ME3 Ending: What did you WANT it to be and WHY? (Expect Spoilers)

[Lithan]

Honestly the Paragon Renegade scaling seemed so unimportant in ME3 it just annoyed me. Most of the game choices require you to have such a low rank that you can use any affiliation and you can still choose both sides with the exception of the very last dialogue with the Illusive Man (I always played by the feel and let the game screw me over though I ended up like 3/4 paragon 1/4 renegade the window all the way to the top and I could always choose both... except Mr. suicide Man).
Oh boy I almost wanted it to end with Reapers cleaning out the whole galaxy after the big last heroic stand. Imagine how great it would be if you collapsed in the Crucible not knowing what happened next, I for once would be fine with not knowing what Crucible rly does.
Or if it was just a simple BFG of doom.
Or if the 3 choices we were actually given felt different from each other.

Im pretty sure TIM's last choice was based on galactic readiness and not reputation. Because my character maxxed out paragon halfway through the game and kept doing freaking EVERYTHING, got asstons more rep and still the rep choices there were greyed out for me.

Maybe someone who they were grey for who doesn't do MP wants to play through a second time (Import ME3 char saves your rep) to just get ungodly off the charts rep (mine was already pretty freaking far off the charts) to see if it's possible without >50% Readiness. I don't. Not worth it with that ending. And I played ME about 5 times and ME2 close to 10.

 

[StriderShinryu]

There should have been at least two more options, including:
1) The Reapers win. Nothing complex about it; you dun goofed and the Reapers successfully defeat your fleet and continue harvesting all advanced organic life.
2) Mass Effect's "Triumphant" ending. Where you shake the little bastard and say "I reject your bullshit choices. You tell me that organics and synthetics can't coexist? Look at the quarians and the geth, look at Joker and EDI. You're wrong and I know damn well that you can call off your troops and leave us to define our own future." The reapers are defeated, Shepard survives, and we get our typical "Hero" ending like the prior two games have offered.

Here is my thing:
-- Snippity --

While I didn't personally hate the ending at all, I think both of the above quoted posted made some very good statements and had some great ideas. I wasn't expecting a "happy" ending myself, but I admit to having hoped it would at least be an option. I also feel that the Choice-O-Matic way of offering the ending selection to the player was totally out of place and can definitely see why some people feel it actually goes against the decisions=outcomes nature of the rest of the series.

I guess my only real personal complaint about the ending(s) is that it feels way too short to work for a 150ish hour experience, but I would be very happy to have either JeanLuc761 or Elamdri's revisions in play.

 

[applesandoranges]

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[FFHAuthor]

I want a 'The Last Samurai' style ending for my commander. Defeat the Reapers, but get that little narration at the end, the sense of closure that after all he's suffered through, after all the terrible choices he had to make, the friends lost, the trials he's gone through, the death and Resurrection, the persecution, the fight to unite the galaxy and fight the Reapers, to be able to destroy them and just find some peace at last.

To sit in that Bar with Garrus.

To help Tali build her home on Rannoch.

To have that steak dinner with Kaiden.

To just have something simple be the final after credits end, not a pic and voice over that makes the game a legend being told. Give me that voice-over, fine, but damn it, let me see something that relates to my characters.

 

[Terminate421]

I wanted a Mass Effect 2 style ending in which a reaper is the final boss with me and my squad and a giant running explosion at the end, in the process to this, I wanted to see my war resources used to the fullest extent, such as the Geth Primes I ended up earning by doing a Legion/Portal styled mission. Then I wanted to see how my choices affected the galaxy and what my team mates did with their lives afterwords.

 

[applesandoranges]

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[omega 616]

Here is my thing:

The Reaper's Motive for extinction needs to be scrapped. It is the seed from which all the complaints about the game's ending stem. Their motive is to exterminate organic life from the galaxy because if they don't synthetic life will exterminate organic life from the galaxy.

WHAT?

