Poll: What's so bad about ME3's ending?

[ShermTank7272]

So it's been a year now, and with the release of Citadel and everyone doing their "Mass Effect Retrospectives", I'm feeling a bit nostalgic of the series overall.

Admittedly, I was attracted to the series over the complaints of the leaked ending. I picked up Mass Effect 2 (as ME3 wasn't out yet) and immediately loved it. I started playing through the series, enjoying every moment, but unfortunately, I had already spoiled myself over the ending.

I have my own personal complaints about it, but mostly I feel that my complaints about it were simply echoes of other's complaints, most of which was barely-contained "nerd rage".

My question to you is, what did you dislike (or even like) about Mass Effect 3's ending, both before and after the Extended Cut DLC? Please be articulate and don't just say the equivalent of "it sucked I want my money back". At this point, rage-hating on the ending is like beating the mangled blob that used to be a dead horse a year ago.

(Edit: I apologize for the weird wording of the poll. I guess it doesn't like apostrophes.)

 

[Xarathox]

Eh... it was an ending. It just fell way short compared to the rest of the series.

The biggest gripe I have with the game is how it completely negated some of your previous decisions in the first two games. The whole Rachni thing really gets under my skin, for example.

 

[Gameguy20100]

Well My dear Find most people considered It bad due to the lack of differences between choices and the plot holes, with the Extended cut (which was very epic and very nice of Bioware) those problems were fixed but you see sometimes a fanboy IS just gonna whine My opinion

Without EC: OK I guess but not something I expected from my favorite Science fiction RPG
With EC: Fixed my issues very touching but I would have liked an option where Shepherd lives and gets back to the crew ah well can't win em all

 

[Delerien]

With EC: Fixed my issues very touching but I would have liked an option where Shepherd lives and gets back to the crew ah well can't win em all

Spoiler

in the high MS destroy ending s/he survives

Well i had to ignore a few things (for example the synthesis choice, because it just comes out of nowhere and seems way to convinient) to really like the ending, but with the EC i actually really liked it. The Reaper AI is just insane though...

That earlier choices don't matter that much doesn't really bother me. It's the journey that counts after all. I do however understand why many people were pissed about it.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

The biggest problem with ME3's ending... was that it wasn't ME2's ending (by ending, I refer to the entire process of the suicide mission).

It has it's faults sure, as does the overall game, but I was never on board with the people who were outright furious about it. Even then, I got a lot more charitable towards it after I played Assassin's Creed 3 later that year, and received a rude awakening as to what an actual travesty of an ending looks like.

 

[Silly Hats]

Personally I loved the 'Refusal' ending most of all. It's utterly dark, but Shepard remains in character and while the cycle continues (at the price of humanity) Shepard refuses to give into the Child by having only 3 completely different and very drastic options - all of them severely affecting everyone in their own way. It's most canon. I also think that is special to Bioware, whatever option you pick it won't be the right one and shows their reaction to the outrage.

The High EMS Destroy is the second favourite ending aside from refusal, though I feel like Indoctrination fits best on a personal level. Destruction represents Shepard loosing his/her indoctrination and is I want to think how the game should end. I love interpreting stories in my own way and I see that is how stories should be treated, I don't need instant gratification.

I loved the ending in a way, it's a good metaphor you can prepare as much as you can and things wont work out the way that you want them to. The universe/fate doesn't care how hard you worked to get where you are. It's incredibly nihlistic yet I find it so refreshing, to have something that isn't sugary sweet or unnecessarily action packed for the sake of it. Call me deluded, I don't care.

I have been a fan of the franchise for a while now, I purposefully waited to play the game until the fan outrage died down a little bit so I should get a clear focus on the story in my own way. Look at Angry Joe, he has half a dozen videos with completely conflicting messages just about Mass Effect 3. It's the nature of online Social media that negativity is more influential to people.

