***************WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE THEM, CLOSE THIS THREAD IMMEDIATELY****************

I wanted to give this topic it's own thread, because I feel it warrants discussion.

Many people have expressed dissatisfaction with the ending of Mass Effect 3, myself included. We claim that it doesn't fit with the theme, that the writers were lazy, and that there was no resolution for many of the major events, relationships, and romantic interests in the game. There was also no means of proving to the Reapers that organics and synthetics could in fact work together, as proven by the Geth-Quarian story line.

However, some recent study by a friend of mine brought my attention this post on the Bioware forums.

Reading over that post, I think some combination of theories 1 and B are the most likely.

Effectively, throughout the game the Reapers are attempting to Indoctrinate Shepard. This is supported by the existence of the child that everyone ignores, and that haunts Shepards dreams on the Normandy. If you pay attention, when the child boards the shuttle at the beginning of the game, nobody acknowledges him. Anderson never sees or hears him, and he makes no sound when disappearing at the start of the game. He actually appears right after Shepard is nearly hit by a beam from a Reaper Dreadnought, which is eerily similar to his appearance after Shepard is hit by the beam at the end. His one and only line is "You can't help me", which is basically the Reapers telling him it's hopeless and he should succumb to their Indoctrination. He represents everything Shepard cannot save.

After Shepard is hit by Harbingers beam attack at the end, I believe Harbinger tries to press his Indoctrination to the extreme, and this takes the form of the ending sequence we see, being played out in Shepards mind as he lies broken and unconscious on Earth. He dreams that he ascends to the Citadel and that he is presented with 3 choices from The Catalyst (again, the child appears) none of which are any good at all.

Looking at the facts of those choices individually:

-Paragon: You choose to control the Reapers. You are destroyed in the process, but the Galaxy is saved. Note that this is what The Illusive Man has been trying to do the entire time, and Shepard has been fighting tooth and nail against this. So why would it be the Paragon option for Shepard to try and control the Reapers where TIM failed? The answer is that he doesn't control them. They give him the illusion of control and he falls under Indoctrination.
-Neutral: You choose synthesis, which is a compromise. All organics and synthetics in the Galaxy are merged into cyborg-like beings preventing the annihilation of everyone. Shepard dies in the process. This choice seems odd for several reasons, but it's also another option that leads Shepard away from his convictions of destroying the Reapers to save the Galaxy. Choosing this option still leads to Indoctrination and ultimately the destruction of the Galaxy at the hands of the Reapers.
-Renegade: Destroy the Reapers. But there is a catch! It will destroy ALL synthetic life, including the Geth and EDI. EDI is a close personal friend of Shepards, and he worked very hard to bring the Geth back into the fold, reuniting them with the Quarians in what appears to be a peaceful society. So why would he choose this option at all? The answer is that the Reapers put a negative aspect on the choice that destroys them. Choosing this option actually represents Shepards ability to throw off Indoctrination entirely and get back into the fight.

The other thing to consider is that the "Renegade" option is the only one of the three that takes your Galactic Readiness rating into account for anything at all, and the ONLY thing it's used for is a tiny scene where Shepard wakes up amongst the rubble of Earth. This tells me that he was never on the Citadel in the first place. The readiness rating represents the military's ability to hold the Reapers off long enough for Shepard to throw off Indoctrination. If they aren't strong enough, it doesn't matter and everyone dies, but if they are, Shepard wakes up and gets back into the fight.

A few more points:

-The color of the energy wave at the end of each cut scene doesn't follow the choice Shepard makes. If he chooses the Paragon option, the wave is red. If he chooses Renegade, the wave is Blue.
-It's nearly impossible for Bioware to release DLC for this game if Shepard dies and the Galaxy ends. They clearly want to add DLC (they mention it when you finish the game), so this theory gives them the ability to release an actual ending in DLC form.
-If the endings we see are in fact true endings, they are horribly unsatisfying and I refuse to believe Bioware would do that to their beloved franchise. It's very out of character for them.

So, from what I've read and discussed with people so far, I think that the final scenes of the game are actually Shepard either succumbing to or throwing off Indoctrination via a hallucination at the hands of Harbinger, and the scene where the Normandy Crew crashes on a planet is simply part of that. A dream cooked up by Shepards bewildered brain as he fights against Harbingers control, just before he comes back to reality or dies. During the final after-credits scene with the Stargazer, he tells his son that he has "one more story about the Shepard", which leads me to believe a true ending to the series will be released as DLC within a few months, and people will suddenly realize how brilliant this ending actually was.

Well? What do YOU think?

I actually like the ending just the way it is. The "it was all just a dream" just seems kinda silly to me, it could work here I guess but I just mean in general.

I wouldn't be surprised if they just left it, and the DLCs were leading in to some kinda prequel series that doesn't have anything to do with shepard at all.

You can't like the ending as it is.

I'm sorry, this isn't a matter of opinion anymore, you literally can't be satisfied by the glaring plotholes, the MacGuffin childreaperwtfgodthing, nonsensical attempts to explain things, the huge contradictions, and the lack of any explanation as to what happens after you screw every person of every species in the galaxy by destroying the Relays.

You know they go supernova when they explode? Every system which had a Mass Relay has been vaporized. Yeah that's right, you've just destroyed Earth, Palaven, Sur'Kesh, Thessia, Rannoch, Tuchanka, Omega, Eden Prime, Illium, every racial leader, the entire fleet you just gathered, your team and the Normandy, and of course, the Citadel.
Makes complete sense, right?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the topic at hand; yes, I'm completely behind this kind of explanation. The ending is just to horribly bad compared the build-up and in comparison to the other two, especially the first. Nothing is explained. Nothing makes sense. No questions we may have had going into the game have been answered, like, what ARE the Reapers? Where did they come from? Why are they actually doing this?
Given Bioware's track record, for example, the epilogues of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect, this can't be it.

However, whilst I'm in agreement with this theory, and have erased this travesty in favor of inventing my own ending, I have a feeling that Bioware know the ending was poor. It was rushed, they knew the plot holes and inconsistencies and are working on to rectify it with a much more satisfying conclusion. Paid DLC or free, I don't care. I want it to be as good as possible, a couple of more pounds for a company that would put that effort in is nothing to me.

All they need to do it revise the ending from the point where Shepard is hit by Harbinger's laser. I have my own ending, maybe I'll post it on the official forums sometimes, see what people think.

I think my biggest issue with the "it was only a dream" scenario isn't from a story perspective, but more like we shouldn't be forced to pay $10 for a DLC to get the "real" ending for a game that should have been finished properly. It's just greed at that point, EA knows everyone will download it, so it's easy money and they probably planned this a year ago.

So, I'm happy with the ending I got, even though I know I'm gonna have to pay to see what really happened...

I don't really see any of the 3 options as paragon or renegade. There's good and bad with all of em. I chose to destroy the reapers, even if it meant sacrificing EDI and Geth, which are machines and can be rebuilt some day, same with the Mass Relays. Destroying em seemed like paragon to me, since it ended the threat to the galaxy once and for all. If Shepard became a reaper, he'd be back in 5000 years to reap with the rest of em, so that certainly doesn't sound very paragonish to me.

Necros wrote:I think my biggest issue with the "it was only a dream" scenario isn't from a story perspective, but more like we shouldn't be forced to pay $10 for a DLC to get the "real" ending for a game that should have been finished properly. It's just greed at that point, EA knows everyone will download it, so it's easy money and they probably planned this a year ago.

Oh I entirely agree! But, since Bioware is the developer and they've put a tremendous amount effort into the past two games, the DLC, and 98% of the third one, I wouldn't mind paying just a little bit more to find out what really happens. After all, there are plenty of other very good games that could benefit from a payed DLC, the other two Mass Effect games for a start, and many others which are published by EA.

So, I'm happy with the ending I got, even though I know I'm gonna have to pay to see what really happened...

Like I said before, something's wrong if you're happy with the ending. If it made sense, if story-lines were wrapped up, if there weren't any massive plot holes or contradictions, I'd be content. This isn't anything like that.

I don't really see any of the 3 options as paragon or renegade. There's good and bad with all of em. I chose to destroy the reapers, even if it meant sacrificing EDI and Geth, which are machines and can be rebuilt some day, same with the Mass Relays. Destroying em seemed like paragon to me, since it ended the threat to the galaxy once and for all. If Shepard became a reaper, he'd be back in 5000 years to reap with the rest of em, so that certainly doesn't sound very paragonish to me.

Doesn't matter if they "can be rebuilt". Everyone is dead, the galaxy is devoid of life when the Mass Relays were destroyed. Shepard ended up dooming everyone in the galaxy, plant, organic, synthetic, Turian, Krogan, all of them, everyone he loved and tried to save, to a fate that even the Reapers couldn't possibly accomplish.

I dunno, I guess it doesn't seem like everything's destroyed since I saw my friends crash land and get out of the normandy and look around. Maybe the hint book spoiled me too, since I followed what it said to the letter to make sure shepard survived. Just seemed like killing all the reapers was the best option. And then the stargazer at the end telling the story, life did go on. Didn't really pay attention to anything else, I just wanted the reapers dead and gone.

I wasn't a huge fan of the ending, i chose to destroy the reapers, btw the mass relays exploding doesn't kill everyone, that is just wrong OP. It may have been a little piece of fluff, but consider it retconned, or consider it a minor plot hole. Destroying the mass relays obviously has other implications but hey...

The thing that annoyed me was that like Deus Ex 3 there was only one truly 'Right' choice. The one i chose. The Reapers are meddling, they are choosing For people rather than letting them decide, even if it is the decision of synthetics to wipe out Organics, who cares? C'est La Vie...

The other annoyance is that the Reaper's Sole reason for existance is based on a pretty big assumption; that synthetics will inevitably 'go skynet' everytime. This is simply not true, a completely logical construct would not do this, one with a bias or flaw might but it is FAR from guaranteed that Synthetics will turn on their masters, or indeed that the masters would be Xenophobic A-holes á la the Quarians. The 'Tron' sub-quest showed how ridiculously idiotic the Quarinas were, part of the reason i gladly wiped them out

Perkustin wrote:I wasn't a huge fan of the ending, i chose to destroy the reapers, btw the mass relays exploding doesn't kill everyone, that is just wrong OP. It may have been a little piece of fluff, but consider it retconned, or consider it a minor plot hole. Destroying the mass relays obviously has other implications but hey...

Ever played the Arrival DLC? You crash an asteroid into a Mass Relay. It goes supernova, basically, and destroys the entire system and everyone in it.

Yeah, that's not a 'minor' plot hole.

Regardless, most people are going to starve, degenerate into savages, or destroy each other in cataclysmic wars. You've screwed the Galaxy whatever you do.

Everything else though, I agree with, particularly the Reaper's reasons for killing everyone. It makes zero sense, and is particular irritating considering you could have just spent several hours proving them wrong with the Geth and the Quarians. If there were some extra dialogue where the childreaperwtfgodthing explains that they've seen the situation before and it never lasts, then maybe it would have been OK.

Perhaps it's because I'm not a fan of the mass effect series but having no clearly defined "paragon and renegade" options sounds pretty good to me.

I'm still astonished over the amount of hate this thing has gotten. I may not have liked it, but I just decided to chalk it up as a gakky ending and move on with my life. Seriously, with all the things going on in the world, one game's bad ending is what makes people fly into a frothing rage. I mean, my entire response to the ending was this:

"Huh. Well that sucked. At least it's over and the game was good in general. Back to something else."

I mean...yeah, it's a gakky ending, but can't we just call it a gakky ending and move on?

Why can you keep playing the same character after the ending? Seems silly to me.

Is there actually a hidden ending that you unlock on the second playthrough?

I think there is something different, or maybe it's just easier and you don't need as many war assets or whatever.

I doubt I'll play again though for a while, after all the DLCs are done I'll start again with my 2nd ME2 shepard and see how it goes.

The multiplayer is pretty fun though so I expect to be playing that a bunch.

I keep seeing/hearing awesome things about ME3, but I haven't played the series at all...Since I play on PS3, I don't have access to the first ...would I miss any important plot points by just playing ME2 and ME3?

Yeah havent played that, Well its a major plothole then lol. I am pretty sure the lil'boy would have mentioned that blowing up the relays would kill all your chums and Earth.

Oh and in complete layman's terms the Mass relay exploding FMV resembles a conventional explosion, akin to say blowing up a nuclear bomb with some C4, i.e. it's gonna make a (dirty)boom but not a nuclear boom. Are you sure the meteor wasnt full of unstable materials/Encased in a mass effect field/used to make the relay misfire/Coated in Macguffin Diamonds?

Also......
Anyone know why joker/the normandy and presumably your team is in hyperspace at the end? Is that supposed to be Earth they have landed on?

Oh and anyone doing another playthrough, do not Play as Sentinel, i can attest that it was went from imo the best class (ME2) to the worst. not that it will matter for all but the final Battle, Which i actually found ULTRA hard, like 10 times harder than any other portion of the game.

Yeah that last battle was a pain.. mostly it was because of all the banshees toward the end. And, you couldn't really save too much which I didn't like.. it took me a couple hours to get through.. what if I couldn't play that long?

for the last few fights I got sick of dying (mostly because I kept getting stuck ducking behind things I didn't want to duck behind) I just gave up and set it to the easiest difficulty and even then it was still a challenge in some parts

Locclo wrote:I'm still astonished over the amount of hate this thing has gotten. I may not have liked it, but I just decided to chalk it up as a gakky ending and move on with my life. Seriously, with all the things going on in the world, one game's bad ending is what makes people fly into a frothing rage. I mean, my entire response to the ending was this:

"Huh. Well that sucked. At least it's over and the game was good in general. Back to something else."

I mean...yeah, it's a gakky ending, but can't we just call it a gakky ending and move on?

It's gotten so much hate because it is literally the single biggest western Sci-Fi RPG series to date. It's one of the most critically acclaimed video game franchises in history, and the endings of the first two games speak volumes as to Bioware's ability to wrap up plot and finish a game. If you look at every other game they have made, they have clearly defined endings with plot resolution and a satisfying conclusion of events.

I flat refuse to believe that Bioware would end the series like this. It's so completely out of character for them. Plus, there is so much evidence to support this theory that I have a hard time believing it's anything else at this point. Read the entire forum post I linked in my original post. I know it's long, but read it thoroughly, and then play the game again. Pay careful attention to what the crew says between missions. Read the journal entry on indoctrination, and look for those signs in the game. They are everywhere. James talking about a humming noise, Shepards dreams, the kid being a ghostly figure at the end. It all fits so perfectly.

If Bioware truly did intend to end the game this way, there are a VERY large number of accidents that make it look like they didn't. My money is on a DLC ending, probably involving a fight against Harbinger directly.

Even if the indoctrination theory is correct anything short of a free DLC with the true ending would be considered an insult to the fans and even then, the question remains, "Did Bioware intentionally plan the indoctrination ending or did they jump on it to save face?"

Either way, it's a PR disaster for them.

Amaya wrote:Even if the indoctrination theory is correct anything short of a free DLC with the true ending would be considered an insult to the fans and even then, the question remains, "Did Bioware intentionally plan the indoctrination ending or did they jump on it to save face?"

Either way, it's a PR disaster for them.

I don't think it is. They obviously planned DLC for this game. They did it for ME2, and it worked out very well. They have done it for other Franchises they own, and it's worked similarly well. DLC has become the new norm for video games and that's just the reality of the medium. So, if they had neatly wrapped a bow on the ending of ME3 on the disk, how do you think they would have implemented that DLC? What could it have been? Something completely unrelated to the story, or a side mission somewhere that has no effect on the outcome because we already knew what that outcome was? No. It HAD to be in the form of an ending, or missions after what we see in the store-bought disk. It was the ONLY way to ensure people would buy it, and the only way to keep their product relevant after people finished the game on the disk.

