To the People Who liked the Ending to ME3

[Nieroshai]

(Can you please explain why you liked it?)I feel like it harkened back to some of my most beloved scifi tropes. 1: Sometimes you just can't save the world without making a sacrifice. 2: the classic scifi possibility of utterly changing the human experience of the universe. This being like the event at the end of the Asimov Caves of Steel series that led to Empire, the Butlerian Jihad that resulted in Dune's civilizations shunning AI but embracing Spice despite its effects, or the endings of the original Deus Ex.
There's also the fact that, like in Metal Gear Solid 4, it shows how much suffering and trauma the hero must go through to accomplish his/her goal.

(What made you feel so satisfied?) Aside from the immersion I get from the trilogy in general, I just felt so emotionally invested. I liked, honestly, that the only way for a single person to save the world would be to utterly change it. A hero doesn't always get a good choice and a bad choice, sometimes they're all ethically scary and yet the only remaining options. What got to me was Shepard's sacrifice.

(Can you explain it without falling back to making assumptions?)Assumptions as in... what? Imagination is all about assumptions. You could even try to discredit my entire post by saying I rely entirely on feelings and old tropes. But feelings are the point.

(Can you relate to the choices given and explain how they mattered to you depending on the end game choice?) I honestly got the endings. The only way to stop the reapers was to either command them, kill all AI, or appease the machines by giving them true life and bringing organics into the machine fold at the same time. Their commanding power was so powerful that ultimately the only thing to save the world was to play the Machine God's game. Taking for granted that a "Machine God" can exist,the fact that it would make these demands only makes sense. I can see how people would be upset that the Conduit turns out basically to be God, but I don't find my disbelief that hard to suspend here. The Geth, Eezo, and the mysterious nature of the Reapers already set me up for the fact that there's stuff the characters, and therefore I, will never know. And thematically, I'm fine wiith that.

(Can you tell me the difference between each of the choices the end gives you?) I'll give the ethical explanations. First of all, know that the Conduit was a test left by the Reapers (Machine God) to decide if organic life deserves to become advanced and control the galaxy. In building it, the first test was passed: organic life could cooperate well enough to get the thing running. The Reapers deviously controlled factions to slow down said construction, to prove if organic life could overcome its own limitations and essentially defeat itself. Saren and the Illusive Man both acted in the name of organics, but were in action doing everything in their power to ensure the Conduit could not be finished. Activating the device requires the willpower to resist Reaper indoctrination, thus the third test. Down to the choices now.
First, control the reapers. Can an organic being really control such power, or even deserve to? And becoming one with them, who's to say who's controlling who, just like Saren and the Illusive Man?
Second, wipe out all mechanical life. Is it ethical to do so, and is it worth all the artificial lives lost if it means ending the Reapers? If you never sided with the Geth in the first place, this is obviously the ending for you.
Merging organic and mechanical life. Why? Because it creates a universe of beings who no longer need worry about what is machine and what is man. All with life are mechanical, all machines are natural. This is the Utopia ending, and ultimately what the Machine God wants. There really is no reason this would be a bad thing, objectively, unless you spend a little too much time around magnets. How this ending is even possible is up for debate, but the mechanical wizard did it.
In all endings, the Reapers disappear and the Mass Relays are gone forever.
Basically the Conduit is the Machine God's gun to the head of the universe, saying "accept our kind and join us, or I will feed you to my children. Hardly a benevolent god, but outside organized religion, what God is? Was Cthulhu nice? No, and why should he be? What makes him a god is the fact that his very visage is beyond human understanding, let alone his mind.
Shepard must die in the end, to show what must be sacrificed to achieve peace. Shepard had to be shown that no matter what he chose, he would never get to benefit from his actions, and therefore must act in the interests of all.

Summary: Machine God wants all organic life to be one with machines instead of dominant over them. So he sends sentient dreadnaughts to eat them unless organics build a ship that can communicate with Mech God and earn forgiveness by making machine brothers with man. Of course, man can screw the Machine God over by killing or enslaving his children, either becoming a murderer or the cyber equivalent of the devil. Either way of the three, no more galactic travel until they can invent it on their own. Make sense?

(If Given the choice would you

A) Want a Different ending
B) Want an Epilogue without changing anything in the Ending sequence
C) Leave it as is

Follow up question, Why?)
I could have used an epilogue, but honestly as you have read, I loved the endings.

 

[tautologico]

The space baby's logic is circular. Create synthetics to kill organics in order to keep synthetics from killing organics.
And why do you think Reapers would not come back after the green endings? If space baby killed trillions with only a flaky argument, what makes you think he wouldn't use them again? Hybrid life forms trying to get rid of one part of the DNA? SEND IN THE REAPERS!

