@Hailinel said:

Brad's reaction to learning what all was added in the extended cut ending is priceless.

This. I love how he goes from confused head-shaking at what he thinks was added and then just into flat shock after people explain to him that the EC added a lot more.

@Milkman said:

@Animasta said:

@Milkman said:

As someone who played the game without the From Ashes, Leviathan or the Extended Cut and HATED the ending, I'm actually really interested to hear what it's like with all of that as part of the package. Though if all that extra stuff is essential to enjoying the story, then you wrote a bad story.

or, well, made a bad game; I don't really think a book would have DLC.

How long do we have until a book has DLC? It has to be coming at some point, right?

Isn't that just a novel with a novella sequel?

The first ending sucked, made me rage like I never did before. Just cause the rest of the game was so awesome. And I mean the whole "All paths lead to this specific point, and here you get to pick your ending, push a button and watch a movie, green, blue or red! Whoo!"-style, it really blows. There are way better ways to force a player to make that choice without making it obvious. Also, I would have liked a rundown on what the hell my previous decisions effects really were. I got the immediate impact of them, but I would have wanted a falloutstyle-story where you get told what happened in the long run.

I had Javik and I dont think he added all that much to the experience, he was a rather dull bloke in my opinion.

Also, I realise Leviathan and the EC-cut makes some sort of difference, but the first ending was so poor, and in combination with me having to play the multiplayer to get the "best" ending... they add up so that ME3 is the only Mass Effect I havent been able to replay. Played the first one maybe 5-6 times, second one 4 times, 3rd one... once.

Doesn't matter what Brad thinks of it. He played a game with all the nickle-and-dime pre-order cut content stapled back into the game, a revised ending (and it's still pretty fucking bad), and a bunch of superfluous extra shit. Of course it's going to come up smelling like roses compared to the shitheap that killed Bioware to me forever.

I will do the same thing I have done with the other ME games play it when it comes out with my Male Shepard and play it again a year later when all the DLC is out on Insanity with Female Shepard.

I would be so funny if Brad thinks that the ending isn't as bad as people make it to be which I totally agree.

Grow up, babies. And stop whining.

@phrosnite said:

I would be so funny if Brad thinks that the ending isn't as bad as people make it to be which I totally agree.

Grow up, babies. And stop whining.

Man, if you read the twitter, not really.

My only problem with the ending was that it didn't give enough answers to be the end of a triology, the extended cut gave me the information I felt was lacking from the orgininal ending. And it's still one of my absolute favourite games this year.

That's all I have to say on that.

I still need to play Leviathan.

sounds like Bioware fucked up out of the gate, pity i played the game at launch really, i liked it, but you know... its been said before, that ending was pretty weak

looking forward to playing the game again now, just got to wait for the last piece of DLC to come out before i jump on board again, Bioware's reputation is really on the line at the minute, i probably wont be buying their next game at launch anyway

@Terramagi said:

@phrosnite said:

I would be so funny if Brad thinks that the ending isn't as bad as people make it to be which I totally agree.

Grow up, babies. And stop whining.

Man, if you read the twitter, not really.

Well, it's we are talking about here. He always disappoints.

Still, I can't believe peolpe bitch about the ending so much but didn't say anything about the Fallout 3's ending which is times worse. There is and there will never be a worse ending than that of Fallout 3.

@phrosnite said:

@Terramagi said:

@phrosnite said:

I would be so funny if Brad thinks that the ending isn't as bad as people make it to be which I totally agree.

Grow up, babies. And stop whining.

Man, if you read the twitter, not really.

Well, it's we are talking about here. He always disappoints.

Still, I can't believe peolpe bitch about the ending so much but didn't say anything about the Fallout 3's ending which is times worse. There is and there will never be a worse ending than that of Fallout 3.

People bitch about Fallout 3 all the time. It's just a more broad hate.

Why was that game so dumb? At least we got New Vegas which blew that shit out of the water.

@Terramagi said:

@phrosnite said:

@Terramagi said:

@phrosnite said:

I would be so funny if Brad thinks that the ending isn't as bad as people make it to be which I totally agree.

Grow up, babies. And stop whining.

Man, if you read the twitter, not really.

Well, it's we are talking about here. He always disappoints.

Still, I can't believe peolpe bitch about the ending so much but didn't say anything about the Fallout 3's ending which is times worse. There is and there will never be a worse ending than that of Fallout 3.

People bitch about Fallout 3 all the time. It's just a more broad hate.

Why was that game so dumb? At least we got New Vegas which blew that shit out of the water.

There's also the fact that Fallout 3 wasn't the last game of a trilogy. Even though it is Fallout 3, it's still its own seperate story.

