Poll: Was the Mass effect 3 ending that bad?

Autumnflame

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Casey hudson drunk on his own power changed so much leading to people like mac walters to leave the company, and we have all see how bad bioware is now expecially with the trainwreck of andromeda which was supposed to save the Mass effect name
 

Jamcie Kerbizz

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Silentpony said:
Souplex said:
Silentpony said:
Wasn't the whole problem that it was rewritten on the fly? I was on the Bioware forums, HOLDING THE LINE!, when the game first dropped and the ending shat the bed. I remember seeing a Dev post on one of the threads that the original ending had been leaked, so it was scrapped, and only one of the writers had time to write the new ending, and it wasn't given to the other writers too proof-read, edit and keep in tone, and was rushed into animation and voice acting.

Its no excuse for sloppy writing, but I think it was less a bad script and more a rough draft over a burger at lunchtime patch-job.
I still don't understand why they didn't just go with the leaked ending.
Anti-spoiler culture is ruining media.
Agreed. I understand not wanting to be spoiled, but if a script is leaked, implying Bioware didn't want it known, then its on the gamers not to read the script and keep themselves unspoiled, as opposed to Bioware needing to do a day-1 rewrite of the entire thing.
O-k so if original ending was leaked (then changed). What was it? Where is it? Should be readily available to all since it leaked so hard, Bioware shat themselves over it, that everyone knew it and all hope is lost, oh noes etc. I still never seen/read it. Any help there?
 

sXeth

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Floating in a vacuum, the ending would be lacklustre, since it doesn't really offer much conclusion to any arcs (and the series effectively rebooted away from it after).

Put into context, its a terrible ending because no part of the narrative leads up to it. The narrative across all 3 games is either delaying the Reapers or preparing the galaxy to face them or both. Only for an ending that goes for some MAtrix 2 style "They engineered it all along" type twist.

Gameplay wise, even in a series that struggles to manage to bare competence in its basic gameplay, fighthing some generic mooks is an awful culmination compared to Saren or the Human Reaper at the end of ME2.
 

zombiejoe

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Oh, that ending was terrible, no butts about it. It's not just the fact that you got there through three binary choices, what the ending tries to say is ridiculous. The Reaper's motivations are ridiculous, and are made even more pointless by the fact they had the means to fix all of their concerns immediatly. Plus, the far more interesting endings proposed were scrapped in favor of the "we need to stop organics from making synthetics that kill organics by killing organics with giant synthetics", which could never have been made good without somehow rewriting the entire series itself to make that a far more important focus. Obviously if the way we got to the endings was more effected by choices throughout the series, it would have helped, but I do really believe the ending itself is just downright bad.
 

Megalodon

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Jamcie Kerbizz said:
O-k so if original ending was leaked (then changed). What was it? Where is it? Should be readily available to all since it leaked so hard, Bioware shat themselves over it, that everyone knew it and all hope is lost, oh noes etc. I still never seen/read it. Any help there?
If I remember right it was something like this:

The use of Mass Effect fields leads to a build up of Dark Energy, which is destroying the universe itself. The Reapers reap in part to contain the spread of Mass Effect technology (maybe, not 100% on that bit), and create more of their own (every Reaper being a Hive Mind gestalt of an entire species) to increase their 'manpower pool' dedicated to stopping the problem. Things are almost at the point of no return and their push for the Human Reaper is presented as their one last Hail Mary to save the universe. The ending choices then become allowing the harvest to continue, and hope the Human Reaper does indeed solve the problem, or telling the Reapers to fuck themselves, maybe blow them all up, and declare that the Citadel species can solve the problem as is.

