I think people need to keep that in mind when they say "the Catalyst isn't being reasonable!" well no fucking duh, that's why he made the Reapers. Because he's taking a complicated moral situation and applying soulless machine logic to it. Shepard straight up says "You don't understand organics, we don't want to be 'saved', not like this". It's actually a great counterpoint to Legion's loyalty mission, where Shepard applies common human (and organic) morality to the geth, who rejects it as being inapplicable. The Catalyst has done the same to all organic life, never understanding that being turned into Reapers is the opposite of 'saving' them. He sees creativity as a purely destructive force, and so has cut technology and every civilization off at the Mass Effect Age for millions and millions of years (that's the genius of the title, it refers to every cycle that has come before it). If you think he's wrong, THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT.

Loved the new endings. I liked the original ones too, but these provided much more closure. The plot holes they filled in were pretty much just what I'd assumed on my own, but it was nice to actually see it happen anyway.

I went with Synthesis originally and was happy they went into a little more detail about what that actually entailed. The Destroy ending was also much better, though I'll still probably never choose it; I couldn't bear to kill EDI. The Control option was actually the most changed for me. I never thought I'd go for the control ending, but the way they frame it in the extended cut is much more interesting. I might just use it for one of my other Shepards.

I've always disagreed that the ending is way off the tone of the rest of the game. It seemed pretty consistent to me. The Catalyst seemed no more magical than any other AI shown; just more powerful. I also liked that the new ending clarified that it was created as a go-between for humans and synthetics. It makes it appearing as the kid Shepard kept dreaming about much more logical. What better tool for a negotiator than the ability to appear as something the person it's talking to will sympathize with?

I was worried the huge negative reaction would scare Bioware into doing something drastic, but they came through in the end. They expanded on their endings without changing them to try and meet others expectations. Can't wait to see what's next for both Mass Effect and Bioware.

I originally went with the control ending, because I felt it was the best solution that didn't involve killing things or making a decision for trillions of lifeforms about how they will evolve (Synthesis). Overall, I'm pretty happy with the additions. My Shepard reached a higher existence that allowed him to protect all life for eternity. He was also able to help rebuild what was destroyed (relays included). For my super-heroic-ultra-nice paragon Shepard it was a pretty fitting conclusion, to sacrifice himself for the good of the many. The Synthesis ending would have been a pretty good choice too, but still, I didn't feel right making a decision that changed the lives of so many, and irreversibly at that. It's nice that they put this out, it did improve the endings in my opinion and very few game stories have had their endings altered let alone improved post release. I think it's important to remember that Bioware didn't HAVE to do this, but I'm glad they did.

Well no, The Catalyst and Sarin and Illusive Man can be crazy. The writers have to be logical otherwise you end up with an unsatisfying story.

I think these are what the endings are what it should have been at the least. I still don't like the pick your ending thing, but atleast it reflects some of the choices you made. I still would have preferred the original ending of the Dark Energy taking over the universe.

I like how Renegade Control is super evil, not super ambiguous happy ending.

@Discoman: Wow, they actually kept the "Normandy exploding part," I thought they got rid of that when they made the new endings. Turns out that your alignment may change the endings a bit.

Edit: Also how the mass relays explode.

Edit x 2: That could just be the War Assets stuff affecting these scenes.

at least we got some sweet animated jpegs out of this...

*sarcasm*

I fucking loved it. The new Destroy ending is the shit. I felt like this was what the ending was supposed to be.
 
The ending slides, showing rebuilt London, the Krogan rebuilding Tuchanka, the rebuilt Citadel, it was perfect. It was the message the series has had since the very beginning: Hope and team-work can stop the devil. 
 
I am satisfied. Hell, more than satisfied. I'm just glad that, while the new endings will not please everyone, that I actually got everything I wanted from the ending, which is really all I ever wanted in the first place.

They shed more light on the fact that Bioware likes their endings. I respectfully think they are just okay.