@Terramagi said:

@phrosnite said:

@Terramagi said:

@phrosnite said:

I would be so funny if Brad thinks that the ending isn't as bad as people make it to be which I totally agree.

Grow up, babies. And stop whining.

Man, if you read the twitter, not really.

Well, it's we are talking about here. He always disappoints.

Still, I can't believe peolpe bitch about the ending so much but didn't say anything about the Fallout 3's ending which is times worse. There is and there will never be a worse ending than that of Fallout 3.

People bitch about Fallout 3 all the time. It's just a more broad hate.

Why was that game so dumb? At least we got New Vegas which blew that shit out of the water.

The only person who was "bitching" about the Fallout 3's ending, that I've heard, was Jeff. Mass Effect 3's ending is just a "that's it?" ending, nothing more. Fallout 3's ending is an insult to every RPG fan.

Edit: Those tards at Game Trailers did a Top 10 worst endings video and Fallout 3's was nowhere to be found.

People just wanted to find something to hate EA even more so they blew the ME3's ending "badness" so out of proportion that I've lost all faith in the gaming community.

@phrosnite said:

@Terramagi said:

@phrosnite said:

I would be so funny if Brad thinks that the ending isn't as bad as people make it to be which I totally agree.

Grow up, babies. And stop whining.

Man, if you read the twitter, not really.

Well, it's we are talking about here. He always disappoints.

Still, I can't believe peolpe bitch about the ending so much but didn't say anything about the Fallout 3's ending which is times worse. There is and there will never be a worse ending than that of Fallout 3.

It's because people cared an order of magnitude more about the story and characters in ME

@Bocam: But you never see them NOT being separated either. That's my point. You're running for 40 seconds then knocked on your ass for who knows how long before you come to. They're behind you and literally ANYthing could have happened to them at any point during the approach to the Citadel. A wormhole could have opened up and taken them to Narnia. Indoctrinated Elcor ninjas could have popped out of the ground and assassinated them. Faced with the impossibility of the mission and the terror of their own mortality they might have just decided to strip down and get it on in the middle of a warzone. Nothing you see contradicts the possibility of them surviving and making their way back on board the Normandy. You can't be inconsistent when there is 0 information to be consistent with, and no inconsistency means no plot-hole.

I rate Mass Effect 3; 2 out of 5 stars.

The fact that it failed to improve upon anything would resulted in a 4 stars down from 5 that I gave ME2, but it's lack-luster side-missions and it's infuriating quest-log and it's lack of markers drove me nuts, their pathetic avoidance of including any ME2 characters into your main party with shit terrible excuses why they don't or can't join you so they could avoid creating more dialog and animations for these characters to do on the ship between missions and during missions just felt pure lazy like they didn't even want to bother trying to add them into the game which if they had would of added a hell of alot more re-playability so their choice in these matter drags it down from a 4 to a 3 but then there's........ The ending which I think most of us can agree ruins if not nearly ruins the whole series which I must add another deduction down to a 2 out of 5 stars.

Regardless of what they add later it doesn't positively effect some of the major problems I had with the game.

I thought this topic was going to be about Brad's reaction to the ending, not about people giving their opinions for the 100th time.

I think we get it ! You guys didn't like Mass Effect 3 !

@SlashDance said:

I thought this topic was going to be about Brad's reaction to the ending, not about people giving their opinions for the 100th time.

I think we get it ! You guys didn't like Mass Effect 3 !

It's about having some confirmation that the DLC and Extended Cut were essential to the experience of ME3 in light of Brad's reaction to the ending. He's literally reeling on twitter about the things that weren't included in the original ending. I'm really anxious to see Jeff and Brad talk it out. Jeff played none of the extra content and Brad played it all. They have two very different experiences so we'll see how Jeff's "that new stuff doesn't matter" pans out with Brad's "continue to be baffled as I figure out what wasn't in there to begin with".

@phrosnite said:

@Terramagi said:

@phrosnite said:

I would be so funny if Brad thinks that the ending isn't as bad as people make it to be which I totally agree.

Grow up, babies. And stop whining.

Man, if you read the twitter, not really.

Well, it's we are talking about here. He always disappoints.

Still, I can't believe peolpe bitch about the ending so much but didn't say anything about the Fallout 3's ending which is times worse. There is and there will never be a worse ending than that of Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 has a fucking terrible ending, but I was nowhere near as invested in Fallout as I was in Mass Effect.

its like a time portal to march opened and all the crazy people are still here

If not for the vague (others call bad) endings of the original we would never have stuff as cool as the indoctrination theory. I still kinda treat the endgame that way.

@golguin: Imo, Mass Effect 3's ending was fine albeit lazy. I waited and beat it with the Extended Cut. My problem with ME3 lied within everything before the ending. The pacing, the dialogue, and lack of "choices". While I still enjoyed it, I felt that everything was extremely underwhelming.