Personally, I find that ending just as bad as the one we got. It still represents a major tonal shift for the game/series (unless they completely rewrote the 3rd game, a bit of foreshadowing in the previous game doesn't cut it). It still completely ruins the Reapers, who go from a Lovecraftian menace to, at worst, 'well intentioned extremists' (I maintain, the reasons why they reap should never have been explained, as it would never measure up, better to leave them as 'unknowable'). Plus, it's just so, grim and depressing. Taking what started as a classical, wonder-filled Space Opera setting, with a focus on unity and optimism and adding 'The thing that makes our setting unique (the Mass Effect) also kills the universe' is still a major and unwelcome tonal shift.
 

Worgen

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Worgen said:
So I didn't hate the ending of ME3, I actually thought the ending itself was pretty good, granted I did play it awhile after release when they had expanded the ending. The neding itself that I got was good, the everyone joining the singularity ending, the problem I had wasn't the ending, it was how you got to the ending. Just letting you choose what ending you wanted from like 4 different ones was super lazy.
I should perhaps reply to this specifically: what a strange question. When people say the ending they mean the last bit of the game, not the end result of it in canon. They also tend to see the ending in relation to the larger whole of mass effect 1, 2 and 3 and in that relation there was little to no build up to the specific endings we got. Something journey road.

Even then though, taking your question with a lot of charity. No, didn't much like the coloured explosions. I wanted to see some reapers shot to bits with a bit of violence and oomph. The weapon used was far too much of a plot device with its ability to specifically destroy synthetics, mind control reapers or the gibberish green thingy. I wanted to kill me some reapers so without having to murder the geth, or to mindcontrol the WMD's or to do the gibberish green thingy.
When I say ending, I mean the specific events that occurred after the choice. Not the choice itself. I probably should have been more clear about that. I thought the events were fine but how you got them was lame.

I probably should have checked out the other endings too, since the join the singularity one worked fine, the big red plot device endings might have sucked since every scifi thing tends to have the big red plot device to win the day.
 

Asita

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Worgen said:
When I say ending, I mean the specific events that occurred after the choice. Not the choice itself. I probably should have been more clear about that. I thought the events were fine but how you got them was lame.

I probably should have checked out the other endings too, since the join the singularity one worked fine, the big red plot device endings might have sucked since every scifi thing tends to have the big red plot device to win the day.
Oh, you want to see all the endings? I'll save you some time:

 

CaitSeith

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Worgen said:
When I say ending, I mean the specific events that occurred after the choice. Not the choice itself. I probably should have been more clear about that. I thought the events were fine but how you got them was lame.
I didn't play the trilogy until 2015 and kept myself spoiler-free in general, and I didn't apply any DLC in my first playthrough to see what everyone was complaining years after release from the complainers perspective. The thing I learned after 80 hours of playing the games: the endings didn't happen in a vacuum. The more invested one was in the characters and the decision making mechanics (which was incentivized heavily in Mass Effect 2 and in less measure in ME3), the worst the ME3 endings appear to be.
 

CaitSeith

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Megalodon said:
Jamcie Kerbizz said:
O-k so if original ending was leaked (then changed). What was it? Where is it? Should be readily available to all since it leaked so hard, Bioware shat themselves over it, that everyone knew it and all hope is lost, oh noes etc. I still never seen/read it. Any help there?
If I remember right it was something like this:

The use of Mass Effect fields leads to a build up of Dark Energy, which is destroying the universe itself. The Reapers reap in part to contain the spread of Mass Effect technology (maybe, not 100% on that bit), and create more of their own (every Reaper being a Hive Mind gestalt of an entire species) to increase their 'manpower pool' dedicated to stopping the problem. Things are almost at the point of no return and their push for the Human Reaper is presented as their one last Hail Mary to save the universe. The ending choices then become allowing the harvest to continue, and hope the Human Reaper does indeed solve the problem, or telling the Reapers to fuck themselves, maybe blow them all up, and declare that the Citadel species can solve the problem as is.

