Video game endings are always bad, why expect ME to be any different? The ending of Uncharted 2 was much worse, yet when Uncharted 2 was up for GOTY it barely got a mention. I didn't much care for the ending in ME2 for that matter. The Witcher 2 had a hugely disappointing ending. The same can be said for virtually all video games, and usually the quality of the ending is not given much weight. Hell many players never even reach the ending anyway. Why has all the discussion of ME3 focused so overwhelmingly on the ending and all the outrage? Listening to the GOTY discussion of "Biggest Dissapointment", I think ME3 is being treated to the biggest double standard I've ever seen. People are so passionate about this franchise that they get incensed over every little problem. This is a 60+ hour game, the ending has zero impact on 95% of your experience. What about the actual gameplay, which I thought was much improved from the past two? Encounters are much more tactically challenging, the level design is much better, the weapons are more fun, the story is about more than just recruitment, etc.

I do.

Just because a lot of games have bad endings doesn't make it okay. Also people had other problems with ME3 than the ending it was just the point that pretty much everyone agreed on and then people got really mad about it

Firstly, Just because something is a certain way and has always been that way does not make it a god thing. Second, Witcher 2 ended fine. Third, considering the amount of time people had invested, their anger wasn't completely unjustified. Finally,enough Mass Effect 3 ending threads. I do agree that there were improvements to the series, especially in the combat like you stated. Also very few people disliked the game, they were just disappointed.

@FluxWaveZ said:

I do.

This thread is so 2012.

Did we just time travel back to spring of 2012? Regardless, not all game endings are bad, and obviously some people do care about them or there wouldn't have been as many complaints as there was. The difference between a game like uncharted 2 and mass effect 3 is the amount of investment a player has in it. ME3 was the conclusion to a storyline that was told through ME1 and ME2, and a storyline that the players were directly involved in by transferring their choices and character from game to game. As a final note, the ending wasn't the only problem with ME3. Don't get me wrong, I love mass effect 3. However, you're not really bringing up any good points in its defense, and are basically just digging up a dead horse to club it around some more.

Maybe it is Bioware's fault due to the tiny fact they made the games and that they've been promising an epic ending where all your individual choices culminate into an epic ending that wasn't "Choose A, B, or C". Too bad the end of ME3 was "Choose A, B, or C".

I'm gonna sound like I only enjoy TV and video games that have terrible endings, but I really enjoyed Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 when I played through them all in sequence a few months ago, but got a total LOST vibe from it. For both, I enjoyed every part of what came before the ending so much that despite having disappointing endings, it couldn't sour the experience enough for me to dislike the show or games as a series. I would never defend either endings, but I would still stand by both pieces of entertainment as being, well, amazing.

Endings have a big impact on a lot of peoples opinions on a piece of media, but sometimes it's about the journey and not the destination.

Just stop. Everyone. Please for the sake of mankind let's move on.

Just because all the games you've played have had bad endings does not mean all games have bad endings. I've played plenty of games with fine endings and even some with great endings.

And even if it were true that all games had bad endings, something that is common doesn't make it right.

Also, why do you care? It doesn't affect you and it's been months. Most everyone, including me, has moved on and I hated the ending with a passion.

Endings are pretty cool.

Because it was a story and character driven game with some of the dullest gameplay elements since TWD.

I liked the Witcher 2's ending

I don't think you know what most of the words you are using mean and you need to stop.

To me endings are important. Sometimes it's the only reason a game persists in my memory. Look at Deadly Premonition and Silent Hill 2, the endings is the reason I keep thinking about them. What great endings they got!

I'm just bringing it up because I'm only now getting through the GOTY podcasts. I care because like I said, I think ME3 got treated to a huge double standard, and I think ME3 is a way better game and has a better story than ME2. ME2 is nothing more than recruiting party members which I did not find that compelling. Anyway remember Dragon Age 2? THAT is what a massive disappointment looks like!

Sure endings matter, and if Mass Effect 3 had ended really well it would have been all the more incredible, but a bad ending does not make a game bad. I think the story is just so engrossing, people seem to forget about the rest of the game. Basically I think its a case of love causing hate and I think that's stupid, seems like Bioware got punished for making such a great game.

