Mass Alex: Mass Effect 3 - Part 26 (The Finale)

The local VOD is taking awhile to process so I put the livestream version up for now if you want to watch that! If you want to wait for the actual archive it will be a bit, still processing.

--Vinny

Bummed I missed this live but I'm eager to see what Alex thought of the ending.

I’m so glad the choice was never a choice at all. I preferred seeing Alex do what he did unknowingly with Vinny and Brad chuckling to him agonizing over which of the 3 he should take.

@vinny: Thanks Vinny. The livestream version cuts off at the very end after the credits, so we miss that very last moment, FYI.

Thank you Cmdr. @Alex, Admr. @Vinny(feat. Specialist @Brad). This, for the duration of it's run, has been not only my favourite thing on the Citadel or one of my favourite things on the internet, but one of the things I have enjoyed the most out of all the things. Been missing a lot of streams but couldn't not be there for this.

Alex accidentally wandering into the Synthesis ending is peak mass Alex. Truly, the only way it could've ended. Really enjoyed going on this journey with Alex and Vinny.

I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite series on the Citadel

I think this video cuts out too early? It stops right after the credits, sans Buzz Aldrin.

now time for Mass Alex: Andromeda

Posthumous salute to Marauder Shields. He died trying to save us all.

o7

Thanks, yeah. It's not respecting my edit points for where to stop and start sadly, but also the edited version is exporting now so hopefully will replace it soon.

Honestly the best way this could have ended. Thanks for this feature, Alex. It's been a lot of fun watching Shep Shepard's journey.

Thanks, watching this live was a blast.

Also, I had the experience of playing this before the adjusted endings, and without any of the dlc, so it this was a nice way to fill in those gaps.

Leviathan and Javik should never have been dlc!

Brad "My Dick is Indoctrinated" Shoemaker.

Thanks Vinny and Alex so much for this fantastic series. It's been a hell of a ride.

I didn't have as visceral of a negative reaction to the ending as the rest of the internet did.. I'm kinda in the same camp as Vinny. I can see how, given the trilogy's emphasis on consequence of decisions and carrying choices forward, that the way everything got distilled down in the end was a letdown. As much as I enjoyed the series I just wasn't that attached to My Story as it were.. probably because I crossed platforms between games and used editors or downloaded saves for 2 and 3 rather than legit importing my own each time. So I thought the ending was "fine". Although I couldn't tell you which choice I made. I legit don't remember. I also never played the Leviathan or Javik DLC so my experience was even more pared down.

I have never played Andromeda and have no interest in ever playing it, and would be perfectly happy if Alex didn't bother with it. But there's a tiny part of me that wouldn't mind maybe a single exploratory episode (not a whole playthrough series), just for my own morbid curiosity.

Mass Effect is my favorite gaming series of all time and watching this and experiencing the series again with Alex has been an absolute blast.

It is kinda super shitty though that Brad, Vinny or the chat didn't tell Alex to stop so he could actually sit back and think about his choice. Honestly can't believe they just let it go like that. Super sucks when you've invested so much time into something and then have the final choice come out like that.

I played the extended cut version of the ending, except with none of the DLC. It's been 8 years, but as far as I remember the lack of Leviathan stuff didn't really affect my understanding of the things the catalyst said at the end as far as the cycles, synthetics rebelling against organics, etc. I just didn't have that Leviathan branch of dialogue.

I'm basically with Vinny on the ending. I liked ME3 because of how it tied up plots along the way, like the Mordin/Krogan mission. The ending itself being a somewhat confusing letdown didn't ruin the rest of it for me really.

Thanks for doing this series, it's been a fun watch!!

I'm a little under halfway through this season of Mass Alex, but I think I'll give this one a watch sooner rather than later. This has been an absolutely fantastic series to watch. Some of my favorite site content in recent years has been people playing games that they "missed" or otherwise never got around to. I don't know what I want next, but I do know that Giant Bomb will deliver.

Alex mistakenly wondering into an ending choice is really the only way to end this series. I was kind of okay with the weird original ending, but I have to admit it is probably better with the truckloads of context they added. Also, the brief fourth ending where you just get wiped out was pretty good and would be a good set up for a Mass Effect 4.

What a perfect way to end this series. Thanks so much for all this!

Finally Brad here to wonder why Alex doesn’t use his abilities and commands correctly

16:48 I love the way Brad says this. So wistful.

Disappointed I missed this one live, it's been one of my favorite features on the site.

Thanks Alex and Vinny for doing this series. It’s been a hell of a ride.

I absolutely adore Mass Effect 3 (and the trilogy as a whole), but there's something about the Synthesis ending that I've always really, really hated. It's insanely jarring and it's really weird the Catalyst telling you it can't be forced and then you literally force an entire galaxy into it. For me, "Destroy" is the only ending that feels right.