Personally, I find that ending just as bad as the one we got. It still represents a major tonal shift for the game/series (unless they completely rewrote the 3rd game, a bit of foreshadowing in the previous game doesn't cut it). It still completely ruins the Reapers, who go from a Lovecraftian menace to, at worst, 'well intentioned extremists' (I maintain, the reasons why they reap should never have been explained, as it would never measure up, better to leave them as 'unknowable'). Plus, it's just so, grim and depressing. Taking what started as a classical, wonder-filled Space Opera setting, with a focus on unity and optimism and adding 'The thing that makes our setting unique (the Mass Effect) also kills the universe' is still a major and unwelcome tonal shift.
We won't know for sure. Execution is more important than the concept itself. The Extended endings didn't change much plot-wise (if anything at all), but they were still better received than the original ones.
 

Dalisclock

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zombiejoe said:
Oh, that ending was terrible, no butts about it. It's not just the fact that you got there through three binary choices, what the ending tries to say is ridiculous. The Reaper's motivations are ridiculous, and are made even more pointless by the fact they had the means to fix all of their concerns immediatly. Plus, the far more interesting endings proposed were scrapped in favor of the "we need to stop organics from making synthetics that kill organics by killing organics with giant synthetics", which could never have been made good without somehow rewriting the entire series itself to make that a far more important focus. Obviously if the way we got to the endings was more effected by choices throughout the series, it would have helped, but I do really believe the ending itself is just downright bad.
TO me the Reapers motivations far more into the line of "From a certain point of view". IIRC, in the Leviathan DLC, it's revealed by the creators of the reapers that they were meant to "Preserve Organic Life", which to the Repears translated as "Ok. THe best way to do that is preserve each worthy species as a reaper. Thus the sum of the species will survive forever. Let's get to work."

I can totally see an AI using that kind of logic, especially an AI that doesn't care about individual beings.

Granted, giving robo cthulhu a motivation at all was a bad choice but I can't really complain about their logic here.
 

Ravenbom

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I'd actually like to know why people chose the ending that they chose.

I'm in the minority in that I chose to kill the reapers and end the cycle. It's an endless cycle, break that fucking cycle! Human life and organic life in the galaxy isn't about fate, and moreover, most of the side missions in ME3 were about breaking the fucking cycle like curing the Genophage! Or helping the Rakni Queen in ME1!

Also, it's been your mission for 3 games and at least 150 hours combined, it's weird to suddenly give the player a moral dilemma right at the end of 150+ hour saga.


I don't get the synthesis ending. So many people chose it! I don't want a metal dick or suddenly give other people circuit board balls. It's super rape-y to suddenly, forcibly, change the entire galaxy of beings just so Joker and EDI can get it on.
Changing all life in the universe to be some other form is literally the plan of every mad scientist who ever needed to be stopped.

Also, I had renegade Sniper Shep. He obviously wasn't there to compromise.
 

Avnger

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Dalisclock said:
zombiejoe said:
Oh, that ending was terrible, no butts about it. It's not just the fact that you got there through three binary choices, what the ending tries to say is ridiculous. The Reaper's motivations are ridiculous, and are made even more pointless by the fact they had the means to fix all of their concerns immediatly. Plus, the far more interesting endings proposed were scrapped in favor of the "we need to stop organics from making synthetics that kill organics by killing organics with giant synthetics", which could never have been made good without somehow rewriting the entire series itself to make that a far more important focus. Obviously if the way we got to the endings was more effected by choices throughout the series, it would have helped, but I do really believe the ending itself is just downright bad.
TO me the Reapers motivations far more into the line of "From a certain point of view". IIRC, in the Leviathan DLC, it's revealed by the creators of the reapers that they were meant to "Preserve Organic Life", which to the Repears translated as "Ok. THe best way to do that is preserve each worthy species as a reaper. Thus the sum of the species will survive forever. Let's get to work."

I can totally see an AI using that kind of logic, especially an AI that doesn't care about individual beings.
To build a bit more off this post, it's also made very clear that the Reapers don't destroy all life in the galaxy during a purge. They come in and destroy intelligent species above a certain tech level.