The Reapers don't "kill all organic life", they "prune" organic life by leaving the less advanced races alive and keeping the DNA of the harvested races. The idea being that if the Reapers didn't do that, the organic races would create synthetics that would go on and exterminate ALL organic life in the galaxy. So the Reapers exterminate SOME organic life so that it is not completely exterminated. Yes, doesn't make the argument very good, but it's not really circular. If organics and synthetics are fused, the threat of extermination of one by the other does not exist anymore, so the cycle effectively ends (also, the Citadel, which most probably was the computer where the "Space Timmy" AI ran, is destroyed, so he can't come back and do stuff).

To your second point, unless the quantum entanglement comm device can wisp up food and supplies anywhere in th galaxy, organics are fucked.

Not necessarily. Earth is still there, and with FTL it is possible to reach many stations the Alliance have established near the solar system in little time. Also, people didn't lose all their technology, so food and other things necessary for survival can be produced.

Also, the relays exploded, we saw what happens during relay explosions. Saying "oh, but it's different this time!" doesn't make it true. The relay exploded with enough force to catch up with a ship going at FTL speeds and knock it out of space.

But it IS different. If you drop a huge bomb at a nuclear plant, it will blow up. But if you deactivate it, it won't. The "explosion" you see in the cinematic may not be true explosions but the spreading of the "signal" that changes organics and synthetics. No one knows if the systems were destroyed or not, I'm just saying it's quite possible they weren't.

Next up, 27 years is a long time. Really, really long. A salarian could barely survive a trip across the galaxy, a human would see a fifth of his life gone. There is no way you can establish proper trade channels under such conditions.

27 years to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other, along the longest diameter. Nearer places are reachable in much less time. Krogans and Turians could probably get back to their home planets well inside their lifetime, of course not everyone would make the trip but a lot would. Many important places in the galaxy would be reachable in a single lifespan. Most races live far longer than the salarians.

Either way, best case scenario, all the Turians and Quarians flying over Earth are dead from starvation, the Salarians are all dead due to their short lifespan.

In the synthesis ending, Quarians and Turians wouldn't necessarily die. They would now be new life forms with synthetic heritage, and this could solve the problems with the levo-protein food. Or maybe they could eat completely different stuff to feed the nanomachines inside them or whatever.

I'm not saying that these things are THE TRUTH, but they're all possible within the canonical sources. And the alternatives (quarians and turians dying, relays killing everyone around them, etc) are just as speculative as what I said.

 

[tautologico]

(Can you tell me the difference between each of the choices the end gives you?) I'll give the ethical explanations. First of all, know that the Conduit was a test left by the Reapers (Machine God) to decide if organic life deserves to become advanced and control the galaxy. In building it, the first test was passed: organic life could cooperate well enough to get the thing running. The Reapers deviously controlled factions to slow down said construction, to prove if organic life could overcome its own limitations and essentially defeat itself. Saren and the Illusive Man both acted in the name of organics, but were in action doing everything in their power to ensure the Conduit could not be finished. Activating the device requires the willpower to resist Reaper indoctrination, thus the third test. Down to the choices now.
First, control the reapers. Can an organic being really control such power, or even deserve to? And becoming one with them, who's to say who's controlling who, just like Saren and the Illusive Man?
Second, wipe out all mechanical life. Is it ethical to do so, and is it worth all the artificial lives lost if it means ending the Reapers? If you never sided with the Geth in the first place, this is obviously the ending for you.
Merging organic and mechanical life. Why? Because it creates a universe of beings who no longer need worry about what is machine and what is man. All with life are mechanical, all machines are natural. This is the Utopia ending, and ultimately what the Machine God wants. There really is no reason this would be a bad thing, objectively, unless you spend a little too much time around magnets. How this ending is even possible is up for debate, but the mechanical wizard did it.
In all endings, the Reapers disappear and the Mass Relays are gone forever.
Basically the Conduit is the Machine God's gun to the head of the universe, saying "accept our kind and join us, or I will feed you to my children. Hardly a benevolent god, but outside organized religion, what God is? Was Cthulhu nice? No, and why should he be? What makes him a god is the fact that his very visage is beyond human understanding, let alone his mind.
Shepard must die in the end, to show what must be sacrificed to achieve peace. Shepard had to be shown that no matter what he chose, he would never get to benefit from his actions, and therefore must act in the interests of all.

Summary: Machine God wants all organic life to be one with machines instead of dominant over them. So he sends sentient dreadnaughts to eat them unless organics build a ship that can communicate with Mech God and earn forgiveness by making machine brothers with man. Of course, man can screw the Machine God over by killing or enslaving his children, either becoming a murderer or the cyber equivalent of the devil. Either way of the three, no more galactic travel until they can invent it on their own. Make sense?

