Mass Effect 3 Ending, opinions and feelings?

I couldn't find anything on the site. Anyway for the players of this game what did you feel about the game/trilogy's end?

I'm not going to write any spoilers if they come up please write a notice first. I don't want to ruin in for anyone who hasn't played it yet.

RANT ALERT

In my opinion, I hated the ending, plain and simple. First of all it made no sense what so ever, it was awful. It essentially alienated the fans by pretty much making every thing you did in the previous games almost unnecessary. I have never felt so bad about a games end before. I usually feel a little bad when a game/series ends because it has ended and I accept it but its not the actual ending that gets me down its knowing that the story has concluded. This was not the case for ME3. The actual ending made me feel sick. I honestly do not want to touch a Mass Effect game again because I know I will have to deal with that ending again.

What do any players here think?
This is becoming big, there is a massive movement to have it changed here is the movement's facebook page:

Demand a better ending to Mass Effect 3 | Facebook

It seems Bioware is doing a fantastic job of alienating their fans (no pun intended). DLC drama, Tali's face being a Getty stock photo and now this.

Anywho discuss.

I haven't heard the DLC drama issues but I know the glitches like the import function not working has alienated folks and some of the game play controls I've had make it so hard to play without being ticked. I do find it funny that some of teh stuff you did in ME2 gets undone by Bioware in ME 3. Did you get all the endings or the lame one? Apparently you have to do everything just right to get the really good ending, they're using it as a reason to force you to play multiplayer as that makes it easier to get the ending

I'm not sure how much is bioware and how much is EA sticking their noses into thing as they're now telling developers they publish how to do things. They want Dead Space 2 to play like Resident Evil 5 even if the guys making DS don't want to. You wouldn't think making a face for Tali would be that hard since they could have scanned her actress like they did with Miranda. The game feels rushed, i don't think it was ready to release.

I'd join the movement but i don't have facebook. Maybe they'll do what happened with Fallout 3 where the ending was so poorly received they used a DLC to change it and add on to it.

I looked up the whole multiplayer singleplayer connection and its ridiculous. It pretty much affects what happens to Sheppard and Earth but regardless there are three options to end the game and they are all terrible. They implement a Deus Ex Machina to resolve the story and end it on a awful note. As one person said somewhere "The ending seems to be written by a person who had a 15 minute explanation of the game and just kind of winged it". They have got to fix, one way or another.

Yeah Deus ex's ending was horrid too, i was hoping for some closure via DLC but as always Square dropped the ball. I heard that unless you did everything absolutely right to make up for not playing multiplayer you get a lame ending. I know that the bioware forum has implemented new rules as apparently the game makers were being insulted lol.

http://www.therpf.com/f47/mass-effec...nsoles-141143/

Thanks for not posting specific spoilers. We haven't beaten the game yet (a lot of our game time has been consumed by watching Game of Thrones).

Gonna put my whole thing under spoilers because I don't want to talk "vague"

Spoiler:

I liked the ending in a sense. Before you shoot me and call me an indoctrinated agent of Bioware, let me explain.

The ending made sense. The Citadel has been key since the beginning, it's always been there - The Protheans discovered it and used it, as did the Asari/Turians/etc/Council. It's revealed in ME:1 that it's actually a Mass Relay and that it was built by the Reapers (or so the Prothean VI thought).

In reality, the Citadel houses the VI responsible for controlling the Reapers. One thing I wish Bioware would have explained is the connection to Harbinger (the most powerful Reaper is hardly ever mentioned in the story ) but nonetheless, Shepherd finds this VI and then you begin the fun discussion of - "To kill, or not to kill, that is the question."

If you choose to destroy the Reapers, all synthetic life is destroyed (including Reapers, Edi, Geth, etc) as well as the Mass Relays and the Citadel itself (wiping you out along with it). If you don't have Galactic Readiness to 90%+ or whatever, most of the fleets are decimated in the final attack so almost everyone dies.

Is it a good way to end the series? Sure. You destroy the cycle of destruction that you discovered at the end of ME:1, you save humanity (your #1 priority) and give your life in the cause (Shepherds purpose). But, as Bioware loves to point out, everything has consequences - the penalty of destroying this cycle is losing the technology the Reapers created, namely the Mass Relays. Thus humanity is now forever separated from the Reaper threat/technology, but also from further Galactic Exploration.

Are there loose ends? YES. THAT's what bugged me the most. I had at least 20 different questions AFTER I beat the game. The game's ending SHOULD have answered all of them.

