Is this a rhetorical question? This is the Internet we're talking about.

I played it for the first time late last year and managed to feel pretty pissed by the end, though the Citadel DLC did help mellow me out. There are some real highs and lows in that game. I can easily see how someone could feel either way about it depending on priorities, focus, and what DLC they played/if they played it before the ending patch.

I was never mad but it was disappointing. It's still the only ME I haven't had the urge to replay and I've played through the other 2 at least 5 times each

I think I'm more mystified than mad. I really can't fathom how you, if you were leading up the team on that series, you wouldn't have the ending already down and as close to locked in as possible prior to even starting work on 3. If you were going to get anything right, it needed to be that, so wouldn't that be priority number 1? And yet by all accounts they had no idea what they were going to do until crunch time and it basically involved Casey Hudson and Mac Walters going off and scribbling something down on a paper napkin.

And to this day, I don't think BioWare really understands where people who didn't like the ending are coming from. I mean, sure, they made the Extended Edition or whatever, but that's just because people got so pissed off. I honestly think they still believe the original ending was a masterpiece of good writing. Their game design since then (not just story, but actual game design) has made me suspect they don't have anyone in the room capable or willing of saying "no." As in "no, that idea won't work" or "no, that content isn't good enough" or "no, you really do need to fix those faces." Instead, everything feels like The Best Idea Ever, and gets put in regardless of whether it will actually improve the game or not.

ME3 was a great game.

@lawgamer: Sometimes you do wonder whether the outcome of certain aspects of games are a result of a lack of ability for a developer to reflect or just simply deadlines, money, technology. It's a weird concept to look at a game as a consumer and instantly think "how was this even considered shippable" about certain things. Perspective is a hell of a thing and I'm sure it gets very clouded in a AAA development cycle.

As for ME3's ending I thought it was bad, but most of the story leading up to it was pretty subpar as well. I was never a fan of the Reaper threat main storyline it was always trite to me. I mainly play the ME games for the side stories about characters and their place in the galaxy.

ME:A indicated a break from the trappings of the Reapers and I had hoped they might avoid the whole 'chosen one, ancient evil' thing but they seem to be veering in that direction again based on the intro. I hope it evens out and doesn't become that though.

There were a lot of decisions made with Mass Effect 3 that I think really sour the whole mood and atmosphere around Mass Effect 3. It's still a fun game, but there were a lot that I felt miffed or put off by that I couldn't place at the time until the ending set me off. Why did Shepard care so much about a dumb kid left behind on Earth? Why would he dream about this one kid when he's literally seen dozens of people die in front of him? It was weird and didn't feel right. Why did they completely eliminate the Dark Energy plot that was alluded to in ME2? Was Kai Leng really necessary, considering he was the worst part of the books? Remember when it seemed like you saving or killing the Rachni Queen would be a really important decision? Turns out it didn't matter at all. The ending not making sense just jobbled all of my "Huh that was stupid" moments into one colossal disappointment stew.

The Tali Getty Images photoshop thing was also a real stinker. It felt like zero thought and effort was put into something that was supposed to be a really cool reveal. For 3 games we wondered what Quarians looked like under their masks, and to find out what Tali's face looked like after all this time was going to be a really nice treat, so I was really disappointed when it was just a stock photo somebody poorly edited, a photo that by the very nature of its existence doesn't make any sense, story wise. Who took the photo? What planet is she on? Why did she take off her entire suit just for one photo? Just one tiny bug can send Quarians into sniffle-town, and she needs to take multiple boosters just to snog with Shepard, I really don't think she'd strip down just for one photo.

See, ME3 is just filled with a lot of "Why?" questions created because the writing dipped in a way I never noticed in ME1 or 2. They don't make the game bad by itself, but it detracts from the story and illuminates the lower quality. It's like that one book they put out that completely ignored events of the past books and completely rewrote characters' personalities. There was a clear shift in lead writers and direction that seemed to not outright pull the rug out, but shift the rug a bit so people notice things are off. Mass Effect 3 was disappointing enough that I don't want to spend money on the DLC people say made the game better.