That's quite similar to what I think of the story, but with one difference: the "Machine God" is not actually divine in origin, but is a very old AI that is so much more advanced than what every organic race can do that it seems divine. Remember the Arthur C. Clarke quote "Any sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The AI, running in the Citadel (which is a giant computer) gained conscience millions of years ago, and maybe witnessed (or even participated in) an attempt by synthetics to completely exterminate organic life, but then changed mind and decided this was not that good an idea. Then it creates the Reapers, the relays, etc and start the cycle. This gives a perspective into why such a harsh solution as the cycle, from our point of view, makes sense to the AI: it's been living in such a large time-scale and knows so much that 50 thousand years of civilization doesn't mean all that much to it. The Crucible as a test is quite possible. It seems to have originated from the AI itself, of course, as the Prothean VI say it was passed from cycle to cycle in a timeframe spanning millions of years, and no one knows where it came from.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Thats actually an interesting POV that I had never considered.

Yeah...I try, sometimes I succeed. All I hear is 'the ending is great!' or 'the ending is awful', not giving any real context about how they played. SirBrighty's description of his playthrough begins to make people enjoying or accepting the end seem more reasonable, but it does make me feel that the end was geared towards resolving a 'loss and sacrifice' playthrough and didn't allow for a 'triumph over adversity' ending, tone wise that is.

this is very true, honestly i had semi considered some of this but you summed up some of my thoughts alot better than i could have, so i will just quote you and say i agree with what you have posted.

 

[kommando367]

I was okay with the ending because It worked well with the theme of sacrifice in Mass Effect 3.

I also don't think the species of the galaxy was completely boned. (That's overly cynical even by Escapist standards). It's heavily divided now, but that's about it.

The Quarians probably have massive farms on their ships somewhere.

The Turians and Asari may be a little more screwed than the rest without mass relays, along with certain human colonies that rely on regular shipments.

The Krogan have been screwed as a species since the genophage and now that it's cured, (well at least that's what I did) the Krogan have probably come out of this war stronger than before.

Batarians: well I guess they are fucked as a species.

Volus, Elcor, Hanar, etc... did the Reapers even hurt them in the first place? They should be fine.

A real epilogue would have been nice, but for now I'm just going to assume the citizens of every surviving colonized planet will just move on and go back to normal life like those 2 people in the post credits scene.

 

[skywolfblue]

I can honestly see part of the sacrifice themes, Losing thane and mordin hammered that in, but I wasnt expecting the end scenario to be so terrifyingly gruesome, if my imagination is expected to fill in the blanks of the story, then my personal logic dictates a lot of it, or I can disregard it and have puppies and rainbows either way, I still would have liked an epilogue detailing some events to get an idea of what exactly it was I accomplished.

If you say my mission was to stop the reapers, then yeah that was pretty much the end scenario everyone knew before even buying the game, if you detailed to me that I wouldnt get to see what my final choice would entail, then I would have been a bit disappointed. Like I am now.

Still I can half agree with your POV.

Would it be too bothersome to ask, if you would like to see an Ending DLC added, or at least an epilogue?

I wouldn't mind a few Dragon Age style epilogue screens. Though I don't think they'd be terribly important.

"Joker and the rest of the crew survive and their children go on to be a great civilization X many years later"

"X many years later, the Asari rediscover how to make a Mass Relay, the galaxy works on reforming free of the reapers control"

"The fleet trapped at earth settle down and establish colonies on Mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Humans and aliens of all sort grow to mix and call the Sol system their home."

But that kind of takes away from people envisioning their own version of the ending. So *shrug*.

As far as DLC goes, I feel like it's a little like people asking for an alternate ending to be written for their favorite book just because they didn't understand it at the time. AKA, what if fans of LoTR request that the part about Frodo & co. coming back to a ruined shire be taken out?

I don't think that the ending is flawless or beyond question (why is normandy in FTL when it should have been in the battle, why were my team members who were right behind me and got fried with the reaper beam somehow there?), but I do think it's exactly the ending ME3 needed.

Sometimes the ending is suppose to make people angry and upset in order to push them out of their comfort zones and into a greater understanding.

Actually, Children of Dune would kind of be a good example of this personally. When I read it the first time I absolutely hated the ending of that book. Leto ascends to the throne and becomes a godlike invincible tyrant to rule over all of humanity, how is that suppose to be good? But with time, and reading the next novel in the series I realized I was completely wrong.

Um, doesnt the Dune Series end with Children of Dune, where Pauls Son has become a Giant God Worm, and after a bunch of incredibly convoluted yet well crafted events he breaks the Future sight and dependance on the spice by making Duncans Heritage a part of every living being?

You've missed out on God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune? Go out and read them ASAP, personally I think they're the best part. I think you may have read God Emperor, since the things you mention occur there instead of in Children of Dune. Heretics and Chapterhouse happen after the god emperor is dead and feature primarily the Bene Gesserit and how they deal with the legacy he left behind. It's brilliant work IMO.

 

[Samurai Silhouette]

I liked it because it just shows that life isn't fair. If there really are forces out there bigger than us, we're not entitled to a "happy ending". Just think about the Holocaust.

 

[Ympulse]

When was it decided that the laser that hit Shep was from Harbinger? The reaper was no bigger than any other sovereign-class reaper, and Harby, According to the codex entry, is twice the size of a standard reaper.