@pyrodactyl said:

Before: All endings were the same plothole ridden bullshit

Now: Refuse is interesting

controle and synt are fine and well explained with only 1 major plot hole

destroy is still plothole ridden bullshit but now it's explained, animal house plothole ridden bullshit

so if you chose that one, sucks for you I guess lol

What plot holes are talking about? Every time I ask no one says what the plot holes are and when they did they were addressed in the EC.

The Control Ending is the most badass shit in the world. Shepard becomes some sort of space god that uses the Reapers to reconstruct the ruins of the galaxy(including the mass relays) and keep the peace. It's also narrated by Shepard with a Reaper voice filter laid over it, so it sounds awesome.

My favorite part of it all is that despite his obviously noble intentions, both the music and some of his words give off this really sinister vibe. It's the perfect ending to my Shepard and my experience with the game.

Much improved. Then again, I wasn't as offended as the rest of the internet with the original ending. I think this new ending solidifies Mass Effect 3 as being my favourite game in the franchise (previously being a bit of a three-way tie, methinks)--and this comes from someone who's followed this franchise religiously since it's original announcement in 2005.

i played it this morning and i have to say i really liked all the new dialog before the final choice. that said, i had no problem with the ending to begin with, did not think i was super good but not bad either. so i mostly played this to satisfy my curiosity and i was plesently surprised. i went with the syntheses ending

I went blue again since my Shepard is blue. I was fine with the ending as it was before so I didn't really care about the additions. The one thing I did like was the bit at the end with the memorial.

Most interesting was the addition of the fourth ending. I got that by accident then quickly hit Alt+F4 before it autosaved.

Fuck, I don't know. I guess the extended cut wasn't really for me to begin with. It was fine and still is fine and ME3 is still a kickass game and I still can't wait for some paid DLC.

@mrpandaman said:

@pyrodactyl said:

Before: All endings were the same plothole ridden bullshit

Now: Refuse is interesting

controle and synt are fine and well explained with only 1 major plot hole

destroy is still plothole ridden bullshit but now it's explained, animal house plothole ridden bullshit

so if you chose that one, sucks for you I guess lol

What plot holes are talking about? Every time I ask no one says what the plot holes are and when they did they were addressed in the EC.

The fact that everyone can return to their home planete in the destroy ending goes directly agains major concepts in the mass effect fiction.

@pyrodactyl: They can return but it would just take them a long time.

I haven't actually replayed the final mission, so I haven't seen the new stuff added up to that point. I did watch the new "destroy" ending which is the one I would have picked while playing (at least I meant to, but the choices weren't adaquately marked so I actually chose control by mistake the first time through)

It added "clarity" but completely changes how you think the universe has ended up. Either it really shows how bad the original endings were in terms of showing you what was in store for the Mass Effect universe, or they just tossed it on hoping that a "happy" ending would appease people. I'm gonna assume it was the latter.

My biggest gripe about the original finale was that the final mission didn't really make use of the main story concept of the rest of the game, which was the idea that you were building up your intergalactic army so that you could stand a chance against the reapers, so I'll see how that is addressed before making a final judgement.

Honestly, the only thing interesting about the original endings was the Indoctrination theory.

@mrpandaman said:

@pyrodactyl: They can return but it would just take them a long time.

but it doesn't. Wrex gets there in time to start the reconstruction and samara goes back to her daughter

And when you say 'long time' I think we're counting in hundreds or thousands of years

Hey so I played the ending again and chose the synthesis ending again and this time a came away feeling pretty positive about the whole thing. The bits they added made me happy so I'd say they've done a pretty good job. It's over now so let's all just move on.

@Oldirtybearon said:

For me, this is the end that Mass Effect deserved. A proper farewell.

We can only hope. Fine, I can only hope.

@TheDudeOfGaming said:

@Oldirtybearon said:

For me, this is the end that Mass Effect deserved. A proper farewell.

We can only hope. Fine, I can only hope.

Not a fan?

Refusal is the only ending I care for. The cycle should continue infinitely. Why should sheppard's generation be so special to stop it?

@Oldirtybearon said:

@TheDudeOfGaming said:

@Oldirtybearon said:

For me, this is the end that Mass Effect deserved. A proper farewell.

We can only hope. Fine, I can only hope.

Not a fan?

You could say that.