I think the last videogame ending that left me completely satisfied was FF8. I was much younger and easily impressed then, but 20 minutes of CG unspoiled by bad voice acting with beautiful music to boot seemed like a good deal at the time and I still think the ending holds up as one of the best.

A lot of games have great endings in my experience. You're right about the rest of the game being forgotten because of the ending though. But that's a lesson they should learn. You give us a full product or you risk a thing like that.

@Atanatari165 said:

I'm just bringing it up because I'm only now getting through the GOTY podcasts. I care because like I said, I think ME3 got treated to a huge double standard, and I think ME3 is a way better game and has a better story than ME2. ME2 is nothing more than recruiting party members which I did not find that compelling. Anyway remember Dragon Age 2? THAT is what a massive disappointment looks like!

Sure endings matter, and if Mass Effect 3 had ended really well it would have been all the more incredible, but a bad ending does not make a game bad. I think the story is just so engrossing, people seem to forget about the rest of the game. Basically I think its a case of love causing hate and I think that's stupid, seems like Bioware got punished for making such a great game.

What I feel about ME and ME3 is that for a trilogy where people invested a hundred hours, and were promised that their choices would matter, it was rather bitter to get to the end and see how little their choices had any weight, and how all the hype and expectations from all the publicity and from playing the previous two games were crushed in a standard ending. What generated most of the hate wasn't the ending, but the expectations fans build and were carelessly destroyed even as Bioware and EA falsely publicized the game.

• There are plenty of games with good and even great endings. Many games having bad endings is no excuse for a shitshow on another games part.
• Witcher 2 ending was fantastic for the specific events that happened during it, in a much larger overall narrative
• Many other games get flack for shitty endings all the time. ME3 just got way more flack for it then most due to being so story focused and being so off the charts terrible for most people that it managed to retroactively spoil their immediate feelings on the entire trilogy. It's precisely because people were so passionate and invested that the backlash was so great.
• DA2 got it's fair of shit for it's ending too, it just wasn't as discussed because it was already just part of a middling story in a middling game
• And I agree with you on the fact that ME3 is a much better game then ME2 for all those reasons you mentioned.
• Bioware didn't get punished for making a great game, they got punished for dropping the ball in the most spectacular fashion probably ever seen in a video game right at the finish line. They got punished for moving their lead writer off to another project. They got punished for trying to meet ship deadlines and working on the ending in the last days, instead of taking their time to ensure quality, or planning out the arc beforehand.

@Imsorrymsjackson said:

@FluxWaveZ said:

I do.

also this

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

A lot of games have great endings in my experience. You're right about the rest of the game being forgotten because of the ending though. But that's a lesson they should learn. You give us a full product or you risk a thing like that.

I actually think Uncharted 2 has one of the best endings of all video games. It has closure to it and is one of the few games that has a "movie" ending. Just my opinion though. And I'm a big supporter of game writers needing to figure out how to properly end their stories. For example, there's no reason a game like Bulletstorm (which will not be receiving a sequel anytime soon) should have ended on a cliffhanger.

Jeust, Yeah I do wish the choices had more impact, but when ME2 came out it was clear to me that they were NOT following a real branching-story approach at all. Its more about which party members you favor, and the short-term impact of your choices. I think expecting choices to have huge effects on the story line is unrealistic, Witcher 2 is the only big-budget title that has delivered on that recently, and as a result I felt it was way too short.

Speaking of Witcher 2, I don't know what you guys liked about the ending. It was so abrupt After an amazing prologue and two great dense chapters, chapter 3 was very short, and then in the end I walk up to Lethro, hear his story, and let him go. Chapter 3 + ending took me all of like 3 hours. It wasn't exactly "bad" it was just abrupt, unmemorable and anticlimactic. With how meaty the other chapters were I was expecting more content.

Tennmuerti, good points but it is still irrational and and unfair. Bad endings are more common than good endings, and endings are only a small part of a game. It isn't like a movie where the ending is 1/4th of the game. The ending is only like 1/20th of an RPG. Also ME3 should be compared to the competition, not what everyone wished ME3 to be. Do you really care how good the ending is in Black Ops 2, Max Payne 3, Assassin's creed 3, Resident Evil 6? I don't because those games are all so mediocre I'm never going to bother finishing them! Mass Effect 3 meanwhile is gripping and fun from start to finish.

