Why do people hate the ME3 endings so much? [Spoilers, obviously.]

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Notabot
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Why do people hate the ME3 endings so much? [Spoilers, obviously.]

Post by Notabot »

Spoilers beyond. Proceed at your own risk.






So I just finished Mass Effect 3, chose to synthesize organic and synthetic, and saw the ending. Then I went and watched the other two possibilities on YouTube. I'll admit, it wasn't the best ending of a video game, but I don't get how people say that it ruined the entire series. Honestly, the whole final sacrifice of Shepard is a very fitting ending. Did people want a happier ending, a more detailed ending, no ending at all, or what? I'm just kind of curious about all the hatred it's received, and I refuse to read YouTube comments.
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Post by Thunderwave »

Let me give this a shot:

1) Shepard, through out the series, is show to be a bull headed stubborn fighter. When he gets to the end and the "God Child" tells him that this is how it is, so suck it up, he just accepts it and limps along to his fate. No discussion. No attempt to fight things or shoot the "God Child". Nothing. Just shuffles along to pick what color the explosions at the end will be.

2) A little more detail. What the hell is going to happen to all the aliens stranded in the Sol System? Turians and Quarians can't eat the same things as everyone else. Do they just slowly stave to death? Do they find a way home? Or what about the people you grew attached to as the series goes on? What happens to them?

3) The developers pretty much betrayed the fans. All the way through they kept talking about how intricate their choice system was and how choices made back in 1 will effect the ending of the series. Kept talking it up and stringing us along when, in fact, the ending comes down to what color you want things to be when it blows up. Nothing you do, up until that point, matters. It changes the story along the way, but **** all if it actually changes the outcome of the end AT ALL.

Don't get me wrong, I love the series. But that end almost feels like it was written by another staff and just tacked onto the end as a giant middle finger. It's incomplete and gives no closure to the series.
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

Thunderwave wrote:Let me give this a shot:

1) Shepard, through out the series, is show to be a bull headed stubborn fighter. When he gets to the end and the "God Child" tells him that this is how it is, so suck it up, he just accepts it and limps along to his fate. No discussion. No attempt to fight things or shoot the "God Child". Nothing. Just shuffles along to pick what color the explosions at the end will be.

2) A little more detail. What the hell is going to happen to all the aliens stranded in the Sol System? Turians and Quarians can't eat the same things as everyone else. Do they just slowly stave to death? Do they find a way home? Or what about the people you grew attached to as the series goes on? What happens to them?

3) The developers pretty much betrayed the fans. All the way through they kept talking about how intricate their choice system was and how choices made back in 1 will effect the ending of the series. Kept talking it up and stringing us along when, in fact, the ending comes down to what color you want things to be when it blows up. Nothing you do, up until that point, matters. It changes the story along the way, but **** all if it actually changes the outcome of the end AT ALL.

Don't get me wrong, I love the series. But that end almost feels like it was written by another staff and just tacked onto the end as a giant middle finger. It's incomplete and gives no closure to the series.
1). The Catalyst was a bad idea and badly written and his logic made no sense, before The Extended Cut (and Leviathan to a certain degree) came out. While the DLC helped make his case more understandable but I think the Catalyst as a holographic kid that was a bad idea. The Crucible should have been used to destroy or control the Reapers. Synthesis was a horrible concept and IMHO it makes no sense, feels like it makes Shepard an intergalatic rapist, and tries to make the end of the Mass Effect series end in a way that comes off as a VERY bad Star Trek wannabe.

2) In The Extended Cut it is stated in all 3 endings that the fleet left when the Crucible fired to a rendezvous point and that The Mass Relays weren't destroyed but badly damaged but can be repaired. So the turians and quarians won't strave and will be able to get back home. There is a "slide show" showing what happened to the surviors who weren't on the Normandy and that the Normandy was repaired and it got off the planet. These ideas and stories should have been addressed in the final release and not in a DLC. I guess either BioWare thought that the fans were smart enough to figure it out, or the fans weren't smart enough, or both.

3). I don't think that they betrayed the fans they certainly did their best to try and pay off the decesions, (I mean the ME3 mission with Conrad Verner pays off quite a few from the first game), but with so many things to resolve (IIRC series producer Casey Hudson said there were over 1,000 minor and major plots that they had to pay off) some were bound to be forgotten and/or overlooked.