@N7: the entire point of the mass relays is that travel between disconected systems within the galaxy would be impossible without them.

FTL is faster than light but not fast enough

I watched the destroy ending and it honestly had the feel of a proper ending, i still find the other choices a bit silly, in fact I think at this point if i were to ignore the others and think of destroy as the only option when up on the crucible it makes me a lot happier, hacketts voice acting really did it justice, it had a lot of closure. In fact i'd of been happy with a dead shep too, would have been fittingly final

even if there are still gaping logic holes in the others, like: (whats to stop new biological life forming from scratch in synthesis? is the plan to just genocide it all or what?) that little bit of explaination and filler lets me know what they were going for at least so i can just about live with them.

I think they did a good job out of a bad situation here.

Without getting into it and having only seen the Synthesis ending so far: better.

oh there's one thing wrong with that synthesis ending that kind of annoyed me. That husk didnt back off like the control ending, it stayed around like it was sentient.

They're purely mechanical, no ai so it wouldn't be turned into a living thing or whatever, unless there's a geth consciousness chillin in there or sumet. ahhhghhh fml

Read most posts in this thread and as far as I could see, no one else brought up my biggest gripe with the ending(s), the S. Though I do like these endings slightly more, I still don't like the fact that there are multiple endings. This wont be the end of Mass Effect and therefore 3 of the 4 endings are not canon, maybe that should not bother me and I should enjoy my own personal adventure/story, but I am simply unable to do so.

They way I see it Mass Effect 1 was the best way to go about making an ending. There were some player choices like saving the council, but the reaper and Saren were defeated either way, and a bunch of highfives were exchanged. If you look past the whole canon issue, it also just feels weird to me that you could have 4 different endings without cheapening the writing of the story as a whole, which it probably has.

Because the series have multiple endings it is not memorable. Are you able to recall what the final line is in your ending? even if you are, 3 out 4 people will not heard that line(without going on youtube, which only makes even more pointless) and they will not have shared the same experience. Can a story really be any good if it can end in 4 different ways? shouldn't every storybeat have been geared towards that final moment, that final line, that final shot. An ending should sum and present the very essence of the whole thing.

I do appreciate now having some kind of closure to the story, but it doesn't change the fact that a well written story can't have multiple endings.

now i've listened to the extended catalysts explanation the endings start to fall apart again. he explains he's a cold calculating ai who killed his creator race with the sole purpose of preserving both forms of life, so he would surely not allow shepard to go through with the destroy ending and undo all his work. Just doesn't make sense

going to throw my 2 cents in- first time commenting on this whole kerfuffle...

i beat the game once prior, and while i wasn't utterly enamored with the ending- i could see where they wanted to go with it. put differently, it wasn't the 'what,' but the 'how' i took issue with. the biggest problem was related to pacing- they asked the player to make too big of a leap too quickly in those final moments. having completed a synthesis redo last night, i have to say- i think they did the best they could with the EC. they stretched it out and let it breathe a bit. the best additions IMO were the bits of character interaction- the lovers' farewell, the memorial at the end, etc. and i do have to say- upon a second viewing- there ARE some moments that really shine from the original ending. namely the final interactions with anderson (if you have that sitdown with him) and the illusive man (going full paragon- calls back to full paragon saren's ending).

the strength of mass effect (for me) has always been good character writing, and they brought some more with these brief additions. i'm sure people will continue to rage about the starchild, but that will never really end. bioware has decided to stick by their grandiose alpha/omega/adam/eve/omgPARADOX ending, and that's ALWAYS going to piss a certain segment off by principle. but i gotta say, as a huge fan, this feels pretty good.

parting thought: anyone claiming bioware is trolling vis-a-vis the refusal ending...i really don't think so. they're sticking to their guns, and the narrative they've constructed. they gave that ending some great dialogue, and it plays out EXACTLY as they have set it up to in that universe. anyone whose feelings are bruised probably should remind themselves that they didn't write the game, and although player choice was been emphasized, the writers were always going to write a specific outcome in the end. it would have been cost prohibitive to do otherwise.

