Slight Spoilers Ahead.

I just finished Deus Ex last night, and I had one major issue, no matter what choices you made in-game, you get to pick the ending you like best. All four endings you can pick from are all the same cutscene of stock-footage, only with a different narration by Jensen.

How is this any better than Mass Effect 3's ending? I have not heard complaints about this issue, which I think is a major issue. At least Mass Effect didn't present the endings to you in a "Chose Your Own Adventure" style, it based the endings off of the choices you made(I know all it does is change the color of the ending, but still)

Why are more people not taking issue about this? I guess my main question is, why is it okay for us to riff on EA and Mass Effect 3, and not Eidos and Deus Ex 3?

People spent 60 dollars to reach Deus Ex: Human Revolution's ending while over 120 dollars could be spent to reach ME3's.

I actually liked the endings to HR. The way they presented them to you were shit, but the ending sequences themselves were fine. The narration from Jensen is pretty different for each one.

The internet rages about literally anything, Eidos were just lucky enough to dodge the bullet.

I think it depends on your opinion of what constitutes a bad ending vs. a good one. In the case of Deus Ex I appreciated the... Well I guess this is kind of a (soft) spoiler -

People were complaining when the game came out, 9 months ago. You are a little late to the party.

The difference was the big build up to ME3 over two games and some people expected the last one to be amazingly good with every little choice from the two previous games expanded upon. Compare that to Deus Ex which people wanted to be good but the last game in the series to come out was Invisible War and no one from the original Deus Ex team worked on HR. I think people adjusted their expectations accordingly. Most importantly I think, was that ME3 was marketed on the story choices you can make while Dues Ex was marketed more on the gameplay choices you can make. I reckon the only reason that HR had multiple endings was because that's what the other Deus Ex games had and the endings they present you are totally in line with how the original game presented its endings.

******SPOILERS BELOW FOR ME3 AND HR ********

As for the endings themselves. The way both are presented to you are lazy and in Deus Ex's case kinda silly but the ME3 ending themselves are all really lazy. At least the Deus Ex endings vary in the footage they show and sort of give you an idea of what each choice means for the future. The ME3 endings just have a different colour and are really ambiguous about what any of it means. Stack that on top of the reveal in the last five minutes about the Citadel and the Reapers and it's not hard to see why people were much more annoyed with the ME3 ending.

because you know the outcome, human revolution was only a prequel. So whatever you chose is not that relevant because Deus Ex 1 canon still exists. Mass Effect 3 was a conclusion, to a series of games and you don't know what happens to the universe at the end thus people felt stabbed in the back. my take on that.

You can't compare the two. 
 
Mass Effect has been going on for 5 years in 3 different games and a shitload of novels and comics and what have you. It has tons of fans who masturbate to the sweet sways of Liara's firm blue butt. It also has a massive and impressive sci-fi universe that has simply set the standards to how video games should present sci-fi themes...  
All of that ended with picking a color or however ME3 ended. It's so boring I haven't finished it yet. 
 
Human Revolution is the spiritual successor to Deus Ex. A game about GAMEplay, not about a story with sexy aliens and rich lore. The things that made that video game amazing was the game parts, the smart level design, the hacking and sneaking and finding multiple paths, the gadgets and weapons you could use, the cameras and robots you had to dodge. 
By the time you finish this gem you are so satisfied by the looong memorable stealth adventure you went on, and the way the story progressed and unfolded, that you simply sit there in peace listening to Jensin's soothing voice as the video reel plays, trying to connect the dots to Deus Ex 1 and picture how things went between the two games.

Actually Deus Ex Human Revolution was criticized for it's ending in many revues and by word of mouth. Of course not to a degree of a ME3 ending.

There are far far more problems with ME3 ending for many people then with HR. People have written whole articles, lists and almost essays on a whole boatload of issues with the ME3 ending. Being a simplistic choice is but one of them.

I don't think Dugas or Anfossi or Square-Enix were running around claiming that Deus Ex: Human Revolution would have dozens of endings with every decision being hyper important either. Or another way to look at it is that little was promised about Deus Ex:HR while a lot was promised for Mass Effect 3. Both of them had odd issues, especially in the ending, but I don't blame anyone who feels more disappointed by the one making grander promises and failing to deliver on them.

Oh my God we can't talk ab out the ending of one game without talking about ME 3?