The harsh reality is that most publishers do NOT make their money back just selling copies of the game. Producing a game of this magnitude takes a budget close to what blockbuster movies use, and far more people go to the movies than buy video games. As such, the company MUST sell DLC to make a profit. If they don't, they either have to make the game lower budget to start with (IE, a worse game) or eat a loss and go out of business. Many people wait until they can buy a used copy of the game to play it, and none of the revenue from those second-hand sales goes to the original publisher or the developer, so they include things like the online-key, which is required to play multiplayer, and DLC packs. The former relies on the desire of a second-hand purchaser actually wanting to pay for the Multiplayer, and the latter requires the DLC to be relevant to the story and engaging enough for people to buy it. What better way to ensure it will be purchased than to release the conclusion of the game as DLC?

You might not like it. You might call it trickery, but if that's the case here, it will work spectacularly, and I have no problem at all giving Bioware more of my money for a quality product. Most of the DLC I have played so far has been well worth the cost, and if they actually do the series justice with an endgame DLC then I will consider it money well-spent. Plus, if you look at the on-disk ending as a hallucination, it's really quite brilliant on Bioware's part. The clues they left in the game all point to it, and the final choices at the end become MUCH more interesting when you realize what their true nature is.

But all of that aside, all we can do is wait and see. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. All I'm saying is, evidence points to something else going on here.

If it really is the case, and the real end is coming in a DLC, that's great and all, but it better be free. After the poopystorm this ending made, it's the least they can do. But in the end, it just smells like a dicky trick to make a fast buck. In the future I'll probably think twice about a Bioware game that's how it's gonna be. Games should be done when you buy them, DLCs should be extra goodies.

EA takes DLC to yet another new level where to complete a game you now have to pay $10

I'm gonna laugh my hat off if that actually happens.

Necros wrote:If it really is the case, and the real end is coming in a DLC, that's great and all, but it better be free. After the poopystorm this ending made, it's the least they can do. But in the end, it just smells like a dicky trick to make a fast buck. In the future I'll probably think twice about a Bioware game that's how it's gonna be. Games should be done when you buy them, DLCs should be extra goodies.

I think this might be a discussion worthy of its own thread, so I'm going to make one. I'll link it here shortly.

Aldarionn wrote:

Necros wrote:If it really is the case, and the real end is coming in a DLC, that's great and all, but it better be free. After the poopystorm this ending made, it's the least they can do. But in the end, it just smells like a dicky trick to make a fast buck. In the future I'll probably think twice about a Bioware game that's how it's gonna be. Games should be done when you buy them, DLCs should be extra goodies.

I think this might be a discussion worthy of its own thread, so I'm going to make one. I'll link it here shortly.

I actually made one awhile back if you want to add your thoughts: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/432265.page

This situation is actually eeriely similar to my fear as I pointed out at the end of my original post.

LordofHats wrote:EA takes DLC to yet another new level where to complete a game you now have to pay $10

I'm gonna laugh my hat off if that actually happens.

You can just see the EA CEO wiping away a tear after the person who suggested such a idea to him, muttering 'I'm so proud to be in charge of this company today'

Here is my new thread, regarding paid DLC. I'll check out that one you linked.

Watch Both of these videos. They bring up very interesting points. I more so agree with first one. Even if you look at the ending in a metaphysical sense like the second video it still sucks.







So yeah. Idk, the ending would be slightly better with the indocrination part, but the Ultimate ending was still bad. And it's kind of like what the first guy is saying, maybe we're just hoping that it was a dream, to save the story because it really actually sucked. Also, the end choices don't feel like they matter very much, every ending is pretty much the exact same thing, however you should notice that during both the control, and synthesis choices shepard, for a few frames, looks very reaper like, much like the Illusive man towards the end. I think that the colors don't matter so much. But I'm still not convinced it was a good ending.

My analysis:

Destroy the Reapers
- Shepard shoots an energy junction causing the Crucible to fire an unbalanced energy beam for the Citadel to transmit. The Reapers' organic consciousness shorts out and they die. The Citadel blows apart after sending the overload signal to Charon, which takes serious damage. It resonates, then re-transmits the signal, and collapses. Repeated on a galactic scale. However, all synthetic life, electronics, VIs, EDI, and the Geth die as well. As the Relays are destroyed, the Normandy crash lands. EDI is dead so we'll never see her (even if you had her and Joker romance each other as I did).
- don't like this since it basically sends galactic civilization back to the stone age and perpetuates the conflict; instead of organic and synthetic living together, they will continue to resent each other (the future synthetics, at any rate).

Synthesis
- Shepard sacrifices himself to give the Crucible a techno-organic energy signature. It's the same as the other endings, with the Citadel blowing apart and the Relays collapsing. The Reapers don't die - they leave to find a new purpose by exploring the universe, the Cycle o longer necessary. The synthesis signal transforms all organic life to have synthetic components, and all synthetic life to have organic components. Organic and synthetic life are now one, so the conflict between the two is ended. EDI and all synthetics are also transformed.
- don't like this since it makes everything perfect. I abhor perfection. No more creation and innovation. Evolution is frozen, and in the end the Reapers win, since their vision of the future becomes reality.

Control
- Shepard sacrifices his physical form so his consciousness replaces Catalyst as the Reaper architect and overseer. The retreat signal is sent out; only this time the Citadel doesn't blow apart, and while the Relays are damaged, their only disabled, they can be repaired. The Normandy crashes not because the Relays are gone, rather inoperational. EDI and Joker can still have their happy ending.
- my chosen ending. Civilization can rebuild, and evolution can continue down different paths instead of the perfect one decided by the Reapers. Shepard will decide whether or not to continue the Cycle, and when.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
And no, I don't think that if a Relay collapses they go supernova. Why? Because i. The Destroy/ Synthesis ending they expend themselves re-sending the signal, while in Arrival, the Project Base simply destabilized the Alpha Relay. Proof? The Citadel is the largest of the Mass Relays; it didn't go spernova, it simply blew apart.

Control, though, the Relays survive, damaged but repairable, while the Citadel simply closes up.

Bojo wrote:Watch Both of these videos. They bring up very interesting points. I more so agree with first one. Even if you look at the ending in a metaphysical sense like the second video it still sucks.







So yeah. Idk, the ending would be slightly better with the indocrination part, but the Ultimate ending was still bad. And it's kind of like what the first guy is saying, maybe we're just hoping that it was a dream, to save the story because it really actually sucked. Also, the end choices don't feel like they matter very much, every ending is pretty much the exact same thing, however you should notice that during both the control, and synthesis choices shepard, for a few frames, looks very reaper like, much like the Illusive man towards the end. I think that the colors don't matter so much. But I'm still not convinced it was a good ending.

I can totally understand WHY people are upset with the ending. Even assuming the indoctrination theory is correct (which I firmly believe, and I believe it was by design) it basically means they shipped an incomplete game, and anyone that wants to play the end of the game has to buy an endgame DLC pack to do so unless its free DLC. Then again, it could very well be free DLC. That' and if the theory is correct, it would appear that it's gone way over most people's heads. It's a pretty bold move by BioWare to be honest, and it takes the idea of indoctrination to a player level, not just an in-game level.

I'm not saying the outrage is unfounded, even if the indoctrination theory is correct there will be people upset at the fact that they released the game with no "ending" on the disk, but I think there is an opportunity here for BioWare to make something incredible out of this situation, and as I said I believe they planned this from the beginning. The clues are everywhere, and some of them are not so subtle, including the fact that something as ridiculous as actually ending the game like this is WAY outside the box for BioWare. Their games ALWAYS have excellent story and well defined endings. The might have taken the risk of outraging their fans to release an amazing ending as free DLC several weeks later as a publicity stunt. Think about it. How many people are talking about this game these days? BioWare is getting a massive amount of publicity from this.

I'll wait and see what happens, but I'll be surprised if it's not something along the lines of the Indoctrination theory. Either the developers are sitting back chucking right now as they put the finishing touches on that DLC, or they realize they screwed the pooch big time and are working to correct it. Anything else means a massively tarnished reputation, and a massive loss of faith from their fan base. I mean....if the ending WASN'T going to be released as DLC (or corrected as DLC) I would never buy another one of their games at release.

Bojo wrote:

This

P.S. I support the Garrus and Shepard beach ending. Lets make that happen. And have a mud wrestling match between Miranda and Liara while were at it

Of all the outrage regarding the ending of ME3, I think the "no choice" one annoys me the most.

All the ME endings were 95% the same ending, with minor variations. If anything major happened to deviate the story line (say, like letting the Council die) things happen off-screen that effectively make the choice irrelevant.

Hell, as far as I know, if Shepard dies in ME2, ME3 still effectively assumes its broadly the same character, you simply can't import your old one; ie. its still Shepard, just not your Shepard.

Really, though, I think the heart of the issue is that people are upset that you can't "win" in the bog-standard video game sense where everyone lives happily ever after and the galaxy goes back to how it was before. Kind of a weird objection in a game about a war in which trillions of people die, the galactic economy is obliterated, and the former center of galactic power is irrevocably moved to the home planet of one the races in charge of it.

In the Control ending though the Mass Relays are only damaged, not destroyed, and the Citadel only closed up, it didn't collapse.

Necros wrote:I actually like the ending just the way it is. The "it was all just a dream" just seems kinda silly to me, it could work here I guess but I just mean in general.

I wouldn't be surprised if they just left it, and the DLCs were leading in to some kinda prequel series that doesn't have anything to do with shepard at all.

Then how do you explain the scene with Shepard waking up in rubble? When he was in space. On the citadel. Where everything is made of metal. You don't think that hints he was in London.

Then how do you explain your party members getting to the Normandy and then randomly fleeing the battle when they had no knowledge about what you were doing and that the blast would happen.

How do you explain the reapers turning around and acting all nice and benign when the reapers have repeatedly proven that they are arrogant meglomaniacal machines and have made no secret of the fact?

How do you explain Anderson somehow sneaking past you after he 'followed you up' and 'appeared in a different place'

etc etc etc

I think you're just being one of those stubborn people on forums who thinks they're being aloof when something is disliked and trying to defend it. Don't. The ending. Makes. No. Sense. It just doesn't. Indeed I'am baffled that you were not taken aback by the surreal nature of the scene. Bioware are not stupid, they are doing that deliberately because they want your money for DLC and want to make it clear to you whats going on isn't what it seems.

iproxtaco wrote:You can't like the ending as it is.

I'm sorry, this isn't a matter of opinion anymore, you literally can't be satisfied by the glaring plotholes, the MacGuffin childreaperwtfgodthing, nonsensical attempts to explain things, the huge contradictions, and the lack of any explanation as to what happens after you screw every person of every species in the galaxy by destroying the Relays.

You know they go supernova when they explode? Every system which had a Mass Relay has been vaporized. Yeah that's right, you've just destroyed Earth, Palaven, Sur'Kesh, Thessia, Rannoch, Tuchanka, Omega, Eden Prime, Illium, every racial leader, the entire fleet you just gathered, your team and the Normandy, and of course, the Citadel.
Makes complete sense, right?


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As for the topic at hand; yes, I'm completely behind this kind of explanation. The ending is just to horribly bad compared the build-up and in comparison to the other two, especially the first. Nothing is explained. Nothing makes sense. No questions we may have had going into the game have been answered, like, what ARE the Reapers? Where did they come from? Why are they actually doing this?
Given Bioware's track record, for example, the epilogues of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect, this can't be it.

However, whilst I'm in agreement with this theory, and have erased this travesty in favor of inventing my own ending, I have a feeling that Bioware know the ending was poor. It was rushed, they knew the plot holes and inconsistencies and are working on to rectify it with a much more satisfying conclusion. Paid DLC or free, I don't care. I want it to be as good as possible, a couple of more pounds for a company that would put that effort in is nothing to me.

All they need to do it revise the ending from the point where Shepard is hit by Harbinger's laser. I have my own ending, maybe I'll post it on the official forums sometimes, see what people think.

I actually think the reapers motives are far simpler than we or they themselves believe. I actually think they don't know their own purpose since reaching the apex of evolution cost them their humanity and thus they have nothing to do but replicate for eternity. Whenever a reaper speaks to you, I think he is deliberately criptic since he is insecure about this glaringly empty and pointless existence that their transhuman perfection has created.

Heres a longer post I put elsehwere where I talk about it

Ac to the kid, the reapers introduce order by preserving organic life in reaper forms. He also clearly states that 'synthesis' is the natural evolution of all life; implying perfection. Harbinger probably was stating the reapers genuine opinion. That is what the reapers are; organic melded with synthetic. The 'chaos' that the reaper on Rannoch probably does refer to the inevitable rise of synthetics once they surpass their creators. The reapers have a Darwinian, not moral view and Jarik expresses a similar sentiment when explaining the rise of the Prothean empire was to ensure 'that our machines would not be greater than us'. However, Harbinger omits several key points already established in the reapers motives. Firstly, they show a complete contempt of organic life, as much as Sovereign showed for the Geth heretics according to Saren. Considering that other sci-fi genres where all consciousness are fused to one super-entity (the thing, the flood etc) is usually justifed as solving all the 'chaotic' elements of organic existence. United in a reaper, there is no war, no disease, no pain, no suffering, no discord, no death and all reside equally in a complete nation. Secondly, they do not do this solution to 'save' organic life. Mainly because the process kills the organics, suggesting the reapers do not understand that it is our consciousness not our flesh that we wish to preserve. Only a logical machine would assume that preserving our DNA and organic material in reaper form might achieve this. Given that so much more organic 'chaos' is subdued by the reaper solution his proposed melding of DNA doesn't make sense. Harbinger is ommitting the reapers hatred of organics which has been well-established in the lore and is indicated by their insistence on killing people to unite their flesh in a reaper shell. Also, the reapers offered the Geth to be put into a body according to Legion, who had no reason to believe any deception given by them. This would suggest that the 'we are here to save organics' is either a clear deception or misguided machine logic. So Harbinger dilutes and distorts the reapers real views into a form more palatable to Shephard in order to manipulate him. The reapers do not care for organic life, and the chaos is not just synthetics annialating organics but is also the organics own propensity for self-destruction. Both threaten the reapers ability to reproduce and need to be controlled by them.

Dwelling on the order/chaos theme the reapers keep repeating. Order, implies certainty in the universe. Chaos implies uncertainty. From a machines logic, it is best to provide order (certainty) that is in their interest. The reapers have no real purpose, as suggested above they have already solved all the issues that define so much of organic life. Without it, they have no true purpose. Indeed their deliberate vagueness probably suggests their own insecurity about this, which they hide behind deluded meglomania at how powerful they are; rather than a mysterious motive. The only thing the reapers can achieve then, is to merely replicate their own perfect forms ad infinitum. To facilitate this, much like a real-life farmer, they have to regulate consumption of organics to make more reapers. Consume them all, and the reapers will extinguish all life thus invalidating any possible purpose they might have. Let them grow too much and they risk the organics/other synthetics becoming strong enough to challenge them. The reapers plan with the citadel implies that they had this process down to an art form and could reliably harvest new hosts for eternity.



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Perkustin wrote:I wasn't a huge fan of the ending, i chose to destroy the reapers, btw the mass relays exploding doesn't kill everyone, that is just wrong OP. It may have been a little piece of fluff, but consider it retconned, or consider it a minor plot hole. Destroying the mass relays obviously has other implications but hey...

The thing that annoyed me was that like Deus Ex 3 there was only one truly 'Right' choice. The one i chose. The Reapers are meddling, they are choosing For people rather than letting them decide, even if it is the decision of synthetics to wipe out Organics, who cares? C'est La Vie...

The other annoyance is that the Reaper's Sole reason for existance is based on a pretty big assumption; that synthetics will inevitably 'go skynet' everytime. This is simply not true, a completely logical construct would not do this, one with a bias or flaw might but it is FAR from guaranteed that Synthetics will turn on their masters, or indeed that the masters would be Xenophobic A-holes á la the Quarians. The 'Tron' sub-quest showed how ridiculously idiotic the Quarinas were, part of the reason i gladly wiped them out

Yes, the reapers are not thinking objectively about this and I think that harbinger told you a half-truth. He ommited all of the reasons for containing the self-destructive urges of organics (of which the machines rising is a consequence) which are by his own perverse logic 'chaos'. Put it bluntly, any machine that really thinks turning everyone to goop and putting them into a machine is a good thing is quite clearly insane. Its a bit like the I Robot storyline where the central AI believes what it is doing is perfectly logical and in the organics interests and since it lacks empathy/understanding of life it cannot comprehend the sinsiter nature of what it is doing.