 

[lomylithruldor]

Can you please explain why you liked it?

What made you feel so satisfied?

Can you explain it without falling back to making assumptions?

Can you relate to the choices given and explain how they mattered to you depending on the end game choice?

Can you tell me the difference between each of the choices the end gives you?

I am not making this thread to bash or insult, or inflame, I just honestly want to know, how you relate to the ending, and why you like it and feel satisfied by it.

EDIT:

If Given the choice would you

A) Want a Different ending
B) Want an Epilogue without changing anything in the Ending sequence
C) Leave it as is

Follow up question, Why?

I should have made a Poll >_>

I really liked the ending. Some things that can explain it:
- I REALLY like cyberpunk and gothicpunk settings. When things go from bad to worse with a crapsack world, I'm really enjoying the story. Some of my favorite games include all the Shin Megami Tensei games. Those that begin after the world came at an end.
- As a DM, My games usually end with a big reveal about the villain's motives so that his motivation make a lot of sense with a choice that will change the nature of the world (ex: change some natural law about the world). I've had lots of players change side at the end of my stories.
- The game didn't have a pointless stupid boss fight at the end like ME2. Instead, it was mostly conversation and a really RPG feel to it.

About the choices of ending, Shepard came on the citadel to destroy the reapers, TIM came to control them. They were both right that the citadel can do it. I don't know why you would choose to control them, but hey, the choice is there. I played 1 and 2 on the 360 and 3 on my computer, so I had to go with the default choices. Because of that and the way I played my Shepard, I didn't have enough war effort to get the green ending (or maybe it's because I destroyed the Geth) so I can't really comment on that choice. Shepard came on the citadel to destroy the reaper and I could do it. I don't know what more choices do you want. Sacrifice has to be made to better the world and it's a pretty big theme in ME3. Mordin and Eve sacrificed themselves to cure the genophage, I sacrificed the rebuilt racny queen to save the Krogan squad, I sacrificed the Geth to ally with the Quarians (a non-sentiant race to save a sentiant race). Shepard sacrificing himself (and EDI) to get rid of the Reapers didn't came out of nowhere.

I would chose C. I don't really need to know how things work out for everybody because there's too much people and the ending wouldn't end. You can pretty easily fill up the blanks.

As an addendum to Boag's post...leaving aside personal feelings about Star Baby, choices taken into account/not taken into account/themes employed and abandoned, can the people who liked the ending explain the following to me, using data actually provided for us in the game/lore and not their own speculation?

1. Why is Joker fleeing? How is fleeing consistent with his character? How did he know to flee?
2. If Garrus was shown in a pool of blood at my feet, why is he exiting the Normandy on the garden world?
3. How does Hackett know Shepard is on the Citadel? Radio chatter indicated no one made it.
4. How does Anderson beat Shepard to the Crucible? Anderson entered the beam after Shepard.
5. The ending shows us all the relays exploding. We are to understand from the Arrival that this obliterates the systems containing them. Did Shepard just wipe out dozens of densely inhabited systems?
6. If you got the Rubble Shepard/Wake Up Breath ending, how does Shepard go from standing on an exploding Citadel to waking up in a pile of concrete rubble in London?
7. What is the wisdom in creating a synthetic army to wipe out advanced organic life every 50,000 years to prevent a synthetic army from wiping out advanced organic life? Why couldn't your synthetic army fight against the hypothetical bad synthetics? Or warn the organics? Or do ANYTHING ELSE?

I can make my peace with the Star Baby ending if so much of the stuff surrounding it didn't make no sense at all.

Well, I don't care about the codex, but I can still answer.

1- He probably saw the big red wave destroying the ships and reapers and jumped not knowing the effect would follow the mass relays.

2- Probably a bug in the characters shown in the ending. I also did WTF when I saw that.

3- Don't know and don't think it really matters. Maybe he got the transmission between Shepard and Anderson.

4- IIRC, they got teleported to different locations. Also, Shepard don't really walk very fast and Anderson doesn't seem as hurt as Shepard.

5- Probably not. There's a difference between destroying a relay with an asteroid and destroying it with an overload. If most of the energy is concentrated with the entended effect (blue, green or red) instead of destruction power in a different way than with only destruction power. You don't see a really big explosion capable of destroying planets, you see a big colored wave with a little explosion at the center.

6- Didn't get that ending, but it's not the first time something like that happened to Shepard and I guess he's more robust now that he's in part robot.

7- Well, as the Reapers told Shepard in each game, you mind cannot comprenhend their reasons. I guess Reapers are ME's extremist tree huggers. They kill the advanced civilisation before they create something that will destroy all life. Also, the reapers are not synthetics, they are organic and synthetic.

 

[tzimize]

As MisterShine said, it's a subjective ending that is open to a lot of interpretation. The whole point is that you are suppose to make assumptions. Part of a good ending is leaving a bit of mystery for the reader/player to figure out/solve on their own.