It is kind of hard to ignore how the endings seem....similar. It is kind of hard to avoid the comparison for Deus Ex:HR where really the blame should like with the other game.

HR was a prequel, so while people thought the ending was terrible, they didn't take it as hard as the ending of an entire trilogy arc, where the entire story turns around and eats its own ass.

HR also had terrible boss fights, and there was a complete illusion of choice...also, no 'human revolution' to speak of, so yeah...it wasn't that great a game, it was good, but used too many old-school, out of date mechanics which would never make it any better than that. The ending isn't that big a deal in comparison, because again, prequel, and it can be easily forgiven...though the ending was still terrible, but I just found myself not caring at that stage.

ME3 was a whole other kettle o' fish, ranging from glitchy controls, crappy maps/mission tracking, poor implementation of previous choices, graphical and sound hiccups, confusing plot points and a lackluster MP that still makes no sense to me, culminating in the poor showing at the end, which combined into a massive shit-storm that was the outrage surrounding it.

In fact, many a time I've compared to two, but only to show just how out-of-place ME3's ending was. I mean, last game in a trilogy, high expectations, and pulling a HR ending? Doesn't make sense to do that, given how drastically different those games are in concept and stages of their respective series.

All three Deus Ex games had an (A, B, C) or (A, B, C, D) ending structure and despite the amount of agency they gave you during the game you could always choose all of the endings in the last level. Just about every game with branching stories returns to an inevitable decision point at or near the end. Knights of the Old Republic had it just before you flew to the same end level to kill the same end boss for a "light side" reason or a "dark side" reason no matter how you played the game up to that point. One of my favorite games, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, had it's decision point in the form of a taxi ride, which at least sends you to different boss levels and very different endings. The choice is at least obscured in a long dialog, but even there your loyalty up to that point is hardly a factor.

Invisible War addressed my biggest complaint with the original Deus Ex by actually letting you choose to support a number of factions instead of giving you a false choice between the "good" guys and the "bad" guys, but all that support and did was decide who was where in the final level.  If Human Revolution copped out at all, it was by presenting the ending choices as a series of buttons instead of creating discrete mission objectives for them as the older games did. There is logic to the way it's set up though since you are controlling the public perception of the events that unfolded and not unfolding a new set of events.  

HR and ME3 ending spoilers ahead.

The endings for both games, and how they were presented to you are pretty terrible in my opinion. Also it's been almost a year when Human Revolution came out, so I don't think people care enough to rant about how the ending sucked for that game. Just like now the ME3 hate seems to have died down.... I think.

Still, I loved both games overall.

@ChaosDent said:

All three Deus Ex games had an (A, B, C) or (A, B, C, D) ending structure and despite the amount of agency they gave you during the game you could always choose all of the endings in the last level. Just about every game with branching stories returns to an inevitable decision point at or near the end. Knights of the Old Republic had it just before you flew to the same end level to kill the same end boss for a "light side" reason or a "dark side" reason no matter how you played the game up to that point. One of my favorite games, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, had it's decision point in the form of a taxi ride, which at least sends you to different boss levels and very different endings. The choice is at least obscured in a long dialog, but even there your loyalty up to that point is hardly a factor.

Invisible War addressed my biggest complaint with the original Deus Ex by actually letting you choose to support a number of factions instead of giving you a false choice between the "good" guys and the "bad" guys, but all that support and did was decide who was where in the final level. If Human Revolution copped out at all, it was by presenting the ending choices as a series of buttons instead of creating discrete mission objectives for them as the older games did. There is logic to the way it's set up though since you are controlling the public perception of the events that unfolded and not unfolding a new set of events.

The "fuck everyone" ending in Invisible War was the best part of that game. You got to completely ignore how bad of a game it had been up to that point and erase everything you'd accomplished so far.

Kind've a meta-ending about how much the game didn't matter.

From a philosophical and thematic point of view, the endings to Deus Ex:HR are complete and congruous. When looking at "trans-humanism" and augmentation in the context of the game, it is throughly explored leaving the player with a good idea the benefits and consequences on each of the endings even though the mechanics of it are very lackluster. On the other hand, with Mass Effect 3 expects you to make a choice on "which one looks cool?" leaving the player with little idea what is going. They might as well have asked "What is your favorite color?" instead...or did they? :)