When Legion said that the Geth needed to find their own way to evolve and not rely on the Reapers he clearly did so because they needed a different path. One which ansawred the question 'does this unit have a soul'. In many ways the reapers could be argued to not have souls given their treatment of life and near demonic actions. The fact the geth succeeded in doing what the reapers did not, or more probably could not do suggests the reapers own glaring weakness. Its likely that the reapers overthrew their creators and probably REALLY do believe that machines will destroy their creators. Because thats what they did and they are perfection and the apex of evolution. Hence they cannot be wrong in their own minds.Their own souless social darwinianism has trapped them in a mentality where they have ultimately regressed to become nothing better than a parasite that breeds and reproduces. They have evolved only to become the simplest kind of organism. In fact, come to think of it, aren't reapers meant to resemble creatures held under the microscope? Bioware is probably implying their parasetic nature and ultimate futility in searching for evolutionary perfection. Since bioware games stress choice, relations between people etc. Its clear why an enemy like the reapers would be set as antagonists in this game. They are a perverse abomination of a manner of thinking about perfection.

You know Total War one answer could potentially explain all those questions: The ending sucks.

Not say thats it, but just saying. It wouldn't be the first time Bioware produced an utterly horrid ending *glares at DA2*

I was actually quite confused once I thought I died to that bigass laser beam.

Once I got onto the "Citadel", I noticed that I could reload my gun, but I would never run out of bullets if I just kept firing over and over. That clued me in immediately that I was indoctrinated and dreaming.

Further proof was the black tendrils coming out of everywhere when I was talking to Illusive Man.

Then, when I noticed I had a gunshot wound in the same place as Anderson for some reason.

I actually really liked the ending because I noticed it for what it was - a fake.

Prestly said on the Bioware Social forums that they will "reveal more" about the game once enough time has passed for everyone who bought the game on release to experience the ending for themselves.

An incredibly clever move by Bioware, and I applaud them for it. I cannot wait for what actually happens.

I just wonder what will happen to those who picked the two wrong options (Synthesis and Control). I picked Destroy because it was clear that "destroy all the geth, EDI, and you because you are half synthetic" was a ploy, and when Shephard said "so the Illusive Man got it right after all" was clearly a trick.

Until then, I will likely either import my ME3 character and play the game again to get to level 60 and just enjoy the best game I've ever played some more, or start again as a Sentinel or Engineer. I've been an Infiltrator since ME1.

Oh, also, I thought it was even more clear when you didn't actually get a save after the ending. Time actually reverts back to before you attack the Illusive Mans base, even on your save profile. Its like it never even happened and you failed on your mission. The game reverts back to your earlier save just like it would if you died on the last mission in ME2.

Karon wrote:I was actually quite confused once I thought I died to that bigass laser beam.

Once I got onto the "Citadel", I noticed that I could reload my gun, but I would never run out of bullets if I just kept firing over and over. That clued me in immediately that I was indoctrinated and dreaming.

Further proof was the black tendrils coming out of everywhere when I was talking to Illusive Man.

Then, when I noticed I had a gunshot wound in the same place as Anderson for some reason.

I actually really liked the ending because I noticed it for what it was - a fake.

Prestly said on the Bioware Social forums that they will "reveal more" about the game once enough time has passed for everyone who bought the game on release to experience the ending for themselves.

An incredibly clever move by Bioware, and I applaud them for it. I cannot wait for what actually happens.

I just wonder what will happen to those who picked the two wrong options (Synthesis and Control). I picked Destroy because it was clear that "destroy all the geth, EDI, and you because you are half synthetic" was a ploy, and when Shephard said "so the Illusive Man got it right after all" was clearly a trick.

Until then, I will likely either import my ME3 character and play the game again to get to level 60 and just enjoy the best game I've ever played some more, or start again as a Sentinel or Engineer. I've been an Infiltrator since ME1.

Oh, also, I thought it was even more clear when you didn't actually get a save after the ending. Time actually reverts back to before you attack the Illusive Mans base, even on your save profile. Its like it never even happened and you failed on your mission. The game reverts back to your earlier save just like it would if you died on the last mission in ME2.

There really is no reason for spoiler tags - the thread says spoilers on it.

You were indoctrinated right from the point where you got hit by Harbingers laser.

Proof....

1. You never run out of bullets in your Carnifex pistol after that point. You can reload, but you can fire thousands of rounds without ever reloading.

2. The black tendrils are cluing you in that you are under the very heavy effects of indoctrination, just like they were effecting you in your dreams. The child has always been the Reapers just fething with your head - it was never real.

3. When you shoot Anderson in the gut, you also get shot in the gut for no reason whatsoever.

4. When you are talking to the God Child, he tries to make the "Destroy the Reapers" option the least attractive, and even makes Shephard say "So the Illusive Man was right after all..." to take you away from even thinking of it.

5. The Synthesis Option is to bring the weak-minded and people who can't decide to come to a compromise. This option is the same as trying to control the Reapers - they still win.

Once you realize that the entire level after you get hit by Harbinger is a dream and you are indoctrinated, it all makes sense. Bioware wouldn't do this to their game, they are too intelligent.

They have effectively indoctrinated and fooled 2/3 of the people that played their game. That is why after the game "ends", you revert back to before you attack the Illusive Mans base. They are likely working on the canon, DLC ending.

Bioware already said earlier that they want everyone to experience the "fake" ending before they say anything.

Karon wrote:
Once you realize that the entire level after you get hit by Harbinger is a dream and you are indoctrinated, it all makes sense. Bioware wouldn't do this to their game, they are too intelligent.

I haven't played the game and I don't care about the quality of it's ending but this really just sounds like you're in denial.

corpsesarefun wrote:

Karon wrote:
Once you realize that the entire level after you get hit by Harbinger is a dream and you are indoctrinated, it all makes sense. Bioware wouldn't do this to their game, they are too intelligent.

I haven't played the game and I don't care about the quality of it's ending but this really just sounds like you're in denial.

Ok

I haven't played the game so I have no stake in it, the way you're speaking comes across as you're desperately finding reasons that bioware can't have made a mistake.

corpsesarefun wrote:I haven't played the game so I have no stake in it, the way you're speaking comes across as you're desperately finding reasons that bioware can't have made a mistake.

That is a logical fallacy. You cannot presume to pass judgement on arguments concerning a subject on which you have no first hand knowledge. If you haven't played the game, all of your information is hearsay, and therefore holds little to no weight in an argument. The ending makes almost no sense at all if it's literal, and the clues that point to the Indoctrination theory are scattered through the game from beginning to end. Play through the game yourself and you just might revise that sentiment.

That said, my sources are telling me that the reason the ending is not on the disk is because people were data-mining an early beta release to spoil the ending, so BioWare pulled it and planned to release the ending as DLC. This DLC is currently being referred to as "The Truth" (though what it will actually be called I have no idea) and will be released next month for free, along with a multiplayer DLC that will include new classes (Geth Infiltrator/Engineer, Krogan Battlemaster, Asari Justicar, and Batarian Soldier/Sentinel I believe). In place of an actual on-disk ending, they created the surreal scene we actually get, which lends credence to the whole indoctrination theory being planned from an early stage. It also allowed them to ship the game earlier and put extra time and effort into an ending DLC while the game was in post production. Had they included the ending on the disk, the game wouldn't be out for another couple of months due to the extra time it would have taken to finish the endgame.

Of course none of this excuses the fact that BioWare effectively released an unfinished game, which is a slippery slope that smacks of EA interference. I'd have waited an extra 3-6 months for a complete game, and to avoid this kind of backlash on a company that I think usually produces well-written games with solid story through-and-through. I think this course of action was BioWare's mistake, not the inclusion of the ending we got. If they had put the actual ending on the disk immediately following the scene that's on there now, people would be praising them for their brilliance, not condemning them for a "half assed ending". It's the waiting and uncertainty that has people upset, not that the sequence in question was included. Think of how shocking that reveal would be if an actual ending followed it. The entire game was spent throwing off indoctrination attempts by Harbinger, culminating in what appears to be an ending sequence, only to either fail the mission for choosing two of the three choices, or to have Shepard wake up on Earth for choosing the third (and having a strong enough military to hold off the Reapers from destroying Earth), throwing off Indoctrination and leading the final push that eradicates the Reapers from the galaxy.

If this theory is wrong, I'll admit my mistake at the end and call it a day. BioWare are capable of errors like any company, and if this is one of them then it's certainly going to make me question my faith in them as a developer. But if it's not, then I'll give them a pass assuming the ending DLC is worth the wait. I imagine they will have learned their lesson after this fiasco, and I doubt they will ever pull a stunt like this again.

Totalwar1402 wrote:

Necros wrote:I actually like the ending just the way it is. The "it was all just a dream" just seems kinda silly to me, it could work here I guess but I just mean in general.

I wouldn't be surprised if they just left it, and the DLCs were leading in to some kinda prequel series that doesn't have anything to do with shepard at all.

Then how do you explain the scene with Shepard waking up in rubble? When he was in space. On the citadel. Where everything is made of metal. You don't think that hints he was in London.

Then how do you explain your party members getting to the Normandy and then randomly fleeing the battle when they had no knowledge about what you were doing and that the blast would happen.

How do you explain the reapers turning around and acting all nice and benign when the reapers have repeatedly proven that they are arrogant meglomaniacal machines and have made no secret of the fact?

How do you explain Anderson somehow sneaking past you after he 'followed you up' and 'appeared in a different place'

etc etc etc

I think you're just being one of those stubborn people on forums who thinks they're being aloof when something is disliked and trying to defend it. Don't. The ending. Makes. No. Sense. It just doesn't. Indeed I'am baffled that you were not taken aback by the surreal nature of the scene. Bioware are not stupid, they are doing that deliberately because they want your money for DLC and want to make it clear to you whats going on isn't what it seems.

Just to back track on what I said before... no I didn't really "like" the ending I got, but I was satisfied enough. When I watched the ending movie, what I took from it was... Reapers are gone forever, Shepard's closest friends are alive somewhere, and Shepard is still alive. The Geth are gone? I don't care, since the only one I liked is dead anyway. EDI is gone? Just another sacrifice shepard had to make in his long career. Isn't there something in ME1 where you have a choice to save Ashely or some other guy? never played it.

Anyway, after all that stuff happened it seemed like the next place to go was Shepard is alive and his next mission will be to help rebuild and do his best to reconnect with his friends. Life will go on.

Overall, the real reason I don't want the "it's a dream so go download the real ending" ending, is because I want to buy a COMPLETE GAME. If they make me pay extra for an ending, or even wait a few months and give it away free, then IMO that's just... crappy to say the least. And it's gonna make me paranoid for other big games in the future so I'll be reading all kinds of spoilers ahead of time just to see if I can play the whole game without having to pay an extra fee later. The whole idea just really bugs me for some reason, so I'm in denial and I'll happily just stick with the ending I got for now

So basically you dislike the prospect of BioWare making a medium-changing decision by releasing the ending of their game as DLC content, even for free, so you choose to deny the whole thing and pretend to like the ending you got despite a complete lack of closure.

Seems rather odd that your real-world view mirrors synthesis (compromise with yourself to make the problem go away rather than taking a stand on the real issue) when you chose destruction and effectively threw off Indoctrination (assuming that theory is correct.)

Aldarionn wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:I haven't played the game so I have no stake in it, the way you're speaking comes across as you're desperately finding reasons that bioware can't have made a mistake.

That said, my sources are telling me that the reason the ending is not on the disk is because people were data-mining an early beta release to spoil the ending, so BioWare pulled it and planned to release the ending as DLC. This DLC is currently being referred to as "The Truth" (though what it will actually be called I have no idea) and will be released next month for free, along with a multiplayer DLC that will include new classes (Geth Infiltrator/Engineer, Krogan Battlemaster, Asari Justicar, and Batarian Soldier/Sentinel I believe). In place of an actual on-disk ending, they created the surreal scene we actually get, which lends credence to the whole indoctrination theory being planned from an early stage. It also allowed them to ship the game earlier and put extra time and effort into an ending DLC while the game was in post production. Had they included the ending on the disk, the game wouldn't be out for another couple of months due to the extra time it would have taken to finish the endgame.

If thats the case then they don't earn any negative points in my book. Getting to build hype and suspense for a free DLC ending would be epic and amazing. Indeed it would be on par with the KoToR shock of you being Revan. If not greater than that. Since its free that would only enhance the games (and therefore biowares) reputation and earn them great credit since IMO mass effect 3 is probably the greatest game I've ever played bar the ending and solving that would be a bold and intriging move. Paying 800 or 1200 MSP would be disquieting but it wouldn't be enough to make me dislike Bioware. If its high enough quality then I have no problems with it. Given how the rest of the game went and the desire for a true epilogue/ending then I fail to see how it could be bad. It would also turn a negative (current ending) into a positive (unique attempt to indictrinate you where shephard overcomes their manipulation). That would be epic.

It also gives them a second chance to show Tali's face. Its not as if they can't animate alien faces.

I'm not passing judgement on the game, I'm simply saying that the way Karon is speaking isn't dissimilar to someone very much in denial.

corpsesarefun wrote:I'm not passing judgement on the game, I'm simply saying that the way Karon is speaking isn't dissimilar to someone very much in denial.

With all due respect, its a dream because it doesn't make any sense to anyone who has actually seen the game. That and other people have said that Bioware has all but said they are doing DLC. In fact he's not the only one to have said this. There are lots of other people who have said so and made videos about it. This a general trend not one persons opinion or denial. Again, you really shouldn't judge something without having seen it. Thats like judging the effectiveness of a new 40k codex without having read it or even played it on the tabletop. You simply can't do it. Also denying something thats false can't really carry the negative conotations you're putting to it. So if you can't disprove his facts or theories then it doesn't matter if he, like I, wants this to be the case. I was swayed on the evidence and the fact that it just made common-sense unlike the actual ending.

I don't post often anymore, but this is one topic that I needed to post in.

I really disliked how the ending was literally choose your color, red/green/blue. If what you guys are saying is true, there will be much rejoicing in the form of pizza for the little ones. I finished ME3 and literally stared at the screen, squinted, and said the following:

"...that's it? That's it?!! THAT'S IT!?!?one?! YOU'VE GOT TO BE FREAKIN' KIDDING ME! I SPENT A MONTH REPLAYING ME1 AND 2 ONLY FOR IT TO END LIKE THIS!? I finished every subplot/side mission, I saved the whole damned universe twice, I romanced Tali, AND THIS IS THE ENDING YOU GIVE ME!? **** YOU BIOWARE!"

I proceeded to shut my Xbox off, and when my roomy came in and asked what was wrong, I said Mass Effect, he immediately knew what I was talking about and just pointed to the computer screen. There were a bunch of conspiracy theory videos on Mass Effect resembling something out of Lost's pshycopathes.

I am now just hoping that Bioware fixes their game with some DLC, I don't care if I have to pay for it, I just want to get one of the endings where Shepard doesn't end up not dying in an epic confrontation (this sentance will only make sense if you read it slowly).

Footsloggin wrote:I don't post often anymore, but this is one topic that I needed to post in.

I really disliked how the ending was literally choose your color, red/green/blue. If what you guys are saying is true, there will be much rejoicing in the form of pizza for the little ones. I finished ME3 and literally stared at the screen, squinted, and said the following:

"...that's it? That's it?!! THAT'S IT!?!?one?! YOU'VE GOT TO BE FREAKIN' KIDDING ME! I SPENT A MONTH REPLAYING ME1 AND 2 ONLY FOR IT TO END LIKE THIS!? I finished every subplot/side mission, I saved the whole damned universe twice, I romanced Tali, AND THIS IS THE ENDING YOU GIVE ME!? **** YOU BIOWARE!"

