I am not going to spoiler block ANYthing in this blog, because the entire thing would read like one of Richard Nixon's memos. So if you haven't beaten ME3 yet and decided to ignore my giant, obvious warning, I will say again: Turn back. Turn back. Turn back.

Upfront: the fact that they have very similar cinematics sucks and I really didn't care for the starchild (I thought the projection could take the form of your love interest or at least a Prothean), but neither of these things even came close to ruining the experience for me. And frankly if the former ruined it, that's incredibly shallow. It basically says to me that, rather than really consider what the ending actually MEANS, one would rather be wowed by production values, which is ironically anathema to what MOST people were complaining about before the game even came out! But more on that later. Alright, it's been talked to death but this is my blog and I'll talk if I want to (I feel like we've been here before, have we been here before?), but this ending has GOT to be one of the most polarizing things to ever happen in the history of videogames. I'm not even being hyperbolic when I say this. Name me one other single in-game event from any other videogame that has divided the entirety of such a huge chunk of the community like this has. And I can even see why: having seen my ending and then discussed the other two (and I'm talking top-tier Galactic Readiness endings), it's definitely not the direction I'd have thought Bioware would go in. And I think that's PARTIALLY what some of this backlash comes from: a certain subset of people really, really don't like being surprised. They like to brag about how they "totally saw it coming," usually with a single pinky outstretched and nose turned to the ceiling, so that they can feel superior to their peers. But this? Nobody could have seen this coming. Shepard sacrificing him/herself (only time I'm going to do that) so that the war could end, even at the cost of the Relays, was heart-wrenching. This article postulates that it's one of the only videogames to ever actually earn the "visceral" descriptor and I agree: I had an actual, gut reaction both to the revelation that the game was coming to a close and to how it ended, and I'll admit: I felt initially betrayed.

A large part of me wanted to see Shepard make it, to sweep Jack off her feet in the proud VJ-Day photo tradition, get shitfaced with Garrus, arm-wrestle Wrex, see Tali lead her people and on and on. But then I really sat down and thought about what this ending meant in the greater galactic context. Mass Effect has always been a series about contextualizing greater conflicts into personal stakes, but this ending is almost an exact mirror-image reverse of that concept. It's an incredibly personal moment of sacrifice to give the entire galaxy lasting peace. I couldn't bring myself to destroy the geth or go down the same path as the Illusive Man and try to control the reapers just to selfishly give myself a chance to live because that's not who my Shepard is. Over the course of three games and over five years, these characters have grown to mean something and to betray that just to give myself a shot at a happy (or at least happier) ending actually seemed completely antithetical. Of course the game ends with Shepard dead. How could it end any other way after all the previous sacrifices to make the galaxy safe? Ironically Brad's joke during the ME3 Quick Look of "So this is an even suicidier mission?" turned out to actually have a huge chunk of truth to it: Yes. This WAS an even suicidier mission, because for me the only way it could end was with Shepard's death. It also precludes them looking at all the zeroes they'll see with sales figures and having EA go "Make another one, we don't care that you said you wouldn't." Or if not precludes, then it at least makes it a LOT less likely.

So I guess at the end of the day, I really, REALLY don't understand the vitriol that's being hurled at this game. So much vitriol, in fact, that there's apparently a petition started for a NEW ENDING?? Setting aside the incredible stupidity of that notion, how would that even WORK? Furthermore I remember before the game came out, people were screaming, or really screeching, that the game had gone in a "generic, DUDEBROHUAH!!!!" direction. Now whether or not you think that's true: you must admit that the ending they wind up giving you is the absolute antithesis of that mentality. It's almost as if people are just looking for a reason to justify the hate they preemptively threw at this game rather than admit that, perhaps, they were wrong about what they wanted in the first place. I'm not saying you're wrong to be upset with the ending if it's not what you wanted, I'm saying you can't accuse the game of going in too generic of a direction then complain that the ending wasn't straightforward enough. It's not a picture-perfect Hollywood happy ending, it's not even a particularly happy one. But to say it's depressing is doing it a MASSIVE disservice because depression implies an absence of hope and this ending is anything but hopeless. In fact, in retrospect I actually find it incredibly uplifting. Anyway, thanks for reading (if you did, and if you didn't I'll probably be able to tell by your comment). I feel like I'm still processing it and the more I do, the more I find myself liking it. Not being happy about it, but being satisfied with it.

I am not going to spoiler block ANYthing in this blog, because the entire thing would read like one of Richard Nixon's memos. So if you haven't beaten ME3 yet and decided to ignore my giant, obvious warning, I will say again: Turn back. Turn back. Turn back.

Upfront: the fact that they have very similar cinematics sucks and I really didn't care for the starchild (I thought the projection could take the form of your love interest or at least a Prothean), but neither of these things even came close to ruining the experience for me. And frankly if the former ruined it, that's incredibly shallow. It basically says to me that, rather than really consider what the ending actually MEANS, one would rather be wowed by production values, which is ironically anathema to what MOST people were complaining about before the game even came out! But more on that later. Alright, it's been talked to death but this is my blog and I'll talk if I want to (I feel like we've been here before, have we been here before?), but this ending has GOT to be one of the most polarizing things to ever happen in the history of videogames. I'm not even being hyperbolic when I say this. Name me one other single in-game event from any other videogame that has divided the entirety of such a huge chunk of the community like this has. And I can even see why: having seen my ending and then discussed the other two (and I'm talking top-tier Galactic Readiness endings), it's definitely not the direction I'd have thought Bioware would go in. And I think that's PARTIALLY what some of this backlash comes from: a certain subset of people really, really don't like being surprised. They like to brag about how they "totally saw it coming," usually with a single pinky outstretched and nose turned to the ceiling, so that they can feel superior to their peers. But this? Nobody could have seen this coming. Shepard sacrificing him/herself (only time I'm going to do that) so that the war could end, even at the cost of the Relays, was heart-wrenching. This article postulates that it's one of the only videogames to ever actually earn the "visceral" descriptor and I agree: I had an actual, gut reaction both to the revelation that the game was coming to a close and to how it ended, and I'll admit: I felt initially betrayed.

A large part of me wanted to see Shepard make it, to sweep Jack off her feet in the proud VJ-Day photo tradition, get shitfaced with Garrus, arm-wrestle Wrex, see Tali lead her people and on and on. But then I really sat down and thought about what this ending meant in the greater galactic context. Mass Effect has always been a series about contextualizing greater conflicts into personal stakes, but this ending is almost an exact mirror-image reverse of that concept. It's an incredibly personal moment of sacrifice to give the entire galaxy lasting peace. I couldn't bring myself to destroy the geth or go down the same path as the Illusive Man and try to control the reapers just to selfishly give myself a chance to live because that's not who my Shepard is. Over the course of three games and over five years, these characters have grown to mean something and to betray that just to give myself a shot at a happy (or at least happier) ending actually seemed completely antithetical. Of course the game ends with Shepard dead. How could it end any other way after all the previous sacrifices to make the galaxy safe? Ironically Brad's joke during the ME3 Quick Look of "So this is an even suicidier mission?" turned out to actually have a huge chunk of truth to it: Yes. This WAS an even suicidier mission, because for me the only way it could end was with Shepard's death. It also precludes them looking at all the zeroes they'll see with sales figures and having EA go "Make another one, we don't care that you said you wouldn't." Or if not precludes, then it at least makes it a LOT less likely.

So I guess at the end of the day, I really, REALLY don't understand the vitriol that's being hurled at this game. So much vitriol, in fact, that there's apparently a petition started for a NEW ENDING?? Setting aside the incredible stupidity of that notion, how would that even WORK? Furthermore I remember before the game came out, people were screaming, or really screeching, that the game had gone in a "generic, DUDEBROHUAH!!!!" direction. Now whether or not you think that's true: you must admit that the ending they wind up giving you is the absolute antithesis of that mentality. It's almost as if people are just looking for a reason to justify the hate they preemptively threw at this game rather than admit that, perhaps, they were wrong about what they wanted in the first place. I'm not saying you're wrong to be upset with the ending if it's not what you wanted, I'm saying you can't accuse the game of going in too generic of a direction then complain that the ending wasn't straightforward enough. It's not a picture-perfect Hollywood happy ending, it's not even a particularly happy one. But to say it's depressing is doing it a MASSIVE disservice because depression implies an absence of hope and this ending is anything but hopeless. In fact, in retrospect I actually find it incredibly uplifting. Anyway, thanks for reading (if you did, and if you didn't I'll probably be able to tell by your comment). I feel like I'm still processing it and the more I do, the more I find myself liking it. Not being happy about it, but being satisfied with it.

Good rant. I am not capable of forming my own opinion so I think I am agreeing with you. I posted something earlier much shorter, but in the same light. Why is everyone so mad, really?

The response I got was "YOUR CHOICES MEAN NOTHING" I think that is the true valid gripe. (Along with the lazy duplicated cinematic thing)

But that brings up another revelation. Each of these games has touted choice, but both individually and across games, but it all has been relatively inconsequential. That sentiment is magnified by these endings. Somewhat justifying the crazy response.

@morrelloman said:

Good rant. I am not capable of forming my own opinion so I think I am agreeing with you. I posted something earlier much shorter, but in the same light. Why is everyone so mad, really?

The response I got was "YOUR CHOICES MEAN NOTHING" I think that is the true valid gripe. (Along with the lazy duplicated cinematic thing)

But that brings up another revelation. Each of these games has touted choice, but both individually and across games, but it all has been relatively inconsequential. That sentiment is magnified by these endings. Somewhat justifying the crazy response.

Because of the contradictions and plot holes on top of the fact everything you've done in the Mass Effect universe is immediately made pointless. It was also just a copy and pasted ending for each different outcome as seen by the cutscene at the end basically being identical except colour changes, it's a poor end to the series.

That was a good read: I really needed the articulate opinion of another person, which wasn´t "OMG THEY RUINED TEH MASS EFFECT" (I imagine that all of these people play as a Male Shepard).

I belive the ending is brave, no matter what you choose, it´s the end for the Mass Effect universe as we know since the very mass effect relays have been destroyed. It´s a bitter sweet thing to see. I really thought a bout the potential post-Reaper consequences of my choices through the game, and it´s crazy to have all of that vanish. But this only speaks to how much this series have managed to engage me. No other games have done something like this, atleast not to me.

Sorry if that got a bit longwinded. I just needed of my chest.

@morrelloman: Yeeeeessss, follow my woooooords! As I'll go into below, your choices aren't really meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I never really got the idea that they were going to somehow have an ending cinematic for every single choice you'd made, that would be literally impossible.

@Sooty: I don't get the "everything you did leading up to this was rendered pointless." Everything you did leading up to it was FOR that moment. If you hadn't united all the races, you wouldn't have been standing there. If you hadn't supported the Crucible being built, you'd have never gotten the choice in the first place. And everything you did informed the decision that you made (or it did if you were roleplaying it, I could see being disappointed if you just wanted to see three endings...). I guess I just don't understand what people DID want because most of them are just saying what they DIDN'T want.

@slashdotdot: By all means! Vent! My roommate and I have expounded at great length about what this means for the future of the series. And hey! My default Shepard was a dude (though I've got four or five with a pretty even split). And it was kind of wistful just now to refer to him in past-tense.

Well the trilogy itself did a really good of providing hope for a good satisfying ending (not a rainbows and sunshine happy one) from Shepard always beating the odds, a love interest (I've heard those are better if you stick with someone who stays on the ship in 3), the great conversations with your crew on Earth, and even that crazy/awesome suicide run to the conduit before the laser hits you and you end up in the citadel. I also think if they had replaced the little kid in your dreams and the space God with whoever died at Virmire (Kaiden or Ashley), people would have been a lot happier.

Bioware just never built up to this sort of ending. The game was great at telling its story but takes a complete tonal shift. And the Reapers turned into all knowing badasses to being synthetics meant to kill you so you don't get killed by synthetics when you could have just been done uniting the Geth and Quarians. Then there's the fact that people are bringing up pretty good proof that the last 20 minutes are all a hallucination or indoctrination.

And I never complained about the game before it released but you've got to admit that the advertising was poorly done. Turret sequences, explosions, Jersey Shore lookalikes, and modes that take the best things about Mass Effect (the conversations) out of Mass Effect, lead to a lot of scared fans.

We got more answers than closure as well. So that ending was a pretty hard punch to the gut for me. If you enjoy it that more power to ya. But that ending was just never built up to. The ending most people ended up wanting was built up to better. Just look at all the fan endings people created on youtube that are surprisingly well done and are fitting.

EDIT (Didn't finish before hitting submit so I added more to what I said)

@Undeadpool: My problem with the ending was that the choices it presented were all worse then not doing anything at all. The galaxy was better off without the cruicible, simply fighting the reapers to the death as a unified fighting force. Activating the crucible destroyed the Mass Relays in all 3 endings, which would strand everyone you united and cared about in the Sol system to die of either anarchy or resource shortage. To make matters worse, all of the work you've done was for nothing, building a cohesive fighting force ended up counting for nothing, there was no epilogue, no closure. What happened to the Krogan after you cured the Genophage? The Quarians reclaiming their homeworld? The Answer: Most likely nothing good.

A fourth ending should have been made, were you could kill the Star-Child thing and let the united races of the galaxy fend for themselves against the reapers, that way your War Assets might actually count for something.

A good example for an ending was for Dragon Age Origins. I dont think people needed a happy ending, they just wanted an ending that gave us closure, an epilogue.

Okay, I agree, but these topics are a little much, especially when you're already stating the same viewpoint that everybody else has a dozen times over at this point in the other very active ending threads.

@CaptainCharisma said:

Well the trilogy itself did a really good of providing hope for a good satisfying ending (not a rainbows and sunshine happy one) from Shepard always beating the odds, a love interest (I've heard those are better if you stick with someone who stays on the ship in 3), the great conversations with your crew on Earth, and even that crazy/awesome suicide run to the conduit before the laser hits you and you end up in the citadel. I also think if they had replaced the little kid in your dreams and the space God with whoever died at Virmire (Kaiden or Ashley), people would have been a lot happier.

Bioware just never built up to this sort of ending. The game was great at telling its story but takes a complete tonal shift. And the Reapers turned into all knowing badasses to being synthetics meant to kill you so you don't get killed by synthetics when you could have just been done uniting the Geth and Quarians. Then there's the fact that people are bringing up pretty good proof that the last 20 minutes are all a hallucination or indoctrination.

And I never complained about the game before it released but you've got to admit that the advertising was poorly done. Turret sequences, explosions, Jersey Shore lookalikes, and modes that take the best things about Mass Effect (the conversations) out of Mass Effect, lead to a lot of scared fans.

We got more answers than closure as well. So that ending was a pretty hard punch to the gut for me. If you enjoy it that more power to ya. But that ending was just never built up to. The ending most people ended up wanting was built up to better. Just look at all the fan endings people created on youtube that are surprisingly well done and are fitting.

EDIT (Didn't finish before hitting submit so I added more to what I said)

I agree with this.

Call me generic but I would've preferred go-lucky happy ending, or a sad one would be fine too, but this, all the relays gone, galactic civilization is pretty much gone, might as well be the end of the cycle. Even if all the relays are gone and shepard's dead, I wanted more of an ending sequence, I wanted to see my squad members rejoice, talk about the relays being destroyed. Basically I'm not completely against the way it ended, but more to the fact that it ended so abruptly. I kind of feel at a loss, I wanted to hear more about what the end of the reapers, and the relays means instead of having to extrapolate myself.

The game should've ended before that stupid platform. Also like it or not the endings do make all of your decisions worthless. The way you handled the geth, the genophage, cerberus, everything all for nothing cause in the end you have to fuck over everyone who came to help and the rest of the galaxy by destroying the very things that bought the galaxy together.

I would also like to say that, while bad, the ending showed real guts from Bioware.

I don't hate the ending, but I certainly did not like it. I did not want a rose coloured glasses ending, I fully expected and kind of wanted my Shepard to die. The star child thing came from left field and there wasn't any indication of that happening, some one said it was like if Return of the Jedi ended like 2001: A Space Odyssey and I agree with that. I wanted a simpler ending, one where the Reapers were simply destroyed. Hell I even though for most of the game that the catalyst was going to be the Earth or the Sun which would basically destroy our civilization to save the galaxy, and that would have been a better ending IMO.

I felt it was a twist just to have a twist. It did not shock me (like Sovereign being a Reaper, the Revan reveal, or Master Li betraying you) because they did not allude to it which meant there was not a way for me to foresee it. It just left me perplexed and confused in a bad way.

It doesn't matter which way you look at it the conclusion was bad and it does nullify everything you did in the span of three games.

@CaptainCharisma: That's how ANY game is marketed. DA: O did nothing but show battles, nudity and people getting stabbed in-cinematic. FFVII showed nothing BUT cinematics. It seems like people complaining about the way the game was marketed expect something like Dead Space to show nothing but the tension-building parts rather than the parts where you blast aliens into pieces and almost get shot into space.

@Swoxx: That's fine if that's your preference (honestly? I probably would have preferred that too), my issue stems from people who complained about how supposedly "generic" the game was and then flipped their lid at the anything-but-generic ending.

@Mordukai: I don't know about you, but the ending didn't invalidate my attachment to my squad, the unification of the warring races NOR my endgame decisions because every one of those contributed to the gameplay experience that I had and the final, let's say, hour of the game that I saw.

@Jay_Ray: I didn't really see a "twist" at all.

@Napalm: Yeah, but I don't like posting multi-paragraph long posts in other people's threads and I didn't feel like summing up my feelings in two sentences because I'm still actually kind of coming to grips with the ending itself.

@mikey8714: I disagree on the bad part but definitely agree on the gutsy part.

there are 17 endings...some of them depends on your endings from the first 2 games! oh this is fun!

It's not the outcome of the ending so much as how it arrived at said outcome. Why did all my squadmates return to the normandy? why was the normandy in the middle of a jump when the shockwave hit? why did the shockwave make the normandy crash but none of the other space ships in the massive fleets around earth? How does the ending make any sense at all? The god-child, who had never even been hinted at or mentioned before the last 5 minutes of the last game in the trilogy, says he controls the machines and orders them to kill everyone so that people won't make machines that kill everyone? Even if there was a good idea originally, it was extremely poorly implemented to such a degree that whatever meaning was originally intended for the ending is lost in a sea of WTFness.

uh, my sheps alive, i think anyway. she breathed. I was expecting an Inception gong right before the credits but that didnt happen :(

I'm in such denial that I've completely adopted the hallucination/indoctrinated theory people have going on. Alot of it makes sense if you bother to read through it. God, I suck.

@truckington:

Also I agree with truckington, the whole game is about saving Earth, and 10seconds in the end cinematic is dedicated to hinting on what actually happens, in one city

Also yes, I was like wtf when it switched to joker in the Normandy, I thought all my crew was on the ground, were they all cowards and ran back in and took off as soon as I reached the beacon? What happened to the different species involved in the final battle, their fleets? And so on.

I'm fine with whatever they went with, after all it's their game and their direction and they can tell whatever story they want, I just think the execution and presentation is extremely poor.

I know this is a bit off topic but the whole "killing organics so synthetics won't kill organics" joke is a bit off. When the god child said they're harvesting advanced races to save organic life, he meant they're saving organic life as a whole. So it's not really a contradiction, they just don't think of a single organic being as important. They want to preserve organic life in some form.

@Undeadpool: That's fine but Dragon Age was a new franchise so there weren't any expectations of what it really was yet. And even if advertising is supposed to be all boom and boobs, people would still be scared. Like I said, I stood away from all spoilers and never complained about Mass Effect 3 until I played that ending but I can still see why people were so afraid of what Mass Effect might have become. I loved the game and think it's the best I've ever played, but I hate how bad of a taste that ending gave me.

@Undeadpool: The "twist" to me (which probably is not the best term) was that the star child was the catalyst and that he controls the Reapers.

@truckington said:

It's not the outcome of the ending so much as how it arrived at said outcome. Why did all my squadmates return to the normandy? why was the normandy in the middle of a jump when the shockwave hit? why did the shockwave make the normandy crash but none of the other space ships in the massive fleets around earth? How does the ending make any sense at all? The god-child, who had never even been hinted at or mentioned before the last 5 minutes of the last game in the trilogy, says he controls the machines and orders them to kill everyone so that people won't make machines that kill everyone? Even if there was a good idea originally, it was extremely poorly implemented to such a degree that whatever meaning was originally intended for the ending is lost in a sea of WTFness.

Well said that was what really threw me. Your squad is with you on the ground then some end up back on ship. huh?

Sythesis man here. Loved the concept. Completely underwhelmed by the execution of the payoff cinematic. Horribly redundant in comparison to the other endings. Lacking in payoff. Painfully.

I would have preferred a cookie cutter 'Hero-Saves-the-Day-and-gets-the-Broad' ending. Well - Joker got Edi and that's fine by me, doesn't mean I have to like how it all went down though.

@Grixxel said:

I'm in such denial that I've completely adopted the hallucination/indoctrinated theory people have going on. Alot of it makes sense if you bother to read through it. God, I suck.

It makes a surprising amount of sense when you read all the details on the theory. It also makes much more sense than God-Kid asking you to pick your poison.

I like being surprised.
I don't like illogical dumbassery.
Or hamfisted forced martyrdom.

I actually enjoyed this post even though I didn't care for the ending (didn't hate it), good job getting your points across clearly. Personally, I would have been fine with Shepard dead and everyone else too. Like no survivors, with them explaining that's how it always goes, Races get close but always fail, but this time they built the catalyst so there's hope for the future, and if they did that, it would give them a jumping off point for ME4. Am I crazy for actually thinking that is how it was going to end? I started to think that right after you leave the Asari home world. I'm probably crazy.

That or your love interest holding their stomach. Then I realized that wouldn't make any goddamn sense for the FemShep players.

@CaptainCharisma said:

@Grixxel said:

I'm in such denial that I've completely adopted the hallucination/indoctrinated theory people have going on. Alot of it makes sense if you bother to read through it. God, I suck.

It makes a surprising amount of sense when you read all the details on the theory. It also makes much more sense than God-Kid asking you to pick your poison.

People get a weird idea that the universe ends once it cuts to black. That's preposterous. Your choices do matter. The Quarian and Geth will be whatever state you left them in. The Krogan will either be cured or not. Earth could be totally destroyed. Many of your companions could lie dead. All of those things still happen. Sure, every single person who plays the game doesn't get their own, special, unique ending that references every choice they ever made. But to expect that is ridiculous. The only way to reasonably do it is through text backgrounds, and those are never that enjoyable. The galaxy doesn't blink out of existence as the credits roll. You just don't see what happens next.

@Undeadpool said:

@Swoxx: That's fine if that's your preference (honestly? I probably would have preferred that too), my issue stems from people who complained about how supposedly "generic" the game was and then flipped their lid at the anything-but-generic ending.

I can totally see that. I actually like the way they flipped the books on the ending, I was just disappointed at how little details they gave about the consequences. Now instead people are speculating as to what each ending meant. I would've preferred it if you could talk to the kid about each decision and get some more info.

I kinda felt lost after it ended. I chose synthesis, all I know it's the pinnacle of evolution and that everyone is glowing like they're in tron. But what does it mean? Is joker healthy now? Can EDI have children?

Maybe it's just my crazy mass effect addiction, but I want to know these things. I also wanted to know what Hackett and the other survivors thought about what happened.

@Undeadpool: I apologize, but I'm one of those haters of the ending. Though I do find it hilarious how, despite your disagreement with that opinion, you used the phrase 'TITANIC' considering how, in my opinion, it went much the same way: Straight down. That said, it's good to know that there are people who can justify the ending for themselves. As I said, I disagree with your opinion and have thrown my lot in with a petition that keeps the three options but leaves a choice open for a much more difficult fourth/fifth. But thanks for placing your opinion in a calm, reasonable, format.

@JonSmith: I just don't get what that petition is trying for. Do you really think they're going to completely reprogram the end of their game, get new music, art assets, and bring all the voice actors back into the booth for free? And if they charge for it, will anyone actually be placated or will they just accuse Bioware of making an "intentionally shitty ending to sell us a DLC one" in the same vein as Prince of Persia?

@truckington: @CaptainCharisma said:

@Grixxel said:

I'm in such denial that I've completely adopted the hallucination/indoctrinated theory people have going on. Alot of it makes sense if you bother to read through it. God, I suck.

It makes a surprising amount of sense when you read all the details on the theory. It also makes much more sense than God-Kid asking you to pick your poison.

I actually think the dream explanation makes the most sense. And, to Christian Cage, I don't recall the ME1 exactly showing what a deep, in-depth conversation and choice mechanic there'd be. I remember Shepard punching Saren, geth blowing shit up, making out with Ashley...you know: TRAILER SHIT.

@SeverePapercut: Considering they said from the beginning that this would be a trilogy, lil' bit crazy.

@Jay_Ray: Ah! I didn't really see that as a twist, personally. No one really knew what the catalyst was, so it could've been anything.

@Undeadpool:That's true, I guess I just let my opinion of EA probably pushing for another game affect my judgement towards the end.

@Junkerman: How can you say it was worse than doing nothing at all?

If the fleet went into an all out war with the reapers they would have lost anyway and the cycle would start again with some Yahg version of Shepherd. It took a crap ton of resources to take down a destroyer let alone stronger reapers like Harbinger, the Fleets only chance is the crucible. The entire point is that you have broken the reaper cycle and are allowing life to blossom in the future. If you were expecting the reapers to just die without consequences so that everything goes back to being hunky-dory then you are straight up deluded. Serious actions have to have significant consequences in order for them to mean anything.

@Undeadpool: I reckon you hit the nail on the head there, I personally found that doing what Anderson wanted and destroying the Reapers was a fitting end for my Shepherds story.

I think it sucks that Bioware is giving into this stupid peer pressure and they should stick to their original endings.

I think that it can all be boiled down to this: For a series built on strong writing, well-realized characters and unique/rich lore, the final moments of Mass Effect 3 failed at telling the story. Whether the endings were odd/shallow, filled with plot holes, left too open for interpretation, or negated the previous games all come from the fact that the writers/game failed to fully tell the story in the end...when it needed it the most. If you spend countless words and effort trying to defend or justify the ending, or "how things would be if the game had an epilogue," you're doing yourself a disservice as a viewer/reader/listener of the story. The fact is that too many key elements are unclear or not referenced in the game's final breath, this is what's wrong with the ending. The story was not clearly told. Even stories with open endings like Inception or even Catcher in the Rye, the storyteller gives you enough evidence to make a conclusion. Mass Effect 3 lacks that evidence and therefore fails at properly telling the story.

Sorry for the wall-o-text. I guess iPads hate paragraph structure : /

@Undeadpool said:

@JonSmith: I just don't get what that petition is trying for. Do you really think they're going to completely reprogram the end of their game, get new music, art assets, and bring all the voice actors back into the booth for free? And if they charge for it, will anyone actually be placated or will they just accuse Bioware of making an "intentionally shitty ending to sell us a DLC one" in the same vein as Prince of Persia?

If you read the charity's forum, you can see that they're pretty sure this charity won't change the ending. They just legitimately want to use their negative energy to do something positive. They're actually pretty level headed for people wanting a work of fiction to just go up and change. And I can applaud $40,000 being made just because how much they love Mass Effect.

@Undeadpool said:

@JonSmith: I just don't get what that petition is trying for. Do you really think they're going to completely reprogram the end of their game, get new music, art assets, and bring all the voice actors back into the booth for free? And if they charge for it, will anyone actually be placated or will they just accuse Bioware of making an "intentionally shitty ending to sell us a DLC one" in the same vein as Prince of Persia?

Eh, the petition is attempting to change something I personally disagree with. Is there any better reason to sign such a thing, even if there is no actual hope for it change anything?

@CaptainCharisma: Hey, far be it from me to criticize people who are giving to charity, I was more trying to say I wish this level-headed discourse was more frequent and I think the movement could actually gain some respectability if it got out ahead of the people frothing and losing their damn minds, just sort of incoherently screaming.