HELL no. Thats not a good ending at ALL. Thats just lazyness/failure on account of the writer. A good writer has a PLAN for his story. Something he wants to tell. And usually the ending is one of the first things, maybe THE first to be written.

If I as a story-consumer wanted to imagine my own story, why in the flying fudge would I BUY a product presenting a story for me?! I pay to be TOLD a story.

Not necessarily - it's perfectly feasible to write a satisfactory ending that leaves questions unanswered or a mystery for the reader/viewer/player. It just needs to provides a sense of closure, an emotional release, and it should make sense in the context of the rest of the story.

An obvious but simple example is Pulp Fiction - we never find out what's in the briefcase. You could view that as a huge unanswered question, but the reality is it doesn't matter what's in the briefcase and not knowing doesn't detract from the ending (ignoring the fact that the ending is the middle in that particular case...)

This guy gets it. And Skywolf, just because there are stories that end that way doesnt mean they are good endings. In Pulp Fiction, it works. In Mass Effect, it doesnt.

 

[FalloutJack]

I'm going to not bother with spoiler tags because this whole thread is one. I'm also going to point out that I'm telling you what my girlfriend did not me because she's the one who was playing, and she doesn't like the Escapist...so she will not be posting. The following is therefore based upon our discussions of the endings. That much settled, here's the answers...

{1} First, you gotta understand that my estimate of the Reapers was that there were way too many of them and they had too much power per ship to be beaten when I knew very well that they were killing civilizations for eons. I didn't know how the Mass Effect boys were gonna deal with that, and that I also figured that someone was at the center of all this. Little did I know that the answer to the problem and this theory of the central figure were one in the same. Now, I know about how the endings are only slightly different in content, but they lead to different futures, essentially. Maybe it seems slapdash and quick to all other people, but I'm a little more loose, and SHE liked it as well. It's not empty. It HAS meaning. I suppose the main issue other gamers have is that it's also short, and not much work was put into it, but as a guy who took a little philosophy in college, I look beyond the picture to the indication of the achievement and see something bigger.

{2} It's not a question of 'so satisfied'. People like me are okay with open-ended endings while others require something more full and visual. I can reach contentment while others others want a bigger payoff. My girlfriend is not nearly as zen about this. She simply found the whole thing awe-inspiring and cool. She loves Mass Effect alot. And if she's not complaining, then it must be okay. And when she's happy, I'm also happy.

{3} I can explain it logically. On the production end of things, you're damn right it's easier to make an ending video and just add slight differences. You're damn right that it saves money and seems rushed. Here is the real question: Does it really bother me? No. It doesn't need to be all too extravagant, though. The ending leads to some finale of the voyage of Shepard, but let's not forget that this series is very forwards and backwards-thinking. The cycle is BROKEN. Nothing will ever be the same again. And what happens afterward? Could be anything, which is something you can't put in an ending sequence. Something was going to happen to the relays no matter what, and they had to show it, but to show all the possibilities of what lay after? Bit hard.

{4} This was her doing, of course, but I LIKE IT. The choices mattered. For the record, she chose to have Shepard take control of the Reapers. Why? Well, I'll tell you. For one, it means that Shepard ain't dead, but in control of a giant legion of squid-vessels. That's like being Cthulhu in space a million times, commanded by Nyarlathotep...when the Crawling Chaos isn't feeling like a jackass. Shepard's good people, so instantly you know that the Reapers won't be used to terrorize. Sure, the Mass Effect relays are down, but there's an army of Reapers who won't be killing-you-guys from now on. The possibilities from that alone are endless. Open-ended endings are fun because even though they can't show what your character's up to in the future, you can imagine it, and it kicks ass.

{5} Let's see, the three endings were to blow it all up, all the races with the Reapers, or take control of the Reapers, right? All oof which were done by different color lights - different catalytic energies - through the Mass Effect relays. The relays are sort of like...Zohar Modifiers from Xenogears/Xenosaga, powerful ancient energy source technology. The whole series revolves around them. This is the space opera of the Mass Effect relay area of space, right? Right. The ending is therefore something important involving them, namely the center of their being and that of even the Reapers. The three endings were going to be similar inevitably because you have to run SOMETHING through them to achieve the effect. So, when they blow up, the cycle is broken and all the races will have to go find some other Macguffin. Also, the Reapers are destroyed. When the Reapers are taken control of, the relays shut down and there is an army of squid vessels under Shepard's control...which he could do ANYTHING with. Or, when Instrumentality tbe great merge takes place, we are all Reapers now, right? All of us, side by side, for the sake of order? Yeah. This is not hard. Hell, it's not even rocket science. (It's engineering!)

{6} You might do a final report thing, but it'd be from the perspective of someone who isn't Shepard and doesn't know what the hell happened anyway. Dependent on your ending, Shepard could be dead, so an epilogue from him wouldn't work. Same with the Reapers, or...you know...everybody. Unless you were willing to do the time and wait for more like that, I would say don't complain. I'm not.

