Why the Hate for ME3 ending? *spoiler alert*

[Gigatoast]

Everything up until the final decision I absolutely loved, but as soon as you made your choice the story cliff dives into a concrete floor.

I hate it because it's a dead end, not just for the game, but for the entire series. If the mass relays are destroyed that means there can be no more travel between system, which means the galactic community is completely done for, which means everything you just spent the past 3 games fighting for was entirely pointless. It would have been better just to let the reapers kill everyone so the next cycle can have a chance.

There's also no post-game, no way of knowing the outcome of all the decisions you've been making, no closure or proof that you did the right thing. Everyone was screwed anyway so what did it matter? None of your relationships have any payoff, you don't get to see Shepard walk into the sunset with their true love, it's just an all around unhappy ending. And after 6 years of buildup WE DESERVE A DAMN HAPPY ENDING!

Don't defend it, you know you'd rather have gotten something better, and I'm sure with enough pressure we could force Bioware to change it and the series could stay brilliant all the way through.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

you know what doesn't make sense about 2 of the 3 endings? when the Relays were destroyed, nearly every living thing in the galaxy was in the Sol system, TRILLIONS of life forms, but then the relays get destroyed, effectively stranding them in the Sol system, meaning MASSIVE overpopulation, lack of resources, starvation, then death anyways....

 

[Joccaren]

*snip*

1) Plot holes.
2) Lack of exposition and closure. You are told NOTHING about what happens at the end. You are shown a short montage that allows you to piece together a little, but we know very little about what happened during and after the end.
3) Lack of choice. All three endings are extremely similar: Reapers stopped, Mass Relays destroyed, Normandy stranded. It ties somewhat into the exposition where you aren't shown the differences your choices make, but it also goes beyond that. There is honestly no choice my Shepard would take out of them. He would do what was proposed by some BSN member: Refuse to choose, and watch the fleets engage the Reapers. Gather enough war assets, they win. Don't, they lose. It adds in an opportunity for the galaxy to lose to the Reapers, it adds in a chance for the galaxy to remain as is, but defeat the Reapers. There is more choice and variety to the endings than there is with the three we have
4) The massive Deus Ex Machina pulled. I can live with a bomb of sorts that one hits all the Reapers, like it is constantly hinted towards during the game. I wouldn't like it, but I could live with it. What I can't live with is the fact that what this 'bomb' does is give 3 options at the end that your choice controls the galaxy for a while. That's taking it too far.
5) The lack of an ending that is 'happy'. There is an ending in which Shepard lives, but if the rage and comments are anything to go by, its not Shepard we care about. We want our squadmates to be safe. Instead, they are stranded on some random planet in the middle of nowhere by some random Deus Ex Machina at the end.
6) Lack of any real confrontation with the enemy. What made Mass Effect 1's ending so satisfying to me was that I dealt with the two arch-nemesis of the game personally. I killed Saren, then Sovereign controlled Saren. Imagine if the end had of been a dialogue choice as to whether you shoot and kill him, pull a Harbinger and ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL'd him or merge with him, then it just showed a cutscene where that happened. It wouldn't have been very satisfying, and that exhibits many problems that people have with this ending, including the fact that you never really faced him.
7) All your choices account for nothing. They are converted into a meaningless 'Galactic Readiness Meter'. I wanted to see the Destiny Ascension destroying a Reaper, the Zhu's Hope colonists fighting on Earth, Zaeed leading some Mercs into battle, the Rachni engaging Reaper forces. Instead, all that happens is you are shown a rather generic space fight based of your galactic readiness meter, and your Geth/Quarian choice. Even then, post game your choices affect nothing either, whereas they have always affected something in ME titles, and in DA:O (Can't remember DA2).
8) The pacing was just bad. You are rushed through London, through the talk with the Illusive man, through pretty much everything and then you are just plopped at an anticlimactic ending. After it accelerated you towards a conclusion, the pace just stopped. All of a sudden, all of the tension built up previously just disappeared as you were given three choices and that's it.
9) The Reaper's reasoning is absolute crap. A 3 year old child could come up with a better plan of action than that 'Jason' kid AI thing.
"We have prophesied with our crystal ball that Organics will always make evil AI that attempt to wipe them out, what should be do?"
'Jason':
"Harvest all Organic life every 50,000 years to stop Synthetics from destroying it"
3 year old kid:
"Kill the bad things"
Its really not that hard.
10) The seemingly contradictory undermining of the Original Man vs Machine conflict with another, shitty Man vs Machine conflict. The Original conflicts were Man vs Reapers (Machines) and Quarians vs Geth (Machines)(Was Originally Man vs Geth, but a sufficient explanation was given to have the Geth not be vs Man, but vs Noone until the Quarians attacked) (Man in both cases == Everyone Organic). What this is undermined by is a Universal Man vs Machine conflict that the Reapers are trying to help man in by wiping man out. Here is how it all ends up working out for my playthrough:
The Reapers allied with the Geth to wipe out Organic life so that they could save Organic life from being killed by the Geth, who were only hostile to Organic life because the Reapers intervened and who were by now allied with Organic life to stop the Reapers from wiping out Organic life to save it from the Geth who are their allies. Doesn't make a ton of sense does it?

