The ending of Mass Effect 2 came up on the bombcast, and everyone but Jeff started acting like it was stupid, and had always been stupid. To which I was like: huh. I loved the twist at the end of 2, didn't even mind the design of the terminator baby thing. So it got me thinking, what's the popular opinion of that twist at the end of Mass Effect 2:

...the Terminator looking thing?

It didn't bother me. It was kind of dumb, in retrospect, but whenever I fight that thing I don't have that "this is fucking stupid" thought going through my head.

Neither dislike or affection. And that's the truth.

I was kind of indifferent to it, which really is probably worse than thinking it was stupid. I think it's pretty cool in concept at least.

Looking back at it, I'm pretty indifferent but when I was fighting it I pretty much went "What the fuck is this?" to the friend sitting next to me. Partially because of the dumb boss, and partially because how goddamn easy it was to not even get hit.

I thought it was dumb at the time and the whole thing was kind of stupid. The mission itself was great so I'm not going to ding the game for that one tiny mistake.

DESTROY

Reaper baby is fucking stupid.

Far more stupid than anything in the 3rd game.

Jeff, it was stupid but I don't have a problem with it, it wasn't STAR CHILD

Both? It was hella stupid but pretty neat at the same time.

No, it was kind of stupid. Not like "this ruins the game" stupid, but preeeeeeetttty ~ stupid. Just felt like "okay, we need a boss fight here and we watched a whole lot of those Terminator movies."

Mass Effect 2 is still one of my favorite games of all time, though.

I mean, one of my other favorite games of all time has *this* for a side-dungeon final boss/hardest fight in the game:

Oh, the "twist?" I mean, that's actually something they were hinting at with previous games. They were abducting entire colonies and not turning *all* of them into Drones. I didn't find anything wrong with that; though weirdly I just expected another Reaper to look like a gigantic squid-ship.

It made for a cool looking boss fight, but conceptually it was pretty stupid.

It was pretty silly, but it at least had a reason for existing that was explained in the game without the need for DLC.

I didn't mind the it that much but the actual fight where it's playing peek-a-boo with you over the ledge was kinda dumb. That whole mission was super rad though.

The concept of fighting a barely sentient/completed Reaper in the finale of Mass Effect 2 is sound. What's even more sound is the original design of the Reaper baby, which is horrifying on many levels.

It was stupid, and the boss fight itself was fucking terrible. People love ME2 but you have to admit that whole human reaper thing was a huge letdown.

@joshthebear: It was almost worth it though, just to hear Vinny describe it as a "Learning disabled Terminator"

Liked the concept, the design was lame. The battle wasn't great, but boss battles hardly are. It was servicable and the mission leading up to it, fucking rad.

It's a video game boss fight... And not the good kind, like in Metroid Prime or something.

It's a videogame boss ... when I played Mass Effect 2 for the first time I thought it was cool looking.

@psylah said:

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

That is fanfuckingtasic. The final pane is amazing.

I think the part where it looks like half of a Terminator is kind of hokey, but the idea of the Reapers converting humans into nondescript organic material to make a human reaper is kind of badass, not to mention entirely central to what Reapers are themselves.

It was massive, clumsy, slow, underwhelming, took place on an isolated platform suspended in mid air, and probably worst of all, the core mechanics were that you had to survive a wave of attacks, wait for it to inexplicably open up its weak spot and then shoot it while it was down. It is everything that is wrong with bad video game boss fights.

It was at that precise point that I could not believe that everyone was talking about this game so fondly.

As for the concept, it was alright. I didn't think that it was particularly amazing, though, and it certainly wasn't unique.

The worst part to me is actually the part where they make you fight the thing.  
It would have been ok, but still pretty stupid, if you just shot it down and then that was that, but no, it's a videogame so of course it has to come back up from the depths of the base somehow and be a really boring bossfight.

I liked the concept of it because the execution of it as a boss fight wasn't that great. I would have liked it better if they left the fate of the reaper up in the player's hand like what they did with the decision to either keep or destroy the collectors base.

I forgot what the ending even was until I read this. I just remembered having to make a choice to destroy the base or not. That whole boss thing was just very forgettable and uninteresting.

Why after so many civs fighting back they have to choose humans? There must have been at least one creature as impressive as shepard in fucking millenia.