Its just strange because I'm not the biggest Mass Effect fan, I don't think the story compares to classic RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Planescape, the best Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger etc. ME is more about cinematic presentation and character relationships than story. And as a result I could really care less about the fiction of the ending. I'm more interested in how well its presented, and the gameplay and challenge of the ending.

Plus the ending comes at the END, after you've already played it! You've already enjoyed the game! I dunno, I guess I'm just one of those people who usually gets bored about 90% of the way through so I often don't even see the endings.

Almost a year later and I'm still struggling to understand where the sentiment that "all video game endings are bad" comes from.

I don't know if I agree with your "all games have bad endings" idea. In fact, I can think of a few games that have some pretty good endings.

I have literally just now finished ME3. I had no problem with the ending. In fact, i thought it was pretty good.

Everyone always considers the "ending" of a game, to be the final cutscene that plays after you beat the big boss, or make the final choice. I, however, consider the "ending" to be the final chapter. So from the point of no return onwards, i had a good time and enjoyed the emotion they layed out.

The ending was just that. A suitable end, with a suitable consequence for choice to a trilogy.

I really have no idea why people hate this games end so much.

edit: The fleet engagement cutscene. Fucking awesome.

@LikeaSsur said:

I don't know if I agree with your "all games have bad endings" idea. In fact, I can think of a few games that have some pretty good endings.

Did you mean to include ME3 there? People also disagree about Spec Ops. Some of those you listed are all-time classics. Sure I can list probably 20 games with great endings. But I'm sure you and I have both played 100s if not 1000s of games so I don't know how meaningful that is. I can also list a bunch of games with bad endings, so what? Here is a list of 50. In the old days it wasn't so much "bad ending" as it was "bad ending boss fight".

What is more meaningful is that fact that a lot of recent AAA highly rated games have bad endings. Uncharted 2, Mass Effect 2 (imo), Dishonored, Every Bethesda game ever made, Witcher 2, Black Ops 2, etc.

Judgements about endings are highly subjective. One person's awesome ending is another person's idea of crap. Just look around the web at lists of best and worst endings. So I don't think they should be given much weight or taken that seriously.

Endings seem to be a difficult thing for video game writers, but I think it's going way too far to say they're all bad. The reason that there were different expectations for Mass Effect than other games was because it had been a series that did storytelling way better than most other games out there, and that had been pretty damn well-written up to ME3, at least in relative terms. I agree that the way that a lot of people focused purely on the ending and didn't look at the rest of the game when criticising it was a real bad way to go about things, but we can't pretend that the ending only accounted for 5% of the value of the story in that game, or that it didn't colour the events of the rest of that game or even the whole trilogy.

It was an ending, the grand finale, the culmination of all the events in that universe, the product of all your work as Shepard, and the thing that the whole series had been building to. Like any ending, of course it was going to be very important. It seems a pretty huge stretch to say all the series of the previous games were just about recruitment as well, between the character relationships, the racial tensions, the larger universal threat, the in-world politics, and everything else the series did, it offered much more than just recruiting guys.

Yeah who cares about endings, when the game is so bad I didn't even bother finishing it.

@Imsorrymsjackson said:

@FluxWaveZ said:

I do.

I care about endings. Sure, at the end of the day, if I enjoy most of the game up until the end, I still think it's a good game, and that's how i felt with ME3, I loved it, but I'd say that ME 2 is better, not just because of the ending, but also I liked the crew members better and thought the Loyalty missions were better than most of the missions in ME 3. Now you want to talk about a bad ending, play Assassin's Creed 3, I swear I have never been more insulted by a video game ending in my life.

