrous origins explained. Sovereign was arrogant and considered their reasoning to be beyond organic comprehension, so why did they back out on that prospect and instead give them a really stupid motivation? "As Synthetics, we will destroy and assimilate your cultures to prevent you from creating Synthetics that will destroy you. Because we're totally not like those synthetics who rebelled and overthrew their creators-OH WAIT"

This is actually what i meant when i said the Reaper AI is insane. Of course synthetics will always destroy organics as long as the reapers are the ones doing it. Shepards reaction to this was what really bothered me. You just have to sit there, listen to it babble on and pretending it's all coming together now or something.

But why is he ordered to retreat? Shouldn't the fleet keep guard of the Crucible until they're done? And why is the Normandy the only ship in a Mass Relay jump, if everyone was retreating?

At least on that part i think i can shed some light. They retreat because they know somethings blowing up but they don't know the specifics. So they feel safer the farther away they are. Joker and by extension the Normandy actually waits a while longer because he still wants to pick up Shepard, thus he's the only whos still in mid jump during the explosion, while the rest of the fleet has already left.

snip

He, your headcanon is almost identically to mine. The only difference being that for me Shepard is conscious the whole time and since the Reapers kinda neglected to built any defense right into the crucible the AI makes one final (and hilariously pathetic) effort to try to convince Shepard that s/he doesn't have to destroy the Reapers.

 

[Ironside]

I thought the ending was complete garbage, but that just meant it fit well with the rest of the story for the third game. I dont know why everyone concentrates on the end so much - the story was poor throughout with only a couple of good moments such as Mordins scene and parts of Rannoch. If you are going to pick story as your major problem you may as well be consistent rather than just pick the last 10 minutes of the game.

 

[Savagezion]

Before EC, it was garbled nonsense that, honestly, the indoctrination theory did it a favor and added more depth to it than Bioware could have wished for. Indoctrination Theory wasn't perfect, and I didn't subscribe to it before or, especially, now - but it was leagues better than what was actually sitting there staring blankly back at us. At least the theory gave purpose to the starchild existing in the plot at all. I can't stress enough how blessed Bioware was to have that caliber of fan-fic thrown their way to gloss over a major screw up. By doing an extended cut with it included, they could explain away the problems it held, but it would have worked and I would have shook my finger, winked, acknowledged they got lucky, and been appeased.

Extended cut - See above really, only now it isn't garbled; it's just nonsense. They would have been much better off railroading the final fight into either victory or loss depending on war assets, then making 30 second - 2 minute cutscenes that did checks as to what it would play at the end providing a custom endgame cutscene that would end up being 10-12 minutes long that served as a tribute to all the choices the player made and how they effected the outcome. A customizable ending like that isn't hard and was being done in the days of the SNES.

Overall, Mass Effect had more potential in the pre-ending story than the ending could possibly deliver. Rather than try to one-up that content just embrace that the ending can't be better than the story. It is the story that is epic, not the ending. What they did instead by trying to one-up it, was actually undermine the story as a whole making the story itself lose weight. Good job! Epic fail, in a very literal sense of that term.

 

[w9496]

I like the ending with the Extended Cut installed, even if it does make me incredibly sad and bummed out for the rest of the week when I play it.

One thing I really would have preferred is to be able to talk to your crew and friends if you survived the ending. This would give you a chance to see what they're up to, spend time with your love interest, and maybe have some missions(not sure at all how those would work, but it's an idea dammit).

 

[Oly J]

sorry to be "that guy" but for me the worst thing about ME3's ending is that people are STILL talking about it, even that doesn't bug me too much and I suspect I'd understand if I'd played the game, but I'm sure it was blown out of proportion, no ending deserves so much attention

 

[Ren_Li]

I felt that the ending turned it's back on what made Mass Effect, Mass Effect.

It's writing, it's ability to emotionally draw a person in, it's dedication to it's own in-universe lore, and indeed that lore itself. In my opinion, the ending- minus EC- turned it's back on everything that drew fans into the series, and raised more questions than answers- and I don't mean the good kind of questions that leave you thinking, but the questions which leave you going "what the fuck, how, but that... WHAAAT." Those are rather bad questions to end a series on.

