onan

@heatDrive88: It was between the part where Shepard jumps into the conduit beam and when he ends up on the Citadel. There was a new cinematic that included a Reaper grabbing and crushing an Alliance cruiser in its claw arms.

I'm guessing you had Garrus as a love interest? Liara put my name up (ha, name. "Commander Shepard," they couldn't even put my character's first name up on a text plaque) and ran her fingers over it.

Also, no need for spoiler tags, this is a thread about the endings, that's warning enough.

@Aetheldod: At any point while hunting down that screenshot, busting open photoshop, and blowing up a section of the image by 400%, did you think, "Hm, my case isn't nearly as strong as I thought it was"? Just wondering. I appreciate the effort, though.

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

In 10 years when people look back at the 360 console I think 2 series will be remembered COD and ME.

There's so much wrong with that sentence I don't even know where to begin.

Didn't they release statistic data on COD at some point, and it turned out like 80% of people didn't even touch the campaign? There's nothing to be remembered for, other than, "Man, remember when I shot that guy? Yeah, that was something." Plus it's all multiplatform.

When people look back 10 years from now, they're going to remember the 360 for introducing Achievements and microtransactions. It'll be remembered for Gears of War and Halo. Possibly Forza.

@Aetheldod: @Hailinel: Yeah, Hailinel is right. Asari and Turians both have head fringes, and that's just in this cycle. It also would contradict what she says in the ending about Shepard in the previous cycle ensuring that next cycle's survival. You can't ignore what she's saying because of what she sorta kinda might look like if you squint a little.

@Aetheldod said:

@Hailinel said:

@SketchPanic said:

@Hailinel: Except the Reapers win because you STILL have nothing to stop such a previously established, nearly unstoppable force, which results in the cycle just continuing on again.

It doesn't matter. Hell, I'd even say it's great that there's a "Reapers Win" scenario. That the choice results in losing to the Reapers doesn't invalidate it as a worthwhile inclusion. It's an ending in which Shepard tells the Catalyst to suck it, and then puts his faith, however misguided it might be, in the galactic force he had spent the entire game organizing for this battle.

Yet all have overlooked the fact that in this ending at the stargazer scene ther is a human boy and an Asari in it , which obviously weren´t killed by the reapers , so in my mind the cycle won in surviving the reaper onslaught , to have another go at it , but still , that seems like a victory to me (alabit a small one with a huge cost , but it is awesome).

...Whoa, rewind, what are you basing that off of? They're super tiny and in silhouetted on the screen. There's no reason to even assume the stargazers were human to begin with. Now that there's a female in Reject, so it's suddenly an asari? I just assumed the original guy they used was busy or died of old age.

Wait, what are you talking about, Garrus assumes Shepard is alive? I didn't see that at all when I played through earlier today.

Also, the new endings all unceremoniously puts the kibosh on the indoctrination theory with Hackett getting a report on the bridge and saying, "Oh, spoke too soon, someone actually got to the conduit after all." Not sure if you noticed it before making this post (Incidentally, why not just post in an existing thread?)

Indoctrination theory is dead, kaput, disproved. All for the worst, I'm afraid. Heaven forbid people get more out of your game that a superficial, face value interpretation!

@BoG said:

@MEATBALL said:

Did rainbows explode from Shepard's nipples as a disco ball lowered from the ceiling and a crowd of dancing Elcor emerged from the shadows? If not, worst ending of all time.

Katy Perry Effect

I now regret not picking up The Sims 3: Showtime. Thanks, BoG.

Damn, so much for the 140 character limit.

@SteamPunkJin said:

@fusrodah said:

I think the only changes occur during and after the conversation with the Catalyst, but I'm not sure

There's ONE thing that happens in London that's new. It happens during the run to the beam. If you have a save in London, that's a great place to start. If you use the Auto-Save at the beam you'll miss that scene.

Yeah, I just did "restart mission" and you start right at the Marauder Shields part. I shot him, get on the ship, and then after the first time, went back to see it again with a rubberband pulling the stick forward for 5 minutes while I went and made myself a sandwich. Can't skip anything, so I watched the last 2 endings on youtube.

One more thing bothers me now: What's with the false time constraint the Catalyst keeps bringing up? "We're running out of time," "There's no time but I'll try to explain," etc. What does time matter to beings like the Catalyst and the Reapers who describe themselves as having no agenda and are more like fire than anything else? Fire isn't in a rush. Shepard's the one that's losing thousands of people every minute he delays by asking questions, so the sense of urgency is held by completely the wrong character.

What's his rush? Unless it's just a "hurry, I don't have much more dialogue to burn through, pick now!" thing.

Edit: Thinking more on it, what's the point of the blue "Control" wave? I can understand the synthesis and destruction wave, those are pure energy, however now that we know the nature of "control," the Shepard AI has taken over for the Catalyst, who was in the same room with him. It's already been established by both the first game, and the Horizon mission in ME3 that Reapers and Reaper troops can send and receive communications and commands instantaneously over limitless distances without the Mass Relay network, very similar to how quantum entanglement communicators work. It's just how they're built. It's what Henry Lawson was researching.

Using an energy wave to usher in new management seems positively prehistoric by comparison. It would be like a website using smoke signals to let you know they're switching over to a new server.