ME3 was not a bad game. I think I could go as far as to say it was a pretty good game. But it did not deliver on the grand idea presented through ME1 and ME2. That idea of your choices mattering in a real way, and things not boiling down to a binary end state. ME3 fumbled that pretty badly. And I don't even really blame Bioware for that. Like, it turns out that it's hard to write a story that is reactive, authored (as in not generated. There has to be a better word for this that I'm just forgetting) and voice acted all at once. VO takes time and money, yo. But that still left me disappointed that the choice of killing the Rachni Queen results in maybe a handful of lines of dialog changed between two otherwise identical versions of a scene, as just an example.

I would never have described myself as "mad" though.

I was never mad at the ending my biggest gripe with 3 was the side quest feature. Instead of interesting dialog with characters you just overhear a conversation(half the time it just appeared in my quest log as i was exploring lol) and do a fetch quest. Honestly all the dialog stuff was tuned back and half the conversations you didn't get a choice in the response.

The original ending was fine to me, typical scifi stuff and the extended stuff didn't change anything just added more detail.

I like 3 a whole lot, but it's the weakest of the trilogy to me, and none of my issues with it stem from the ending. That was fine, not great, but fine, and a near impossible task to wrap up such a grand story. My biggest issue with 3 is the entire tone seem wrong. They want it to be dire, but it has no consequence or sense of urgency, and the Reapers, which until ME3 have been hyped up and shown to be these unstoppable killing machines, are super weak and lackluster from the beginning.

But no, I was never angry. Game was fine. No ME2 or ME1, but totally serviceable.

I was never mad, and as a matter of fact I enjoyed the game quite a lot.

I still think it is a bad ending. When I hear people say they liked the ending, I think "Really?" I have other issues with the game besides the ending, like how the emotional core of that game is a space orphan boy in a hoodie who happens to be the embodiment of the ending who appears 20 minutes before the end of the trilogy, how they showed how troubled the protagonist is with nightmares filled with smoke ghosts and slow-mo walking, and how it is in most ways not as good as Mass Effect 2, one of the greatest games ever made.

Now, am I mad about it? Well, I don't walk around every day cursing about all of these things. I still think ME3 is good, and appreciate plenty of other things about it--like the multiplayer--but that story is one of the most disappointing things I've ever encountered in gaming.

I actually love the patched reject ending of mass effect 3. A good audience fuck you is fun. I got to shoot that fucking laaaame space ghost kid and had my cathartic release.

Mass Effect 3 was a disappointment to me because it felt with a little tweaking and some cuts it had something there. Andromeda on the other hand seems like a hot mess. It's hard for me to feel invested and have emotion for something that barely has a connection to a game I love.

Have my feelings about the terrible ending changed? No, it's still terrible. Being angry would imply that it still weighs on me to some degree though, which it doesn't. It's a lot like that uncomfortable memory of doing something stupid when you were younger, popping up every now and then for a second or two before it fades away. But just because i'm not actively angry about it doesn't mean the ending is now magically 'not crap' though.

wasn't mad, I more or less laughed that all the endings were more or less copy paste jobs(the game itself was alright, not as good as ME2), then they modified the ending and I was like..... really Bioware?

So I had just started playing Mass Effect about a month before 3 came out and at the time, I wasn't really attached to the story until after I finished my first run of Mass Effect 3 and realized how garbage my ending felt because I didn't really take any of the decisions in the two previous games very seriously, and I killed off a lot of the characters in 2, as well as Wrex in 1. It wasn't until I went back (ended up playing through all three games a total of 10 times) through all three a second time when I realized how much I actually enjoyed the series, the story and it's lore. It felt somewhat crappy to receive an extra option for your ending, I wasn't really mad about it, but it felt like a huge wasted opportunity. I eventually got over it and the story became less important to me as I learned the different builds from game to game the more I played. I was obsessed with 3's multiplayer and the way it played for several months.

I feel just as I used to - the ending was weak but so was a lot of the game.