Beat it once with just Javik, and i'm in the process of playing through the renegade path with my femShep. I have gotten to play both DLC's smoothly integrated into my game, as opposed to going back to my first Shepard After he'd already saved the universe (which I didn't really have any interest in doing because his story was done) and I'd say they certainly add something (Leviathan more so than Omega) and I actually liked what the Extended Cut added, it at least gives you a little more closure.

A better experience will all DLC added.

Side thought: Does that "Mass Effect Trilogy" come with any of the DLC for Any of the games?

So I picked up ME 3 a little bit after release, heard some of the shit storm about the ending, heard talk about the Extended Cut a while into the game, and so I held up at the Ceberus base assault mission to wait for that to come out.

It did, but I didn't go back, still kind of dreading it, until last night. I just finished it.

I can't believe what I saw was the "extended cut" of an ending... it was so brief as is. Nevermind the quality, just the content shown. I feel so much for those of you who finished the game straight up at release. I can't believe I downloaded almost 2 gigs and that is what it was. I know there were bits before the actual end, but the end itself...

God. Then that they seemed to have cut so much for DLC.

Pretty shameful. This is just content and amounts. The quality was terrible too to me but it's just not acceptable after 3 long RPGs to crawl across the finish line like that.

As much as we can all say the right way to experience the game is with content that didn't ship or cost more money, didn't Brad have the same WTF reaction to even the extended ending?

@AndrewB said:

As much as we can all say the right way to experience the game is with content that didn't ship or cost more money, didn't Brad have the same WTF reaction to even the extended ending?

Brad's bigger WTF right now is understanding what all wasn't in the original ending. He's baffled at the amount of content that was left out.

@AndrewB said:

As much as we can all say the right way to experience the game is with content that didn't ship or cost more money, didn't Brad have the same WTF reaction to even the extended ending?

I think he had the biggest WTF reaction to the fact that what he saw was an extended ending. That's the same thing I thought playing it last night. I can't believe what it looked like before that as I found it pretty light and quick as is.

Also, did anyone else get that whole spiel by the "star child" and then not have any idea where they were supposed to go for each possible choice? I ended up choosing the super good guy sacrifice ending even though I didn't really want to because I just guessed. Ugh man...

@StarvingGamer said:

ME3 was fine on its own. From Ashes and Leviathan are amazing pieces of content, but add very little to the actual core ME3 storyline. They are there to provide extended lore and overall context, not move the Mass Effect trilogy to its conclusion. Also, they added absolutely nothing with the extended-cut DLC that couldn't have easily been inferred by anyone willing to spare an ounce of brainpower. The EC is the worst example of lowest-common-denominator dumbing-down that I have ever seen. Ever.

EDIT: ME3 is going to be in my top 10 games this year, and would hold the same overall ranking even if From Ashes and Leviathan were part of the retail game or never existed at all.

...that is a bit much to believe where I'm not sure where you are coming from. Shepard ends up in a room that no one has ever found, talking to a being no one ever heard of, given choices where two of them no character in the ME universe, let alone the player, even consider possible let alone reasonable. It is possible the writers were "too smart for us" but then that is poor story telling where "the reader/viewer just doesn't get it" is a poor defense. In other words, if "we" don't get it because the author laid it out poorly, badly, or incorrectly.

And screw them (the authors) if they suggest that it is all explained in some other DLC. There is a way to do this "cliffhanger" correctly but the end of Mass Effect was never ever that.

@EXTomar: I'm not quite following your point. What is there to get? The Citadel is a complete mystery to everyone. Despite being on the Citadel for thousands of years, the combined races still have NO idea how it works. They rely on the Keepers, something else they are are clueless about, to keep the whole thing running. They didn't even know the thing had its own built-in relay. Is it really that much of a stretch to believe that there's a room or rooms that no one ever found?

And as far as the choices go, what is the quotation, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."? This situation is no different than if a prehistoric civilization found a bunch of smart phones that had some weird security feature meaning they could only access the camera. Imagine if after 200 years of their society living with these "cameras," a precursor showed up and unlocked it and suddenly this camera started making phone calls and running hundreds of different apps. These are functions that none of the prehistoric people should have ever considered possible let alone reasonable. If you can "get" that then I see no reason why you can't "get" the ending to ME3.