I proceeded to shut my Xbox off, and when my roomy came in and asked what was wrong, I said Mass Effect, he immediately knew what I was talking about and just pointed to the computer screen. There were a bunch of conspiracy theory videos on Mass Effect resembling something out of Lost's pshycopathes.

I am now just hoping that Bioware fixes their game with some DLC, I don't care if I have to pay for it, I just want to get one of the endings where Shepard doesn't end up not dying in an epic confrontation (this sentance will only make sense if you read it slowly).

Thats the thing. Bioware did this deliberately and it seems to be more apparent that thats the case. The ending where you see Shephard wake up in London is such a massive hint that it makes denying it pretty difficult. If they do it, then I have no qualms about saying that overall this game was better and far more enjoyable than KoToR 1. That good IMO.

Totalwar1402 wrote:That and other people have said that Bioware has all but said they are doing DLC. In fact he's not the only one to have said this.

For those not watching the Bioware forums (what can I say its wonderful for laughs) its already been pointed out that that Bioware/EA can just say this was their plan all along when in fact it might not have been. They've already lied about the day 1 DLC character, who is actually on the disk from the get go (meaning he couldn't have been produced after the game went to production and was in fact held back solely to be DLC), so Bioware saying "Indoctrination? Right... Um. We planned that." Doesn't hold any sway for me.

Besides, Bioware hasn't been infallible in some time. Anyone who has seen the ending of Dragon Age 2 can easily see how they could produce the ME3 ending and think it was fine.

Again, not saying its not possible for them to have planned it in which case, kudos for doing something marginally inventive, but I look at all the theorycrafting going on and instantly think "grasping at straws."

That aside, anyone else hear about the guy who reported Bioware/EA to the Federal Trade Commission for false advertising all because he didn't like the ending (and he sounded so hopeful) Its almost as if he's never heard of hype before

Just finished the game. I'm a little late to the party. But, yeah... those endings did suck. I've seen all 3, including the "perfect" ones on youtube that were anything but perfect.

LordofHats wrote:

Bojo wrote:*snip*

This

P.S. I support the Garrus and Shepard beach ending. Lets make that happen. And have a mud wrestling match between Miranda and Liara while were at it

Funnily enough before ME3 was released I did imagine some kind of ending where the whole crew is chillin' on a beach... Garrus flippin some burgers on a barbeque... Ashley and Liara playing volleyball in their bikinis... Cheesy, yes, but I want that ending!

As to the indoctrination theories... My initial feeling is to take the endings at face value as I've never known a video game to present that kind of illusion, but indoctrination does make some sense with that analysis. If it turns out not to be that way (And I really hope it is true!) then it's spoiled the whole series for me. I know that's a pretty extreme thing to say, but those endings really were terrible. I couldn't play from the beginning of ME1 again knowing that's what awaited me at the end of the series.

Skarwael wrote:

Funnily enough before ME3 was released I did imagine some kind of ending where the whole crew is chillin' on a beach... Garrus flippin some burgers on a barbeque... Ashley and Liara playing volleyball in their bikinis... Cheesy, yes, but I want that ending!

You do realize that Garrus and Tali will die if they eat Human/Asari food...though I would like to see Tali out of her suit (though she'd end up in an ICU afterwards).

Tadashi wrote:

Skarwael wrote:

Funnily enough before ME3 was released I did imagine some kind of ending where the whole crew is chillin' on a beach... Garrus flippin some burgers on a barbeque... Ashley and Liara playing volleyball in their bikinis... Cheesy, yes, but I want that ending!

You do realize that Garrus and Tali will die if they eat Human/Asari food...

Absolutely! They can have their own special dextro-protein food. And that could come in burger form.

Skarwael wrote:

Tadashi wrote:

Skarwael wrote:

Funnily enough before ME3 was released I did imagine some kind of ending where the whole crew is chillin' on a beach... Garrus flippin some burgers on a barbeque... Ashley and Liara playing volleyball in their bikinis... Cheesy, yes, but I want that ending!

You do realize that Garrus and Tali will die if they eat Human/Asari food...

Absolutely! They can have their own special dextro-protein food. And that could come in burger form.

I suppose two sets then...one set for Ievo-Proteins like Shepard, Kaidan (saved him, not Ashley), and Liara, and another for Dextro-Proteins like Garrus and Tali. Are Krogans ievo- or dextro- (let's not forget the Wrex and Grunt)?

Ugh.

You know, I'd be totally fine with an unhappy ending. But one that actually, I don't know, makes sense?

I just finished it last night, so now I feel safe patrolling the internet once more.

Thankfully, after reading all the thoughts on the matter, it has helped clear things up a little bit. The Synthesis route perplexes me the most. It just makes zero sense, and they don't explain anything about it. It's just, "Yay! We're all part TI-83 now and that makes it all better."

Wat.

As much as I don't want to agree with the whole Indoctrination thing, it really does make sense. Particularly the pistol thing. If Bioware didn't want you firing the pistol and running out of ammo, they just wouldn't have let you shoot it. They do it all the time during cutscenes where they don't want you to shoot stuff, so changing that seems pretty obvious to me now. I didn't test it myself at first, because I was too terrified about saving ammo.

I guess now all I can do is sit and wait.

Is it wrong of me to want a happy ending? I think out of anyone who deserves to settle down on Rannoch with his junk-in-the-trunk Quarian girlfriend, it's Commander Shepard. I'm not bitching about not getting what I want though, I'm just a bit flustered that the options I got didn't make any sense.

Not that any of it does really. That last hour or so I was scratching my head a lot.

And I just felt really guilty about telling everyone ever that we were gonna make it and everything will be okay, and to stop saying goodbye because I'll be back.

Internet! Sum up how I feel!

Tadashi wrote:In the Control ending though the Mass Relays are only damaged, not destroyed, and the Citadel only closed up, it didn't collapse.

The Mass Relays DO explode, why are there so many people who think otherwise? LISTEN to what the Catalyst says and WATCH what happens to the Charon Relay. It's exactly the same, but the explosion is blue.

iproxtaco wrote:

Tadashi wrote:In the Control ending though the Mass Relays are only damaged, not destroyed, and the Citadel only closed up, it didn't collapse.

The Mass Relays DO explode, why are there so many people who think otherwise? LISTEN to what the Catalyst says and WATCH what happens to the Charon Relay. It's exactly the same, but the explosion is blue.

Yeah the Relays do explode, even on the "perfect" endings:




So, basically nearly everyone is screwed no matter what you do.

Tadashi wrote:My analysis:

- don't like this since it basically sends galactic civilization back to the stone age and perpetuates the conflict; instead of organic and synthetic living together, they will continue to resent each other (the future synthetics, at any rate).

Synthetic and organics don't resent each other anyway.

Synthesis
- Shepard sacrifices himself to give the Crucible a techno-organic energy signature. It's the same as the other endings, with the Citadel blowing apart and the Relays collapsing. The Reapers don't die - they leave to find a new purpose by exploring the universe, the Cycle o longer necessary. The synthesis signal transforms all organic life to have synthetic components, and all synthetic life to have organic components. Organic and synthetic life are now one, so the conflict between the two is ended. EDI and all synthetics are also transformed.

What conflict? There isn't one. The Catalyst has a hypothesis without any proof, a hypothesis disproved by Shepard.

- don't like this since it makes everything perfect. I abhor perfection. No more creation and innovation. Evolution is frozen, and in the end the Reapers win, since their vision of the future becomes reality.

Basically, yes. You homogenize everyone into one form, stifling evolution and changing everyone's DNA without consideration or approval.
Other than devaluing any evolutionary progression, not other perceived problems are solved.

Control
- Shepard sacrifices his physical form so his consciousness replaces Catalyst as the Reaper architect and overseer. The retreat signal is sent out; only this time the Citadel doesn't blow apart, and while the Relays are damaged, their only disabled, they can be repaired. The Normandy crashes not because the Relays are gone, rather inoperational. EDI and Joker can still have their happy ending
- my chosen ending. Civilization can rebuild, and evolution can continue down different paths instead of the perfect one decided by the Reapers. Shepard will decide whether or not to continue the Cycle, and when.

The Relays ARE destroyed. The Reapers can return.

And no, I don't think that if a Relay collapses they go supernova. Why? Because i. The Destroy/ Synthesis ending they expend themselves re-sending the signal, while in Arrival, the Project Base simply destabilized the Alpha Relay. Proof? The Citadel is the largest of the Mass Relays; it didn't go spernova, it simply blew apart.

That's not proof. A precedent has been established by Arrival, the outcome can swing either way considering we aren't actually shown anything after the Relays explode.

Could they just break down rather than catastrophically explode?

Like the difference between using explosives to systematically level a building, as opposed to just nuking it.

I'm not sure how it matters, everything is ****'d anyway.

Chemical Cutthroat wrote:Could they just break down rather than catastrophically explode?

Like the difference between using explosives to systematically level a building, as opposed to just nuking it.

I'm not sure how it matters, everything is ****'d anyway.

See, that analogy doesn't work because you are using various levels of explosives to destroy an object that itself has no explosive qualities. Dynamite and a nuclear weapon are NOT the same thing, and the building has no explosive properties at all. The Mass Relay on the other hand is a giant energy source capable of generating enormous Mass Effect fields, then hurling ships across the galaxy in the blink of an eye. That power source is self replicating (because they have been used for millions of years by hundreds of civilizations without losing effectiveness), and it's enormously powerful. In other words, the Mass Relay IS the bomb, so you cannot just blow one up and not expect that power source to lose containment and annihilate everything within range. Think of it like a balloon, and the air inside is the power source, while the rubber exterior is the Mass Relay. It doesn't matter if you use a lighter, a pin or a gun to destabilize the exterior, once it loses containment it explosively decompresses.

So, no, you cannot just disable a Mass Relay. You could potentially deactivate it, or if you had the right know-how you might be able to disassemble it safely and release the energy slowly (like pinching off a part of the balloon and poking a hole in that part, then slowly letting the air out), but that's not what happened. A massive energy wave ripped through the structure and caused it to blow up, which would have explosively released the power source and annihilated everything in range. The only way around that is via ret-con from BioWare, or some unforeseen element to the energy which destroyed the structure but absorbed the released energy so it wouldn't destroy everything within several billion miles. Then again....that amounts to the same thing.

Perhaps the effort to send out the blast that triggers whatever event (Synthesis or whatever), drains a majority of the Mass Relay's energy, making for a much smaller explosion when the relay collapses.

Think about this further, there are two things that could have easily improved the ending without necessarily completely overhauling them.

First, don't force Shepard to be hit by a Reaper blast. Given how powerful their weapons are supposed to be it should have killed him outright anyway, and it really only serves to introduce unnecessary ambiguity to the situation. Instead, replace that sequence where you have to avoid Reaper fire via dodging, make it possible to die, but just with the standard "critical mission failure" bit; and maybe a cut scene showing the result.

Second, get rid of that scene with Joker, EDI, and whatever other party members happen to walk off the Normandy. Well, not get rid of, but instead leave it as Joker and EDI, and perhaps anyone you told to remain aboard the ship. In order to keep EDI on the ship, have either Joker or herself claim that she is necessary to keep the Normandy at maximum combat efficiency; clearly valuable considering where its going to be flying around.

Let Shepard make it to the beam, and transfer, or apparently transfer, to the Citadel. Have a normal party battle against the Illusive Man and his henchmen, it doesn't really even have to be a terribly difficult battle. After its over, Shepard, or Shepard and company, talk to the Catalyst. Keeping the same endings, or changing them, doesn't matter much. Maybe have the ending cut scene show that Shepard and Co. never actually went to the Citadel, but were simply standing in the blue beam communicating with the Catalyst.

The goal of this is to remove the ambiguity of the circumstances of the endings, while maintaining the sort of "What next?" feel they all have.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

iproxtaco wrote:
What conflict? There isn't one. The Catalyst has a hypothesis without any proof, a hypothesis disproved by Shepard.

Getting synthetics and organics to coexist for a time doesn't disprove the idea that, eventually, the synthetics turn against their creators.

Even the Geth got along with the Quarians for a time.

I dunno, I kinda thought the walk through the carnage on the citadel was particularly grimdark and creepy. But a lot of the bodies looked... weird. Some of them looked like manequins and whatnot.

I didn't really think about it at the time, but a lot of them were outright faceless. Anyone else pay closer attention to that bit?

dogma wrote:Getting synthetics and organics to coexist for a time doesn't disprove the idea that, eventually, the synthetics turn against their creators.

Even the Geth got along with the Quarians for a time.

The Quarians started it.

Anung Un Rama wrote:

dogma wrote:Getting synthetics and organics to coexist for a time doesn't disprove the idea that, eventually, the synthetics turn against their creators.

Even the Geth got along with the Quarians for a time.

The Quarians started it.

True, but it doesn't really matter who started it, what matters is who finishes it.

dogma wrote:Getting synthetics and organics to coexist for a time doesn't disprove the idea that, eventually, the synthetics turn against their creators.

Even the Geth got along with the Quarians for a time.

And I again point out: The solution to synthetics wiping out organics is to wipe out organics with synthetics?

I thought we were trying to prevent that from happening, minute details of the star child's pretty speech aside.

LordofHats wrote:
And I again point out: The solution to synthetics wiping out organics is to wipe out organics with synthetics?

I thought we were trying to prevent that from happening, minute details of the star child's pretty speech aside.

They are, they aren't wiping out all life. They wipe out the advanced races, basically the races with access to interstellar travel, and leave the rest alone. Its like pruning an overgrown bush.

Even putting aside the Star Child, and more importantly the Prothean who explicitly states this is true, 50,000 years isn't enough time, in an evolutionary sense, for bacteria to evolve into sentient beings.

If you want a speculative answer, the reality of the matter is that the Reapers don't want to fight synthetic life of their degree of advancement, so they cull organic populations in order prevent them from being developed (basically, star child lied, to a degree); while simultaneously using that life to add to their own diversity.

I feel the endings don't give enough closure. You don't really know what happens to your allies, you don't how their homeworlds are doing, I was left with an empty feeling watching the endings.

Rest of the game was good though.

They are, they aren't wiping out all life. They wipe out the advanced races, basically the races with access to interstellar travel, and leave the rest alone. Its like pruning an overgrown bush.

The solution to mass galactic genocide is a slightly smaller mass genocide? Sorry, not buying it. We don't prune a bush out of some noble sentiment that if we don't it will somehow destroy itself. We prune it to make it look pretty.

If you want a speculative answer, the reality of the matter is that the Reapers don't want to fight synthetic life of their degree of advancement, so they cull organic populations in order prevent them from being developed (basically, star child lied, to a degree); while simultaneously using that life to add to their own diversity.

Which is much better than what is presently stated. Though I'd shorten it to "Reapers afraid of being wiped out by organics cause their creators tried to do it to them so they cull the galaxy regularly to ensure it never has a chance of happening." Of course, that was the old community theory behind the Reapers circa ME1 (adapted from the Shapeshifters of DS9). Either of those options work better than "Our group of synthetics is going to genocide some of you so that some other possibly might exist group of synthetics doesn't wipe out all of you." That's just stupid.

I just don't understand how a bunch of writers can be sitting around discussing this and all agree to something like... this.

There wasn't one guy in the room who could stand up and go, "You guys are crazy. Let's have Shepard assault the Reapers on a space shark wielding a Krogan as a melee weapon and give the fans the ending they really want."

Or... um... you know what I mean.

I can make hard decisions and all that... but even KoToR had the option of a 'happy' ending. You guys remember how much WASN'T resolved at the end of that? They gave you a shiny picture and some text, and... that's about it.

But I guess Star Wars is a bit more cut and dry with all that stuff.

I don't know what I would 'rather' see... and I Loved the game up until the end. But that ending left me confused and upset. Not the good sort of thoughtful upset either, more just, "Damnit..."