@Atanatari165 said:

Video game endings are always bad, why expect ME to be any different? The ending of Uncharted 2 was much worse, yet when Uncharted 2 was up for GOTY it barely got a mention. I didn't much care for the ending in ME2 for that matter. The Witcher 2 had a hugely disappointing ending. The same can be said for virtually all video games, and usually the quality of the ending is not given much weight. Hell many players never even reach the ending anyway. Why has all the discussion of ME3 focused so overwhelmingly on the ending and all the outrage? Listening to the GOTY discussion of "Biggest Dissapointment", I think ME3 is being treated to the biggest double standard I've ever seen. People are so passionate about this franchise that they get incensed over every little problem. This is a 60+ hour game, the ending has zero impact on 95% of your experience. What about the actual gameplay, which I thought was much improved from the past two? Encounters are much more tactically challenging, the level design is much better, the weapons are more fun, the story is about more than just recruitment, etc.

First things first:

@FluxWaveZ said:

I do.

...and let's not forget games like Super Metroid and Chrono Trigger. Skyrim's main quest ending is pretty awesome, Mass Effect 1 and 2 both had freaking amazing endings, the original Halo's and Halo 3's were pretty good, Jak 3? Jak 3, where you chase after a gigantic machine in a glorified go-kart across a massive desert on the Playstation 2?

Second thing:

This is a 60+ hour game

No, this a 30 hour game max, I did fucking everything and took my time with all of it and it took me 25. I can't see playing through all of the DLC adding it up to more than 40. Unless you spent a lot of time jacking off, you didn't spend 60 hours playing this game in one playthrough.

Third thing:

the ending has zero impact on 95% of your experience.

Absolutely false. Have you ever heard of a little game called Halo 2? Wanna know how it ended?

Now tell me that doesn't put some kind of a damper on the rest of the game. And the sequel didn't come out for three years!

Fourth thing:

What about the actual gameplay, which I thought was much improved from the past two? Encounters are much more tactically challenging, the level design is much better, the weapons are more fun, the story is about more than just recruitment, etc.

Now this one is mostly subjective. If you enjoyed the actual gameplay, then plus one for you. I'm really glad you did. But I didn't, I thought that the bulk of Mass Effect 3 was kind of boring. I thought the encounters were bland as hell, I thought the level design was mostly boring (side note: Mass Effect has never had great level design). The story was boring, the characters were mostly boring, etc.

I do not hate Mass Effect 3. I think it's a solid three star game because it works and has a handful of good moments . But in my opinion, it is not a game that I want to play again, and the ending was only a plastic fake cherry placed on top of a cardboard sundae.

For me it was more than Mass Effect 3 was so terrible that the ending was my last hope for finding something, anything to justify playing it. Didn't happen.

@Atanatari165 said:

Did you mean to include ME3 there?

Indeed I did. I happened to really like the last hour of the game, including the ending.

@Atanatari165 said:

Judgements about endings are highly subjective. One person's awesome ending is another person's idea of crap. Just look around the web at lists of best and worst endings. So I don't think they should be given much weight or taken that seriously.

So are judgments about nearly everything. You just completely invalidated every opinion ever with that statement.

@Atanatari165: Still for so much time in Mass Effect some for of nod to our personal choices was expected, and was expected even from the adverts to the game.

@Tennmuerti said:

• There are plenty of games with good and even great endings. Many games having bad endings is no excuse for a shitshow on another games part.
• Witcher 2 ending was fantastic for the specific events that happened during it, in a much larger overall narrative
• Many other games get flack for shitty endings all the time. ME3 just got way more flack for it then most due to being so story focused and being so off the charts terrible for most people that it managed to retroactively spoil their immediate feelings on the entire trilogy. It's precisely because people were so passionate and invested that the backlash was so great.
• DA2 got it's fair of shit for it's ending too, it just wasn't as discussed because it was already just part of a middling story in a middling game
• And I agree with you on the fact that ME3 is a much better game then ME2 for all those reasons you mentioned.
• Bioware didn't get punished for making a great game, they got punished for dropping the ball in the most spectacular fashion probably ever seen in a video game right at the finish line. They got punished for moving their lead writer off to another project. They got punished for trying to meet ship deadlines and working on the ending in the last days, instead of taking their time to ensure quality, or planning out the arc beforehand.

All of that is right on!

@believer258 said:

Third thing:

the ending has zero impact on 95% of your experience.

Absolutely false. Have you ever heard of a little game called Halo 2? Wanna know how it ended?

Now tell me that doesn't put some kind of a damper on the rest of the game. And the sequel didn't come out for three years!

