Am I going to cry at the end of Mass Effect 3? No spoilers!

[Johnny Impact]

If you're the crying type then probably.

Not because of the ending itself, which is an arbitrary, tacked-on A/B decision having fuck-all to do with the story you've been playing for ninety hours.

Neither do I have a problem with the "no clear right answer" thing. Both choices should have consequences, that's why they're meaningful choices. As far as that goes, the game delivers. The galaxy will NOT be the same.

No, the spoiler-free version of what bothers me is I spent a lot of time demonstrating certain things and it all got wiped away in favor of somebody else's answer. It didn't match what I'd been told or what I'd been doing.

Characters die, planets are wrecked, victory is measured in survival rather than getting everything you want. It's hard to say what's a spoiler because, for example, characters can live or die at many different times. I lost Kaidan in the first game but I understand it's possible for him to live through the whole series. I made quite a friend of Garrus and was very upset when my Garrus died at the end of ME2. Your Garrus may live or he may not. And so forth. It's different for everyone.

 

[Vault101]

I'm the kind of girl who gets waaaay too into my fiction. When I really, really like a book, a movie, a game, etc I get excessively emotionally invested. This is why it was a very bad move for me to start playing the Mass Effect series during a transitioning time of my life (my bad!) However, I started this quest and I must persevere!
.

no way to sugar coat it...

you will cry

you will feel empty inside

and NOT for the right reasons

 

[Starbird]

I don't get all the hate on the ending tbh. It wasn't perfect - sure - but in a game like ME it would have been hard to do it perfectly.

The extended cut was pretty damn awesome though, and the final message in the ending was just brilliant.

 

[votemarvel]

You can mod The Extended Anderson conversation back into the PC version of the game. I've done it because it doesn't change the pacing that much and it really cements the Shepard/Anderson relationship.

Here's a link to it http://www.nexusmods.com/masseffect3/mods/173/?.

Edit Spoilers I suppose https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmofIH7rN9U

 

[Shingeki no Gingerbeard]

At the very last moments of the game, probably not. As you watch the culmination of all your efforts to rally the different peoples of the universe pay off. As you watch beloved party members die because of decisions you weren't even aware of in previous games, you betcha.

I miss you, Mordin! *tear*

 

[GloatingSwine]

No, the spoiler-free version of what bothers me is I spent a lot of time demonstrating certain things and it all got wiped away in favor of somebody else's answer. It didn't match what I'd been told or what I'd been doing.

Well yeah, the whole second half of the game completely thematically undercuts the ending.

 

[mega lenin]

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Spoiler

What's worse about the synthesis ending is the underlying logic of it's utopian dreams. That the solution to the end of conflict is the end of differences and limitation. It hearkens back to Nazi dreams of ubermenschdom and frankly is the driving logic behind any genocidal policy. That peace and power can be obtained through the elimination of a group different from ours. Now I don't believe that to be the intended message of writers. I attribute this bizarre abomination to unrealistic EA deadlines, wanting to shoehorn extra ending choices, and really not thinking it through because fuck you this needs to be done before the holiday season.

The other problem with it was how antithetical it was to all the struggles of the entire series. The Reapers were billed as leviathan's that homogenized culture and opinion to their's. The collectors were warped to their image, their chief feature of subjugation was through indoctrination whose inner-workings are investigated by a ton of different characters in the game. Indoctrination the homogenization of will and opinion was their key feature as a race. And they were our enemy. Throughout the games we fought to preserve freedoms and our own will with our pluralistic crew against an enemy whose sole purpose was to eliminate us and assimilate what remained into their vast species. Even along story terms synthesis IS their solution. They harvest people and making them into biological and machine hybrids we refer to as reapers. And in the process they become part of the reapers vast machinery. Believing themselves independent (each of us a nation) but in fact simply doing the will as directed by apparently the catalyst in the citadel. And now the catalyst presents it as the best alternative and amazingly perhaps embracing the idea of shepherd as god power fantasy agree.

The other problem with that and the control ending is you can't really incorporate them into a canon of a post reaper invasion mass effect. Each create a utopia without conflict and without conflict there is no story. It's the end of history. It is all the current races of the galaxy reaching a technological singularity. You can't set a game in those settings. At least not one anyone would enjoy or would be relatable to people in the way the original series was.