The more I think about it, the more it pisses me off. IF the theorey about the whole Reaper indoctrination is not true, this is just a terrible, terrible ending which doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the game.
Shephard disproved the Starchild's argument about synthetic life several times over the course of the 3 games. Which alone would be enough for Shephard, as we came to know him, to stand up and kick that little bastard. (I tried to shot him btw, sadly it didn't work.)
Then there are the giant plotholes a lot of people already mentioned. The exploding relays, the crew of the Normandy, etc.

Would somebody explain why the Protheans look has changed so much?

I understand that they wanted to show a connection to the collectors, but the Collectors were completely bio-engineered by the Reapers using harvested Prothean, they don't need to look alike.

ME1 Prothean Statue


The ending is most probably a dream, but it's a bit cheeky for Bioware to leave such a crap tastic finally and possibly charge for the full thing.

Medium of Death wrote:I understand that they wanted to show a connection to the collectors, but the Collectors were completely bio-engineered by the Reapers using harvested Prothean, they don't need to look alike

Its called trading consistency for spectacle.

It makes a lot more sense to me that the Reapers are afraid for their own survival, so they created the culling cycles to wipe out anyone that could challenge them. The BS reason that synthetics will ultimately rebel against their creators, so this ultra powerful group of DIFFERENT synthetics are going to wipe out all organics to prevent that from happening.....makes NO sense whatsoever.

EDI mentions that she has code that mimics organic self-preservation instinct, and she is based on Reaper code, so it would make sense that the Reapers posses the same code, and share the same self-preservation instinct that we do. As a result, they don't want organics to create a better race of synthetics that could ultimately challenge them, so they cull advanced organic civilizations any time it looks like they might have done just that (IE the Geth, which toward the end of the game fully evolve via Reaper code into unshackled AI's like EDI).

Too bad that none of this is ever stated in the game, and that we can only speculate that this is the case. If BioWare has done one good thing in all of this, they have made us realize the depth of the material they have created. Only in comparison to the shallow and unsatisfactory endings can we fully appreciate exactly how deep the lore of this game world runs. Now that it's over, we have time to pour over the past 5 years of storytelling and really analyze it, and it was all prompted by these terrible endings. If the Indoctrination theory IS correct, I am forced to wonder if BioWare knew exactly what kind of response it would cause, and just how thoroughly their material would be picked apart in the search for answers........

I guess. Although it's more terrifying for a Humanoid race to be completely transformed into an Insectoid one. (In my mind at least)

Also those statues could explain how the Protheans were harvested.

Oh Bioware, you so crazy!

LordofHats wrote:
The solution to mass galactic genocide is a slightly smaller mass genocide? Sorry, not buying it. We don't prune a bush out of some noble sentiment that if we don't it will somehow destroy itself. We prune it to make it look pretty.

And why do you think a techno-organic super-race cares about organics at all? When you claim that something won't survive, you're really only claiming something you like will die (doesn't even have to be life in general, just life you like), at least on the scale being considered.

Why do we care about polar bears, tigers, and pandas? Or even just dogs and cats? Because they're pretty/cute.

LordofHats wrote:
Which is much better than what is presently stated. Though I'd shorten it to "Reapers afraid of being wiped out by organics cause their creators tried to do it to them so they cull the galaxy regularly to ensure it never has a chance of happening." Of course, that was the old community theory behind the Reapers circa ME1 (adapted from the Shapeshifters of DS9). Either of those options work better than "Our group of synthetics is going to genocide some of you so that some other possibly might exist group of synthetics doesn't wipe out all of you." That's just stupid.

You're talking about a "race" that is billions of years old. Individual races likely mean as much to them as individual lives do to us.

Honestly, I have a greater issue with why they're interested in our galaxy at all, given that they could have worked to explore others by now.

Either way, assuming their reproduction depends on organics (and it seems to), what they do makes sense. Prevent possible rivals from emerging, while producing new Reapers every cycle.

To be honest, I've thought ME has had major weaknesses since the Reapers were introduced, and I consider the outrage over this ending to be horribly misplaced. Its like people are trying to find excuses for buying this games despite the things they ignored in previous games.

Come to think of it, why didn't the reapers just Hibernate in the Omega four relay system with the Collectors?

Also, if the Reapers had come along a couple of thousand years earlier would Humanity have been spared?

If so, then that would leave Human with what, 50 000 + years of technological evolution.

I don't know how they would safe guard against Species without nearby Mass Relays developing their own form of FTL travel.

Medium of Death wrote:Come to think of it, why didn't the reapers just Hibernate in the Omega four relay system with the Collectors?

Also, if the Reapers had come along a couple of thousand years earlier would Humanity have been spared?

If so, then that would leave Human with what, 50 000 + years of technological evolution.

I don't know how they would safe guard against Species without nearby Mass Relays developing their own form of FTL travel.

Evolutionarily speaking, 50,000 years is REALLY not that long, and you also need to remember that the only reason we became such an advanced race technologically is because we found the Mass Relay and ran into the Turians. After that, we were inducted as a Citadel race and our technology advanced dramatically over night. Without the Turians, Asari and Salarians around to help us advance, it might have taken us 50,000 years to get from ancient times (say 3,000 years ago) to where the Asari are now. We would likely have been the dominant race of the cycle, discovering the Mass Relay and taking thousands of years to reverse engineer Mass Effect fields, then finding the Citadel and guiding other races we find into a galactic council. As it happens, we came into our own at the end of a cycle rather than the start of one.

dogma wrote:And why do you think a techno-organic super-race cares about organics at all? When you claim that something won't survive, you're really only claiming something you like will die (doesn't even have to be life in general, just life you like), at least on the scale being considered.

Why do we care about polar bears, tigers, and pandas? Or even just dogs and cats? Because they're pretty/cute.

The comparison would matter if the Catalyst didn't act like he was achieving some lofty and noble goal. If they didn't care about us I doubt they'd "nobly" kill us all so we won't kill ourselves. I'm not the one saying they care about us, the god child is!

You're talking about a "race" that is billions of years old. Individual races likely mean as much to them as individual lives do to us.

Honestly, I have a greater issue with why they're interested in our galaxy at all, given that they could have worked to explore others by now.

I don't see what this has to do with anything. In ME3 what we have been given is a race of techno-organic beings who have been "nobly" purging the galaxy of advanced life, aka genocide, for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years to protect the galaxy from being wiped out by some assumed species of synthetic lifeforms. That's stupid. If the Reapers are so advanced that we mean nothing to them, then why should they care if we wipe ourselves out? Protecting themselves makes sense but that's not what the ending gives us. It gives us a species that is nobly committing genocide to stop some supposed genocide that they think will happen if they don't commit theirs. That's stupid and nonsensical (and in no way hinted at or foreshadowed at any point in the ME series prior to ME3 at the least). EDIT: And its just made worse that stopping them means blowing up the galaxy and committing genocide! Crap shoot endings are great and all, and maybe more reflective of the real world, but this one is a huge WTF for a series that had painted itself as being a little more upbeat. This is an ending I'd expect from 40k, not Mass Effect.

Either way, assuming their reproduction depends on organics (and it seems to), what they do makes sense. Prevent possible rivals from emerging, while producing new Reapers every cycle.

Except that isn't what is stated. It makes sense but its not what we're told.

To be honest, I've thought ME has had major weaknesses since the Reapers were introduced, and I consider the outrage over this ending to be horribly misplaced. Its like people are trying to find excuses for buying this games despite the things they ignored in previous games.

The Reapers worked as a sort of Lovecraftian destroyer race as they were presented in ME1. It might not be your cup of tea but it worked from a straight forward story stance. ME2 did pretty much nothing with the concept but twist it into something more complex but chaotic and confusing and rather than straighten it out and make sense of it, ME3 just makes it more confusing. I'm not buying the whole noble genocide thing. Its dumb. Bioware is either about to pull the greatest storyline twist of all time (for an additional $10 ) or they just managed to craft and emotional and powerful return as storytellers just to screw themselves with the ending.

I don't understand the hatred against the Reapers concerning the ME2 story. I thought they were fine and still fairly consistent with the previous game.

Amaya wrote:I don't understand the hatred against the Reapers concerning the ME2 story. I thought they were fine and still fairly consistent with the previous game.

Because it mostly just built up a lot of questions and answered none of them, while at the same time twisting around a few things from ME1. If the Collectors were around, why did Soveriegn need the Geth to help him (remember that getting help from the Geth was Sovereign's back up plan because the signal meant to start the cycle didn't work do to Prothean interference). If the Collectors were around as a safety net, why weren't they used when the situation called for it? ME2's ending also features the Reapers flying back to the galaxy on their own power which kind of begs the question of why where the Collectors making one to begin with? If the Reapers could get back on their own and have such a technological superiority, why bother with their Citadel plan at all?

The Collectors being Protheans also just rubbed some people the wrong way. Why? IDK. I guess they figured that the Reapers just wiped everything out and would have no need to keep a bunch of pseudo-Protheans around?

EDIT: Really though I think its the opening of the game, where Shepard dies for pretty much no reason (well, he died so they could make a trailer that said he died and then they actually did it). That opening pissed a lot of people off and at that point they just weren't willing ti suspend disbelief and went looking for reasons to be pissed at the game, myself included.

Of course, ME3 does the same. If Catalyst was in the Citadel the whole time, what was the point of Sovereign in the first place? I'd also point out that if the Reapers goal is to cull organic life before it can create synthetic life and be destroyed by it, why didn't they destroy the Geth on sight? It seems like a logical step in achieving their goal. Can't have a bunch of synthetics flying around endanger future organics now can we? Oh wait, the Reapers fit that bill. That's why this ending makes no sense -_-

LordofHats wrote:

Amaya wrote:I don't understand the hatred against the Reapers concerning the ME2 story. I thought they were fine and still fairly consistent with the previous game.

Because it mostly just built up a lot of questions and answered none of them, while at the same time twisting around a few things from ME1. If the Collectors were around, why did Soveriegn need the Geth to help him (remember that getting help from the Geth was Sovereign's back up plan because the signal meant to start the cycle didn't work do to Prothean interference). If the Collectors were around as a safety net, why weren't they used when the situation called for it? ME2's ending also features the Reapers flying back to the galaxy on their own power which kind of begs the question of why where the Collectors making one to begin with? If the Reapers could get back on their own and have such a technological superiority, why bother with their Citadel plan at all?

Probably because there weren't enough Collectors to confront the Citadel Races one on one, with the implied indoctrinated Rachni destroyed in the Rachni War. And the Catalyst probably awakens when the Reaper Vanguad activates the Citadel Relay or when the Crucible linked to the Citadel. And the reason they use the Citadel Relay is explained in ME1. Also, it takes a great deal of time to travel by normal FTL back to the galaxy. I'm willing to bet it would take the same time to get to the galaxy as to create a new Reaper (from Humans) to replace Sovereign as the Vanguard. And the whole genocide thing is the same principle in Halo; to prevent an even bigger genocide by committing a smaller genocide. I mean, didn't the Allies do something similar in WWII (fire-bombing German/Japanese Cities, using nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki)?

Tadashi wrote: And the Catalyst probably awakens when the Reaper Vanguad activates the Citadel Relay or when the Crucible linked to the Citadel.

Why is he asleep then? Sovereign was supposed to watch the galaxy and call in the troops when the time came. The Catalyst could do the same thing and much better from the Citadel! And the margin of error would have been a lot lower with the vanguard on site.

And the reason they use the Citadel Relay is explained in ME1.

They give a reason, but the Reapers are so technologically advance why should they bother? In ME3 its clearly not a great obstacle. The combined fleet has iffy chances of winning the war against the Reapers. I suppose they could be trying to reduce their casualties, but then Sovereign's body provided a wealth of technology for the galaxy. Had he not gone and gotten killed the galaxy would have been in a worse position. He and the Geth alone managed to take the most strongly defended position in the Galaxy for a time, so a fleet of Reapers seems like they wouldn't have needed much more than brute force.

Also, it takes a great deal of time to travel by normal FTL back to the galaxy.

Obviously it didn't take them that long.

And the whole genocide thing is the same principle in Halo; to prevent an even bigger genocide by committing a smaller genocide.

And Halo handled the idea better. Master Chief doesn't turn around and say, "Well I guess we can't win after all, lets just do that thing you were gonna do." EDIT: Of course, Halo 3's story line isn't exactly spectacular. How nice of the Flood to just show up at the Arc so the Chief could wipe them out XD EDIT EDIT: Plus the idea was at the core of Halo's storyline. It just shows up in Mass Effect literally at the very end of the third game.

I mean, didn't the Allies do something similar in WWII (fire-bombing German/Japanese Cities, using nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki)?

There aren't really any rules in story telling, but a general guideline is "real life makes for poor fiction." An ending where everyone dies stopping themselves from being killed by something else that was killing everyone so something else else wouldn't kill them is stupid fiction for something of Mass Effects tone.

Like I said though, for numerous things that are relatively minor in ME2, a lot of people including me just got pissed and were no longer willing to hand wave things away and started looking for reasons not to like it. There's a reason I say I'm biased Many of these plot points if I were to just relax are over lookable or can be explained away naturally. But I'm not willing to suspend disbelief anymore when it comes to Bioware so I go through everything they do with a fine toothed comb and a box of oreos.

LordofHats wrote:

Tadashi wrote: And the Catalyst probably awakens when the Reaper Vanguad activates the Citadel Relay or when the Crucible linked to the Citadel.

Why is he asleep then? Sovereign was supposed to watch the galaxy and call in the troops when the time came. The Catalyst could do the same thing and much better from the Citadel! And the margin of error would have been a lot lower with the vanguard on site.

Probably because he had no reason to be awake. Most likely, the Catalyst oversees the 'harvest', but since he wasn't awakened until the Crucible linked to the Citadel, Harbinger took over. The Catalyst most likely told Harbinger to '...leave Shepard to me, you and Nazara have messed up so far...'.

And the reason they use the Citadel Relay is explained in ME1.

They give a reason, but the Reapers are so technologically advance why should they bother? In ME3 its clearly not a great obstacle. The combined fleet has iffy chances of winning the war against the Reapers. I suppose they could be trying to reduce their casualties, but then
Sovereign's body provided a wealth of technology for the galaxy. Had he not gone and gotten killed the galaxy would have been in a worse position. He and the Geth alone managed to take the most strongly defended position in the Galaxy for a time, so a fleet of Reapers seems like they wouldn't have needed much more than brute force.

It's because from the Citadel they could gain a strategic advantage at the center of the Mass Relay network, while gaining a tactical advantage by accessing information collected by the civilizations making use of it. And if Saren hadn't locked down the Relays, reinforcements would have arrived in minutes, and Sovereign and the Geth heretics wold have been overwhelmed. In ME3, I'm guessing that Harbinger decided to prioritize harvesting humanity, their agents being the most dangerous to the Reapers, while suppressing the other races to be harvested later.

Also, it takes a great deal of time to travel by normal FTL back to the galaxy.

Obviously it didn't take them that long.

A year or so. But the Human Reaper should have been completed in that amount of time, although it would have to find new tools to access the Citadel Relay. Most likely, the Reapers follow 'tradition'; makes sense since Reapers are bio-synthetic, so they retain organic influences along with synthetic logic.

And the whole genocide thing is the same principle in Halo; to prevent an even bigger genocide by committing a smaller genocide.

And Halo handled the idea better. Master Chief doesn't turn around and say, "Well I guess we can't win after all, lets just do that thing you were gonna do." EDIT: Of course, Halo 3's story line isn't exactly spectacular. How nice of the Flood to just show up at the Arc so the Chief could wipe them out XD EDIT EDIT: Plus the idea was at the core of Halo's storyline. It just shows up in Mass Effect literally at the very end of the third game.

No arguments there. Bioware's rumored 'true ending' DLC had better be free, or a lot of complaints will overwhelm their mailboxes, electronic or otherwise.

I mean, didn't the Allies do something similar in WWII (fire-bombing German/Japanese Cities, using nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki)?