Ever played Dreamfall: the longuest journey? The cliffhanger in that beats the one in halo 2 by a mile. Oh, and the sequel didn't came out yet. It's been 8 years and the main dude behind the series is just about to launch a kickstarter...

@Atanatari165: When you reply to someone don't link to their profile that does nothing. Use the reply function at the bottom right of the post.

It perfectly fair and perfectly logical. ME as a series was build with emphasis on exploration, narrative and player choice; with it's biggest draw being emotional attachments to characters.

It's what that trilogy had over all it's other competition, it's shooting being subpar was given a free pass. It's shallowy good/evil system was given a free pass by many. Shallow rpg mechanics in ME2&3 And so on. Mass Effect games had many weaknesses but they excelled in very specific areas. When those exact same areas that this trilogy excelled in (the metaphorical nuts by which it held most people) are turned into a shitshow at the end it's a veritable house of cards being knocked down. It's in fact the most logical thing in the world.

You also can't assign a mathematical value on an emotional and very subjective thing. An ending may be 1/20th in time for an RPG (and ME is hardly an RPG) but that ending can affect other things. Just because it's a small part of a game doesn't mean it can't be a very important part. Especially in highly story focused games like ME. Time investment is not equivalent to emotional investment.

Consider one of your own examples for instance. One of the major things that made Planescape so great was it's story and a major part of what made that story great is also it's revelations/ending. Now imagine if the last few hours of that game took a complete diarrhea fueled dump on that entire game's story, made it all into a complete joke that was like logical mind poison, made all your achievements on that journey irrelevant and completely failed to deliver on any promising threads. It wouldn't be quite so highly regarded now would it.

Blops2, AC3, (those are the ones I played) also offer many more things and do many other things much better then ME3. The story may not be their strong suit (arguably) but they have other strengths. Hence less value of the overall package is placed on their story. And once again AC3 ending was given a lot of shit by many people.

And as a result I could really care less about the fiction of the ending. I'm more interested in how well its presented, and the gameplay and challenge of the ending.
Plus the ending comes at the END, after you've already played it! You've already enjoyed the game! I dunno, I guess I'm just one of those people who usually gets bored about 90% of the way through so I often don't even see the endings.

This is all just starting to sound like you personally simply did not care much about ME overall narrative. It's hardly surprising then that you are not on the same page as those people that did. Many people were very much invested in Shepard's story/journey/choices and that of his companions. So to them the ending hit much harder. Surely even if you don't feel the same way you can at least see where such sentiments come from?

Finally it's gameplay/challange was nothing to write home about :P

@Atanatari165 said:

Also ME3 should be compared to the competition, not what everyone wished ME3 to be.

By that logic, Dragon Age 2 is a real winner!

Do you really care how good the ending is in Black Ops 2, Max Payne 3, Assassin's creed 3, Resident Evil 6? I don't because those games are all so mediocre I'm never going to bother finishing them! Mass Effect 3 meanwhile is gripping and fun from start to finish.

I've got two major problems with this line of reasoning.

1. None of those games (except AC 3, perhaps, but it blew it anyway) were noted for their stories. Mass Effect doesn't really play all that well, not when you compare it to the competition at least. (See what I did there?) The first game is just out-and-out clunky, and while the other two tighten things up a bit, you're still left with a Gears style third person cover shooter with paired down RPG mechanics (improved in the third, but still pretty light) and a weak squad system. What elevates it above mediocre is the world, the setting, the story. As such, the ending to said story is going to have more weight vs the endings of the games you mentioned.
2. "Gripping and fun from start to finish" is incredibly (hilariously, even) subjective. While I felt that ME3 had some of the highest highs in the series, you also spent a lot of time floating about doing relatively mundane tasks ("Look, here's your statue thing. Oh, I just overhead you talking about it before, no trouble at all") in an attempt to make a bar go higher. It sucked all the urgency out of it; I felt like Shepard was flying all over the place for months and months so he could hook Joker up with my ship's AI while Earth was being eaten by robotic cuttlefish.