{7} Because...I didn't know how they were going to end it either. Really, the end of the game started when Shepard started talking to the Catalyst. You just got to have a chance to give input ON the final sequence. I don't see the problem with it myself, but then I don't tend to lean on games because of one small percentage of an issue.

As just a final note: If you played this game all way to the end from the beginning of the series to this point, you can't tell me that you did not have fun along the way. Gaming is all about having fun, and if you're not having it...you're not doing it right. Even if you hate this series' endings, you can't automatically hate it. Color your complaints with "It was good, but..." and then continue to be a fan.

 

[SFMB]

Epilogue would have been nice. That have been lacking in so many games lately. Deus Ex would have needed one. too. The Good thing about the ME3 endings was that the massrelays got destroyed and, in my opinion, better endings ended Commander Shepard as well (although, I was hoping for a "destroy-all-life"-option). Hopefully Bioware let's this franchise now rest and comes up with something new. But we all know EA won't let a cash cow like Mass Effect just die. We'll be having spin-offs until the end of days.

 

[Frontastic]

Yeah, I liked the ending. I can see why people didn't and in fact I agree with most of the reasons people hated it but I still like it. I'll attempt to clarify a few reasons but I doubt they'll help because the game was tailored to some of my more specific tastes and that surprised me.

The very end and the explanation.
I loved it. I generally find any narrative closure unsatisfying unless it's one of two things; left ambiguous or cyclical. The explanation for the Reapers was wonderful. The inevitable conflict between organic and synthetic being stopped by synthetics destroying organics and preserving as synthetic records of themselves is...beautiful. It's so precise and exact like clockwork, loved that.

The lack of choice and the lack of YOUR choices making a difference.
Ok, this one the outrage makes sense on. I'm annoyed all my choices didn't have some grand effect but at the same time I like what they did in a sort of meta-joke kind of way. The final scene of the old man reinforces something which became obvious once ME2 shipped. Our choices were meaningless in the grander scale of things. What we did had the same effect on the story as what colour our armour was. The story was always going to be set in stone (after all the framing device turned out to be that it was an old man telling it to a child, the finer details were always going to be changeable), our 'free-will' only existed in terms of the finer points of the plot. I can accept that and it doesn't bother me. Anyone who hadn't figured out by mid-way through ME3 that your choices were meaningless was deluding themselves. Can someone explain to me one instance of the Collector base changing something? Or how about the fact that regardless of who you put on the council at the end of ME1, Udina had to be there in 3 because it was part of the fixed story. How he got there may differ from person to person but he was always going to get there, the Illusive Man would always have enough salvage tech to get indoctrinated and Sheperd was always going to self-sacrifice.
Because that's the thing, free-will IS an illusion. The Catalyst was viewing organic and synthetic life on a galactic scale, that probably equates to the way we view cells and atoms; from that far removed a scale it's all predictable. That's what the finale reflected; as humans we perceive that we have free-will but a god-like entity viewing things on level we cannot comprehend would view us the way we view things on a macro-level. It's pretty much the Bioshock twist on a grander scale and delivered with less grace. But I can see why people are annoyed that BioWare made this philosophical point by pretending the player had free-will for three games only to say "see, now you get it, it was an illusion all along!" So yeah, I'll give the nay-sayers this one.

The ambiguity as to the fate of the galaxy/the inferred bleakness.
Ok I like ambiguity and I hate happy endings so again, this I liked. I also LOVE depressing twists. So the idea that our tiny conflict brought all the races together and to earth for a final showdown only for all life to be wiped out by an even bigger, unseen inevitability; I really like that. Sorry, I'm a fatalist and that notion is simply great. Plus I picked the synthesis ending so the idea that current life has reached its peak and it's time to create a new species by wiping out the old one is also something I can get behind. (To any TR fans out there, yeah that means I think Natla was in the right. Wesker too but he was a (wonderful, loveable) idiot.)
Plus, did the implausible optimistic arc not bug anyone else? That after thousands of years of conflict, in a few hours our mighty hero managed to create universal, galactic-wide peace between all the major races? That was just laughably cheerful and was really starting to bug me so the "EVERYONE DIES!" end felt quite satisfying for me.

However...
That nonsense with the Normandy is just plain wrong. It doesn't make any sense. That should be fixed. Unless the Indoctrination Theory turns out to be true (which I wouldn't mind as it's fiendishly clever and quite interesting. And makes an alarming amount of sense.)
Ok that's all I can think of right now for why I liked the ending, I will happily field any responses but I think this ending proves one thing; the world (and the internet especially) is populated with a people far more optimistic than they pretend to be. Looks like us fatalistic misanthropes may be far fewer than years online would have us believe

 

[Hyper-space]

from what I have gathered, lots of people have been "Filling in the Blanks" on what happens after the credits roll, I wanted to ascertain if people can come up with a description of what happens in the End without relying on suppositions, because personally I find myself digging into the Lore to try and make sense of it all and to reach logical conclusions of what happens to the rest of the Galaxy after the relays blow up.