I didn't read the rest of your post 'cos it was a bit of a doozey but I think it was kind of like trees ... hear me out.

There are some big ass trees in America, every so often the forest these trees are in ignites and burns the big ass trees down, now the big ass trees are gone other life can spring up and new big ass trees can grow.

The same way that last time the protheans got there head kicked in 'cos they were the dominant race to allow humans (and the other 5,000) races to become dominant. This reaper invasion was to kill all the humans (and the other 5,000) races so new dominant races could grow.

That's my take on it anywho!

I also liked it, never thought about doing an illusive man and controlling them but kind of made sense to me. Become immortal, make the reapers make a clone of you, live life like before but you can now crush any and all who you deem out of line ... you become a god (who is crap at making stuff) basically.

Isn't there an Indian god that only destroys stuff? Or if your feeling geeky I am sure there is a warhammer 40K chaos god who only destroys.

 

[BLAHwhatever]

More along the lines of DA:O

But I'm over it, I guess. Watched a lot of movies with weird, bad, lame, whatever endings. I suppose if I can shrug off those, I can shrug off this as well

The rest of the game was awesome though. Very good writing, humorous, sad and what I liked most, your crewmates interacting on the normandy and the ditadel. Was an awesome ride.

Would ride again.

Edit And I cried when Thane died. So bittersweet, dying with a prayer for me on his lips
And I went happy-berserk when I found my Space Hamster again.

 

[Saviordd1]

I'm not particularly against the three options presented to us as being potential avenues, but there should have been a hell of a lot more variety. Up to this point, Shepard has successfully been able to talk his/her way out of ANY situation, no matter the odds. He's never accepted the dark path given to him, and yet with the Catalyst, no protest is offered whatsoever. We're basically given these three incredibly depressing options completely out of the blue, and Shepard just goes with it.

There should have been at least two more options, including:
1) The Reapers win. Nothing complex about it; you dun goofed and the Reapers successfully defeat your fleet and continue harvesting all advanced organic life.
2) Mass Effect's "Triumphant" ending. Where you shake the little bastard and say "I reject your bullshit choices. You tell me that organics and synthetics can't coexist? Look at the quarians and the geth, look at Joker and EDI. You're wrong and I know damn well that you can call off your troops and leave us to define our own future." The reapers are defeated, Shepard survives, and we get our typical "Hero" ending like the prior two games have offered.

Beyond that...closure is a definite with a series this large. We NEED to know what happened to our friends and squadmates. We NEED to know what happens to galactic society after the REaper threat is gone. And we sure as hell don't need any extra questions that were introduced 5 minutes before the credits roll. And we don't need Shepard's very character foundation destroyed for no evident reason.

Just a few thoughts.

Here is my thing:

The Reaper's Motive for extinction needs to be scrapped. It is the seed from which all the complaints about the game's ending stem. Their motive is to exterminate organic life from the galaxy because if they don't synthetic life will exterminate organic life from the galaxy.

WHAT?

First, that doesn't make sense; you have the Reapers doing exactly what they say they are trying to stop. Unless you operate under the assumption that the Reapers don't exterminate ALL organic life, whereas other synthetic life would...I guess theoretically destroy ALL organic life to a bacterial level? Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.

Second, why are we suddenly supposed to accept as fact that it is true that all synthetic life will eventually destroy organic life? The only synthetic lifeforms that have actively tried to destroy all organic life are...the Reapers themselves. The only other example we have is the Geth, and there is no concrete evidence from the Geth to support the Reaper contention. In fact, it's quite the opposite.


In my opinion, I think they should have never given us a motive for the Reapers. Why do they want to kill us all? Just because. Because after all, the enemy you don't understand, the enemy who's motives are so utterly alien that they are beyond your comprehension, now that is truly terrifying. Heck, I would also have been ok with just operating under the assumption that I had in ME2, that Reapers needed to use us to create new Reapers. That's fine too.

By removing their motive, it removes the need for the god-kid AI who explains all this crap, and the need for the 3 choice ending.