The Reapers are a surgeon removing the "potentially cancerous tumors" (advanced species) while keeping the rest of the body (all other universal life) as safe as possible. This was necessary because the "tumor" was guaranteed (according to the Reapers) to eventually spawn growths (rogue AI) that would kill the entire body. They then go into dormancy until the inevitable next set of tumors has reached a critical mass wherein they return.

It's probably not the most logical thing in the world, but it's not like it's out of this world ridiculous either. There have been plenty of stories that take the "AI given orders to protect life decides to destroy all humans to protect all other life" approach. The reasoning behind the Reapers is another form of that idea.
 

SirSullymore

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It wasn't great, but not as bad as it was made out to be (nothing could, barring the ending coming out of the screen and punching you in the teeth).
 
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It was a tone deaf mess that had nothing to do with anything that had come before, ignored all player decisions until that point, gave no closure, said nothing about the most important characters or places and even between each other offered no difference between a colour change.

The ending was every bit as bad as everyone said. A generic voice-over by Buzz Aldrin is no way to end 100+ hours of role playing until that point. Baldur's Gate 2:ToB had a better ending (choice of endings) and that was delivered by text slides.
 

Asita

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Ravenbom said:
I'd actually like to know why people chose the ending that they chose.

I'm in the minority in that I chose to kill the reapers and end the cycle. It's an endless cycle, break that fucking cycle! Human life and organic life in the galaxy isn't about fate, and moreover, most of the side missions in ME3 were about breaking the fucking cycle like curing the Genophage! Or helping the Rakni Queen in ME1!

Also, it's been your mission for 3 games and at least 150 hours combined, it's weird to suddenly give the player a moral dilemma right at the end of 150+ hour saga.


I don't get the synthesis ending. So many people chose it! I don't want a metal dick or suddenly give other people circuit board balls. It's super rape-y to suddenly, forcibly, change the entire galaxy of beings just so Joker and EDI can get it on.
Changing all life in the universe to be some other form is literally the plan of every mad scientist who ever needed to be stopped.

Also, I had renegade Sniper Shep. He obviously wasn't there to compromise.
Well for me, Synthesis is very obviously presented as the "Golden" ending and Hudson's(?) pet favorite, and usually I'm quite adamant about getting the golden ending, but it's so stupid that I can't in good conscience support it. "Oh since you're a cyborg if you jump into this pillar of light and disintegrate, then synthetics will somehow become partially organic, organics will become partially synthetic and the problem of understanding between different races/cultures organics and synthetics will be solved forever, and the Reapers will all understand this on an intrinsic level and leave everyone alone". And then of course there's the matter of in-character knowledge, namely: WHY IN THE NINE HELLS WOULD SHEPARD BELIEVE THAT??? The self-declared Master Control Program of the Reapers, enemies whose most prominent weapon is summed up as tricking/corrupting people into becoming their willing servants just told Shepard to that killing him/herself would solve the problem and that s/he should just trust that the Reapers would abandon their genocidal campaign. They promise. And this is a promise that's worth so much more than the promises to Saren and the Geth because reasons.

This latter issue comes up again with regards to controlling the Reapers. "Oh no, the Illusive Man could never have controlled us, but you totally could." So...given what I know of you and how me stopping you is antithetical to your plans, that probably means that the odds of success are low and ultimately this would be a pointless sacrifice on my part, right? There is no basis to trust the characterization of your ability to succeed where TIM would have failed.

I can also go into the thematic resonance of each point. Synthesis represents adopting Saren's ideology during the climax of ME1, Control represents adopting TIM's ideology which you literally just rejected not five minutes prior, and Destroy is what you've been aiming for since ME1, but with all other synthetics thrown in for the simple reasons that the writer doesn't want you to choose that option because he prefers Synthesis.
 