But yes. Long and short of it- regardless of opinion on how it played out, what it was, etc- is that it felt NOTHING like Mass Effect. I'm embarrassingly emotionally involved and invested in the series, and when I reached the ending "choice", I just walked up to one of them without CARING what I was choosing. I was bored. I was totally switched off.
This from someone who sat through all the monotonous boring side quests throughout the series countless times. I stopped caring. I switched off. I didn't give a crap how it ended any more.
And most of all, when it was all over, the overwhelming impression I was left with was that it felt like the ending was written by someone who knew very little about Mass Effect, who didn't care about the ending at all, and that it was stuck on there in a sort of "meh whatever I don't care just do whatever so I can do something else" mentality.

And even now- the EC makes me care more about the ending, and if it had originally been released on the disk, there wouldn't have been the fury over it. But still, even now, I hate the "choices", because they feel so "out of character" for the series, so illogical and mind-boggling, that I can't even consider doing anything but take the "Destroy" option and try to pretend that's all there was there at all.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

It was horrific. For a start, it ignored all your decisions up to that point. Secondly, it involved a Deus Ex Machina, which seems to me like a very stupid thing to stake the fate of all sentient life on. Thirdly it was unsatisfying, from the way Shepard reacted to the ultimatum to the fates of the characters and other races, remedied slightly with the extended cut. I would much rather at least the choice to rely on conventional weaponry and fail against the Reapers gloriously than the ending. In fact, how about give players a chance to gather intel on Reapers during missions, and intuit what they need to invest in/recommend to defeat the Reapers, and have a number of viable strategies that dedicated players will be able to piece together? Altered by whether you have the Rachni/Geth/Krogan at the very least? It could have so easily been better than it was.

But mainly the first one, because my main argument is this: Whether or not the ending makes sense in the storyline (I don't think it does, but anyway), the series was promised an ending that took your choices into account. It doesn't, and by virtue of that also exposes the arbitrary nature of every other choice you made in the entire series.

In the end, I can't see how anyone who has played through the series could be satisfied with the ending, and there are probably people who can't see why I am so infuriated with it. It was a major disappointment that I'd rather not dwell on.

 

[Snotnarok]

It's like there's new threads like this every day on this site and it's not even that bad compared to other endings in other games. Yes it's the ending of a series spanning 3 games but there's been worse I think

Bad game endings I've had recently:
RAGE
Bioshock
Metroid Other:M
Sonic 4 Episode II
Diablo 3
Space Marine
Fallout 3's original ending

Heck Most NES/Master System/SNES/Genesis/Turbo Graphix 16 games have crap endings

But whatever, we get it, it's not a great ending. The game, and series however I felt were some of the best games I've played in a long long time. Don't like the ending? Make a new one up in your head, everybody lives and they go on to play Orcs Must Die 2, together, and they kill all the orcs there ever was.

Bad endings are not uncommon, they're more common than good I'd say...it'd be nice to see a thread discussing ...GOOD endings for once or endings that someone enjoyed.
Sure it'd be a bunch of spoiler tags and such for posts but it'd be different than the constant game hatred everyone seems to have here where nothing meets expectations seriously it's like if the game isn't a 10/10 it's crap.

 

[Silly Hats]

Replayed the EC ending with a mid/high EMS and decided to Synthesis. I thought that it was good and touching and i'll be feeling like crap the following week (in a good way)- thanks Bioware.

I think that there are valid reasons for disliking ME3 endings, though I still stand by the fact that for every good point, there some people just bandwagon still.

 

[Madkipz]

Spoiler

At first, I thought it was bad, but after seeing it with the EC and thinking on it, I just think it's... okay now.

Originally, the idea of the three endings seemed silly, but then I realized one of the main staples of the series: choice. This whole time we've been trying to destroy the Reapers, and for the power hungry Shepard, that's not an ideal solution, so having the Destruction option works for the power hungry Shepard. The Synthesis option did feel out of nowhere, and a bit weird... but ultimately, if you don't like it, you don't HAVE to make the choice, just pick something else. Of coarse, there's no explanation of how it works, which doesn't bother me, but if does to people, that's fair.

My main issue though was closure originally. I knew nothing about what my actions had done once it ended, or what had happened to my allies and the people I had met. EC did give this to me, but something about it still nags me.