There aren't really any rules in story telling, but a general guideline is "real life makes for poor fiction." An ending where everyone dies stopping themselves from being killed by something else that was killing everyone so something else else wouldn't kill them is stupid fiction for something of Mass Effects tone.

Like I said though, for numerous things that are relatively minor in ME2, a lot of people including me just got pissed and were no longer willing to hand wave things away and started looking for reasons not to like it. There's a reason I say I'm biased Many of these plot points if I were to just relax are over lookable or can be explained away naturally. But I'm not willing to suspend disbelief anymore when it comes to Bioware so I go through everything they do with a fine toothed comb and a box of oreos.

Hatred over the end is going to court.

I'm confused as to why the outcry is being called "small vocal percentage." As far as I can tell just about everyone is either meh or super pissed.

But then that anyone thinks the FTC is going to care is being a moron. And if the FTC actually does something I'm just going to sit back and watch with a evil smirk on my face.

LordofHats wrote:
The comparison would matter if the Catalyst didn't act like he was achieving some lofty and noble goal. If they didn't care about us I doubt they'd "nobly" kill us all so we won't kill ourselves. I'm not the one saying they care about us, the god child is!

If you take what he says at face value, they don't care about "us", they care about organics. Sure, we're organic, but just some organics among infinitely many organics.

Its sort of like caring about people, but not every single person. Or, more accurately, the institution of hunting permits to prevent overpopulation, or decimation, of certain species.

LordofHats wrote:
I don't see what this has to do with anything. In ME3 what we have been given is a race of techno-organic beings who have been "nobly" purging the galaxy of advanced life, aka genocide, for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years to protect the galaxy from being wiped out by some assumed species of synthetic lifeforms. Protecting themselves makes sense but that's not what the ending gives us. It gives us a species that is nobly committing genocide to stop some supposed genocide that they think will happen if they don't commit theirs.

I don't see why that doesn't make sense. I also don't see where you're getting nobility from the ending. They're preserving organic life in the way they feel it can best be preserved because they want to preserve organic life. They're keeping the galaxy as a pet; much as the Geth maintain the Quarian homeworld, despite not living there.

LordofHats wrote:
That's stupid and nonsensical (and in no way hinted at or foreshadowed at any point in the ME series prior to ME3 at the least).

Wait, really?

ME1 straight up tells us that the Protheans weren't the first victims of the Reapers. What did you think their motivation was? Clearly not absolute destruction, if so they could have accomplished it easily. That's the only source of mystery.

LordofHats wrote:
And its just made worse that stopping them means blowing up the galaxy and committing genocide! Crap shoot endings are great and all, and maybe more reflective of the real world, but this one is a huge WTF for a series that had painted itself as being a little more upbeat. This is an ending I'd expect from 40k, not Mass Effect.

The series pitched itself as upbeat?

In the first game you're given the choice to let the most important political body in the galaxy die, and are forced to kill a crew member. If you don't act quickly enough in the second, your personal assistant is liquefied in front of you, and if you didn't prepare well enough you might die yourself. In the third, billions of people die before you're even given control.

LordofHats wrote:
Except that isn't what is stated. It makes sense but its not what we're told.

Legion explicitly states that each Reaper is the composition of billions of organic minds.

LordofHats wrote:
The Reapers worked as a sort of Lovecraftian destroyer race as they were presented in ME1. It might not be your cup of tea but it worked from a straight forward story stance. ME2 did pretty much nothing with the concept but twist it into something more complex but chaotic and confusing and rather than straighten it out and make sense of it, ME3 just makes it more confusing. I'm not buying the whole noble genocide thing. Its dumb. Bioware is either about to pull the greatest storyline twist of all time (for an additional $10 ) or they just managed to craft and emotional and powerful return as storytellers just to screw themselves with the ending.

I won't lie, every time Shepard said "The Reapers!" in the ME1 I threw up in my mouth a little. It just sounded stupid. It sounded even worse after Sovereign got punched out like Cthulhu. It got better in ME2, and better yet in ME3 when winning seems like a legitimately outside shot.

I think the ending scenes in ME3 weren't the best (the weird crash scene being the worst part), but they weren't awful either. They made sense to me given that your POV is Shepard, who isn't supposed to know what he's doing so much as just doing his best.

LordofHats wrote:I'm confused as to why the outcry is being called "small vocal percentage." As far as I can tell just about everyone is either meh or super pissed.

Well, yeah, and all conservatives hate gay marriage.

The loudest always seem more prevalent than they are.

Play instantly for those who hated


I hated the kid but it had better endings than most video games. Made me think. I thought about it and started a new campaign and loved it.

dogma wrote:Its sort of like caring about people, but not every single person. Or, more accurately, the institution of hunting permits to prevent overpopulation, or decimation, of certain species.

We don't issue hunting permits for deer to stop deer from creating robot-deers that will kill them.

What did you think their motivation was?

Something other than saving the galaxy from itself by killing everyone with an understanding of advanced robotics and AI programming.

LordofHats wrote:In the first game you're given the choice to let the most important political body in the galaxy die, and are forced to kill a crew member. If you don't act quickly enough in the second, your personal assistant is liquefied in front of you, and if you didn't prepare well enough you might die yourself. In the third, billions of people die before you're even given control.

A story can be sad and tragic (moments) and still be upbeat. Its not the content its how the content is approached, and in the past two games Shepard was the miracle man who managed to save the day... Not save the day by destroying civilization and defeating the whole point.

LordofHats wrote:Legion explicitly states that each Reaper is the composition of billions of organic minds.

I was referring to the self-preservation bit.

LordofHats wrote:

dogma wrote:Its sort of like caring about people, but not every single person. Or, more accurately, the institution of hunting permits to prevent overpopulation, or decimation, of certain species.

We don't issue hunting permits for deer to stop deer from creating robot-deers that will kill them.

What did you think their motivation was?

Something other than saving the galaxy from itself by killing everyone with an understanding of advanced robotics and AI programming.

LordofHats wrote:In the first game you're given the choice to let the most important political body in the galaxy die, and are forced to kill a crew member. If you don't act quickly enough in the second, your personal assistant is liquefied in front of you, and if you didn't prepare well enough you might die yourself. In the third, billions of people die before you're even given control.

A story can be sad and tragic and still be upbeat. Its not the content its how the content is approached, and in the past two games Shepard was the miracle man who managed to save the day... Not save the day by destroying civilization and defeating the whole point.

LordofHats wrote:Legion explicitly states that each Reaper is the composition of billions of organic minds.

I was referring to the self-preservation bit.

The Reapers are trying to get more of themselves. They are repopulating or populating. They are created from entire species.
It makes sense. The Reapers want to ensure that the synthetics do not destroy every sentient race so then they couldn't populate and get a new reaper from it.

Their entire goal is to control the galaxy. Putting fear into the next generations.

LordofHats wrote:
We don't issue hunting permits for deer to stop deer from creating robot-deers that will kill them.

We issue hunting permits for deer to prevent deer from overpopulating, and damaging the general ecosystem; which ultimately ends up with lots of dead deer.

LordofHats wrote:
Something other than saving the galaxy from itself by killing everyone with an understanding of advanced robotics and AI programming.

There aren't too many alternatives.

LordofHats wrote:
A story can be sad and tragic and still be upbeat. Its not the content its how the content is approached, and in the past two games Shepard was the miracle man who managed to save the day... Not save the day by destroying civilization and defeating the whole point.

I'll admit that Javik (the Prothean) changes the game a lot in terms of tone (and should have been included in the game), but I still don't see the problem. Shepard even getting to the Crucible, or even getting it built, makes him unique and miraculous. This is a foe that has destroyed sentient races for millennia, they're not going to lose to one man without him making many, many sacrifices.

I guess our major disagreement is a fundamentally different reading on the prior games. I don't see Shepard saving the day, I see him getting lucky because of a confluence of circumstances and his own skills; more so in ME2 than ME1. In ME3 circumstance is against him, and its only his skill and experience that allows him to even make it as far as he does, but its not enough to live happily ever after.

LordofHats wrote:
I was referring to the self-preservation bit.

Reproduction, and really just the introduction of novel influences, is part of self-preservation.

There aren't too many alternatives.

Alternatives to what? The Reapers have a claim that isn't at all supported by the fiction. The only organic synthetic conflict is the one between the Quarians and the Geth and its abundantly clear that its not the Geth who want the war, its the Quarians. They started it the first time and they started it again. As far as Mass Effect's story goes the Reapers are solving a problem that doesn't exist. That happens when you fundamentally switch theme in the last ten minutes.

I definitly agree we've read into the series from two angles (and we also seem to have a different approach to story)

EDIT: And as for Javik yes he should have. But don't worry. If you have a PC you can unlock him without paying though I wouldn't advise actually doing it with Origin watching

LordofHats wrote:
Alternatives to what?

Alternatives to what is presented given that the first game establishes that the cycle exists.

Why is the super machine race coming back every 50,000 years if not for the lulz, reproduction, defense, or some combination of the 3?

LordofHats wrote:
The Reapers have a claim that isn't at all supported by the fiction. The only organic synthetic conflict is the one between the Quarians and the Geth and its abundantly clear that its not the Geth who want the war, its the Quarians. They started it the first time and they started it again.

Again, it doesn't matter who starts that war, it matters who wins it.

LordofHats wrote:
I definitly agree we've read into the series from two angles (and we also seem to have a different approach to story)

For what its worth, I found Halo very depressing as well. But then, I deal with people as variables on a daily basis, so its bound to happen.

I can look on the pseudo-bright side. With the Mass Relay's destroyed, Bioware has a good starting point for ME4, where you play as the god-king of Man who goes forth into the galaxy to reunite the desperate worlds of man with his twenty super powered sons and an army of genetic super warriors

I really hate the endings....not because of Shepard dying ( he is in fact martyr in the end and I like that end ) I am pissed off because of gigantic plot holes, that many people die for no reason and because nothing that you do in previous two games don't count at all.

It's like BioWare didn't know how to end Mass Effect and they asked Matt Ward to write the endings...

LordofHats wrote:I can look on the pseudo-bright side. With the Mass Relay's destroyed, Bioware has a good starting point for ME4, where you play as the god-king of Man who goes forth into the galaxy to reunite the desperate worlds of man with his twenty super powered sons and an army of genetic super warriors

I love you man. I laughed so hard. That and the 'we don't kill deer to stop them from creating robo-deer' comment. Priceless.

LordofHats wrote:I can look on the pseudo-bright side. With the Mass Relay's destroyed, Bioware has a good starting point for ME4, where you play as the god-king of Man who goes forth into the galaxy to reunite the desperate worlds of man with his twenty super powered sons and an army of genetic super warriors

Well played sir. Well played.

As miffed as we are, I could use the laugh.

I can rant all I want, all I can really do is wait and see what Bioware does really.

On that note, did we hit the mark for killing 1 million Brutes over the weekend?

The "it's just a dream" ending theories are extremely cliché and it seems like more people taking a reasonable ending from the train crash which was the ending.


The fact is that the ending has absolutely no bearing on what you did throughout any of the three games, there is no closure at all and as we know when all the relay blow up it would have exterminated all life on the galaxy. Also the boy had no relevance to anything at all (and should have been the casualty from ME1)

I'm not looking for a happy ending, or an ending where Shepard lives, i would even be happy with the reapers killing all life in the galaxy but there is no closure.

the ending i would like to see:

The crucible connects to the citadel and uses its power to take out the shields of all the reapers. (as it is said that soveins shields were taken down by Sarens death when he connected his conciousness)

Paragon could be that Shepard connects himself to all the reapers and then sacrifices himself to take down thier shields.

Neutral could be that Shepard lets anderson connect and sacrifice himself

Renegade could be that Shepard connects the illusive man and then shoots him

how it happens in don't really care

when the shields go down however i would like a series of cut scenes based on consequences throughout the three games.

EG if you had little effective strength your ships are annihilated and lots of people die
if you had high strength then people fight and kill some reapers ect ect ...

which ever species you picked (quariens and geth) dies if you got both the fight/die/survive together

the destiny ascension killing stuff if you saved the council

ect ect ect

Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
On that note, did we hit the mark for killing 1 million Brutes over the weekend?

Oh we shattered the crap out of it. We killed over 3 million Brutes, and anyone who extracted against Reapers on Silver difficulty gets an extra pack for exceptional service.

Hurray extra pack! We definitely were on a Brute killing Binge over the weekend. I wish the game had stat-tracking for that kind of stuff... I'd love to compare all that.

Incinerate wins, Engineer fo' life.

LordofHats wrote:

Amaya wrote:I don't understand the hatred against the Reapers concerning the ME2 story. I thought they were fine and still fairly consistent with the previous game.

Because it mostly just built up a lot of questions and answered none of them, while at the same time twisting around a few things from ME1. If the Collectors were around, why did Soveriegn need the Geth to help him (remember that getting help from the Geth was Sovereign's back up plan because the signal meant to start the cycle didn't work do to Prothean interference). If the Collectors were around as a safety net, why weren't they used when the situation called for it? ME2's ending also features the Reapers flying back to the galaxy on their own power which kind of begs the question of why where the Collectors making one to begin with? If the Reapers could get back on their own and have such a technological superiority, why bother with their Citadel plan at all?

The Collectors being Protheans also just rubbed some people the wrong way. Why? IDK. I guess they figured that the Reapers just wiped everything out and would have no need to keep a bunch of pseudo-Protheans around?

EDIT: Really though I think its the opening of the game, where Shepard dies for pretty much no reason (well, he died so they could make a trailer that said he died and then they actually did it). That opening pissed a lot of people off and at that point they just weren't willing ti suspend disbelief and went looking for reasons to be pissed at the game, myself included.

Of course, ME3 does the same. If Catalyst was in the Citadel the whole time, what was the point of Sovereign in the first place? I'd also point out that if the Reapers goal is to cull organic life before it can create synthetic life and be destroyed by it, why didn't they destroy the Geth on sight? It seems like a logical step in achieving their goal. Can't have a bunch of synthetics flying around endanger future organics now can we? Oh wait, the Reapers fit that bill. That's why this ending makes no sense -_-

Simple. The collectors had nothing to do with activating the relay. That was soveriegns job, he failed. Remember arrival can happen before you destroy the collector base meaning the reapers have already almost entered the galaxy. Since the reapers are on the move it would have moved them from whatever relay they had in dark space meaning anything happening would have been irrelevent. They had already put plan B in motion.

The collectors had only recently encountered humanity, the first contact war only being 30 years before ME1. Their chief goal was to gather specimins to see and determine which would have been most useful for creating reapers. Hence the abductions, testings etc. It may also have determined the creation of husks and they could send any data they wanted to Harbinger. Since the reapers enter from the south they would also have made a useful 5th column in the north where the Terminus systems are. The attempt to build a human reaper was thus simply sparked by Shephard destruction of soveriegn and their decision that humanity was a likely candidate for 'ascension'. So they decided to get a head-start. Basically, ME2 plot is not about a true galactic 'threat' in the same way ME1 and 3 are. It is more about exposition on what the reapers are, how they are built, what they do to their captured servents, 'what they intend to do to us' and of course expand what cerberus is and Shephards relation to it. Thats not to dismiss it as filler, but it is less about saving the galaxy and more about the growing darkness leading up to the Reaper invasion.

Also the collectors only had one ship and the Geth had hundreds and Soveriegn probably saw no reason to endanger his science division. Also the reapers are pretty arrogant, he only lost because of one human making him brain dead by killing Saren. One or a few collector ships would have meant little. ME2 is less about galactic struggle than the first and third games. Its about Shephard really being on his own and without allies to the point where he has an alliance of convenience with Cerberus since nobody else believes in the coming storm.

Simple. Harbinger (the kid) lied to you in order to make himself appear more benign. Think about it, the reapers are giant cyborgs, synthetics in their own right; surely THEY have overthrown their creators at some point. Also if Sovereign (confirmed by Legion who had no reason to lie) offered the geth a body then it blows that whole 'we're saving organics' argument out of the water.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

JamesMclaren123 wrote:The "it's just a dream" ending theories are extremely cliché and it seems like more people taking a reasonable ending from the train crash which was the ending.