 

[The Selkie]

People love to complain. It was alright, a bit of a disappointment considering the 80ish hours I'd put into that particular playthrough, but definitely not bad enough to ruin what was a very good game. The problem is they painted themselves into a corner of having all your previous choices affecting the outcome, causing people to expect their every decision to have a visible impact on the ending.

Ideally I would have been happy if they kept the current three options, but altered the final battle slightly depending on some of your decisions (e.g if you save the krogans then a handful of krogan soldiers fight with you in a climatic final battle etc.) and then went down the Fallout route of addressing what happens to each character/race and how your choices altered their fate. They could have had Anderson or that child narrating with a few seconds of "Garrus died in the final battle while holding off the reaper forces" or "Garrus returned to help rebuild Palaven but never got over Shepard" or "Garrus returned to help rebuild Palaven, married X 3 years later and had 2 kids" depending on the choices you've made and your relationship with him.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Why does my Shepard drink the kid's Kool-aid? It was a total character betrayal. Where the fuck did that "Synthetics vs Organics" thing come from? I thought the core conflict was humanity and its place in the greater universe? Interspecies teamwork? Bueller? Why the heck does the Star Child exist? Where did that whole infodump showdown come from? What happens to my crew? What happens to the gigantic fleet parked in the Milky Way with no Mass Relays to get home?

 

[Soviet Heavy]

My problems with Mass Effect 3's story go beyond just the ending, but since this isn't the thread for that, I'll just go with the usual.

The StarChild's whole argument falls flat on its face if you united the Quarians and Geth, yet you never get the chance to tell him off for it. The game demands you go on with his broken logic, and then says "fuck off and die" if you choose to refuse his demands. You have no way of telling him "uhh, we proved that synthetics and organics can live alongside each other, also, what does this have to do with stopping the Reapers?"

Artificial intelligence rights is a big part of the series, but it wasn't the main focus. The main focus was always to Stop the Reapers. Honestly, I would have rather just gone with the Reapers being arrogant and cryptic instead of having their ludicrous origins explained. Sovereign was arrogant and considered their reasoning to be beyond organic comprehension, so why did they back out on that prospect and instead give them a really stupid motivation? "As Synthetics, we will destroy and assimilate your cultures to prevent you from creating Synthetics that will destroy you. Because we're totally not like those synthetics who rebelled and overthrew their creators-OH WAIT"

 

[Cabisco]

It's just... not that great and I loved that series.

Getting to the climax and suddenly being like 'oh hey kid from the opening ten minutes who's been kinda bugging me repeatedly, what are you doing here?'
'what is your favorite colour?'
'whys that matter?'
'its how we want to end the game'

considering how long I played that game and how much I loved the universe Bioware had created those final three options all just sounded terrible, like I had been smacked in the face for liking the game so much. I just wanted to press a button and screw the reapers up against a intergalactic wall. I wanted Shepard to live. I didn't want a little kid telling me I had to die and all I could control was what colour killed me. The whole reaper army under shepards control/everyone have synthetic/mass death options suck.

I guess I just got so invested in the series I wanted the option of 'shepard lives and smokes a victory cigar as the citadel provides a firework display in the form of reapers'. I don't think thats too much to ask.

 

[LetalisK]

The biggest problem with the ME3 is the constant arguing it has caused. But since I'm a total hypocrite, I'm going to add to that fire.

I thought the ME3 ending was a crap par for the course video game ending. Most video game endings are kinda...bleh. However, because it's the ending of endings for one of the most revered video games series in existence, and our expectations have steadily improved as games have improved, this mediocrity is even more stark than it would otherwise be with any other average game.

 

[Zhukov]

Surely if you wanted an answer to that question you could have looked any one of the thousands of threads, videos or articles on the matter.

 

[Josh123914]

Surely if you wanted an answer to that question you could have looked any one of the thousands of threads, videos or articles on the matter.

Those quickly devolve into flame wars, I'm glad this one at least hasn't.... yet.......