I think then there could have been a plethora of endings

1. You failed to bring peace to the races of the galaxy. The Reapers defeat you and life is exterminated from the galaxy.
2. You failed to bring peace to the races of the galaxy. The Reapers defeat you and life is exterminated from the galaxy. However, you left some message for future generations of the next cycle to give them a chance.
3. You use the Crucibles magic McGuffin powers to Destroy the Reapers, but at heavy costs. It is a phyrric victory, society still crumbles, but the Reapers will never threaten an organic race again.
4. You use the Crucible's magic McGuffin powers to Destroy the Reapers, and the galaxy survives, but because you failed to truly bring peace to the races, without the threat of Reapers over there heads, soon the races of the galaxy seek to exploit each other in their weakened state
5. You or the Illusive Man used the Crucible's magic McGuffin powers combined with the Illusive Man's study of Reaper tech you saved on the Collector Base to take control of the Reapers and conquer the galaxy for humanity.
6. You unite all the races in the galaxy in a true alliance, Destroy the Reapers, bringing true and lasting peace to the galaxy, but at a high cost of life.
7. You unite all the races in the galaxy in a true alliance, Destroy the Reapers, bringing true and lasting peace to the galaxy, and Shepard survives the events.

Basically these.

I don't mind that the ending wasn't happy happy joy joy, but it should've at least made sense, not be copied from a god damned anime. Also, I really feel the OPTION for an awesome ending should exist, it should be hard as balls to get, but it should exist. Also the "You dun goofed" thing should also exist. This all seems simple, why can't bioware follow this? Their little "Plot twist" wasn't interesting, it was annoying and made me vow to never buy their shit again unless the fix it.

 

[boag]

I've been reading a lot about the rage over the ending of Mass Effect Three, and to be honest, I've read a lot of good arguments about why the ending of the current game is bad (and a few about why it's good). However, I haven't seen much if any of meaningful discussion about what people actually wanted to see from the endings of their Mass Effect games.

and I'm not talking about things like "I wanted my choices to matter" and "I wanted closure" or "I just didn't want it to suck." These don't really give any insight into what you are thinking. How am I supposed to know what you would view as "your choices mattering" or "Closure." I'm talking what did you actually want to see happen. Describe it for me, explain it to me. I want to see what people's actual expectations were.

I want an Epilogue that details what the fuck any of the 3 different choices of using the Crucible do to the rest of the Galaxy.

I dont even want a different ending, I just want shit to be explained in this game, and not have to wait for the next Mass Effect Title to learn what the fuck happened at the end of Sheppards story.

 

[AD-Stu]

I'm still trying to rationalise it, but here's my thoughts:

- I'm going to admit it up front, my preferred ending would have been the Hollywood one: Shepard rides off into the sunset after crushing the Reapers beneath her mighty booted heel and hearing the lamentations of their women. I've got nothing against downer endings, BTW. Some of my favourite books and films have them. It's just not the ending I wanted for this story. Society rebuilds, Tali gets her home on Rannoch, so on and so forth.

- That said, I figured things would probably end badly for Shepard. People were going to die, Shepard was probably going to die, it's war after all. If it had an ending like that which made sense, obviously I'd be sad but I'd be OK with it.

- I can kind of see why Bioware felt the need to do what they did... they probably thought they needed to give an answer to the question "Where did the Reapers come from, and why are they doing this?" Personally, I didn't need an answer to that question. I definitely didn't need one that made little if any sense and got pulled from nowhere at literally the last minute. Plus utterly implausible space magic. Ugh.

- Despite what I said above, I'm OK with the fact that there's no epilogue "this is what happened to Tali, this is what happened to Garrus" stuff. If it was there then great, but if not, I have an imagination and I can imagine what they got up to afterwards.

- There were some really lazy or badly executed parts of the ending. Liara was my love interest so it was fine with me that she was one of the three pictures that flashed up - but hearing that her picture turns up for people who romanced other characters (other than Ash or Kaidan) is just horrible.