Thats precisely the basis of my disgust with the game.

All your choices boil down to what color of meat (renegade or paragon) you wanted with your potatoes, and not even on those did Bioware keep consistent.

Everything that should have been impactful got turned into an artificial number under the all encompassing military readiness. You want to talk about meaningful choice in a game? Witcher 2 has a few key distinct choices that lead you through act 1-3 in a completely different manner. That is meaningful choice. What you decided to do has an impact on how the world and your actions flow together rather than separate of each others.

Mass Effect 1-3 had no such thing, although number one certainly pretended that it would have at some point. Bioware went nowhere with choice. All they did was reflavour the same setpiece in 2 different manners, and fuck the lore in the ass with each new iteration of cerberus.

I picked control. Just to see what would happen, and then the internet exploded. Because Mass Effect pretended to be something else. It pretended to have meaningful choice and boasted that your decisions would matter, but in the end of the series - once all was said and done - Bioware failed. They failed so hard and fell so short that they are dead as a developer. The walking dead did some of the same thing (your choices are merely fluff or rendered moot by events in the next episode), but at least it made some sense out of itself and had a decent ending to it.

 

[ellers07]

I have to say I enjoyed the ending and I kind of see where people are coming from who didn't, but I will never understand the hate for it. ME3's ending didn't seem to have any more or less choice to it than the previous games. I've seen a lot of praise for ME2's but when you come right down to it, your only real choice was if you blow up the reaper base or keep it. I suppose your crew was a little more involved at the end and their fate was tied in to your decisions, but that just describes the entire game of ME3.

Yes, the Star Child had warped logic, but I would expect that he would. A being who repeatedly destroys the galaxy should have issues logically thinking things through. Otherwise... well, we'd have no game. Doesn't every villain have to have logic we don't agree with. In my mind, it made sense for there to be a higher power controlling the reapers. There's a godlike being what manipulates the universe and it took the form of a kid that Shepard was figuratively haunted by throughout the game. I can live with that. The only thing that would have made it better was if he was voiced by John de Lancie.

As for the three color complaint, that's the one that I really truly don't understand. Yes, they used three different colors to visually make them look different, but your choice at the end has three very different implications. Should they have made three different animations for each one? I guess they could have, but I don't see how it makes that big of a difference. What I really liked is that all the endings could (in theory) appeal to people who played the game entirely different ways. Someone above commented that they liked the refusal ending because that fit their Shepard. That choice wasn't even an option for my Shepard. I had spent three games trying to unite people. In the first game I had to deal with Human and Alien relations. In the second, it's all about bringing an unlikely crew together and dealing with Quarian and Geth issues. The third game brought it all to a head and the only option that made sense for me was Synthesis. Refusing all options wasn't a choice because my play through had always been about making the best possible choice in a bad situation. How cool that our Shepards could all come to these very different conclusions.

So, while I get some of the complaints I really thought this was a fitting end to what I see as the greatest video game series. It was a series that allowed us to sculpt our characters in a way I've never seen before. Having just finished the Citadel DLC, I realize how much I've enjoyed my character and the whole crew. I excited to see what comes next, whether it be prequel, sequel, or something in between.

 

[TheCommanders]

I've said it before- there was nothing wrong with the ending, it simply didn't appeal to the tastes of some people. It is purely a subjective thing, so I feel the backlash towards BioWare was unwarranted. The ending was tragic, epic and presented the player with one of the toughest choices in the game. The fact that there was no scenario where Shepard lives only made the choice heavier. People are free to dislike the "character dies" approach as an end to the series and even say that BioWare chose poorly with that decision, but outcries of foulplay are simply ridiculous. Nobody has the right to ask of a creator to alter his creation, this is a story told and thus it ends, for better or worse. It's like asking for a rewrite of Romeo and Juliet, so they don't die in the end.

Point? Missing it.

The biggest problems with the ending have nothing to do with the fact that Shepard dies in *most* (not all) of the endings. It's the thematic departure from the rest of the series, and the complete lack of logic. Using your chosen example, it's like if Romeo and Juliet had ended with Macbeth suddenly appearing and killing Romeo, and then asking the audience to decide if he should force Juliet to marry him, kill her, or knock her out and sell her to a better suitor against her will. It makes no sense, comes out of nowhere, introduces a new character that feels like it's from some other story entirely, ignores what's happened before it, introduces a choice we've had no reason to anticipate, for which no option sounds particularly appealing, and then forgets about the main character.