Why a baby? Its a robot that is supposed to take the shape of the most badass thing in the universe and it chooses an infant human instead of a grown one?.

Stupid.

I wasn't really surprised by the reveal and I didn't think it was stupid at all. I actually found the idea that inside every Reaper shell lived a being they once harvested and had become the basis for a Reaper (or more) was very cool.

@probablytuna said:

I wasn't really surprised by the reveal and I didn't think it was stupid at all. I actually found the idea that inside every Reaper shell lived a being they once harvested and had become the basis for a Reaper (or more) was very cool.

"Oh crap, we need a giant monster for the player to fight or else they will feel unfulfilled upon completion of the game!" --How I imagine the conversation went down during development.

It was profoundly stupid, especially the idea that they need to pulp thousands of humans to make a giant metal robot. That being said, ME2 is still one of my favorite games of all time.

It didn't bother me, and I found the boss fight itself fairly cool. I can totally see why people would feel it was stupid, though.

Big robot boss...didn't bother me... at least It all didn't come down to babysitting a truck...then doing it again...yuck

You mean the thing they stole from Contra 3?

Contra 3 was fucking rad. Alien Wars > Hard Corps 4lyfe.

I had more of an issue with how they made the final choice seem extremely significant, and then they barely addressed it in 3.

It was scientifically and logically the dumbest thing I've seen in a (somewhat serious) sci-fi setting in a long long while.

Easily beats the childish way Binary Domain handles AI issues.

C. Crazy stupid.

The mission still felt great. The tone and the pacing and the music, all great. That boss, when you reflect on it, total nonsense.

Yeah I thought the Human Reaper thing was kind of dumb but more wonky dumb than badumb, which is its own problem given how well they've sold that universe. However when coupled with why they were making it and how, human slurpy machine, then it really reveals the bigger problem with ME2's plot which to me is worse than dumb. Since this thread is about the ending I'm not going to get into it but needless to say it made me think real hard about the rest of the game, leaving me with the impression ME1 was my favorite of the two.

I thought it was OK. Didn't have too many problems with it. That being said, I never really thought the Mass Effect stories were anything super awesome so the ending to 2 didn't surprise/disappoint me either way.

No, it was kind of stupid. Not like "this ruins the game" stupid, but preeeeeeetttty ~ stupid. Just felt like "okay, we need a boss fight here and we watched a whole lot of those Terminator movies."

Mass Effect 2 is still one of my favorite games of all time, though.

I mean, one of my other favorite games of all time has *this* for a side-dungeon final boss/hardest fight in the game:

Oh, the "twist?" I mean, that's actually something they were hinting at with previous games. They were abducting entire colonies and not turning *all* of them into Drones. I didn't find anything wrong with that; though weirdly I just expected another Reaper to look like a gigantic squid-ship.

It was dumb, but I didn't think it was that bad. I think it would have been less dumb if you didn't have to fight it.

Good idea, really back fight, and really bad reaper design.

It didn't bother me. It's as stupid as any other game ending boss. I barely care about what I fought at the very end when the whole suicide mission, from the time you make the jump, is just fantastic. Getting caught up on one tiny detail when the entire end is so great is just silly to me. It's like maybe 3% stupid in an otherwise perfectly executed ending mission.

So "Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

And the ending to Mass Effect 2 certainly kicks the every-loving shite out of the ending to Mass Effect 3, stupid end Terminator or not.

I enjoyed it and and it was really creepy too but pretty basic in how you approach the fight.

I liked it, the though of reapers being based on the species they harvested. I'm not sure what else you could expect the human reaper to look like honestly.

A lot better than mutant final boss Saren....

Personally I found the ending kind of abrupt. I was expecting a system beyond the Omega relay and a bit more story to explore so I rather surprised when the whole thing turned into a space battle.

As such it didn't really register with me too much at the time about the appearance of the reaper in terms of form, however afterwards I did think it seemed kind of dumb. There's not really any logic or rationale as to why an ostensibly space based entity would require a human appearance and it flew in the face of the cuttlefish look of the other reapers. The totem-ism just seemed like an unnecessary conceit.

@Lind_L_Taylor said:

That Demogorgon looks very cartoony. Is that the World of Warcrack version?

Nope, that's official promo art for Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal.