What precisely is your especial problem with the ending of this game? It was a bad ending, deflated of the story majesty which had permeated so far and ends up feeling like it goes on a little too long. I'm a writer and the last video game ending that I would call "good" was GTA4. Games that are relative story juggernauts (LA Noire, Halo Reach, Assassin's Creed 2, Bioshock) have had terrible endings, or clever but narratively bankrupt endings (Portal 2, Darksiders.) So why the special Mass Effect 3 hate? Besides your investment, suspend that for a second. I'd like to hear speculations about what the precise problem was with the ending, besides "everything" which is a complaint I would leverage at these equally prestigious games. There will obviously be spoilers in the response.

I would say it was because of the clear fact that none of your previous choices in the game mattered and no closure with the galaxy or characters.

Or people just will now hate on anything BioWare produce which I think is a great percentage.

I thought the ending was ok good points bad points.

No previous choices mattered.

It was badly written.

It was filled with massive plot holes.

@jakkblades: Man... you don't wanna start this.... People will freak out!!!

I'm with you on this. I think people are overreacting and going crazy mostly because the ending did not live up to their expectation(and really, expectation is such an irrational thing).

Simply put there was no closure. There was no real consequence of either triumph or defeat it just... stopped. You get this far and that was it. There simply was no epilogue.

It was totally disappointing and if they want to fix things they could at least give us an epilogue like what we saw in Dragon Age: Origins.

Badly written is a bad complaint because BioWare games have constantly had bad writing.

@DonChipotle said:

Badly written is a bad complaint because BioWare games have constantly had bad writing.

Ok that's fair. I should have said that it was especially badly written, even by BioWare's low standards.

@DonChipotle said:

Badly written is a bad complaint because BioWare games have constantly had bad writing.

No, throughout the rest of this game, Mass Effect 3 has had better writing that previous ME games and had the more touching moments throughout

@Dany said:

@DonChipotle said:

Badly written is a bad complaint because BioWare games have constantly had bad writing.

No, throughout the rest of this game, Mass Effect 3 has had better writing that previous ME games and had the more touching moments throughout.

Better writing doesn't mean that past games have been badly written.

@strangone said:

@DonChipotle said:

Badly written is a bad complaint because BioWare games have constantly had bad writing.

Ok that's fair. I should have said that it was especially badly written, even by BioWare's low standards.

I'm not disagreeing with you. I thought the last few hours were poorly written. Noticeably so.

@DonChipotle: "Sci-fi generic" I'll grant you but I'm not ready to call them "badly written" compared to games in similar genres (Gears of War, Kingdoms of Amalur.)

EDIT: Also SOA has one of my favorite characters from video games in Jon Irenicus. So no, I won't agree with you there.

@DonChipotle: But this game has good writing, it has phenomenal character moments that work because of the voice acting and the lines they have to read. The moments in the story with the quarians fighting works, the feeling of failure and loss of thessia works, the death of mordin works.

There are already several threads where people explain they're hate for the ending, what's the point of making another one?

It seems weird to me to complain that Bioware have bad writing and then complain that you got no closure for the characters you cared about. Seems like someone regurgitating criticism they've heard elsewhere. If Bioware had such terrible writing I don't know how so many forged such a large connection with the characters or the series. I would say Bioware's dialogue is pretty good amongst video games. I dunno, maybe I'm way off the mark, nut it feels like there are an awful lot of people who just spout that Bioware's writing is bad without any sort of examples or explanation. (that's not to say that there aren't those who do, but it just seems odd that this idea has gained so much traction with little explanation, like it's just some kind of given.)

I see that my call for specifics has fallen on deaf ears. Assume for a second that I'm a six year old child and I need you to tell me *exactly* what you were expecting and received.

@jakkblades said:

What precisely is your especial problem with the ending of this game? It was a bad ending, deflated of the story majesty which had permeated so far and ends up feeling like it goes on a little too long. I'm a writer and the last video game ending that I would call "good" was GTA4. Games that are relative story juggernauts (LA Noire, Halo Reach, Assassin's Creed 2, Bioshock) have had terrible endings, or clever but narratively bankrupt endings (Portal 2, Darksiders.) So why the special Mass Effect 3 hate? Besides your investment, suspend that for a second. I'd like to hear speculations about what the precise problem was with the ending, besides "everything" which is a complaint I would leverage at these equally prestigious games. There will obviously be spoilers in the response.

I've never played Mass Effect 3, but I thought Grand Theft Auto IV's ending was awful. Like, really awful.

Like they were written-by-someone-else-bad. Felt like a cop-out and a complete shift in tone. The real sticking point to me is the entire victory fleet trapped in the Sol System with no way to get to their respective homes and Shepard's flat acceptance of Ghostboy/Ancient AI/Deus Ex Machina's assertion that organics and synthetics could not co-exist. My Shepard would have pointed out the window to the Geth/Quarian situation I had resolved only hours before. There are a lot of plotholes, but those are the ones that irk me the most.

@jakkblades said:

@DonChipotle: "Sci-fi generic" I'll grant you but I'm not ready to call them "badly written" compared to games in similar genres (Gears of War, Kingdoms of Amalur.)

EDIT: Also SOA has one of my favorite characters from video games in Jon Irenicus. So no, I won't agree with you there.

Ever since KotOR, the games have been getting more and more generic and derivative when it comes to narrative. When they aren't following the exact same formula for plot progression they are dealing in cringe inducing dialog. The games may have well written moments, but that doesn't mean the whole thing is well written. This is why I think KotOR 2 is a better game, because it is better written.

@Dany said:

@DonChipotle: But this game has good writing, it has phenomenal character moments that work because of the voice acting and the lines they have to read. The moments in the story with the quarians fighting works, the feeling of failure and loss of thessia works, the death of mordin works.

It may have sold moments, but on the whole Mass Effect 3 is not particularly well written. If narratives were judged on how good specific moments are, then yeah, Mass Effect 3 would be up there, but that's not how it works. If anything, your statement says more about the quality of the voice actors than the actual script. A good actor can turn a shit script into gold. Usually, anyway.

Pretty simple for me. It's that it was a twist ending for the sake of a twist. I didn't fight my way across 3 games to have an ambiguous ending. The ME series always had a hollywood sci-fi style to it and I want my happy ending. The Reapers die, Shepard lives, makes blue babies with Liara and goes can plinking with Garrus every weekend.

There was no lead up or real justification for the last events of that game short of shocking audiences which should never be a reason to fuck with your narrative.

And finally, none of the choices I made across 3 games reflect on the ending. That's just kinda lame.

I'm tired of explaining it. Here, this guy does a pretty good job summing it up.

Nothing I did throughout the entire game means jack shit in the end, even though resolving the quarian-geth conflict peacefully should change ALL of it.

The Reapers' motivation is nonsensical - it lacks context, right now it's just fodder for that Xzibit meme.

It's also rushed, like entire cutscenes and sound bites were left out. Shit that was leaked hours before the premiere is miraculously cut, even though it makes no sense to remove a line. Hell, one could even explain one major plot hole.

Finally - there is no promised closure. Nothing that happens in the ending has its consequences explained. Something they promised they would not do.

@jakkblades said:

I'm a writer and the last video game ending that I would call "good" was GTA4. 

Wow. It's amazing, because that ending isn't really good.

Try Binary Domain, Nier, Red Dead Redemption, Mother 3.

I think now that this thread has had a little time to rest, and (hopefully) has a reasonable answer, I should close this. We have 4.3 billion* threads on ME3's ending already, so it'd be nice if we could somehow keep these conversation condensed within threads that already exist. Thanks!

*rough estimate