I don't think the idea of giving the player essentially 4 less than ideal ways to win and the player has to pick the one that for them sucks the least. I think a conventional victory with the Reapers would be a stupid ending because it undoes all the effort to make the Reapers a credible threat and makes the ending to ME1 seem less important.

If I want to the Reapers to go from a credible threat to a joke I'll read The Transformers: Devastation.
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Post by Warcry »

The Mass Effect series are some of my favourite games from the current generation of consoles (well, 2 and 3 anyway...one is kinda meh), but I'm definitely one of those who didn't like the endings.
Thunderwave wrote:Kept talking it up and stringing us along when, in fact, the ending comes down to what color you want things to be when it blows up. Nothing you do, up until that point, matters. It changes the story along the way, but **** all if it actually changes the outcome of the end AT ALL.
This sums up my feelings pretty well. In the endgame it basically doesn't matter what Shepard did in the 2.99 games that preceded it. You still get the same choices for how to end the game, and the fallout (what little of it we saw) is the same whether Shepard was a Paragon who crusaded around the galaxy righting wrongs or a bloodthirsty, murdering Renegade.

Honestly, I don't think the player should have had any choice of how Shepard ended the Reaper threat. Or at least, no direct, last-minute choice. I wish they'd come up with, say, seven or eight different endings, each of which had the Catalyst do different things, and had the game decide which one you got based on your previous choices, War Assets and Paragon/Renegade score. That would have been a great way to really make your choices mean something, and to increase the game's replay value.
Thunderwave wrote:Don't get me wrong, I love the series. But that end almost feels like it was written by another staff and just tacked onto the end as a giant middle finger. It's incomplete and gives no closure to the series.
It actually was written by another staff. The ME2 writing staff had already developed a working backstory for the Reapers and seeded hints of it throughout that game (remember the star that was dying too quickly because of dark energy?), but all of those people were gone by the time ME3's ending was written.
Cyberstrike nTo wrote:1). The Catalyst was a bad idea and badly written and his logic made no sense, before The Extended Cut (and Leviathan to a certain degree) came out.
Leviathan helps a lot when it comes to making the ending make sense, agreed. I don't think it necessarily makes it any better, but it at least erases the "wait, what the hell just happened?" feeling I had going through it the first time.
Cyberstrike nTo wrote:If I want to the Reapers to go from a credible threat to a joke I'll read The Transformers: Devastation.
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Post by Thunderwave »

Warcry wrote: It actually was written by another staff. The ME2 writing staff had already developed a working backstory for the Reapers and seeded hints of it throughout that game (remember the star that was dying too quickly because of dark energy?), but all of those people were gone by the time ME3's ending was written.
I was actually referring to the rest of 3, let alone 1 and 2. It seems so out of place with the drama and action of the rest of the series. Rather then the killed/knocked out boarding party, then the gimpy finale with the Illusive Man, and then picking your favorite explosion color a more fitting end would of been to siege the Catalyst, blow your way through Reaper/Cerberous forces, have several heroic sacrifices along the way (just imagine if the cast gave their lives, one at a time, in epic last stands to buy Shepard time to do what needs to be done), and then have the dramatic show down with the Illusive Man and THEN get to pick from 2-3 options based on things you did before. Even if the options where variations on a theme (i.e. Renegades could, say, enslave the Reapers to the Geth if you let the Geth survive, or to the Quarians if you let the Geth die, or even to yourself if your score was high enough), it would be better then what we got.

And yea, the release of DLC might of cleared things up. I don't know as I haven't brought myself to finish a second play through. Hard to summon up enough give a damn when the payoff the first time was weaksauce.
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Post by Notabot »

Valid points, one and all. Did the fleet assets affect anything at all in the game? And is there a way to make the preparedness anything other than 50%?

The level I thought felt the most slapped together was the fuel depot one. It seems like they forgot to make that one until the last minute, so hurried it through. "You go this way, and I'll tell you I'm doing the exact same thing off-screen, so we're doing six things, but really only three. OH NO! You threw a switch, so ten baddies are attacking! Hope that doesn't happen at the NEXT switch too!"

I'll admit that I was rather moved by the ending the first time I played through it, but in retrospect the Catalyst-child does seem like something of a cop-out. And while it would have been neat to see what happens to everyone (and, yes, I was expecting more noble and heartbreaking deaths on the squad), it's also kind of interesting to just let the player come up with their own ideas. (Also a cop-out, in a way, but better than a still screen that says "Liara went on to found a chain of restaurants using her information as shadow broker to corner the Poppler market.")
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