Even the intro was banal, as we went from "Blew up that Terminator Reaper, but the others are still out there in space!" to "Oh god they're here!" without any rhyme or reason; all Shepard's been doing for the past two games is jump up and down about how the Reapers are going to gang up on everyone and, despite blowing up two of them, no one takes him seriously. Or has access to a telescope. Frankly, the whole overall plot of the series went down the tubes when the ending to ME2 put us in the same place as ME1, so I wasn't surprised when the whole thing turned out to be a let down.

ME is more about cinematic presentation and character relationships than story.

So why aren't you pissed? The ending's "cinematic presentation" was more or less nonexistent and it did a fair job of discarding or at the least had no care for whatever character relations you had built up. Also, those character relations are a component of the story, by the way.

I'm more interested in how well its presented, and the gameplay and challenge of the ending.

I'm right with you! Remember how epic that last fight was? I must have restarted ten or twenty times because the final attack that the boss charges up kept....wait a minute. There wasn't a final boss fight. I mean, I shot a marauder a few times with an unlimited ammo pistol, but other then that, what gameplay challenge was there in the ending? You wobble around a bit until you reach the center of the Mcguffin and then you make a choice and it's over. Didn't exactly rely on crackerjack timing. Even the fights before it were repetitious slogs through waves of enemies; I played the whole game through on Insanity the first time and the only difficulty I ever had was keeping my sniper rifle stocked with ammo.

I won't even bother going into why the "presentation" of the ending as such was a nightmare; it has all been said before.

Plus the ending comes at the END, after you've already played it! You've already enjoyed the game! I dunno, I guess I'm just one of those people who usually gets bored about 90% of the way through so I often don't even see the endings.

I cannot understand this at all. It's like sitting through all three of the Lord of the Rings movies and stopping just as Frodo reaches Mordor. You really don't give a shit if he makes it or not? Then why did you watch nine hours of movie? How can you say you liked the character interaction in Mass Effect if you got bored of them before knowing if they live or die? If you liked playing the game so much, why don't you want to play more of it? That last 10% can have the best boss fight, the most difficult or rewarding level, the most ultimate forms of your abilities, or it could all be shit and tarnish the rest of the experience.

That's exactly what happened with Mass Effect. I sat through nine hours of movie, I saw Frodor reach Mordor, I saw him go "Hoo boy, that mountain is pretty far away, wish we came up with a better plan!" and I saw an eagle swoop down and go "Hey Frodo, you could just put the ring on and BE Sauron!" and that's exactly what he did....and I wasn't too thrilled at that pay off.

I was just happy that Mordin wasn't around to see it.

So, the ending impacted me like it did because, to me, ME3 is an average shooter which has some really great character moments sandwiched in between periods of repetitious, boring tasks, and it ultimately failed to deliver on what the series was building up to. The ending hurts a bit more then it would otherwise because the game it's placed in isn't an award winning example of gameplay or presentation (which would help make up for it), and it also devalues the series as a whole and therefore my investment in it.

And that's all I'm going to say; I think it's time to put this baby to bed once and for all.

I suppose I feel very differently about story in 3rd person shooters vs. RPG/adventure games. I care much more about the story arc in an RPG than a shooter, and I take it more seriously, although I still don't feel that endings have much impact on my enjoyment. Maybe that's just because I don't finish that many games.

Mass Effect 3 is this weird hybrid that sometimes feels like an RPG but is really like a party-based shooter with RPG elements. So I don't care quite as much about the story as I would if it was pure RPG. I think the deal is that it feels more like an RPG in the beginning and middle and that is where I enjoy the story and characters. At the end of each game it is more like a linear shooter because in the end you are just railroaded down a corridor and watching cutscenes, I don't feel invested in that part.

The shooting in ME3 may not be quite as good as the best shooters, but it more than makes up for it with weapon/power variety and the party control. The missions, locations, storylines, lore, etc are all much richer and more interesting than your generic military shooter, and the combat does not feel like the pure whack-a-mole you get in many games (call of duty, uncharted, gears of war, etc). Granted it could be too easy if you really min-maxed it, but I lucked into a build that gave the right difficulty for me on hardcore. Its very easy to die, at least the way I'm equipped.