@InfiniteGeass said:

Refusal is the only ending I care for. The cycle should continue infinitely. Why should sheppard's generation be so special to stop it?

I actually really appreciate this fatalism, and loved that this ending made it into the extended cut.

slightly improved but ME3 is still such a Sloppy single player experence. ME1 and 2 were janky and glitchy at part but not as bad as ME3 was

@N7 said:

@pyrodactyl: Oh no, you're confused. Everyone has FTL. It's not dependent on the Mass Relay's. Remember that scene in Mass Effect 2, where the Collector Base was coming back online and they had to GTFO? Yeah, they used their FTL core to get out of there. So FTL still exists, it's not dependent on the Mass Relay's. I think it's more like a Mass Relay's do not use any energy to take you to and from places, whereas using FTL independent of them will use up some sort of fuel or something. So everyone takes the Mass Relay to save a bunch of money on fuel or something. Look, I'm really not sure. But I do know someone asked the Bioware developers this during a convention and they reminded everyone that FTL still exists and the Mass Relay's weren't the only way through the galaxy.

Basically, it's the difference between horses and the bullet train. We don't have hitchin' posts and oats and people ready to clean up horseshit. We still know how to ride a horse, there are still horses left to ride, but there's no point when I can get farther, faster on the subway.

@Brodehouse said:

I think people need to keep that in mind when they say "the Catalyst isn't being reasonable!" well no fucking duh, that's why he made the Reapers. Because he's taking a complicated moral situation and applying soulless machine logic to it. Shepard straight up says "You don't understand organics, we don't want to be 'saved', not like this". It's actually a great counterpoint to Legion's loyalty mission, where Shepard applies common human (and organic) morality to the geth, who rejects it as being inapplicable. The Catalyst has done the same to all organic life, never understanding that being turned into Reapers is the opposite of 'saving' them. He sees creativity as a purely destructive force, and so has cut technology and every civilization off at the Mass Effect Age for millions and millions of years (that's the genius of the title, it refers to every cycle that has come before it). If you think he's wrong, THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT.

If Reaper-kid was completely logical answer this.

Which do you think is more logical? :

A: Create an armada of living spaceships and have them hide in the dark space on the edge of the galaxy waiting thousands of years for the day an advanced civilization will create artificial lifeforms.

Then when those lifeforms are created have your armada terrorize all the advanced civilizations of the galaxy by sending wave after wave of indoctrinated creature, and corrupted artificial lifeforms to kill them for no apparent reason. While the advanced civilizations are still reeling from the earlier attacks, the armada arrives and spends a few hundred years wiping out all advanced lifeforms throughout the galaxy.

Killing billions, torturing, terrorizing twisting living creatures into mindless slaves, destroying knowledge, history and culture and turn those civilizations into cream-filling.

Organic goop preserved in Reaper tupperware for all of history for exactly no one to care about or share with.

or

B: Show up and say: "Don't build any robots or we'll fucking kill you!"

(which is essentially what the reject ending is)

@N7 said:

@pyrodactyl: Oh no, you're confused. Everyone has FTL. It's not dependent on the Mass Relay's. Remember that scene in Mass Effect 2, where the Collector Base was coming back online and they had to GTFO? Yeah, they used their FTL core to get out of there. So FTL still exists, it's not dependent on the Mass Relay's. I think it's more like a Mass Relay's do not use any energy to take you to and from places, whereas using FTL independent of them will use up some sort of fuel or something. So everyone takes the Mass Relay to save a bunch of money on fuel or something. Look, I'm really not sure. But I do know someone asked the Bioware developers this during a convention and they reminded everyone that FTL still exists and the Mass Relay's weren't the only way through the galaxy.

Basically, it's the difference between horses and the bullet train. We don't have hitchin' posts and oats and people ready to clean up horseshit. We still know how to ride a horse, there are still horses left to ride, but there's no point when I can get farther, faster on the subway.

@pyrodactyl said:

@N7: the entire point of the mass relays is that travel between disconected systems within the galaxy would be impossible without them.

FTL is faster than light but not fast enough

It wouldn't be impossible, it would take a long time because our galaxy is huge.