- And the whole killing the Normandy thing at the end, putting everyone else you care about on a different planet for no explained reason (not to mention the sheer preposterousness of the Normandy just happening to crash an a garden world)... yeah, I wouldn't have done that. There's literally no reason for the Normandy to be where it was, or for any main character other than Joker to be on it.

I think part of what left me feeling so hollow is that it all smacks of writers trying to kill their creation so that their publisher can't do horrible things to it without their permission in the future... which anyone who's seen, say, the Alien series of movies will know is futile anyway.

Here is my thing:

The Reaper's Motive for extinction needs to be scrapped. It is the seed from which all the complaints about the game's ending stem. Their motive is to exterminate organic life from the galaxy because if they don't synthetic life will exterminate organic life from the galaxy.

*snip*

1. You failed to bring peace to the races of the galaxy. The Reapers defeat you and life is exterminated from the galaxy.
2. You failed to bring peace to the races of the galaxy. The Reapers defeat you and life is exterminated from the galaxy. However, you left some message for future generations of the next cycle to give them a chance.
3. You use the Crucibles magic McGuffin powers to Destroy the Reapers, but at heavy costs. It is a phyrric victory, society still crumbles, but the Reapers will never threaten an organic race again.
4. You use the Crucible's magic McGuffin powers to Destroy the Reapers, and the galaxy survives, but because you failed to truly bring peace to the races, without the threat of Reapers over there heads, soon the races of the galaxy seek to exploit each other in their weakened state
5. You or the Illusive Man used the Crucible's magic McGuffin powers combined with the Illusive Man's study of Reaper tech you saved on the Collector Base to take control of the Reapers and conquer the galaxy for humanity.
6. You unite all the races in the galaxy in a true alliance, Destroy the Reapers, bringing true and lasting peace to the galaxy, but at a high cost of life.
7. You unite all the races in the galaxy in a true alliance, Destroy the Reapers, bringing true and lasting peace to the galaxy, and Shepard survives the events.

^ this. For the love of all that's unholy, this. I would have been over the moon if this was how the ending worked. I'd never choose anything other than #7, even for my Renegade characters, but this would have been perfect.

 

[Jedoro]

I wanted to retire with my LI to that motherfucking apartment I won on Pinnacle Station.

But really, the endings of the first two games were about beating the odds, kicking ass, and taking names, then in the third it's not even an option.

Captcha: sting like a bee

Hmm, maybe if Shepard had plasmids, then he could've beaten the Reapers...

 

[putowtin]

OP: I want a simpler ending. Have it turn out that the Reapers are just evil and harvest organics to reproduce. They built the Relays and the Citadel to guide galactic expansion along a path that was easy to control and dominate (that doesn't have to change).
There are three endings dependent on your Galactic Readiness and maybe a couple of other factors.

1) Galactic Readiness is full- Happy ending. You win and Shepard and your crew live to tell about it.

2)Galactic Readiness is middling- Bittersweet. You win, but with very heavy losses and Shepard dies (maybe the Normandy and its crew too). You are remembered as the great hero that saved the galaxy.

3)Galactic Readiness is low- Bad Ending. The Reapers beat you and the cycle continues.

It is simple, but I'd prefer it to what we got and why couldn't we just have had a simple ending?

this seems good by me, wrap it up, I'll take it to go!

 

[boredhooman]

I would have rather had 6: 3 lose, and 3 win.

1: Reapers win, next cycle is screwed. You did not do anything extra and only played the game to get through it. Very low galactic readiness, no allies, etc.
2: Reapers win, but the next cycle will almost surely defeat them. You did just enough to mess up the Reapers, but not enough to kill them.
3: Reapers lose, but you do to. Everybody's dead. Next cycle, however, is free to develop their own technology and be totally awesome badasses.