My main issue with Mass Effect 3 is still the idea of quantifying your ability to defeat the Reapers as a 4-digit number that can be increased by multiplayer and app activities. And if I'm not mistaken, that number really doesn't affect very much at all.

I loved Mass Effect 3 from day one. The gameplay, the main narrative, the story, the multiplayer, the ending, everything. It fixed most of my problems with ME 2 (the crappy mainline there was the biggest issue). I actually loved the way it ended, with your choice being a monumental decision regarding the fate of the entire galaxy.

People seem to love ME 2, but seem to forget that the end of the suicide mission was a weird, disappointing boss fight. So I'll never understand why 3 got such flak for how it ended. I actually preferred the original version it to the extended cut, which had some weird pacing issues. Specifically when they stop in the middle of that last run to chit chat for a bit.

Anyway, I loved Mass Effect 3. I continue to love Mass Effect 3. And while Andromeda doesn't seem to be anywhere near that game in terms of narrative and scope, I'll play it somewhere down the road.

The ending was so hamfisted and galaxy changing that it makes it a little harder to enjoy the previous games, which is my biggest issue with it.

Mass Effect 3 also further shifted the series towards being a shooter and had those awful dream sequences with Space Ethereal Kid that I did not care for one iota. With what we know now, it still looks like a better Mass Effect than Andromeda.

I'm thinking of revisiting it sometime with the fan made ending modification and doing a full DLC run.

I didn't like Mass Effect 3 as much as Mass Effect 2, but I was never really mad. Just more of a "Really? That's it?". I latched onto the Indoctrination Theory pretty hard, because it made enough sense to not be impossible, but elevated a pretty mediocre ending into something cool. But alas.

My anger came with Dragon Age 2. Origins was one of my favorite games, ever. DA2 was a rushed, lazy EA-ified turd. I was VERY vocal about my dislike of the game. I've softened to just not really caring anymore, and that sort of extends to everything Bioware makes these days, which I think is even sadder. They were by far my favorite developer for close to a decade. Andromeda looks like a hot mess. But that doesn't make me feel good, in a schadenfreude sort of way. I just can't muster up the energy to care at all.

I actually read so much hate about the ending before the game came out I never touched the single player. I put 100+ hours into the multiplayer though so I'd say I got my $60 worth.

I'm not still mad, but I can look back on my feelings during the whole situation and still feel completely justified in my anger.

From the A B or C ending image criticism alone, I still feel that it's objectively true that consumers were lied to. Even if that wasn't true, the endings are all still horrible for a multitude of reasons, some of which are covered by this video, along with the countless other videos that can be found on the subject.

Still buying Andromeda, though. Multiplayer saved ME3 for me, and looks to perhaps do the same for Andromeda. That, and I really need to make up my own mind about the game. I have yet to play a bad BioWare game, and until I do, I'll still buy their games at launch.

Speaking of Angry Joe and the new Mass Effect:

I thought 3 was pretty good, But I did play it after they "fixed" the ending.

I pulled a Brad with 3. I stopped playing about 2/3's the way through when I read about the disappointment of the endings. I started over and beat it after the 2nd story dlc came out (Omega) and completed it, enjoying it much more than I would have with just the base game. Reading the original endings afterwards, yeah I wouldn't been bummed about it too.

However, charging seperately for Javik and DLC that both explained and fleshed out the Reapers was worse IMO. That actually made me a bit upset and soured a bit of what I thought was the best playing game in the series by far. I really dug everything about the combat and mission designs, especially the story missions. I also felt that the story, as flawed as it was, was still better than 2 which unfortunately put the Reaper menace too much on the back burner.

ME Andromeda bringing back that exploration aspect of the original ME with the Mako and adding in DA: Inquisition-style hubs has me really excited, as does everything I've seen from the combat.

Funny thing is, Issac Asimov's long awaited Foundation sequel, Foundation's Edge contains an ending reminding me of Mass Effect 3 so much that I went "Oh, for f*** sake, Bioware!" when I read it last year. The book won almost every major awards for science fiction novels when it came out, yet Mass Effect 3 was buried the backlash and the Indie BOOM...

