To end a series beloved by millions is bound to upset a few, it’s bound to be talked about through the ages. Story telling is hard enough as it is, in this day and age we’ve heard it all. It’s hard to keep a anyone invested in a interesting story long enough for it to pay off. Mass Effect 3 ends a epic space journey and it’s found the hate bandwagon.

My personal take on Mass Effect 3’s ending without spoiling anything is, it’s an amazing way to end the series. Honestly it’s perfect from a story teller point of view, but that’s me, most will want something similar to an Uncharted ending where the everyone walks away as if nothing really happened. As if all has been set right in the universe. Mass Effect 3 is about fighting a war, its dirty, gritty and death is around every corner. It’s unavoidable, an unstoppable force is on your door step with no hope to defeat it. The reason for the way the ending went was a very smart way to sum up why the story of Mass Effect even happened. It’s a circle of life type of ending with all your questions answered well at the same time leaving enough open so the player can fill in all of what he loves.

I’ve heard people saying some nasty things, asking Bioware to change the ending is ludicrous. You have no right over the story, over what they do with it. A writer tells a story because it’s something he is interested in, it’s by him for him. You’re lucky to be enjoying someone’s fantasy. Having said that, Bioware gave players choice, they gave gamers the will to craft their very own story. Your choices have an impact on the ending of the game whether you know it or not, your universe will not be the same as others. EARLY ON SPOILERS- did you cure the genophage or did you let it continue. This will determine whether or not the Krogan will be a force in the universe again. Depending on who’s leading the Krogan will also depend on what their future is- SPOILERS END. Depending on your choices will determine how many war assets you gain over the course of the game, how many war assets you have will determine one of eight endings. There are sixteen endings in total, eight for saving the collector’s ship and eight for destroying the collector’s ship.

What strikes me about what people are saying is they seem to want a clean, neat ending wrapped in a bow. Consider Mass Effect was real and all of this really happened, would it have ended in a neat little bow? I don’t think so and I give Bioware much respect for doing that, bravo to Bioware for having the balls to end their epic space journey the proper way. Let’s compare to my favorite series of all time for a second.

Uncharted 3, for me is the best in the series and I loved the ending but even with the love I have for the series I’ve always felt each game has wrapped up all to neatly for what just transpired. Consider running around an island filled with pirate with only two friends with you, would you honestly think all three of you are going to walk away without so much as a scratch? Uncharted 2 was even worse, for the epic set pieces and solely the main villain. Zoran Lararevic is a military man, trained to fight wars just as the men he commands. Drake vs. Zoran, who would win? Zoran hands down and yet everyone on Drake’s side walk away unscathed… well all but two and honestly they were simply thrown in there just to die off. Consider getting shot in the side and surviving a train crash than dragging yourself three feet of snow in nothing but a shirt and pants only to fight off waves of military trains soldiers…. Think about that for a second and yet I’ve never heard one person complain about that…

SPOILERS: Mass Effect 3’s ending from my point of view. I knew going into this war with over six thousand in military force and 100% galactic readiness, which by the way the galactic readiness does not impact the ending, it impacts how well your military force fights the reapers. I knew I would lose people, I knew it was not going to be a perfect win with zero losses. One thing I hated from the very beginning of the game was the whole “hey, we just found this ultimate weapon that will kill all reapers in one hit.” In no war, story is that ever really good. Once on the citadel at the very end you discover the reapers are basically gods second son, organics are gods first son and represent chaos well the reapers are gods synthetic second son which represent order. It makes perfect sense, as its weaved through the story all synthetic life will oppose its creators. Geth and Quarian, EDI and Cerberus… etc. Javik even says at one point that “organics created synthetics to be perfect, they will always know organics are not perfect.”

The finale boils down to a choice, destroy all synthetics, unit both synthetics and organics or take control of the reapers. Either way you’re aware this is your end, Shepard is beaten, he is broken, he’s come to find out they’ve been wrong about the reapers the whole time. no matter your choice all mass relays are destroyed and Shepard is killed. The power of your choice flows through the mass relay destroying them to put an end to the reapers, I loved this because it sets the whole universe back a bit, no longer to that have that fast travel as it were. Everyone can still space travel, it’s just a lot harder, it’s a whole new start to the universe. Shepard’s death is perfect, there is no way to do what he did and live through it, the reapers are unstoppable and yet he brings four or five down throughout his journey. No your asking him to bring them all down in one hit, an unstoppable force in one hit. Anyone who crafts a story where someone does something like this and walks away is a fairy tale ending and not nearly as interesting or realistic.

The crew makes a narrow escape to crash land on some strange planet, watching joker and EDI step off the ship both highlighted in green (I choose the unit both synthetics and organics ending) is amazing. Here is the future, joker-a organic- and EDI-a synthetic- together in a universe which both synthetics and organics are one! The credits roll and all I could think was how my crew filled with the universes best are going to go about their as the next leaders of the universe. At this point anyone can think what they want for what happens to your crew but I like to think Garrus becomes a huge figure head for the Turians. Tali finally builds a home on Rannoch as she leads her people in peace living besides the Geth. Liara became a figure head for the Asari well honoring Shepard and never letting him out of her heart. Joker and EDI settle down for a nice quite life somewhere no one will bother them. Javik becomes a member of the citadel council and seeks to bring the Protheans back to the universe. James goes on to be a great N7 soldier well Ash continues her work as a Spectre. And slowly the universe rebuilds all that was lost in the war till finally you have that fairy tale ending.