4: You win, but everybody barely survives. The current ME3 ending. You did just enough and made just enough good choices to beat them. Opinion below*
5: You win, survive, no Deus Ex Machina but at a heavy price. Most governments are relatively structured, but now it's a standoff between surviving nations (depending on choices throughout game). Basically a galactic reset button.
6: You completely destroy the Reapers, no Deus Ex Machina, with surviving civilizations (depending on choices throughout game) relatively intact. I get to have my ride off into the sunset with Tali.

*Here's my opinion on this ending: it was beautiful. That piano piece during the ending cinematic brought me to tears. However, this is Mass Effect. If that was how I said, it would be great. If this was just some generic but popular 3rd person shooter where you didn't make choices, it would be great. However, it makes the choices not matter at all. Peace with Quarians and Geth? Pick your choice of laser. Genophage cured? Pick your choice of laser. Anything else hard as balls to pull off or otherwise something that should matter? Pick your choice of laser. And as mentioned before, plotholes. Ask others if you want a list.

Side note: Sequel: Mass Effect 4... 0,000. In the grim darkness of the somewhat far future, there is only war... Basically, a bunch of human colonies cut off from each other, hostile(?) alien races, technological reset, you get the idea. I'm just waiting for Shepard to come back as the God Emperor and lead the Great Crusade to reunite humanity...

 

[Incomer]

Also at least one ending where the Mass Relays didn't blow up and kill everyone.

They didn't kill everyone, they were used to spread the colored wave of magic of your choice. The Batarian Relay explosion killed everyone. These explosions were different because of the Crucible...somehow.

I'm not saying that it's a fantastic explanation, but the explosions in ME3 were in fact different than Arrival.

One has to think now why didn't the Reapers just blow up the Relays instead of the slow and annoying fighting with all those different civilizations

Because they don't just kill all life, they "preserve" it in a Reaper.

Tell it to the people who got vaporized by their weapons (or shot/mauled to shreds). They were able to make a new reaper from few outer colonies in ME2 why bother with masses on Earth (when you will have to erase most of them anyway as those buggers try to fight back). Besides they are not very hot on the "uniqueness of individual" anyway so different kinds of humans for the best possible new Reaper argument wont work either.

 

[xorinite]

I was just thinking of making this exact thread. However since this one exists I'll use it.

What I wanted/expected was a totally different over arching plot and ending. Rather than the whole 'we have plans for a device but we don't know what it does' deus ex machina story thread why not have a conventional strait up gather an armada and take it to the reapers.

Now I know in ME3 they established the reapers as unstoppable technological giants with a massive armada, however in ME1 and 2 they weren't like this. Vigil establishes that the reapers beat the protheans by coming through the citidel killing their government and using the citidel mass relay overrides to cut off communications and travel between systems. Then they systematically went system to system killing everything.

Which means that the reapers have never had to face the combined forces of the galaxy in any of their previous invasions.

So I naturally assumed that with their control of the citadel prevented it was now for the first time possible to amass the entire combined forces of the galaxy and defeat the reapers. I imagined that you could do this in a paragon way (making peace, saving civilisations, curing genophages etc) or in a renegade way destroying reaper resources at the cost of the other races planets, systems and ships.

This would culminate in an ending that either had your total combined armada able to repel and defeat the reapers (or just turning the tide and then saying more is to come perfect DLC/sequal material) or having used destructive tactics to cripple the reapers and all other races so humanity could defeat them alone and dominate the galaxy.

No star children, or anti-reaper cannons. Just consistant space opera military drama.

Capcha: Fifth column, and in honor of that why wasn't there more stuff involving uncovering indoctrinated agents, that would have been awesome to find one of your squad mates were under reaper control and perhaps finding a way with the thorian/exogeni material to counteract indoctrination and either use it on people to gain allies or undo it to gain friends.

Edit additional: also the reaper reason for attacking should either have not been explained, or have been explained as the original dark-energy subplot that was developed in ME2.. Oh and harbinger was a much better spokes-person for the reapers than star child was.. MUCH MUCH better and cooler.