And to be honest, I had enough sense of closure 4 years ago, after DLC the Citadel, so eh I am not that interested in Andromeda to begin with and it's been one busy first quarter.

I was never mad. I was just disappointed that business decisions were made that compromised the game's narrative. It not fair to Mass Effect: Andromeda to be punished because ME3. It seems that future Mass Effect games will face an uphill battle to win people over. As for the ME3 ending. Enough time has passed and we should move on. Just let it go.

@spaceinsomniac:I feel all on that list is overblown nitpicking and or is all "fixed" in the ending DLC. I never had a problem with the ending.

At the end of the day we got

Teleportion...

Ok it doesnt make any sense that your entire team is back up on the Normandy but they have been teleporting the entire series why would you count that spcificly into a poorly done ending?

No closure...

comon the entire game is full of closure missions. As an example he says "Why cant i spend time with Tali on her new won homeworld that you fought 4 hours to save?" Well because you already did that in that mission....

No mass effects travels after the relays are gone...

Well thats a good question. Maybe they can go between solarsystems on their own but slowly (as in it will take several years) and not instantly as with mass effect relays. I always assumed they entered a really difficult rebuilding phase. This question aint exactly answeared yet in Andromeda either where they can just go around without Mass relays like nothing.

Where did the reapers come from and who is the ghost...

Well it was somewhat poorly explained in the original but with some extended dialogue and the Leviathan DLC its pretty clear. That ghost is just a hologram of the reaper AI. I think they wanted to leave it up to the player to imagine but to many people just assumed they spoke to god which aint exaclty a satisfying ending.

The reason for creating the reapers is just using circular logic...

Well duh. Its an AI logic gone wrong, the classical "We can only protect our masters by destroying them". Joe really need to watch some more Scifi if he doesnt understand that concept.

Does it make sense for Joker to escape the blast?

Not really but the alternative is everyone dies which is a bit harsh. I dont see that "plothole" as a big issue.

This is my big issue with the game, an insanely lazy and poorly designed sidequestsystem.

I was never mad, but I'm still disappointed that it was a bad game (a topic you could literally write a book-length discussion around).

Loved ME3. Thought it played the best and had impactful portions of the narrative. Both it and Dragon Age: Inquisition suffered from a truly explosive, epic opening into a plodding second, third, and fourth mission.

I was just disappointed with it. Never played the ending DLC, since it wouldn't change my original experience with the game.
Also it being a reaction to the outrage, means I would never be able to shake the feeling of playing through something akin to fanfic.

I was never mad - in fact, when I played it first I felt quite satisfied. The score in that game is really good and did a lot of the heavy lifting.

With that said, when the criticisms started reaching a critical mass, I couldn't really deny any of it. To be honest I don't really think critically about games while I'm playing them in the way I do with books and films, so really it's not that I thought it was fine, but the ways in which it was fairly evidently bad had to be pointed out to me.

So in the years since, I've come to dislike Mass Effect 3. Not just for its ending, but for the myriad ways it squandered the promise of the series. Someone earlier on said they always felt that the Reaper story-line was trite - and I can't deny it. But the reveal in Mass Effect 1 had so much promise and was handled so well. I think the big issue was that they should never really have tried to give the reapers a logical motivation. When Sovereign went on and on about how his motivations were totally beyond my understanding in the first game - he really didn't think much of me did he? The addition of some really badly written nonsense about machines and organics was total garbage, and felt like a totally bolted on element. There are a lot of other small things that just add up to ME3 leaving me quite sour.

I don't know whether this has had any impact of my attitude to Andromeda. I wasn't particularly interested in playing it and part of that probably was my dislike of 3, and just my general lack of faith in Bioware in general nowadays. With that said it did plenty to keep me uninterested on its own merits.

I have played and loved all of those games but because the fiction is so dense, I can barley remember anything that happened it any of them. I'm sure I was reminded stuff would come back to me but I remember nothing about the end of Mass Effect 3.