OT: The biggest problem I had personally with it was the Starchild's broken logic and the numerous plotholes the endings presented. Also how there really wasn't much forshadowing going on with it, as a whole the ending seemed completely detached from the rest of the series, both in its message and its execution.
I wasn't actually as mad as I figured I'd be from the similarities between the endings. Probably because the tight development time was showing well before the ending (the alarm bells started ringing for me with the Rachni mission and how Anderson's handled), I mean regardless of your actions in previous games most missions end up being the same with maybe one character swapped out for another if the first one's dead, and pretty much everything after the Horizon mission made me uneasy.

 

[dreadedcandiru99]

My question to you is, what did you dislike (or even like) about Mass Effect 3's ending, both before and after the Extended Cut DLC?

It's been a while since I had to dig these up, but here you go. This guy explained it better than anyone else.

 

[RedDeadFred]

It's adequate to me. Before the EC I thought it was horrible but with it I think it's fine. It's not that good but it's good enough. The only thing I really wish they could have included was actually showing your war assets in battle.

 

[Adamantium93]

Oh god, the memories are coming back, oh god the memories...

Plot holes, a literal deus ex machina, logic that fails upon the smallest questioning, themes that contradict the previous three games, anti-climactic endgame, choices not mattering, three identical endings (note, this was before EC), overall poor quality...

I could go on and on, but let me just say the thing that mattered the most to me:

After ME1 and ME2, I felt like a bad ass. I saved the galaxy, defeated the big bad guys, and I had fun doing it. Immediately I wanted to go back and play the series again.

When I beat ME3, all I wanted to do was erase that monstrosity from my mind and never touch the game again. Remember, the original endings implied that the universe was essentially destroyed and all the remaining aliens were stuck in our solar system which, thanks to the Reapers, was devoid of any natural resources. Some praised that the ending wasn't a "conventional happy ending" but you know what? It was worse: It WAS conventional, faux-artsy, depressing just to be different, ripped off from Deus Ex: HR, and it made the entire three games leading up to it feel pointless and almost kind of cruel.

And then I got a nice little message saying "Buy moar DLC! Give us your money you sheep!"

Yeah, I wanted a happy ending. No, I'm not a care bear who thinks everything should be all rainbows and ponies. I LIKED Walking Dead. I LIKED (well, I appreciated) Spec Ops: The Line. But those endings fit with their games, while ME3's was a jarring about face from everything that had come before it. And they did it simply to make the game seem smarter than it was.

 

[Samus Aran but a man]

It was a complete disconnect from the preceding 80 hours and a MASSIVE deus ex machina. None of your choices matter. It was incredibly stupid.

The Extended Cut was just polishing a turd. It was still fundamentally awful.

 

[linkmastr001]

Spoiler

At first, I thought it was bad, but after seeing it with the EC and thinking on it, I just think it's... okay now.

Originally, the idea of the three endings seemed silly, but then I realized one of the main staples of the series: choice. This whole time we've been trying to destroy the Reapers, and for the power hungry Shepard, that's not an ideal solution, so having the Destruction option works for the power hungry Shepard. The Synthesis option did feel out of nowhere, and a bit weird... but ultimately, if you don't like it, you don't HAVE to make the choice, just pick something else. Of coarse, there's no explanation of how it works, which doesn't bother me, but if does to people, that's fair.

My main issue though was closure originally. I knew nothing about what my actions had done once it ended, or what had happened to my allies and the people I had met. EC did give this to me, but something about it still nags me.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Between the plot holes, circular logic, and the utter emasculation of the Reapers that turns them from Space Cthulhu into the Starchilds personal bitches...

Well I didn't get the game (and confirmed my that my stance that the EA logo on any product is going to be shit) but the resulting firestorm was amazing to watch.

I'm going to put down 'it was entertaining (but not in a good way).'

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

You forgot the poll option "The number of threads pulverizing the deceased horse bones to dust".

Seriously, another one of these threads, makes my head hurt. Can we move on or are we going to harp on this for years?
Holding on to rage over a video game this long is kind of sick in a lot of ways.

But hey, I guess people need something to be pissed about.