The Milky Way is 100,000–120,000 light years across

The average Mass Effect FTL ship can do 12 light years in 24 hours, but Reapers can do an estimated 30 in 24 hours.

FTL travel creates static electrical charge, that has to be discharged into a planet, moon or discharging station and depending on which can take hours or or days.

These endings are essentially trying to work with such terrible ending material, I think that the whole premise of the ending was fundamentally flawed. It's not something that they can just push out with an update to fix - it's a re-write that the story needs.

IMO I think this is all wasted time, effort and money. Bioware could have been doing other things but they spent their time just expanding the same endings, which are pretty stupid IMO, and introducing a giant "fuck you" ending? Yeah, the Bioware we once knew is gone, for the (far) worse. There wasn't anything they could have done to redeem themselves, save for delaying the game and making fundamental changes to the story. The whole ME3 story just reminds me of extreme disappointment, it's completely flooded with negative associations with how they handle so many things.

I just shot the kid for fun and then he's all "so be it!" I was KIDDING, dude... God, now I have to do the whole thing again.

So much better. Not going to argue. I had no problem with the original endings except for lack of variation and lack of explination. They added both these things.

@dropabombonit: ME TO the thing that i hated about the ending was the things that happen in me me2 didtr pay off in the end

@Brodehouse said:

I think people need to keep that in mind when they say "the Catalyst isn't being reasonable!" well no fucking duh, that's why he made the Reapers. Because he's taking a complicated moral situation and applying soulless machine logic to it. Shepard straight up says "You don't understand organics, we don't want to be 'saved', not like this". It's actually a great counterpoint to Legion's loyalty mission, where Shepard applies common human (and organic) morality to the geth, who rejects it as being inapplicable. The Catalyst has done the same to all organic life, never understanding that being turned into Reapers is the opposite of 'saving' them. He sees creativity as a purely destructive force, and so has cut technology and every civilization off at the Mass Effect Age for millions and millions of years (that's the genius of the title, it refers to every cycle that has come before it). If you think he's wrong, THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT.

If Reaper-kid was completely logical answer this.

Which do you think is more logical? :

A: Create an armada of living spaceships and have them hide in the dark space on the edge of the galaxy waiting thousands of years for the day an advanced civilization will create artificial lifeforms.

Then when those lifeforms are created have your armada terrorize all the advanced civilizations of the galaxy by sending wave after wave of indoctrinated creature, and corrupted artificial lifeforms to kill them for no apparent reason. While the advanced civilizations are still reeling from the earlier attacks, the armada arrives and spends a few hundred years wiping out all advanced lifeforms throughout the galaxy.

Killing billions, torturing, terrorizing twisting living creatures into mindless slaves, destroying knowledge, history and culture and turn those civilizations into cream-filling.

Organic goop preserved in Reaper tupperware for all of history for exactly no one to care about or share with.

or

B: Show up and say: "Don't build any robots or we'll fucking kill you!"

(which is essentially what the reject ending is)

@Dookysharpgun said:

@Brodehouse: That penny arcade comic wasn't funny when they published it, it isn't funny now. . And I'd say the issue comes down not to sacrifice, otherwise I wouldn't have loved the refusal ending as much as I did, but to the fact that the player is asked to play god with every race in the galaxy, kneeling to the will of an enemy that is clearly evil, and after all of that, even if you disagree with the catalyst, you still have to make a set of choices that undermine everything that was done to defeat the reapers. All of these ending, in my eyes, still count as a loss, because you make the same decision that the creators of the catalyst made: alter the universe out of fear of evolution, evolution that, as we've seen with the quarians and geth, the only two examples the game has every put forward involving conflict between synthetics and organics, can be deterred if both sides understand each other...you know, they're both life, they both deserve life, there's an array of themes there, but there alone. No matter what you do, you lose, whether it's all the life in the galaxy, the synthetics alone, or your organic life, you still lose no matter what you do. So really, what's the difference between the four endings? Nothing, you either die defying the reapers and allow the next cycle to fight them more effectively, or you corrupt an entire galaxy by imposing a godlike decision you alone made for the masses, because...why not?

