Vrex360 said:
What I want and what a lot of other players want (I imagine) is some kind of shining ray of hope out of all that. Some indication that what we did actually mattered, that our emotional attachments and relationships to characters were ultimatley worth it, that our choices actually impacted it in some way. That character's sacrifices weren't in vain and that despite all this loss there still remains hope for the future.
I don't understand, isn't that what you get? I mean, at the very end, the game throws a deus ex machina at you and gives you three choices, two of those choices being prior ideas beforehand. The third is really the only new choice that you'd probably never considered and or imagined and is obviously the middle ground, the compromise as it were between destruction and domination. Despite what you might think, all your herculean efforts to bring the galaxy together did in a way result in you having these choices in the first place. The Catalyst itself says something along the lines of 'but you are here, my priorities have changed'. The very fact you reached it after all your struggles and are now presented with the three different ways to save the galaxy tells you that what you did was not in vain, that those who sacrificed themselves did so ultimately that you could reach here at the eleventh hour. Sure, you were always going to reach here because it's the end of the game, but if you look at it from a story perspective rather than purely a gaming experience, you realise that everything you achieved has led you here.
As for the more specific choices you made in the game, such decisions are ultimately too far-reaching into the future for the ending of Mass Effect 3 to wrap them up in a satisfying way. Better to leave them hanging for possible future explanation then try and shoe-horn them in at the end in a very half-assed and rushed way. Besides, how would you convincingly convey either the Quarians and Geth getting along or reverting to war or the Krogan peacefully breeding or aggressively expanding? These large events need a more thorough and detailed telling and don't really belong in the conclusion of Mass Effect 3; they seem to be issues best left up to the imagination, for now. Who knows, even with the Mass Relay's kaput, whose to say the races who have been using them for centuries or more wouldn't perhaps have some chance of recreating them and thus allowing a future game in the series (set considerably far in the future of the Mass Effect universe) to show the far-reaching ramifications of Commander Shephards choices in the first three games, through new eyes of course.
As for your hope for the future, the shining ray of light, doesn't that final cutscene satisfy? It infers to us that life did survive at least in some way and that Commander Sheperd's sacrifice was not in vain, even if some of the details have been lost to history. That's actually inferring more than just hope for the future, it
is the future.
Regardless of whether you liked the ending or not and were pleased with it or not, these fans making online petitions demanding the ending be changed are acting ridiculously, and here's why...
'Hey Bioware, we don't like the creative decision you made, and have the right to make, as authors with an artistic vision, and we, self-entitled thinking fans, believe we deserve a better ending, what with all the time we've invested in this franchise, and so we are petitioning you to give us one, disregarding or ignoring how you guys (the games creators), feel the story should end. Disliking it is not enough, we demand you change and alter you're vision to suit our needs.'
Now let me argue in greater depth, why I think ME3's ending, far from being a terrible dissapointment, is actually a stroke of brilliance. Moral ambiguity has been a central part of the Mass Effect series without being plainly obvious. Most people think the actions and decisions we as players make via the paragon and renegade system is a good vs evil like mantra: a moral dualism that is very black and white. This is most certainly true but with ME3 we are now seeing that many of the decisions we might have made in ME2 or even ME1 such as saving the Rachni, re-writing the Geth heretics or retaining the Genophage data, can have seemingly unforeseeable and negative consequences. Thus, whilst the actions we make might seem black and white, the outcomes and consequences of many of those far-reaching decisions are anything but. The ending to Mass Effect 3 takes this idea to the extreme, giving us three choices to choose from, none of them being either simply right or wrong.
Ideally, we're meant to as players really struggle with the choice because there is seemingly no easy or 'right' answer (or for that matter any wrong answer). It is this moral ambiguity which I think makes Mass Effect 3's ending really stand out in a good way from most other long-spanning series' of any genre, because it is ambiguous, it isn't just Commander Shepherd defeating the Reapers and saving the day. Instead, it's unpredictable, unexpected, and seems to intentionally challenge how we might have perceived all the events leading up to the final moment. Sure, you might validly criticise it for being tonally inconsistent or lacking a greater sense of closure or being poorly executed with the copy and paste cut-scenes but personally I think you'd be overlooking what it does achieve very effectively, arguably even profoundly; that of suggesting that sometimes there is no easy, straightforward answer, and sometimes events do occur beyond our control, but we must choose nonetheless.
My main complaint with the ending is that they didn't give you a choice not to choose any of those presented, if for instance, you felt like you were being manipulated or if you felt that all of the choices were terrible and that refusing to accept any of them was actually the right choice, even if it did mean the destruction of all life and the continuation of the reaper cycle.
I mean, how earth-shattering (quite literally) would that have been, if after all you've been through, all you've committed to stopping the Reapers, that you're commander Shephard sees each choice as being as detestable as the other and would rather let the cycle continue, realising it is actually the 'right' choice. Of course, this could not be a canonical ending (unlike the other three which have the potential) because this would effectively re-write the Mass Effect universe meaning any future games could not include any of the races we already know. It would also be incredibly dark and bleak, even nihlistic and highly unsatisfying, but at least then you would still have the choice, which is what Mass Effect is all about right? Still, I understand why they didn't include it, assuming they considered it in the first place, probably because of its lack of canonicty viability and the fact you actually lose the fight as opposed to sort of win by changing the circumstances. Plus, it would probably grate for many people as being 'out of character' beyond mere divergence, but then characters are hardly fixed and can change given the right circumstances.