Questions such as -
- The Reaper VI - who created the VI? How has it survived for so long? Why did it take the form of the boy?
- The vision of Shepherd and his "son" - what the hell is this here for? If you're going to die doing the right thing, then it's not going to happen, so is it just some pointless "if the Reapers didn't exist and you never did any of the stuff you did, you could be doing this" thing?
- What exactly just happened?
- What happened to the fleets in orbit around Earth? How are they going to get back to their respective home planets without the Mass Relays?
- What exactly was the Illusive Man? How exactly was he tied to the Reapers?
- What happened to the rest of your crew?
- Is it possible to rebuild the Mass Relays?
- The future of the Protheans. If you do the From Ashes DLC, you get a (spoiler) a Prothean on your team. If he survives, he's the last member of his race, one of the most prominent races to have ever existed. C'mon, go somewhere with this!
- What exactly did the Crucible do? We see an image of the beam washing over Earth and people getting vaporized, well what the hell? Did it just destroy humanity anyways? What exactly did it blow up?
- Etc, and etc.

I think the ending was good, but not enough. I had to do a lot of reading online to sort of close some questions but even then, I'd love for some more answers. The basic structure of the ending was correct when you think of the ME series as an Epic, Shepherd as the Hero and the Galaxy as the people.

The Hero must save the people by sacrificing himself to stop the unbeatable power.

It's a pretty common story-ending, and it's been in ME since the beginning. Bioware followed up with it, but they should have worked through all the holes it left.

Those are just my thoughts. Bioware's mentioned that they won't make an ME:4 (Shepherd's series is done) but that they might make more games with the Mass Effect world (I, for one, would love to get an RTS game for ME based off of the game Star Wars: Empire At War. That would be incredible). They might go into more detail in those.

Should be noted: I've only played the game through once, and I barely did any of the side-quests. I'm on my second playthrough using a different ME 1 - 2 character that I'll do as much as possible in, and choose a different ending.

After all the negative feedback, which I can see why so many people feel cheated, I haven't even started the single player yet to not be disappointed

Instead I've been chilling as a Drell Adept on the multiplayer, which I think is quite enjoyable,

oh, and I'm GeraltORivia online if anyone wants to add me

The Multiplayer is fun, but has so many glitches. For instance - one game, it was as if I didn't exist. It was Wave 8, and my shots didn't count (as in, I could put a whole clip into someone and they wouldn't get damaged at all). I couldn't pick up more ammo, my powers didn't affect anyone, I couldn't melee, but I could get shot and killed.

It was the weirdest glitch. I just had to run around and let my teammates kill them until Wave 10.

I like it though. If they fix the glitches and add some more options rather than just facing wave after wave of enemies, I think they could pull it off.

As to the other ME games that won't involve Shepherd - there's a fair amount of info that Bioware will work on another ME game. I'd kill for an RTS similar to Star Wars Empire At War that involves Mass Effect.

after i finished the game, i anger googled, "ME3 ending WTF" and was amazed at the hits and discussions i found. seems i wasn't the only one feeling this way.

Spoiler:

16 different endings, with three variations of 'color' and a grandpa telling shepard stories after all life in the galaxy was expunged... wtf

definitely rushed from the dead characters inexplicably showing up emerging from the crashed ship in the final cut scene to characters holding weapons that weren't even in their loadout... plenty of things pointing to bioware 'mailing it in'

MasterDurangus, that glitch happened to me a couple times, and at least for me it was when I didn't have enough bandwidth at home, and yeah it was annoying as hell

My teammate was telling me how bad I was lagging. No idea as to what else might have caused it.

Making a list of things I think should/could have been improved in ME:3 single-player:

Spoiler:

Relationships -
- It was my understanding that it'd matter who you hooked up with in ME:1 as opposed to ME:2. EX - I went with Ash in ME:1 and Miranda in ME:2. When I see Ash in ME:3, we talk a little about it, but she's cool with the whole thing. That makes no sense whatsoever! I was expecting some conflict, as in a "you told me you loved me, but you went and slept with her!" sort of stuff.