This was such a fun series though. I was so happy to get to watch Vinny and Alex play my favorite game series ever.

I never got a pitchfork out or anything, but I was really *really* disappointed in the original ME3 ending. My main complaints could really be distilled into:

- The marketing surrounding the game (after it had gone gold) was heavily based on "thousands of possible endings" based on your choices. Casey Hudson even subtweeted Deus Ex at the time complaining about games that gave you a choice of A, B or C and disregarding all your decisions throughout the game, even knowing that that's exactly what ME3 did.

- The ending conversations with the child (some of which Alex must've skipped here) were all pretty much about how synthetic life and organic life could never coexist. This despite the fact that one of the major themes of this game being that, under the right circumstances, they could. Depending on your choices, the Geth might be helping the Quarians resettle their homeworld and a rouge AI is romancing a human. The kicker is that, in the patch that changes up the endings, Shepard can mention both of those things to the child, and the answer is basically a shrug and a "This is the way."

I do think the new endings are a vast improvement on the "same cutscene, but with different lighting and a different Buzz Aldrin narration" old ones, but it never really changed my outlook on either of those two problems.

Still, I love this series a lot (both Mass Effect and Mass Alex) and this was a wonderful way to relive why I liked it so much. Thanks to Alex and Vinny (and Brad!) for making it happen.

E: And @alex, you totally *can* shoot the child at the end, but he just freaks out at you and gives you a game over without an ending scene.

o7

I still hate this games ending so much. the colors of the rainbow ending still bothers me but what can you do. Thank You Alex. This was very fun to watch and I am glad you guys didn't get to see the endings without all the added explanations and cutscenes.

Grats, Alex!

I do think you should tinker with Andromeda at some point though, as it has easily the best gameplay in the series. It is so much fun to mix and match the powers from all the classes at-will, jumping and air-dashing around, plus running enemies over with the Nomad. The story and a lot of the writing isn't as good as the main trilogy, but it's not really bad. Worth playing, but maybe on your own time if you don't want to commit to finishing it?

Thought on Mass Effect 3's endings:

I played Mass Effect 3 when it came out, before dlc (except Javik, who came free with special edition pre-orders), and enjoyed the whole game a lot! I felt like the entire game was the ending, not just the last half hour, so I didn't mind the abruptness at all. I had already spent several hours with all the characters on their respective home planets and they had already had their moments, and then it was time to end. I think the extra bits added by the extended ending patch were good and helped flesh stuff out, but weren't necessary to be satisfied.

I have always chosen Destruction though, because it seems like the most morally acceptable choice. Forcibly rewriting the DNA of every living thing in the galaxy without their consent seems sooooo extreme. They think differently afterwards so I see it as pulling an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers on literally everyone. In effect: Killing all organic life and replacing it with what the AI kid thinks is better. Sure, the replacements have the memories of their predecessors, but are they really still themselves? My Shepards couldn't make that choice.

Control would be a great option for Shepards that didn't believe Synthetic life was real life, but I played the series roleplaying as accepting of their validity, so I couldn't condone the permanent mental enslavement. But if your Shepard thinks they're just machines, and not people, then it's a no-brainer.

Fun fact! The extended ending also added another ending, beyond Control, Destroy, and Synthesis! You can turn around and walk away, refusing to do anything, and the Reapers win. AI kid basically says, "oh well, on to the next cycle."

While this ending is still pretty rough, I think picking the Magical Pure Child to be the avatar of the Super AI is just not a good move. I personally don't totally hate it, but I have always got the vibe (and watching it with a chat live helped this notion) that most people find it really annoying and corny. Maybe it's possible to do a good job with it, but it has always come off badly to me.

I do think that kind of "press the button and they watch it happen, slowly fade the lights on set to black" sort of ending that Vinny suggested would have been more graceful, and actually ambiguous (unlike the day one ending which was sloppily barebones) and better version of the Buzz Aldrin coda (which is neat in concept but doesn't stick the landing) would have been a much sweeter way to end the trilogy.

Hopefully one day Bioware, if the right people are there to make it happen, can make a fourth Mass Effect game. Until then, thank you all for this fun series.

First time I've seen the updated ending, or any of the DLC. It's far less ... rushed?

I finished before the internet melted down over the ending, and I'm glad I did: I remember basically liking the ending, other than the Illusive Man encounter being a terrible version of Saren at the end of ME1, and the ending cinematic (I (deliberately) picked Synthesis too) being overly short. This is better, but not very much so.

The whiny meltdown over how "the fans deserve better" seemed insane at the time, but with the Snyder Cut being a thing now, it seems almost tame.