The doctor appears in the final moment:

Who: Sheperd... the future needs you... grab my ship!!!
Sheperd: Where are we going?
Who: TO ADVENTURE!!

No no no, you got it wrong.
Who: Shepard... the future needs you... To the TARDIS!
Shepard: Who are you?
What are you?!
Why are you here?!?!
Who: The Doctor, Doctor, Fun

The ending when Shepard lives is when You have above 4k-5k effective military strength (overall * readiness %, default 50% if You didn't grind MP) and pick destroy the reapers. You pretty much can't get it without MP unless You made very specific choices in previous games (like killing Wrex in ME1).

It is very possible without Killing Wrex in ME1 and without doing multiplayer, just somewhat harder. You have to get pretty much every asset, AND have Anderson live.
4K if Anderson lives
5K if Anderson dies
and Shepard survives. I'm currently sitting at a little over 8K (4K effective) playing with Wrex alive and no multiplayer. It took scanning every system and making every diplomatic choice I could to get there, but it is possible. Just.

 

[Greatjusticeman]

I don't understand why people hate that. I loved it. Very much. It fitted, and maybe i see things differently, but you are all fools for hating such powerfull, and epic ending. The series ended perfectly. Everything came into a full circle... and i only watched 1 of the 3 possible endings.

Eeesh.

1. God Child is basically an exposition fairy. Why not have Harbinger serve this purpose? Or anything other than a ghostly child. The voice acting was bad, and having an exposition dump at the pinnacle of the game was doubly bad.
2. Shepard spends the entire series arguing against inevitable outcomes given to him/her by godlike AIs. At the very end, a godlike AI says "here are some inevitable outcomes, pick 1" and Shepard says "Ok!". Was he/she tired? This is OOC and slightly absurd.
3. Clumsy attempt at shoe horning some theme into Mass Effect. Theme was never the strength of the series, characters were.
4. None of the endings take into account any of the choices you've made throughout the three games. As this was arguably Mass Effect's most significant claim to fame, it's hardly surprising people feel upset.
5. Why is Joker fleeing the system? When did this happen? Confusing and never explained.
6. Why is the crew with him? When did this happen? Confusing and never explained. You can even see EDI get off the crashed Normandy on "destroy all synthetics" ending, and/or crew members who were with you when Harbinger destroyed your entire force. EXTREMELY confusing and never explained.
7. The voice acting with the old man/little boy at the very end was atrocious.
8. Shepard is wearing different armor/carrying different weapons after getting knocked out/wounded. Confusing, never explained.
9. In one of the endings, Shepard wakes up/takes a breath whilst lying in some smoky rubble. Shepard was on board a space station that blew up.

Now, it's fine if you like the endings, that is your prerogative. God knows we have some ridiculous OTT criticism of Bioware on these forums, and I'm not the type of guy to deny someone their enjoyment of something. But "you are all fools"? Seriously? You're telling me you can't understand ANY of the complaints people have?

1.) For the last time - the AI that Shepard speaks to at the end is the Catalyst. It literally calls itself that. Not anything else. The people that refer to it as godkid or spacekid or spacegod aren't even listening to the goddamn game. An exposition fairy? This was a role planned from the start. Sorry it was giving you answers at the end. Did you think Harbinger was going to come up and have a nice chat with you or something? He tried to kill Shepard.

2.) Was he/she tired? More than that - Shepard was on the brink of death. I'm actually surprised Shepard even went on that far. Did you expect Shepard to pull out some intellectual statements while his groin was bleeding out? Shepard was presented with the options to end the Reaper's cycle. What other choice was there for Shepard?

3.) There are themes in every piece of considered high entertainment - be it film, literature, and video games. Characters are what drive the themes of anything. The issue of synethics and organics getting along or not has always been apparent. Things like cultural tolerance, terrorism, racism, the 'any means necessary', and other themes have been in every game - you're just blind to this.

4.) False. Your choices matter to the end point and beyond. Will the Krogan now have a population surge or not? Will the Quarians have to live alone with the Geth or still cooperate with the Geth, or anything of that matter? Your choices mattered - with your logic on this, I might as well say that everything I do in my entire life is completely worthless because I will eventually die one day.