Anyway, I still stand by my argument that endings are not that important. Lord of the Rings is a great example, if you really got focused on the logical holes in the ending...that could ruin the whole story for you. When I get to endings like that I just kind of tune out. They happen a LOT. I didn't mean to say ALL video game endings are bad, I'm just saying there are a lot of great games with shit endings, and if you get hung up on that sort of thing you are kind of screwing yourself. I almost always find endings really boring and generally just stop reading/playing and pick up something else.

I've just completed the game for the first time and I don't comprehend why the ending was in anyway controversial. It was perfectly fine.

@QuistisTrepe said:

I've just completed the game for the first time and I don't comprehend why the ending was in anyway controversial. It was perfectly fine.

Yep. I probably should have mentioned that I hadn't finished the game when I started this thread! Just finished it (I got 65 wonderful hours out of it, by the way), and I thought the ending was amazing. Definitely one of the best video game endings I have ever seen, vastly superior to the endings of ME2, ME1, any of the Uncharted, Halo, Gears of War or whatever other shooter you want to name. Better than the ending of The Walking Dead in fact. Can't really imagine what would have been better, and I can certainly imagine worse. Maybe people wanted a gameplay-packed ending? A big boss fight? That would have been cool but the game offered plenty of gameplay, boss fights rarely work, and endings should be about story and consequences.

I feel like I played a different game from the one talked about on the Bombcast. The game I played was easily game of the year, with the only real competition being The Walking Dead. Everything else released in 2012 was forgettable and/or lightweight, with the possible exception of Persona 4. Then again they spend a lot of time talking about games that I consider to be little more than novelties and/or addictive time-wasters (Hot Line Miami, Fez, Frog Fractions, etc).

(I played with From Ashes, Leviathan, and the extended cut ending.)

i'd go even further, personally. why bother with the middle and the start? they're not really important and don't impact the rest of the story much.

don't think it's the ending itself that lead to most disappointing title, but rather alot of the DLC was stuff that should have been in the game and thus you would get the Brad experience(the complete experience) instead of the people who played the game on day 1 without all the DLC.

A few things:

1. ME3 is nowhere near 60+ hours, My first playthrough took me 33, and I did absolutely everything.
2. ME2's ending was excellent, an epic conclusion and an amazing set up for the next game, what more could you want from a middle chapter (terminator baby notwithstanding)?
3. Uncharted 2 has a popcorn movie type plot and was always about characters rather than story, ME3 is the conclusion to one of the most story focused trilogies in video game history, Uncharted 2 did not have the same kind of expectations regarding it's conclusion and shouldn't be compared to ME3 in this way.
4. Most people acknowledge that ME3 is a great game leading up to the end, it's only the few extremists that claim the ending ruined the entire game. Just look at how many users on this site included at or near the top of their personal year end lists.
5. This thread, again?

Much of the world is a shit hole. Why care about wanting things to get better?

I loved, absolutely loved the Mass Effect trilogy. But the endings are bad. Thankfully, Marauder Shields has completely eradicated the memory of that awful ending.

http://www.koobismo.com/comic/marauder-shields-episode-6/

Uncharted 2 had a great ending in my opinion so... uh... what? Also I think the ending for ME3 was very good too. The only mistake I saw Bioware do was not releasing From Ashes and Leviathan day one on the disc rather then DLC. Actually the biggest problem I had with that game was that most of the cast from ME2 barely returned. I wanted my really long reunion with Miranda and I wanted her to be on my ship. It bugged me that my romantic partner was only around for what amounted to like 5 minutes of screen time. That's why I'm playing ME again on PC and sticking with Liara all the way through.

Game's biggest selling point is its story, so you're not really defending it when you say the story's too dumb to actually care about the ending. And don't try "I play Mass Effect for the gameplay, thank you very much." You don't.

@atanatari165: Mass Effect probably suffered from the level of engagement over 3 games, especially when the first two had good end points. I have to agree finding the ending to be pretty much what you would expect. For this genre Deus Ex had a kind of crummy but interesting take on game endings in 2000, and nobody has really taken it forward.

But then, having good mechanics and a story engaging enough to get you to the end of the game is probably more important. Maybe we'll see it on PS4? At the least ME-1 to 3 saw amazing improvements in the cinema and mechanics over the course; would love to see further iteration that is hopefully not to micro-transacted to death.