...

You wouldnt prefer an Epilogue that Details how the end event affects the choices you made?

I would have rather they left the ending open instead of trying to explain every micro-detail, leaving things to the player's imagination is something that not a lot of video-games (hell, cannot think of any examples) do.

One of the problems with most video-game stories (and especially art-games) is that they hammer you with their "point", with no attempt at subtlety or any meaningful interpretation. They either shove it down your throat (like Judith) or leave it completely unexplained (in which I mean that they give you an ending in which the answer could literally be "whatever").

This is what keeps video-games from maturing, this lack of discipline in their story-telling and quite frankly shitty teenager-level attempts at "art". Its kind of like most graffiti art, its message is delivered in a way akin to James Cameron's Avatar, like a hammer to the head.

And no, I would not want them to awkwardly try and explain a purposefully vague ending, it would just ruin the experience for me.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

snip

I haven't played ME3 or any of the ME games, but based on what I have been told about the endings, I like them.

Spoiler

They all are phryhic victories, or worse. And the logic behind the reapers make sense if you consider that they aren't killing organics, they are assimilating them into new beings, like the flood.

 

[boag]

snip

I haven't played ME3 or any of the ME games, but based on what I have been told about the endings, I like them.

Spoiler

They all are phryhic victories, or worse. And the logic behind the reapers make sense if you consider that they aren't killing organics, they are assimilating them into new beings, like the flood.

Yeah, that shit no longer applies anymore, Indoctrination is the real final test of the game. I am now applauding Bioware for the Ending.

 

[dystopiaINC]

As an addendum to Boag's post...leaving aside personal feelings about Star Baby, choices taken into account/not taken into account/themes employed and abandoned, can the people who liked the ending explain the following to me, using data actually provided for us in the game/lore and not their own speculation?

1. Why is Joker fleeing? How is fleeing consistent with his character? How did he know to flee?
2. If Garrus was shown in a pool of blood at my feet, why is he exiting the Normandy on the garden world?
3. How does Hackett know Shepard is on the Citadel? Radio chatter indicated no one made it.
4. How does Anderson beat Shepard to the Crucible? Anderson entered the beam after Shepard.
5. The ending shows us all the relays exploding. We are to understand from the Arrival that this obliterates the systems containing them. Did Shepard just wipe out dozens of densely inhabited systems?
6. If you got the Rubble Shepard/Wake Up Breath ending, how does Shepard go from standing on an exploding Citadel to waking up in a pile of concrete rubble in London?
7. What is the wisdom in creating a synthetic army to wipe out advanced organic life every 50,000 years to prevent a synthetic army from wiping out advanced organic life? Why couldn't your synthetic army fight against the hypothetical bad synthetics? Or warn the organics? Or do ANYTHING ELSE?

I can make my peace with the Star Baby ending if so much of the stuff surrounding it didn't make no sense at all.

I'll try answering what I can the way I saw it. The Catalyst is not actually a star baby, just taking a form Shepard can relate too, personally I think it would have worked better if it was the person who died in Vermire as i think more people would get that idea. but any way there were three dream sequences with that kid it did not surprise me that his form was used.

1.) Joker running, I have no idea, my only guess would be that the big green orb is unknown, and he has no clue what will happen, if i had the ability to run i would personally try. (the Normandy did end up cashing for what ever reason)
2.) When was Garrus shown dead? I never saw it in my game,and he never came off the Normandy for me, in my 2 play through i got joker, EDI, and liara/ashly the last time a saw Garrus was the talk about heaven's bar. but that may be a bug where the ending shows certain people based on certain events and if they die after those deciding events then they still get shown anyway....
3.) No clue, Anderson may have updated him that he made it with Shepard, really did not bother me at all there.
4.) Anderson said he followed Shepard up. but they ended up in different places, also Shepard looked like he was knocked out when he got there. Anderson looked like he was in better shape than Shepard injury wise until Shepard was force to shoot him... maybe Anderson woke up earlier or was droped off closer to the console.
5.) In arrival when the mass relay was destroyed it was by getting nailed by a giant asteroid, and it went super nova. it's probable that catalyst can destroy the mass relays with out sending them into a cataclysmic explosion. in the end when the relay went up, it was a much small explosion and the energy from the catalyst was spread from the relay, and simultaneously sent to the next rely. looked like they didn't go super nuclear and wipe out all the systems near relays like arrival.
6.) Went with the synthesis ending so i didn't get that.
7.) The "wisdom"... Organic life will always create synthetic life, and that synthetic life will rebel and destroy organic life. (I'm thinking terminator here) so the reapers harvest the organic life and preserve them in reaper form. like with the human reaper, they take the genetic material of the advanced races, make a reaper out of them. the point of they cycle is established presumably because synthetic life would not stop at only the advances races, the reapers assume that the synthetic life would eventually wipe out ALL LIFE, including the under developed races, the plant and animal life galaxy wide. this may not be correct, in fact it's probably not true. but it's the justification reapers use. It is how ever possible. the geth did rebel, it's more grey than the black and white Synthetics will destroy all organics, the quarians were the original aggressors, but they did expel them from Rannoch.