5/6.) I'll agree with you here - the entire Normandy sequence is off. I could understand Joker maybe wanting to high tail it out of there once they saw the Crucible beam storm as nobody knew what it was and what it could do. However, the crew I was charging the Citadel beam with was on board. But you're wrong about EDI showing up in the destroy synthetics ending - she was not there when the Normandy crashed. I saw Joker, Ashley, and Garrus - she died.

7.) A matter of opinion - some people like Meer's acting while others don't. This shouldn't be a point against the game unless you're talking about Jessica Chobot/Dianna Allers - that was fucking atrocious.

8.) Shepard got reaper lasered. His armor is molded into his body, literally. The pistol is either his or he found it among the other dead soldiers around him. Not that big of a hole if it all.

9.) Who the hell knows with this one. I prefer to just disregard this - Shepard should be dead, regardless. Even if he is somehow alive in this ending, it's definitely not for long. To open to be conclusive.

 

[Keava]

The ending when Shepard lives is when You have above 4k-5k effective military strength (overall * readiness %, default 50% if You didn't grind MP) and pick destroy the reapers. You pretty much can't get it without MP unless You made very specific choices in previous games (like killing Wrex in ME1).

It is very possible without Killing Wrex in ME1 and without doing multiplayer, just somewhat harder. You have to get pretty much every asset, AND have Anderson live.
4K if Anderson lives
5K if Anderson dies
and Shepard survives. I'm currently sitting at a little over 8K (4K effective) playing with Wrex alive and no multiplayer. It took scanning every system and making every diplomatic choice I could to get there, but it is possible. Just.

With every scan at 100%, peace between Quarians and Geths, curing Genophage, keeping Rachni queen, 90% paragon, getting the datapads from Eden Prime I ended up on 3525 EMS. Things I didn't do is cheat Wrex (didn't take Dalatress offer), had Morinth (most disappointing encounter in game tbh)instead of Samara, punched the reporter again during visit on Citadel (it's 10 or so assets if you go paragon on her iirc). So yeah. Still requires very specific play-through with very linear choices across the 3 games to get to 4k and no MP.

 

[rorycon]

I wasn't a huge fan of the ending because of the lack of closure, and not knowing what happens to the Normandy crew and not knowing what happens to galactic civilization when the mass relays are gone and pretty much the entirety of the galaxy's militaries are stuck around earth.
However after i got over my annoyance i realised bio ware have actually set mass effect up really well for a dlc that continues the story if not a squeal(unlikely, i know), as if you do the final assault with an effective military strength of over 5000 you see shepard in the rubble of the citadel suddenly breathes out, and also the conversation between the stargazer and the child where the stargazer says there is another story about Shepard. If that doesn't hint at a continuation at least on a dlc level then I don't know what does.

 

[Lithan]

I didn't get given the choice to join the Organic and Synthetic lifeforms, is there some requirement to be able to do that?

http://www.ign.com/wikis/mass-effect-3/Endings

 

[martyrdrebel27]

*snip*

The Reapers allied with the Geth to wipe out Organic life so that they could save Organic life from being killed by the Geth, who were only hostile to Organic life because the Reapers intervened and who were by now allied with Organic life to stop the Reapers from wiping out Organic life to save it from the Geth who are their allies. Doesn't make a ton of sense does it?

wow... i can't believe that didn't occur to me... OR THE FUCKING WRITERS OF THE GAME!

in This Cycle, after the Geth pushed out the Quarians, there was no AI/Organic conflict, until the Reapers showed up, FORCING a conflict, and using that as evidence that they need to wipe out all life. The Geth were actually one of the more peaceful races. In ME3, you're shown scenes that really make you realize how gentle the geth are, and only acted in self defense, and when they had the oppurtunity to wipe out the Quarians, they didn't. Because destruction wasn't their goal, only preservation. And that's something that NONE of the other races would have done.

It makes me imagine... I'm walking down the street with my best friend, a guy runs up, shoots him right in the face.

"Wow, I just saved your life, you can thank me later!"

and another thing, say they wiped all organic life out, but left the geth, by the time the next cycle was strong enough to be space-faring, wouldn't the geth have expanded so much that there's not much left?

and ANOTHER thing! planets only have finite resources, endless cycles of life growing on the galactic scale would leave no resources for future races. In ME2 i Depleted EVERY planet i came across. DEPLETED=NOTHING LEFT.

and ANOTHER THING 2! the advancements that lead to galactic economy and collective intelligence that lead to AI was really only possible BECAUSE of the reapers and their Mass Relays... if they had never constructed any of these things, each race would be left on their own planets, and the biggest threat they'd face is self-annihilation.

jesus, bioware...

I AM DISAPPOINT.