 

[jcfrommars9]

I didn't like the Synthesis ending. It felt far too easy for me. After three games of struggling, fighting and sacrificing to unite alien races after centuries of distrust, discrimination and war it just came down to nothing more than Shepard sacrificing his or herself to bring about peace not through negotiation and hard work but just the reapers putting their code into every living thing? Shepard once sacrificed his or her own life to save just one person, one and never regretted it. Shepard was already part of the walking dead and to sacrifice his or herself to save an entire galaxy would be a very simple choice. Shepard is not the kind that fears death.

 

[thanatos388]

Starchild: Synthetics will always rebel aganst organics so we have to protect you.
Me: You mean when the Geth were attacked by the Quarians without any previous provocation? Or when they fled beyond the veil and bothered nobody? Or when you took control of them and told them to kill organics?
Starchild: Synthetics will always rebel against organics...
So yeah the ending made no sense and was stupid. Also there was that scene in the EC where they save your party by LANDING THE NORMANDY (It cant land on uneven terrain like that. In fact, I dont think it can land period.) And having some stupid soldiers run out shooting....at nothing there were only other soldiers out there. Why do people still bother to talk about this?

 

[Savagezion]

Why do people still bother to talk about this?

I think will be talked about for quite some time and probably should be despite everyone being sick of it. It's kinda like if Babe Ruth came up to bat and pointed to the outfield and had struck out in 3 pitches. This ending was pretty face palm worthy and was born out of arrogance Bioware couldn't back up. Unless you are like me and think Bioware knowingly lied about their game to hype it up. The icing on the cake was how fans were ridiculed for calling Bioware out on such a blunder and defended such a monumental disaster. Ironically using "it's just a game" defense in conjunction with the "artistic integrity" defense which don't coincide and actually work against each other creating a big circle jerk. According to most defenses to Bioware, no one is ever allowed to criticize a game ever by those two defenses combined provided you actually believe both can be valid defenses towards a single title.

By that same logic, people should hush up about female characters because "it's just a game" and "artistic integrity". As sick of ME3 as I am, I don't really think it should be swept under the rug and out of sight yet.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I voted for the last option. I have decided that The Citadel DLC, or the one I wrote, is where the Mass Effect story ends. I refuse to accept...that thing that BioWare gave us. Take it back, I will stick with my own thank you.

 

[thanatos388]

Why do people still bother to talk about this?

I think will be talked about for quite some time and probably should be despite everyone being sick of it. It's kinda like if Babe Ruth came up to bat and pointed to the outfield and had struck out in 3 pitches. This ending was pretty face palm worthy and was born out of arrogance Bioware couldn't back up. Unless you are like me and think Bioware knowingly lied about their game to hype it up. The icing on the cake was how fans were ridiculed for calling Bioware out on such a blunder and defended such a monumental disaster. Ironically using "it's just a game" defense in conjunction with the "artistic integrity" defense which don't coincide and actually work against each other creating a big circle jerk. According to most defenses to Bioware, no one is ever allowed to criticize a game ever by those two defenses combined provided you actually believe both can be valid defenses towards a single title.

By that same logic, people should hush up about female characters because "it's just a game" and "artistic integrity". As sick of ME3 as I am, I don't really think it should be swept under the rug and out of sight yet.

I agree with wanting to use ME3 as an example for atrocities against storytelling but this thread is focused on the ending itself which has already been deconstructed to the point that we know every insignificant little detail available. While we should be able to move past all that to how this effects the industry in how they respond and over hype games nobody is talking about that. This thread is solely focused on the ending itself.

 

[AD-Stu]

A lot of time has passed and the emotions have subsided a lot for me, so I'd like to think I'm being a lot more objective about it now. And I still consider the ending to be a steaming pile of crap, which the Extended Cut (and Leviathan and the Citadel DLC, to lesser extents) improved in some respects and made worse in others.

I could go into detail but it's all pretty redundant at this stage. Basically time hasn't made it any better, I'm just less angry about it.