I was never mad. I finished it once, thought "well alright then.", and then didn't bother doing the last mission ever again on future playthroughs because why bother. It was so lackluster that it wasn't even worth getting mad about in my opinion, but you know, the internet did its thing anyway. I think at worst I might have detailed my complaints or reasons why the ending didn't interest me in a post or two? Can't really remember that much.

I was mad and disappointed. I loved the series and the story it was telling and thought it deserved a better send off. I had also already played too games/consumed too much other media than ended with the main character doing the "heroic sacrifice" thing at the end and I was bored of it. The extended cut help around the edges, but I still hated the underlying ending. The Citadel DLC was better in that regard, since other than a throwaway line at the beginning and the end of it (and the events of the end of the game itself), there's nothing preventing it from being a post-ending story that is an actual proper send-off.

Its been 5 years, and that's a long time. I'm not mad or even disappointed anymore. There's too many other video game stories, and too much to life period, for me to still be mad about the ending of one from 5 years ago. No matter how much it upset me at the time.

My playthrough was helped by reading that series whenever something especially frustrating came up. I was never as big a fan of ME1 as he was, but I sure disliked a lot of the same stuff about 2 and 3.

I was never mad. It was the best game in the series from a gameplay and characters standpoint. The universe was slightly less cool because it didn't expand as much as the first or 2 did. It also felt a bit rushed in spots. But I would argue the actual mainline story is actually the best in 3. The ending wasn't good though. But I do not share people's problems with Starchild at all.

Can we also not forget how fantastic and fun that multiplayer is?

The ending wasn't the only the thing wrong with that game, it was disappointing from beginning to end. And over the top fanservice DLC couldn't save it.

I was never mad at the game, I was either disappointed or amused.

I was never mad...

I played right after release, so I experienced the 'lackluster' ending, which even then was average, but not bad...there was enough foreshadowing, that I was never surprised with the AI reaper appearing in the end...

Then I played it after that with all the DLC, which added a more fleshed out world and some pretty cool moments...

But overall the game suffers from many other things, just like the previous 2 as well, it's just that the positives are so good that they overshadow these problems...

And judging from the first 10 hours of Andromeda, it's the same all over again

I recently replayed all 3 ME games. The last 15 minutes of ME3 still are not great, but the overall game is good. There are some great heartfelt scenes in the game that really got to me.

It is kind of funny how some people basically say: 'I was never mad, but fuck that game'.

I really liked Mass Effect 3. Gorgeous underwater DLC. Javik was cool.

Getting a new 4K TV on Friday. Downloaded Mass 3 Effect 3 from EA Access, and bought the DLC again. Can't wait to get back to the Leviathan And Citadel stuff.

Disappointed. The ending really felt like a last minute change. Rest of the game wasn't that bad.

I like the rumored direction they were originally going with the game, but I guess the writers wanted to do their own thing once what's-his-name left the writing team. Unfortunate, but that's creative egos for you.

That Citadel DLC, oh man. Best part of the series. The music by Clint Mansell is also kind of incredible.

My only disappointment, being a Londoner, is how boring future London looked.

Mass Effect 3 was a fantastic game. Unfortunately it seemed like EA rushed the game out, so Bioware wasn't able to flesh out some systems that needed to be expanded on. I've beaten it 3 times and while I had a problem with the ending, it didn't ruin the entire experience for me. The highs in Mass Effect 3 are some of the best in the series. It's just too bad people got so caught up on the ending. Also the multiplayer was pretty good.

@zevvion: What characters and classes did you enjoy playing?

I just remembered I never played any DLC for any Mass Effect. Only what came on the disc day one. Sounds like I missed out on a lot, especially with ME3 where some pretty important stuff wasn't on disc?

I'm more mad about 2 than 3 but the anger is still there.

2 and 3 turned the series from an RPG with a fantastic world and a very intense story, 2 was just blah I'm sad fix my problem and then a skeleton robot. freaking LAME

I was never mad, I was just dissapointed with the ending. The rest of the game I loved.

I think ME3 was a far better game than ME2, so I was never mad.

Like, at the very least ME3 resolved choices that cropped up in ME1 in a meaningful way, ME2 just flat out ignores them and tells its own story with its own shitty ending.