@StarvingGamer You keep missing the underlying theme that the authors sought to generate "mystery" by explaining the wrong things. Its fine to have a location on the Citadel that is the key to everything that no one has found but they probably shouldn't have shown an elevator to it let alone how Shepard gets on it. It is fine to have a "weird" or exotic ending which in multi-ending games are actually a staple but the endings presented were really really really really really out there and never ever suggested possible with in the limits of the fiction. The Star Child could have easily just said "On that platform is a time machine where if you chose that you can go back in time shape the future of The Reapers by being the first". Wait when was time travel or control or synthetic reorganization or whatever possible in Mass Effect? You seem content with the answer "Always where The Star Child just happened to mention it now" while others suggest it is BS to set it up like this.

Do you know what I would have loved? Multiple missions that explore each facet of the ending like so...

• The option to build up a massive fleet to attack the core of The Reaper (Destroy). Everything you do is about building up the hard hitting force where in the end Shepard has a shot at destroying The Star Child. Explore and consider the effect of building up the largest force the galaxy.
• The option to hack The Reapers so you can order them to go away (Control). Everything you do is about gaining tech on how The Reapers work where in the end Shepard has a shot at overriding and taking them over. Explore and consider the effect of giving a few or one person control of The Reapers.
• The option to change the rules (Synthesis). Everything you do is about intelligence on how The Reapers organize and distribute their forces where Shepard comes across the their purpose to cull life from the galaxy in a regular period so Shepard comes to the conclusion to stop the cycle they must come up with an unorthodox strategy of changing all life and all machines into something else.

This is what I and many others are saying when we say "The ending was bad". It isn't who lived or who died but that so many facets of the ending are just suggested in the closing moments and then has the gall to ask "Isn't that clever?" No a clever, well put together story would fully explore the themes and ideas instead of introducing them in the last 10 minutes and say "YOUR CHOICE?" Clever isn't having The Star Child telling the player about the final choices. Clever would have been having the player know well in advance what the choices are and spending most of the game with Shepard resolving it with his crew.

@EXTomar: I'm still not sure what this has to do with the post of mine you originally quoted where I said that the EC didn't add anything to the ending that wasn't already implicit. But in response to your actual post:

I still don't understand why you're so hung up over where Shepard ended up. The entire area starting with the beam was uncharted territory, not just the Catalyst's room. It was a clear linear progression, from weird hallways to central platform with an elevator to the final destination. And the elevator was next to the control panel because where else would you put the elevator?

The only ending that was really really out there was the space-hippy unification ending which I will agree, was dumb. But as you said, it's fine to have a weird/exotic ending. But nothing about the other two should have come as any surprise. They're just higher-stakes variations on things you have already done in ME2. In Legion's loyalty mission he was able to create an EMP that could reprogram all of the heretic Geth. The Red ending is just the same thing with a larger blast radius and a kill-command in the code. And we've seen in Overlord and Shepard's experiences on Rannoch a number of ways that the human mind can interact with AI tech. The Blue ending is the ultimate version of that.

Am I wrong?

Looking forward to the inevitable BC discussion. Hopefully a but more rounded with it's opinions than this 'round table ' by Arthur Gies back in March on The Verge: -

Arthur: I wonder if it's spoiled somewhat by the idea that players, or a certain subset of players, will try to game system no matter what. I wonder if that effects people's enjoyment of this, because they were trying to figure out the whole time how to get the "best" ending. Because I hear a lot of talk about the "best" ending.

http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/5/3461080/reviewers-talk-mass-effect-3-the-ending-the-narrative-the-controversy

@StarvingGamer I have no idea how other to express "The ending was badly written". Its been repeated a lot in many other threads. So I'll keep it sort and simple for you to understand: I find the endings intriguing but the messed up delivery. If Bioware wanted to do a trippy fantasy ending, this is not the way to do it. The end.

I don't get the whole you have to play Levithan to have a better understanding of the ending. What about it adds to the experience? I have finished it and other than some extended lore it really just didn't do a whole lot for me.

Are we saying that the events on Harbinger happen all in the mind of Shepard then isn't that the same as claiming the Indoctrination Theory as true?

I do think that the extended cuts add quite a bit to the overall feeling of closure. I still think the last third of the game could have been better but overall I am happy with the ending I choose even if the events didn't play out how I wanted it.

@Zirilius: It explains a lot of things.

I still to this day don't know why people didn't like the ending. For a story that had ramifications that grand, I think they wrapped it up about as well as anybody could.

@Zirilius said:

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

I think the only thing I hated was that no matter what Shepard has to die and taking that choice away from the player is probably what rubbed me the wrong way the most.

@gkhan said:

@Zirilius said:

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

I think the only thing I hated was that no matter what Shepard has to die and taking that choice away from the player is probably what rubbed me the wrong way the most.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

If you play the Extended Cut and choose the red option (to destroy the Reapers) and have a high enough military rating, Shepard doesn't die.

I had totally forgotten about that. Guess that's what happens when you choose the Synthesize ending.