The fact is that the ending has absolutely no bearing on what you did throughout any of the three games, there is no closure at all and as we know when all the relay blow up it would have exterminated all life on the galaxy. Also the boy had no relevance to anything at all (and should have been the casualty from ME1)

I'm not looking for a happy ending, or an ending where Shepard lives, i would even be happy with the reapers killing all life in the galaxy but there is no closure.

the ending i would like to see:

The crucible connects to the citadel and uses its power to take out the shields of all the reapers. (as it is said that soveins shields were taken down by Sarens death when he connected his conciousness)

Paragon could be that Shepard connects himself to all the reapers and then sacrifices himself to take down thier shields.

Neutral could be that Shepard lets anderson connect and sacrifice himself

Renegade could be that Shepard connects the illusive man and then shoots him

how it happens in don't really care

when the shields go down however i would like a series of cut scenes based on consequences throughout the three games.

EG if you had little effective strength your ships are annihilated and lots of people die
if you had high strength then people fight and kill some reapers ect ect ...

which ever species you picked (quariens and geth) dies if you got both the fight/die/survive together

the destiny ascension killing stuff if you saved the council

ect ect ect

How do you explain the scene with Shephard waking up in the rubble if you do renegade and have 5000+ EMS? You were in space. On the citadel where everything was made of metal. there is no way that he could have gotten there unless he had woke up on London. Look at Halo 3, that had the chief float toward a glowing world and now, low and behold we have Halo 4 with that exact event shown in a trailer. If you can provide any satisfactory explanation as to why Bioware would put that in I would like to hear it rather than deny something flatly?

No, they'll make a canon ending if it rolls onto ME4. Not every Geth and Quarian would be at the battle. It will likely be paragon. They promised continuity for the trilogy; not for the franchise.

Yeah, that 'Renegade' ending is definitely something. I didn't you you had to have a certain rating to get that, I just saw it and was like, "Huhwhat?"

They put it in there for a reason.

I was talking to my buddy and we were discussing just that, and he said, "Well, that was a pretty ragged breath, I think he's done."

My response.

"**** that, I've been through worse!"


Having died before is a great opening for all sorts of jokes.

Totalwar1402 wrote:Simple. The collectors had nothing to do with activating the relay. That was soveriegns job, he failed. Remember arrival can happen before you destroy the collector base meaning the reapers have already almost entered the galaxy. Since the reapers are on the move it would have moved them from whatever relay they had in dark space meaning anything happening would have been irrelevent. They had already put plan B in motion.

You realize that just raises more plot holes right? A plot hole isn't something that can't be explained away, most can. A plot hole is just something that doesn't logically track with the internal presentation of the fiction. These questions as I've point out are not answered by the story. Are there explanations that can make sense of it? Yes, but a plot hole is a plot hole. Ideally we shouldn't have to be filling in blanks to make sense of something the fiction should be doing it.

Basically, ME2 plot is not about a true galactic 'threat' in the same way ME1 and 3 are.

This probably upset a lot of people to, because in a 3 game narrative that Mass Effect is, the second game is almost a throw away. All anyone really needs out of it the Suicide mission (no really think about it. What decisions did you make in ME2 that really matter? The Reaper Base and who dies. That's it) and the entirety of the rest of the game is just dribble. Hence why I continue to dub it Mass Effect 2: Side-Quest the Game. EDIT EDIT: Hell everything that's important in ME2, could have been achieved in a 1 hour DLC for ME1!

Simple. Harbinger (the kid) lied to you in order to make himself appear more benign. Think about it, the reapers are giant cyborgs, synthetics in their own right; surely THEY have overthrown their creators at some point. Also if Sovereign (confirmed by Legion who had no reason to lie) offered the geth a body then it blows that whole 'we're saving organics' argument out of the water.

Which would make sense, but then that means Bioware has intentionally lied to and misled its audience, which while better than the current ending, is still bad. They can create a trick ending without it sucking.

Of course an equally probably explanation is that the ending just sucks.

How do you explain the scene with Shephard waking up in the rubble if you do renegade and have 5000+ EMS? You were in space. On the citadel where everything was made of metal. there is no way that he could have gotten there unless he had woke up on London. Look at Halo 3, that had the chief float toward a glowing world and now, low and behold we have Halo 4 with that exact event shown in a trailer. If you can provide any satisfactory explanation as to why Bioware would put that in I would like to hear it rather than deny something flatly?

They wrote a sucky ending. Really that is as probable an explanation as the indoctrination theory (and at this point we may never know if such theory should it come to be true was always planned or just latched onto) and frankly, even IF the indoctrination theory is true, the endings still SUCK. We have two options here. Bioware wrote a sucky ending or Bioware wrote a sucky ending and then pulled a fast one with "that's not the real ending." The later is better than the former but it still a sucky way to go about it. EDIT: Especially if they charge for the true ending. I mean, off handedly I'd think EA isn't dumb enough to pull that stunt, but over the years I've learned to never underestimate the stupidity of the gaming community and their ability to continue forking out money to EA when it pulls gak like that.

No, they'll make a canon ending if it rolls onto ME4. Not every Geth and Quarian would be at the battle. It will likely be paragon. They promised continuity for the trilogy; not for the franchise.

Honestly I'm expecting a DLC ending that will finish off the trilogy. The Mass Relays will still be destroyed, and my joking aside, I think that's going to be used as a pushing point for a more regular Mass Effect Franchise. Think about. The Relays are destroyed, galactic civilization is scattered, and presumably safe from the Reapers. Its a good spot story wise to kick off a new plot line with new characters. I'm guessing we're going to jump ahead in the timeline, maybe to where the galaxy has begun building their own relays to reconstruct the relay network.

Honestly I'm expecting a DLC ending that will finish off the trilogy. The Mass Relays will still be destroyed, and my joking aside, I think that's going to be used as a pushing point for a more regular Mass Effect Franchise. Think about. The Relays are destroyed, galactic civilization is scattered, and presumably safe from the Reapers. Its a good spot story wise to kick off a new plot line with new characters. I'm guessing we're going to jump ahead in the timeline, maybe to where the galaxy has begun building their own relays to reconstruct the relay network.

Yeah, ya know, if the relays breaking don't wipe out everyone, that would be pretty awesome. That thought gives me a bit of hope in a dark time. But I think they'd need to change things a lot to reflect the difference of the evolution of technology, in a way that makes it still feel like Mass Effect, but with a new, fresh sort of feeling.

I'm sure they could come up with something to focus on... the before the Reapers the great Galactic ****all was the Rachni. Maybe it's time for the Yaagh to step up as the bad guys.

Eff that... they make Krogan look like little Salarians.

Yeah, I'm gonna stop thinking about that...

"Well, there goes the future Shadow Broker."

"I think I heard him say T'soni..."

"Don't even joke about that."

LordofHats wrote:[



This probably upset a lot of people to, because in a 3 game narrative that Mass Effect is, the second game is almost a throw away. All anyone really needs out of it the Suicide mission (no really think about it. What decisions did you make in ME2 that really matter? The Reaper Base and who dies. That's it) and the entirety of the rest of the game is just dribble. Hence why I continue to dub it Mass Effect 2: Side-Quest the Game. EDIT EDIT: Hell everything that's important in ME2, could have been achieved in a 1 hour DLC for ME1!

They wrote a sucky ending. Really that is as probable an explanation as the indoctrination theory (and at this point we may never know if such theory should it come to be true was always planned or just latched onto) and frankly, even IF the indoctrination theory is true, the endings still SUCK. We have two options here. Bioware wrote a sucky ending or Bioware wrote a sucky ending and then pulled a fast one with "that's not the real ending." The later is better than the former but it still a sucky way to go about it. EDIT: Especially if they charge for the true ending. I mean, off handedly I'd think EA isn't dumb enough to pull that stunt, but over the years I've learned to never underestimate the stupidity of the gaming community and their ability to continue forking out money to EA when it pulls gak like that.

Honestly I'm expecting a DLC ending that will finish off the trilogy. The Mass Relays will still be destroyed, and my joking aside, I think that's going to be used as a pushing point for a more regular Mass Effect Franchise. Think about. The Relays are destroyed, galactic civilization is scattered, and presumably safe from the Reapers. Its a good spot story wise to kick off a new plot line with new characters. I'm guessing we're going to jump ahead in the timeline, maybe to where the galaxy has begun building their own relays to reconstruct the relay network.

1-No, ME2 could not have been done in an hour. That would have meant your relation with the illusive man would have been much more superficial, none of the characters like Thane, Miranda, Jack, Mordin Legion etc could have been done or made anywhere near as good cameos as they did. You couldn't have set up the genophage or Quarian geth conflict. Yes you can just read the codex, but it benefits from the telling and understanding who these people and what the various issues are are in advance.

2-Not the case at all. we haven't seen the ending. The indoctrination thing adds depth and makes sense in hindsight. To get a second chance to get it right would be good. Given that I enjoyed the rest of the game and thought the Tuchanka/Quarian segments were outstanding I fail to see how the ending could be bad. It will turn a negative into a positive.

So you'll pay £40 for a 2p compact disc in a shiny plastic case but the idea of paying a little for DLC is monstrous to you? They are a company, they make profit and get your money by definition. Charging above a products actual worth is how capitalism works. The quality is not bad at all. You want to play two worlds and Kingdoms of Amalur then be my guest. There is hardly a steller selction of RPGs on console.

3-I'd expect a happy ending if you have high EMS and a concluding epilogue. Whatever else happens is irrelevent they can take whatever time leap they want without blowing ME relays up. It would also be problematic since you would then have a dozen alien races living on earth which would be pretty silly. Look at TOR, 130 years, enough to make (almost) every KoToR character dead and you end up with a verse largely the same at the end. The catalyst will probably just (as many others have said) disable the reapers shields and give your fleet the chance it needs.

I almost get the feeling that Bioware is using it's fan reaction as a sort of group computing thing. They have a bunch of writers pouring over message boards and the like, picking apart what people are saying as they build another ending.

Somewhere on the internet, someone is going to jump up and scream I TOLD YOU SO... because they won the guessing lottery.

Naturally, nobody will hear them.

Am I the only one who thinks destroying the Mass Relays is a terrible idea for the universe they created. Even if they wouldn't wipe out entire systems through that stunt Shepard pulled at the end.

Not only the relays, but most of the Mass Effect-based technology were wiped out. That's pretty much everything! The guns, the space ships, other vehicles, shields. I don't want to see what happens in the ME-Universe after this ending. Because there is nothing that could happen!

Not necessarily chief. We've figured out Mass Effect fields, we can make the things, and thereby remake them.

The difference with the Relays is that they're just so huge... we used them to reverse engineer the mass effect technology, we still have access to that tech. Just not on the scale of the Relays.

Totalwar14021 wrote:-No, ME2 could not have been done in an hour.

The whole thing? Of course not. The parts that matter? Yeah.

That would have meant your relation with the illusive man would have been much more superficial, none of the characters like Thane, Miranda, Jack, Mordin Legion etc could have been done or made anywhere near as good cameos as they did.

No, but really, what's so important about any of them that their roles couldn't have been filled by random character #5, I like Legion, Mordin, and Jack. Characterization in ME2 was great. But when you break it down to the knitty gritty, almost the entirety of ME2 is just filler. Sure ME3 benefits from these characters, but we could have had an actual game instead of the collection of character quests that ME2 was and that's just disappointing. ME2 is like the 15 minute interlude in a movie, except the interlude was 20 hours long with some interesting character pieces.

EDIT: Heck, Cerberus and TIM even came a little from left field in ME2. In ME1 it looked like the Alliance would be the problem as there were numerous hints and allusions to the mass corruption of the Alliance government and its questionable ethics and morality, and then in ME2 none of that was used. Instead, Cerberus, a misc side plot from ME1 no one really cared about, became center stage and the questions of the Alliance dropped off the map at that point.

You couldn't have set up the genophage or Quarian geth conflict.

Both of these were established in ME1. ME2 did little the push anything in the franchise forward. It built off ME1 but did little to advance it.

2-Not the case at all. we haven't seen the ending.

No we have seen the ending. For now, the Indoctrination theory is just a very probable guess.

The indoctrination thing adds depth and makes sense in hindsight.

Audiences tend not to care if something horrible suddenly seems less horrible in hind sight. I certainly don't. Bad writing is bad writing.

Given that I enjoyed the rest of the game and thought the Tuchanka/Quarian segments were outstanding I fail to see how the ending could be bad. It will turn a negative into a positive.

While true, some people will come out of ME3 remembering "Damn that ending sucked, glad they fixed it." The ball has been dropped. It can be picked back up but the next time Bioware pitches everyones doing to have that tiny hesitation, remembering what happened last time.

So you'll pay £40 for a 2p compact disc in a shiny plastic case but the idea of paying a little for DLC is monstrous to you?

I expect the ending to be on the disc. I don't think that's an absurd notion by any standard. If I buy a game, and am told that there is an epic story, I expect my initial purchase to wrap up said story. Not that I'd have to pay an additional $10 on top of the $60 I already paid to get the damned ending. Anyone who actually thinks that that is a good use of money has something loose in their head.

They are a company, they make profit and get your money by definition.

I've always found it baffling the things a company can get away with in the name of profit. You know back in the late 19th century workers worked 72 hour weeks and got paid nearly nothing so that companies could make a profit.

Charging above a products actual worth is how capitalism works.

Congratulations for figuring out 6th grade civics? A consumer who buys a product for more than its worth is a moron. EA has been finding ways to weasel money out of its customers for the better part of the last decade and somehow people keep giving them money. Now we're at the point where buying a game might possibly not even get us the actual game! If the ending DLC is actually charged for and people start buying it, they will do it again. Then they'll keep going down the slope until we reach:




Then again, I'm a cynic.

Then again again, I called out that this bull was gonna start coming down the line back in high school in the early 2000's and no one listened to me then.

3-I'd expect a happy ending if you have high EMS and a concluding epilogue. Whatever else happens is irrelevent they can take whatever time leap they want without blowing ME relays up. It would also be problematic since you would then have a dozen alien races living on earth which would be pretty silly. Look at TOR, 130 years, enough to make (almost) every KoToR character dead and you end up with a verse largely the same at the end. The catalyst will probably just (as many others have said) disable the reapers shields and give your fleet the chance it needs.

We will find out sooner or later. A DLC ending is inevitable at this point, unless Bioware wants its brand to lose all respectability, which I assume they don't.

Not necessarily chief. We've figured out Mass Effect fields, we can make the things, and thereby remake them.

We do find out in ME2, for those who don't remember, that the Asari at least were at that time on the edge of being able to construct a functioning Mass Relay. They had the tecnology, but with a network already in place no real will existed to do it. Now, if the existing network got blown up? We shall see.

LordofHats wrote:
You realize that just raises more plot holes right? A plot hole isn't something that can't be explained away, most can. A plot hole is just something that doesn't logically track with the internal presentation of the fiction. These questions as I've point out are not answered by the story. Are there explanations that can make sense of it? Yes, but a plot hole is a plot hole. Ideally we shouldn't have to be filling in blanks to make sense of something the fiction should be doing it.

A plot hole is a plot hole, but not all plot holes are created equal.

In the case of the Citadel plan, there is an obvious advantage to shattering the center of galactic civilization immediately. I mean, imagine ME3 (or even ME2) without being able to travel to the citadel, it changes things completely.

The Collectors are a bit trickier, but it is my understanding that the Geth were a backup plan after Sovereign learned that the Keepers had been altered. Its very possible that "he" simply lacked control of the Collectors, for a variety of reasons.

These answers aren't spelled out in the fiction, of course, but that isn't necessary. Plenty of great fictional universes, and ME is far from great, turn on not having everything spelled out.