Also, didn't notice before that they took three games to add a gay character, then kill him without fanfare or remark at the end, while lesbians are everywhere. Hmm.

@madpierrot said:

I don't think Brad or Vinny even remembered how abrupt and unclear the choice was. It's shitty of Bioware to poorly communicate that the choices were represented by the 3 paths and didn't even offer an "are you sure you want the synthesis ending?" prompt when Shepard walks far enough down the path instead of blindsiding the player into a cutscene. All the paths are identical in lighting. Left path is slightly blue, right path is slightly red, but middle path is also really bright blue. If Bioware were trying to do environmental storytelling, they failed miserably in communicating it.

The Green Mile.

It was nice seeing the end of this game again. Good times.

The sound design during the space battle above earth is so insanely good.

The biggest bummer about Mass Effect and being an EA published game was all the really good and important stuff being split into optional DLC, including Javik, I liked ME3 quite well without all that but the added context and the prospect of a living Prothean and digging into their past really elevates it.

I like the original ending well enough (agree that the starchild and the cirquit board skin is a bit much) but this was a real treat to experience all the extra stuff through this series. I hope we get to see more episodic series on the site like Mass Alex, Beast in the East and MGScanlon.

Thank you all so much for playing through Mass Effect. It has its warts, but is still one of the most impressive game series out there. What a ride.

@simonbuchan: Cortez died without a peep because Alex didn't interact with him enough throughout the game in that classic case of 'You didn't talk to this person enough? Too bad, they died at the end'. But 100% correct in it being shitty that it takes until the third game to have the possibility of a gay relationship with either him or Kaiden.

I remember when I first played this, I reloaded my save to watch all the endings, and I do agree with a bunch of people that synthesis is just a bit too much as a solution. Looking this up on the ME wiki recently, I'm pretty sure I've been misremembering this, but at the time I swear taking the destroy option meant the mass relays got completely destroyed, and so I thought, 'Fuck that. I'm not forcing everyone back to the intergalactic stone age where everyone's stuck in their own little part of the galaxy'. However, I think the line about them fixing the mass relays were simply based on EMS, so if you had that high enough, you'd get the good outcome of them eventually fixing the relays and everything essentially going back to normal. Kinda sucks though that only that option gives you the 'Is Shepard alive at the end?' tease.

Overall, I ultimately picked control, but dealer's choice on whether you think control/destroy is the better option.

“His dick has been indoctrinated”

-Brad Shoemaker

This game is EASILY the worst of the trilogy.

Thank you for this Alex and Vinny! I had a lot of fun reliving this series.

I'm not sure what I will feel when I watch this video... Mass Effect was one of my favorite series and that love was utterly demolished by this absolutely fuckawful third game. The ending felt like a kick when I was already down. So, will this be mildly cathartic? Will I just be madsad all over again?

Mass Alex was a joy to watch and I am glad to have finally experienced all the stuff Bioware added after release but all the talk about how they fixed the game was just wildly overblown. Citadel was fan-fictionesque and while I enjoyed some of it, it has no business being integrated into the main game.

This ending though is unfixable whatever they added. Bioware killed Mass Effect before EA could have even lay their dirty fingers on it. Fuck this game!

Edit: Now after watching this I'm glad to know that I can finally laugh about this trainwreck.

To think, this entire series from battles to sex with blue aliens, was just stories a crazy old man was telling his grandson. Truly, an ending like no other.

It really is, holy shit. Alex stumbling into things while Vinny can remember barely anything (warp was the power to damage armor, which Alex had the entire time) was probably why I enjoyed Metal Gear Scanlon more, but as I got used to it, it had a certain charm towards the end.

Wondering what’s next...

Deus alEx?

Shenmue 2 Endurance Run?

❤️

The ending to the series is just so terrible, even with the "extended cut". There is no satisfying ending. Even the synthesis feels very forced, even in a universe with space magic. That is why I always pick destroy, as it is closest to what the ending should have been.

To make a good, satisfying ending they could have just gotten rid of the "kid" and made the catalyst a weapon of mass destruction that kills the reapers, like they were implying for the whole game. Not trying to throw some badly done twist right at the end with no real buildup (even with the DLC). They didn't even have to give the player any choice in the ending, since a single ending would have been better than whatever the f- this is.

Even though this technically isn't a deus ex machina ending, it sure feels like one.

That being said. Mass Effect 1-3 are still all great games. It just sucks they had to blunder it right at the very end.

PersonallyI always ended up going with the destruction ending. Always seemed like the most morally right way to go about it for me.

Also, shepard survives during the destruction ending, if you had high enough war effort rating.

"...and that's when the ME's increasingly shaky overarching plot collapsed in on itself"