There is something to the idea that you can only debut a game once. Although the Extended Cut does explain what the writers were thinking it is still nonsense. And @Hailinel is right that I don't think they released this to satisfy haters but satisfy "shaken fans".

The endings are bad. But the Extended Cut is a great final touch. I liked the Reapers Win option.

@Hailinel said:

@Aetheldod said:

@Hailinel: Well you dont belive it then ... im not forcing you but I choose to beleive so , and makes sense ... just you know I always said that the catalyst was a sort of AI created by the people that made the reapers , and the EC proved that so who is to say that Im wrong about this? ;)

Im not saying I know it all and stuff but the content provides enough info to go with this. But Im sensing that we will be at this al nite so lets agree to disagree , as cliche as that sounds , and dont want to get sour with you :D

I don't want this to drag on, either, but I'll state once more that you're reading things incorrectly. The content does not make any of the allusions that you're suggesting. The end result of the choice is cut and dried. You refuse to use the Crucible, and as a result, the war is lost. Game Over. Better luck next cycle. Also, humanity doesn't exist anymore, therefore Buzz Aldrin can't be around to tell stories of Shepard's exploits to children, so someone else had to be cast. That person is a woman of an unknown alien species from the distant future. Pointing to a silhouette and saying that it is, without a doubt, an Asari is just playing into the same ridiculous headgames that set the internet on fire with Indoctrination Theorists.

Now I'm done.

Saw this a little while ago again and it reminded me of this thread. @Aetheldod , really, watch it again.

" The cycle continues." Fade to white. (Incidentally, director Paul Verhoeven has been quoted as saying fading to white is usually a cinematography technique to indicate either death or awakening from a dream.)

"I hope the information in this capsule is enough to help you before it's too late. Herein lies the recounting of our war with the Reapers."

"Without the information they passed down, we too would be threatened." "What else do we know about the Shepard?"

It's a pair of people that haven't been killed by the reapers, and know everything they know from the archives left by Liara. You're making an assumption that Liara seeded a planet of Asari that the Reapers somehow ignored and also somehow didn't know anything about the war, about the fate of Thessia, anything. And you based that on appears to possibly be 12 pixels of shadowy head tentacles. Far more likely is that it is a new cycle, which is indicated by literally everything else. (For all you know, Liara's hologram might have caused a popular hairstyle for the next cycle.)

Anyway, enough of that. I've had enough of the irony of your refusing to accept the information presented in the Refusal ending. :)

They tied up all of the loose ends and even manage to stuff it with an emotional ending. The three endings were different enough. I mean look at the Mass Effect 2 ending. It was a yes or no question that didn't even matter when it came to ME3.
 
With Bioware, you either love them or hate them. I feel like they managed to get at least half of the people who hated the original endings back on board, and there are people who just seemingly hate Bioware no matter what.

This Extended Cut DLC changed nothing.

It doesn't change the fact that the Catalyst is a deus ex machina.

It doesn't change the fact that it's assertion that "without the Reapers, synthetics would destroy all organics" is pure nonsense.

It doesn't change the fact that the Catalyst has no reason to bring Shepard up to it's lair and present him/her with the 3 options.

And the list could go on and on. It's nice that you're pleased with the ending. But don't act like people are crybabies when they demand a conclusion that isn't lazy, hackneyed, and poorly written.

The ending was never going to please everyone they provided closure and more explination to those who wanted that , I wanted to talk to the Catalyst I did that and I wanted to know what happened to the universe after my choice and they showed me that. They gave me all that plus a new choice and elaborated on the previous one , I don't know why isn't ok for someone to dislike the ending after the EC so the same as someone who wants to make up their own conclusions with what they've provided (Indoctrination theory and all that), at end at least to me it only matters if I was satisfied with the content I don't know why someone else's opinion should sour your own or your thoughts on the game, that's the only thing I cannot get behind like Jeff saying "yeah I don't like it because other people didn't like it and made long ass forum post about why they didn't like the ending" , like why? did you like it or do you care if forumuser123 like it? that's the only thing I don't understand about the ME3 ending argument.

See, I think if this had been originally the ending of the game, it would've been fine. What I hate is BioWare's spineless backtracking from the original ending. Destroying the mass relays in particular was a really brave thing for them to do in my opinion, and I really admired that decision. But no, now they're only "severely damaged". It's gutless. Same goes for the Normandy, the ship isn't even remotely damaged in the new ending. Why have the scene of the crashed Normandy at all anymore?

The original endings were deeply flawed, sure. But I still loved that synthesis ending so much. The idea that Joker and EDI could be the Adam and Eve of a brand new form of life, that their offspring would go on to inherit the galaxy from the ashes of the war between organics and synthetics, I thought that was really beautiful. I never thought in a million years thought the synthesis ending meant that every living thing in the galaxy was transformed against its will, that's monstrous!

@SketchPanic said:

I just find it sad that there are still people crying foul, despite their only gripes being plotholes (that are again explained in the DLC).

This is a very bad assumption. As others have pointed out the source of most of the plothole discussion is the fact that the story uses a deus ex machina twist. This meant that the last 15 minutes or so of the story had to do a ton of explanation etc to create a valid ending as at the point you invoke it everything that has been told earlier is invalid, which it failed at doing. All the new ending(s) does is make that explanation less bad. However if there was no deus ex machina ending to begin with that wouldn't be a problem, as the ending wouldn't have to "make sense" in the same way as it wasn't trying to build this entirely new concept just at the end (it would've only needed conclude the story). If it had a "normal" ending hten any plotholes would be spread out along the story and not all be focused around those last 15 minutes, which was the problem of the original ending.

So the point still remains. Deus ex machina ending is bad as it doesn't conclude the story you've been experiencing, all it does is scrap everyting that's been told and introduce a it's own conflict and resolution instead.

As someone who didnt hate the original ending all that much, I am pretty satisfied with the extended cut. For me it cleared up all the sloppyness near the end of the game and at least showed what happened with my choices albeit in still form. I had to say I enjoyed and also the ending you get from shooting the cut is priceless for me.

Also when Anderson and Shepards are put on the memorial on the Normandy :( all around.

IT's just a deus ex machina still has that stupid god child So they elaborated doesn't change the fact that magically a god child shows up to solve all your problems. A god child I suspected was a reaper and guess what now I know for a fact is a reaper basically said so it's self when I told it to go fuck it's self.