People never wanted happy endings, or endings without sacrifice, but what was put forward, even now, doesn't solve the issue of the game at all. In three out of the four endings, the reapers still exist, with the potential to slaughter and decimate everyone, with only one ending destroying them outright, but also destroying all synthetic life, a solution that won't last, that isn't practical or beneficial to anyone or anything. Only one of the endings has the player make a meaningful choice, refuse to side with any form of solution a genocidal machine has to offer, and instead, go out fighting (something I think could have been expanded upon with the galactic readiness and all that lark, allowing for even the slightest chance of victory) the way you've been playing throughout the three titles, sticking it to the Reapers because their idealogy means total destruction for no logical reason.

But again, the assumption is that these endings were in line with the original story of the first two games, which we know is not true, so really and truly, this ending to the game never really meant much, it was pulled out of the air, given conflicting themes, and stapled to the end of the story with no regard for past events, so out of all of them, the only real choice that makes any sense is the refusal ending. In the end, people wanted choice, and what they got wasn't influenced in any significant way by their actions throughout that title. They were simply shoe-horned into a shitty ending because someone leaked the initial ending to the story, and Bioware didn't have the spine to send it out anyway.

Also the catalyst was a serious deus ex machina that was never alluded to in prior titles, added specifically because everybody forgot about it for the first two scripts of the games. In that sense, I fail to see the argument against people who viewed the options given as total bullshit, nothing about this game seemed particularly coherent in terms of story, so really, I'd let people away with being pissed about how the ending turned out, it was a huge drop in quality and shouldn't have made the initial cut, nevermind the extended cut. In the grand scheme of things, I think people getting annoyed is kinda low on the list of problems revolving around this game.

Truth.

The original endings were nonsense. The Extended Cut DLC endings are just longer versions of the same nonsense.

The extended cuts were a lot better than the original endings. Bioware kept their promises of expanding upon what was originally there, and props to them for doing so. But at the end of the day, they're still kind of bad endings. Particularly the new one they added, which is just as shallow as the original endings, in addition to adding an intentional slap in the face of fans. I'd say Control was improved the most, with Synthesis becoming worse, and Destroy still coming across as the strongest since it made the most sense with the universe up to that point.

It's still a bad way to end the Trilogy, and it really shouldn't have come to this. They only have themselves and EA to blame.

While we can all discuss the quality of the endings it DID provide closure. Even as a big Mass Effect fan I am glad they didn't change the endings, but rather expanded and provided some much needed closure. The core problem was not the endings but the lack of closure and Bioware did address this issue. In the end I am happy that Bioware took the time to make this content.

@Bauknecht87DK said:

While we can all discuss the quality of the endings it DID provide closure. Even as a big Mass Effect fan I am glad they didn't change the endings, but rather expanded and provided some much needed closure. The core problem was not the endings but the lack of closure and Bioware did address this issue. In the end I am happy that Bioware took the time to make this content.

Honestly though, what closure? Sure, we get to see Zaeed in a deck chair, but out of all the endings didn't they just follow through exactly what we thought was going to happen? Do people really need Bioware to spell everything out instead of leaving it an open ending with different interpretations?

My idea is that If you chose the Refusal ending it would go through all of the choices you ever made in the series and if it determined you were as dedicated as you possibly could be greater good, they give you an opportunity to beat the Reapers fair-and-square without any space magic bullshit. Only then though. That would have been a true ending.

@Lord_Punch said:

The original endings were nonsense. The Extended Cut DLC endings are just longer versions of the same nonsense.

Have to agree. I didn't hate the original ending but I feel like these new endings take it too far. I think the rejection ending should've been in the game all along and should've been more fleshed out

It was still dumb, it felt forced. Green eyes to indicate the merging of organic DNA with synthetic What? Making ED-E cry, showing krogan baby's... ugh. It felt so bittersweet and rushed, but at least it was less dumb then the original ending...i guess. I mean if they just cut out the entire star child bit, and just ended with anderson and shepard dying next to each other, that would be fine by me. So yeah pointless waste of resources this "extended cut" Bioware should just move on and start working on new IP's . .