the point being that peace was see as impossible by almost everyone, it was a huge shock that Shepard could get them to not destroy one another to the rest of the galaxy. and even then the peace was helped by the existence of the reaper threat, as bigger enemies were lurking and the geth and quarians were better served by making peace to fight the larger foe, if not for that they may not have been able to reach a peace, which does lend itself to the reaper's original point. (same goes for the krogan allied with the turians)

that what I think personally, not saying I'm right but that's how it made sense to me.
(also what if the reaper believe this because THEY were the first synthetic life form during the first cycle?)... food for thought.

Captcha: hard lines yup some hard lines have been drawn on this issue lol

 

[boag]

2.) When was Garrus shown dead? I never saw it in my game,and he never came off the Normandy for me, in my 2 play through i got joker, EDI, and liara/ashly the last time a saw Garrus was the talk about heaven's bar. but that may be a bug where the ending shows certain people based on certain events and if they die after those deciding events then they still get shown anyway....

any squadmate you bring to the battle ends up dead after the beam fires.

 

[Nieroshai]

(Can you tell me the difference between each of the choices the end gives you?) I'll give the ethical explanations. First of all, know that the Conduit was a test left by the Reapers (Machine God) to decide if organic life deserves to become advanced and control the galaxy. In building it, the first test was passed: organic life could cooperate well enough to get the thing running. The Reapers deviously controlled factions to slow down said construction, to prove if organic life could overcome its own limitations and essentially defeat itself. Saren and the Illusive Man both acted in the name of organics, but were in action doing everything in their power to ensure the Conduit could not be finished. Activating the device requires the willpower to resist Reaper indoctrination, thus the third test. Down to the choices now.
First, control the reapers. Can an organic being really control such power, or even deserve to? And becoming one with them, who's to say who's controlling who, just like Saren and the Illusive Man?
Second, wipe out all mechanical life. Is it ethical to do so, and is it worth all the artificial lives lost if it means ending the Reapers? If you never sided with the Geth in the first place, this is obviously the ending for you.
Merging organic and mechanical life. Why? Because it creates a universe of beings who no longer need worry about what is machine and what is man. All with life are mechanical, all machines are natural. This is the Utopia ending, and ultimately what the Machine God wants. There really is no reason this would be a bad thing, objectively, unless you spend a little too much time around magnets. How this ending is even possible is up for debate, but the mechanical wizard did it.
In all endings, the Reapers disappear and the Mass Relays are gone forever.
Basically the Conduit is the Machine God's gun to the head of the universe, saying "accept our kind and join us, or I will feed you to my children. Hardly a benevolent god, but outside organized religion, what God is? Was Cthulhu nice? No, and why should he be? What makes him a god is the fact that his very visage is beyond human understanding, let alone his mind.
Shepard must die in the end, to show what must be sacrificed to achieve peace. Shepard had to be shown that no matter what he chose, he would never get to benefit from his actions, and therefore must act in the interests of all.

Summary: Machine God wants all organic life to be one with machines instead of dominant over them. So he sends sentient dreadnaughts to eat them unless organics build a ship that can communicate with Mech God and earn forgiveness by making machine brothers with man. Of course, man can screw the Machine God over by killing or enslaving his children, either becoming a murderer or the cyber equivalent of the devil. Either way of the three, no more galactic travel until they can invent it on their own. Make sense?

That's quite similar to what I think of the story, but with one difference: the "Machine God" is not actually divine in origin, but is a very old AI that is so much more advanced than what every organic race can do that it seems divine. Remember the Arthur C. Clarke quote "Any sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The AI, running in the Citadel (which is a giant computer) gained conscience millions of years ago, and maybe witnessed (or even participated in) an attempt by synthetics to completely exterminate organic life, but then changed mind and decided this was not that good an idea. Then it creates the Reapers, the relays, etc and start the cycle. This gives a perspective into why such a harsh solution as the cycle, from our point of view, makes sense to the AI: it's been living in such a large time-scale and knows so much that 50 thousand years of civilization doesn't mean all that much to it. The Crucible as a test is quite possible. It seems to have originated from the AI itself, of course, as the Prothean VI say it was passed from cycle to cycle in a timeframe spanning millions of years, and no one knows where it came from.

That's kinda what I meant, should have specified. What I liked about the Reaper concept in the first place was that they were older than pretty much anything else in the galaxy, and utterly beyond understanding because they were created by an intelligence that died an infinite number of cycles ago, and Machine God/Crucible is no different. Perhaps the reason the Reapers used the Geth and advanced their evolution was because they saw their own plight in these tiny flashlight-headed robots?