Ending -
- Here's how I would end the series. It's cliche, but how I would have done it. Reapers are sentient machines, but they're connected to their VI aboard the Citadel. Some form of QC communication, most likely. The plans for the "Crucible" aren't some doomsday superweapon but a machine that taps into this network. Once you have access to the network, it's just a matter of destroying all the information (like securely erasing a harddrive or destroying a brain of a human) to end the Reaper threat. But, the final piece - the "Catalyst" - is that you have to connect it to the VI (the key that all Reapers connect to) in the Citadel.
^^ That's the basis. Now, let's go into decisions:
- A. GETH - The GETH are also synthetic beings. If you complete the Paragon option involving the GETH and Quarians, then they give you the option of using them to connect remotely to the Citadel VI. Unfortunately, if you do this, it will destroy every GETH as well because it destroys that "neural" network.
- B. The Prothean VI - You can connect the Crucible to the Prothean VI and disable the Reaper's connection to the Citadel VI. The Prothean VI would have full control over the Reapers, and then Javik could have his revenge, and the Reapers would be repurposed. Plus, information could be gathered about their significant technology from the Prothean VI and humanity jumps forward in technology another 200 years. To do this, you MUST save the Prothean VI at Cerberus HQ.
- C. Control the Reapers. You connect to the Citadel VI, but instead of erasing all the data, you upload your own virus/program that "destroys" their "free will" and lets you have full control over them. You're now the most powerful man in the galaxy, and feared above all.
- A. Give control to the Council, the Reapers are now the personal weapon of the Council and SPECTREs. They're used to explore parts of the galaxy and settle disputes, and extremely strict rules are set in place for their usage.
- B. Humanity's interests - you team up with Cerberus and use your new control to further humanity, gaining massive control over the Council and other races.
- D. Destroy the Reapers. You erase the network and the Reapers shut down, forever destroyed.
- A. Choose to study the Reaper remains for technological advances, which brings up its own pros/cons.
- B. Deposit the remains of the Reapers in an abandoned part of the Galaxy and destroy the ME Relay.

So many options... THIS would be how to end it. What do ya'll think?

The A-B are supposed to be UNDER the main option, as decisions on a decision.

I'm enjoying the bioware link i posted. The entire ME3 forum is about how bad the endings are and all the boycotts that are planned. Bioware is pretty quite other than one game guy said to keep all the ME3 saves you have. This game is getting attacked left and right.

Wes R said:

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I'm enjoying the bioware link i posted. The entire ME3 forum is about how bad the endings are and all the boycotts that are planned. Bioware is pretty quite other than one game guy said to keep all the ME3 saves you have. This game is getting attacked left and right.

Just now checking it out... I'll be interested to read what everyone thought about it. Call me an optimist, but I really didn't think it was all that bad.

Everyone is betting that they'll be adding DLCs to it like with ME2 to make up for it by having the ending you got not be the real one. I also hope they fix Tali's face. I'm thinking maybe they couldn't get a scan of the actress in time like they did Miranda and put that there until they could. Heck maybe it's actually a joke where tali Photoshopped a photo on purpose.

There was DLC for ME:2? .... I missed something.

MasterDurangus said:

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There was DLC for ME:2? .... I missed something.

There were quite a few for it.
Downloadable Content - Mass Effect Wiki - Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, walkthroughs and more

Here's the list. There's dlc for ME1 too.

Thanks for that... show how much I know about gaming!

The theories on that website you shared are great. If that's true, Bioware gets a standing ovation.

If not I have a lot of their games not selling after this as people are already losing faith after Dragon Age 2. It wouldn't be so bad if Bioware actually would say something but they're like the council pretending there isn't any issues.

If anything, get Lair of the Shadow Broker. It is the best of them all. Arrival isn't too bad either.

Shadow Broker is so huge that it probably was originally part of the game.

C0mmand3rC0dy said:

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If anything, get Lair of the Shadow Broker. It is the best of them all. Arrival isn't too bad either.

Guessing that has something to do with Liara?

I'll take a look at it. DLC... very new to me haha.

Thought of this...

Not going to put spoiler tags because it only deals with ME:2, not ME:3 (though be forewarned!)



What if Shepherd did die in ME:2? Was I the only one who thought it was kind of convenient... he dies in orbit around a planet... gets picked up and repaired over a 2 year period by Cerberus.... this leads to all the craziness we see in ME:2.

I'm not sure how this could play into ME:3, but it's interesting to consider.

Oddly enough ME 3 forces you to create a new Shepard if he/her dies at the end of ME2 at the collector base. It would have been interesting for them to give people who had that happen to have a new commander pop up but since this is Shep's story that couldn't happen. Man bioware has a lot of damage control to do, they and EA are losing customers like mad.

Man this movement is growing rapidly. The facebook page is very close to passing 20,000 supporters. MSNBC, Forbes and various others have articles about it. The lead writer of Bioware stated that he is reading peoples statements but is not ready to comment yet, looks like we really have Bioware squirming.