Okay, look. It's not *terrible*. It's not "the worst ending ever". People are emotional, and they're engaging in a lot of hyperbole when trying to get across how they're feeling.
Were this a one-off space game, and we got that ending, I'd say it was an average to poor ending, but hardly anything to storm into the streets over. I'd likely say "Huh. Little disappointing, but...whatever. Some neat stuff I guess." and move on to other things.
The problem here is that, well, Bioware did something pretty special with Mass Effect. I've heard it described as gaming's first true epic, and while I think that title properly belongs to Ultima, there's no question that ME is the tighter, more cinematic, more realized, and more popularly accessible series. Perhaps its most celebrated selling point was the concept of player co-authorship of the story. This was OUR Shepard, this was OUR epic. We made significant choices, and thus shaped events in unique ways depending on the outcome of our actions. It created an unusually strong bond between player and character. Take Shepard away from that connection and he/she is a perfectly mundane, generic Mary Sue of a character. Prototypical space cowboy, not remotely as complex or interesting as protagonists such as Garrett, or The Nameless One, or even the Bhaalspawn. But with that connection, with that sense of player co-authorship and player investment, Shepard became something special. He/she became an extension of the player, of our values and desires. Shepard's struggles and triumphs became our struggles and triumphs. Shepard's friends became our friends. In a lot of ways, Mass Effect was a real step forward in digital storytelling. Not because of the complexity of the narrative, but because of the depth of the emotional attachment to the world.
Taken in this context, the questionable ending now has the potential to be devastating. Bioware invited the player to participate in the authorship of this story, and then at the 11th hour, removed the player from the equation and handed us their ending to the story we thought we were writing together. Some people may have enjoyed it and thought "Just how I would've done it!". Many others felt confused, and upset, and deleted from the process they thought they were a part of.
I've heard comparisons between this and say, television shows, or films, or books. That you can't over-do fan service, that you can't write stories by committee, and that Bioware needs to stay true to their artistic vision for the series. And while there are elements of truth to this, gaming is a unique medium that allows for stories to end in more than one way. You can't have a million endings to suit every person, but neither should you have three endings that are virtually indistinguishable from each other, and leave the player with more questions than answers, more confusion than closure.
The ending is a failure not because "it's the worst thing EVAR", it's a failure because it's an abrupt and confusing deviation from the spirit of the games its concluding. The games deserved a more coherent culmination. The fans deserved it, as well. If this is truly Bioware's artistic vision for their game, they don't need to violate it to satiate angry or disillusioned fans, but at the very least they have a responsibility to provide a little more clarity.