Gethsemani_v1legacy

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Avnger said:
It's probably not the most logical thing in the world, but it's not like it's out of this world ridiculous either.
The ridiculous part is that the player has to fork over 10 bucks (pretty sure it was 15 on release) just to get a few quests that lampshades the stupidity of the ending. Leviathan does make it slightly more palatable, but post hoc justifications are always bad, especially when the player has to fork out more money just to not have an ending that's a giant logical fallacy.
 

Avnger

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Gethsemani said:
Avnger said:
It's probably not the most logical thing in the world, but it's not like it's out of this world ridiculous either.
The ridiculous part is that the player has to fork over 10 bucks (pretty sure it was 15 on release) just to get a few quests that lampshades the stupidity of the ending. Leviathan does make it slightly more palatable, but post hoc justifications are always bad, especially when the player has to fork out more money just to not have an ending that's a giant logical fallacy.
I definitely won't disagree with you there. Considering the impact it has on the overall story, it should have been, at the very least, free if not a part of the base game. I was just taking issue with zombiejoe's claim that the story was absolutely off-the-walls bonkers.
 

meiam

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On the whole "95% of the game is great aside from the ending" did they already forget Kai Leng? That character alone is enough to destroy a game, I didn't like the ending but I couldn't muster any real anger because by that point I just didn't give a shit anymore, Kai Leng killed all the shit I had to give.

His first boss fight is textbook definition of a bad boss fight.

I'd second reading Shamus Young mass effect retrospective (can't link it cause his website is down atm) for a lengthy analysis of what went wrong. He's more negative about ME2 than I'd be (although ME2 need to be played on insanity to be appreciated), but overall I mostly agree with him and he's a far better writer than me.
 

Trunkage

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Dalisclock said:
zombiejoe said:
Oh, that ending was terrible, no butts about it. It's not just the fact that you got there through three binary choices, what the ending tries to say is ridiculous. The Reaper's motivations are ridiculous, and are made even more pointless by the fact they had the means to fix all of their concerns immediatly. Plus, the far more interesting endings proposed were scrapped in favor of the "we need to stop organics from making synthetics that kill organics by killing organics with giant synthetics", which could never have been made good without somehow rewriting the entire series itself to make that a far more important focus. Obviously if the way we got to the endings was more effected by choices throughout the series, it would have helped, but I do really believe the ending itself is just downright bad.
TO me the Reapers motivations far more into the line of "From a certain point of view". IIRC, in the Leviathan DLC, it's revealed by the creators of the reapers that they were meant to "Preserve Organic Life", which to the Repears translated as "Ok. THe best way to do that is preserve each worthy species as a reaper. Thus the sum of the species will survive forever. Let's get to work."

I can totally see an AI using that kind of logic, especially an AI that doesn't care about individual beings.

Granted, giving robo cthulhu a motivation at all was a bad choice but I can't really complain about their logic here.
Putting Leviathan as a DLC was ME3 biggest mistake, I think. I wonder if there would have been as big as an outcry if this was part of the main game.

Lovecraftian works have always had a problem - the characters are pointless because their survival isn't dependant on themselves, it dependant on Deus Ex Machina (or maybe Dues Ex Lovecraftian -a person gets randomly killed because the monster wanted to scratch his leg). Dues Ex Machina endings always feel bad, its a cheap way to get out of situations. The same can be said for Star Trek technobabble, which has the same affect.

The same problem here. Reapers just killing without any concern of others. Also, the crucible feels Dues Ex Machina.

This might not be a problem if it wasn't a game about defeating the Reapers. Which puts it in contrast with the Lovecraftian theme. It was always doomed to fail, and this can be seen in ME1 and ME2 ending as well.

OT: I don't find the ending offensive as others do but I see problems with it. But then I see massive problems with Witcher 3, the Fallouts, Divinity Original Sin 2 and Pillars of Eternity endings and wonder why they don't get as much scrutiny