LordofHats wrote:
This probably upset a lot of people to, because in a 3 game narrative that Mass Effect is, the second game is almost a throw away. All anyone really needs out of it the Suicide mission (no really think about it. What decisions did you make in ME2 that really matter? The Reaper Base and who dies. That's it) and the entirety of the rest of the game is just dribble.

None of the ME1 decisions, except "who dies", mattered either.

People seem to, for some reason, have bought into the idea that ME is somehow "about choice" in a way that other games haven't been. This is false. You aren't given any kind of material choice in any ME game aside from which squad mates live, and what small dialogue change your save file may encounter.

LordofHats wrote:
Hence why I continue to dub it Mass Effect 2: Side-Quest the Game. EDIT EDIT: Hell everything that's important in ME2, could have been achieved in a 1 hour DLC for ME1!

The suicide mission isn't important at all except for the introduction of new characters. Hell, if Shepard dies in ME2, and you want to play ME3, Shepard isn't dead.

The whole of ME2 was about fleshing out the ME universe, and as a universe driven series that's completely fine. It isn't like "impending galactic doom, averted by a special human" is a new plot line.

dogma wrote:A plot hole is a plot hole, but not all plot holes are created equal.

I concede to this point. As I stated earlier in the page I am unwilling to suspend disbelief in the story anymore, so while these holes are fillable, I just choose to be bitchy about them

None of the ME1 decisions, except "who dies", mattered either.

People seem to, for some reason, have bought into the idea that ME is somehow "about choice" in a way that other games haven't been. This is false. You aren't given any kind of material choice in any ME game aside from which squad mates live, and what small dialogue change your save file may encounter.

I'm not talking about the choices that are imported into the next game. I'm talking straightly about the events of ME2 and how they impact into those of ME1 and ME3. Everything important that ME2 did, could literally have been done in 1 hour, because of the 30 hours I could spend playing through a game of ME2, I spend only about 5 of them actually doing anything related to the main story line of the trilogy, and if I were to completely break those 5 hours down into what really matters, I could get that story told in about 1 hour and tacked it onto the end of ME1 cause frankly the suicide mission is the only event in ME2 with an impact on the trilogy.

EDIT: In this form it would be: Shepard gets a call from the Alliance that explains the Collectors, that they're kidnapping Colonists, and that they went through the Omega Relay. Shepard and team pursue, find base. I just saved everyone an additional 4 hours of filler in the main story, and an another 25 of meaningless dribble... But then again I suppose some people really like the characterization that the meaningless dribble comprises cause it was really good characterization all told (for the most part *glares at Jacob, Miranda, and Samara*) and that I can respect. But I will never EVER concede that ME2 had a good story because it didn't. It had a horrible main story with some nice really nice side-plots. EDIT EDIT: And I just opened up the field for an actual story line to fit between ME1 and ME3 that could have been a billion times more interesting than the real ME2 was.

LordofHats wrote:The suicide mission isn't important at all except for the introduction of new characters.

Which is really all ME2 did. Hence why I think the games story sucked, and why I'd say that of the three games ME2 is the weakest in story and could really be ignored were it not for the need to import save files.

The whole of ME2 was about fleshing out the ME universe, and as a universe driven series that's completely fine.

They could have fleshed it out and still actually driven the main story line forward. The goals are not exclusive of one another. In terms of fleshing out I agree ME2 did great. To bad its nice for a universe to advance while being fleshed out.

It isn't like "impending galactic doom, averted by a special human" is a new plot line.

Its preferable to not really having one. EDIT: And the age old addage "There is no such things as an original story."

LordofHats wrote:[qu

Charging above a products actual worth is how capitalism works.

Congratulations for figuring out 6th grade civics? A consumer who buys a product for more than its worth is a moron. EA has been finding ways to weasel money out of its customers for the better part of the last decade and somehow people keep giving them money. Now we're at the point where buying a game might possibly not even get us the actual game! If the ending DLC is actually charged for and people start buying it, they will do it again. Then they'll keep going down the slope until we reach:
.

No need to be a . I'am trying to cut down on the long posts and not write an essay here. You don't invoke common sense as proof of your intellectual background. Also, you're saying the consumer who pays more than a product is worth is a moron. By that logic every consumer is a moron. In fact, come on, you're in a 40k forum!!! Don't even start on companies inflating profit

Totalwar1402 wrote: In fact, come on, you're in a 40k forum!!! Don't even start on companies inflating profit

...

Well played...

EDIT: Though in my defense I stopped buying GW stuff two price hikes ago

LordofHats wrote:
I'm not talking about the choices that are imported into the next game. I'm talking straightly about the events of ME2 and how they impact into those of ME1 and ME3. Everything important that ME2 did, could literally have been done in 1 hour, because of the 30 hours I could spend playing through a game of ME2, I spend only about 5 of them actually doing anything related to the main story line of the trilogy, and if I were to completely break those 5 hours down into what really matters, I could get that story told in about 1 hour and tacked it onto the end of ME1 cause frankly the suicide mission is the only event in ME2 with an impact on the trilogy.

Right, and ME1 could be compressed into the same 5 hours, less if we're going to hand over characters like Liara; at least as is relevant to the trilogy.

Hell, you pick up Garrus and Wrex on the Citadel, Liara could just as easily been put there in order to cut out a mission. The only trilogy relevant things you do, outside the tutorial (Eden Prime) Virmire and Ilos, are based on character and world development.

LordofHats wrote:
Which is really all ME2 did. Hence why I think the games story sucked, and why I'd say that of the three games ME2 is the weakest in story and could really be ignored were it not for the need to import save files.

The story of every game sucked. Its entirely driven by the character and the world.

The original KoToR had an excuse for being campy, and even then it innovated, but ME has always been "Cool world, generic story."

LordofHats wrote:
They could have fleshed it out and still actually driven the main story line forward. The goals are not exclusive of one another. In terms of fleshing out I agree ME2 did great. To bad its nice for a universe to advance while being fleshed out.

Advance to what? Reaper invasion? The problem with introducing "super big bad" in the first game of a trilogy is that it doesn't allow much room for expansion.

Its not like we could find out that, really, Shepard was the son of a Reaper.

LordofHats wrote:
Its preferable to not really having one. EDIT: And the age old addage "There is no such things as an original story."

Its about as good as "These weird things are kidnapping people, we need to stop them."

LordofHats wrote:I can look on the pseudo-bright side. With the Mass Relay's destroyed, Bioware has a good starting point for ME4, where you play as the god-king of Man who goes forth into the galaxy to reunite the desperate worlds of man with his twenty super powered sons and an army of genetic super warriors

You do know that leading men for entire Mass Effect project, Casey Hudson, is Space Wolves player? He said that in one of his interviews...
And you thin that all those 40k related things in Mass Effect universe are just random?

Brother Coa wrote:

LordofHats wrote:I can look on the pseudo-bright side. With the Mass Relay's destroyed, Bioware has a good starting point for ME4, where you play as the god-king of Man who goes forth into the galaxy to reunite the desperate worlds of man with his twenty super powered sons and an army of genetic super warriors

You do know that leading men for entire Mass Effect project, Casey Hudson, is Space Wolves player? He said that in one of his interviews...
And you thin that all those 40k related things in Mass Effect universe are just random?

What, the SOB/femshep boob armour?

dogma wrote:Right, and ME1 could be compressed into the same 5 hours, less if we're going to hand over characters like Liara; at least as is relevant to the trilogy.

That's one of my criticisms of ME1. Not only were all the party members bland and boring, all of them were only there to be there. Well, except Wrex. He was maybe a little bland, but he certainly wasn't boring

EDIT: I was pleased in ME2 when Garrus and Tali managed to find personalities. Less pleased that Ashley/Kaiden remained as interesting as brick. EDIT EDIT: Then again ME2 took my criticism of ME1 to a whole nother level. Instead of six person sized pieces of dead weight I got nearly a dozen. Miranda and Mordain were the only ME2 party members who mattered XD

The only trilogy relevant things you do, outside the tutorial (Eden Prime) Virmire and Ilos, are based on character and world development.

The other planets (baring Liara's) fulfilled a plot role in that they were used to help uncover the mystery. Sure they could have been written out by my logic, but at the end of the day there's still a lot more story than there was in ME2, and it was more interesting too boot (the 'freshness' of the universe probably helped. Things are always nicer the first time you see them).

The story of every game sucked. Its entirely driven by the character and the world.

Character driven stories are typically seen as superior to other kinds. I'm not talking about innovation, or originality, or uniqueness. ME is far from unique. I'm just plainly talking about structure. Its certainly not A Tale of Two Cities but no one should be going into the story looking for a master piece that will last the ages. Video Game story lines are about the same in quality as pulp fiction. The structure of the story of ME1 was perfectly fine. Its big achievement was probably the success in Bioware's finale for the game where they managed to build tension and hold it very effectively for about the last two-three hours of the game. EDIT: Well, ME2 probably did that too, but I was so bored with the game by the suicide mission I just wanted it to be over.

Hell maybe that's the problem with ME3's ending 1 and 2 built the tension high and blew up. ME3 just simmered out XD

Advance to what? Reaper invasion? The problem with introducing "super big bad" in the first game of a trilogy is that it doesn't allow much room for expansion.

There was plenty of room for expansion. Even the Collector story line had nothing wrong with it on its face. The execution was just half-assed.

Its not like we could find out that, really, Shepard was the son of a Reaper.

You know people actually theorized that after ME2 The blobs of text they called "evidence" were hilarious. Some of them even had pics!

Brother Coa wrote:You do know that leading men for entire Mass Effect project, Casey Hudson, is Space Wolves player? He said that in one of his interviews...
And you thin that all those 40k related things in Mass Effect universe are just random?

My god, its all making sense now.

But no I didn't know that I just noticed how the current ending results in a rather common sci-fi scenario and one that is seen in 40k

This is actually how I'd break ME down:

Geth = Cylons
Quarians = The Twelve Colonies
Asari = They always seemed Vulcany to me, though the idea behind the Asari is one I've never seen before unless
Turians = Romulans
Krogans = Klingons
Reapers = The Borg
Salarians = The Obsidian Order (DS9)
Humans = Generic human space bad asses

EDIT: And the Rachni are just the bugs from Ender's Game

And of course they named the main character Shepard. I wonder if that's a metaphor

LordofHats wrote: Miranda and Mordain were the only ME2 party members who mattered XD

Not Legion, or Jack?

LordofHats wrote:
The other planets (baring Liara's) fulfilled a plot role in that they were used to help uncover the mystery. Sure they could have been written out by my logic, but at the end of the day there's still a lot more story than there was in ME2, and it was more interesting too boot (the 'freshness' of the universe probably helped. Things are always nicer the first time you see them).

Its still just exposition of the universe, and very little actual story; though at that level there is little difference. Which, really, is my point.

LordofHats wrote:
There was plenty of room for expansion. Even the Collector story line had nothing wrong with it on its face. The execution was just half-assed.

Not really, because ultimately everything has to tie back to the Reapers; for example the Collectors.

Once you introduce the ultimate evil, everything has to riff off that. Even Cerberus, ultimately, had to riff of the Reapers.

LordofHats wrote:
You know people actually theorized that after ME2 The blobs of text they called "evidence" were hilarious. Some of them even had pics!

I mean, considering the IM, he at least likely had some Reaper tech used to resurrect him.

dogma wrote:Not Legion, or Jack?

Unless I'm forgetting something; Miranda to pull a Jesus for Shepard and Mordain to get around the little bug probes. I suppose you need some filler to complete the other Suicide Mission parameters but I think of that as more of a game play aspect than a story aspect.

Its still just exposition of the universe, and very little actual story; though at that level there is little difference. Which, really, is my point.

The presentation was vastly different, and in story presentation is what really matters.

Once you introduce the ultimate evil, everything has to riff off that. Even Cerberus, ultimately, had to riff of the Reapers.

Like I said earlier I honestly don't know why Cerberus got elevated to the position it did. ME1 set up the Alliance government and the Council to be a problem, but then just dropped the Alliance.

I mean, considering the IM, he at least likely had some Reaper tech used to resurrect him.

The theory stuff going on after ME2 was crazy. I can't remember all the wacky to outright asinine theories people came up with XD.

LordofHats wrote:
My god, its all making sense now.

But no I didn't know that I just noticed how the current ending results in a rather common sci-fi scenario and one that is seen in 40k

This is actually how I'd break ME down:

Geth = Cylons
Quarians = The Twelve Colonies
Asari = They always seemed Vulcany to me, though the idea behind the Asari is one I've never seen before unless
Turians = Romulans
Krogans = Klingons
Reapers = The Borg
Salarians = The Obsidian Order (DS9)
Humans = Generic human space bad asses

And of course they named the main character Shepard. I wonder if that's a metaphor

Geth, Reapers = Necrons. ( there is even a story that Javik said about soem race named Zha'til who were dying due to radiation of their dying sun, then decided to upgrade themselves in metal parts to survive longer, until they were transferred into full metal body with AI-'s and decided to rampage around galaxy. Sounds familiar no? No C'Tan but still.... )
Quarians = Adeptus Mechanicus.
Asari = A mix of Eldar and Tau. ( advanced tech and long lifespan but not racist like Eldar )
Protheans = Tau Empire. ( "Our Empire had many subjects, all eventually called themselves Prothean." "They were not given a choice." Sound like Tau to me )
Krogans = Orks. ( like that was not obvious enough )
Shepard, N7 = Kasrkins. ( if class is Solder )
Samara is from ortodox order or knights that dedicated their life to serving the code, use biotic powers and always fighting evil no matter where it is or who she kills. Her title said it all, the Justicar = Grey Knights, Inquisition.
Cerberus = Chaos. ( No daemons just renegades )
Rachni = Tyranids.
Alliance Military and Navy = Imperial Guard and imperial Navy.
Turians = Cadians.
Citadel Council = High Lords of Terra ( with Udina like Goge Vandire ).
Salarians = Tau. ( technology, fast attack tactics, infiltration and intelligence operations )
Admiral Hackett = Ursarkar E. Creed
and so on...

Only difference is - no Space Marines ( unless you count Shepard as one after all those advancements in ME2... ).

Your list is much more impressive than mine

LordofHats wrote:
Unless I'm forgetting something; Miranda to pull a Jesus for Shepard and Mordain to get around the little bug probes. I suppose you need some filler to complete the other Suicide Mission parameters but I think of that as more of a game play aspect than a story aspect.

By that standard the only character you "need" in ME1 is Liara, and she doesn't need to be a party member to accomplish her role.

If we push this to other, similar, games:

In KoToR you need Bastilla.

In KoToR 2 you need Kreia.

If all that matters is maximum expediency regarding the fulfillment of a central story arch, you only ever need a bare minimum of characters; but that's boring.

LordofHats wrote:
The presentation was vastly different, and in story presentation is what really matters.

I didn't see much difference. Or, rather, the difference that I saw was that in ME1 there was absolutely no choice, and in ME2 there was choice by way of failure as an end state.

You cannot have both a tightly written narrative, and a one in which choice plays a material role.

LordofHats wrote:
Like I said earlier I honestly don't know why Cerberus got elevated to the position it did. ME1 set up the Alliance government and the Council to be a problem, but then just dropped the Alliance.

When was the Alliance Government ever a problem? They, from the beginning, backed Shepard almost completely, to the point of deferring to his judgment regarding the risk of multiple fleets in an engagement predicated on saving alien lives.

dogma wrote:When was the Alliance Government ever a problem? They, from the beginning, backed Shepard almost completely, to the point of deferring to his judgment regarding the risk of multiple fleets in an engagement predicated on saving alien lives.

There were multiple allusions throughout ME1 to the Alliance's corruption, racism, and questionable ethics (blowing up a ship to create biotics, the consequences be damned!). In the game it was presented as they were behind Shepard as a means to advance their political position, not because they really liked him or anything. Most people thought that the Alliance would end up becoming a major obstacle in ME2, but then it turns out Cerberus is actually really powerful and important rather than a random terrorist cell no one likes (as they appeared to be in ME1).

EDIT: Then again, a lot of people thought the Shadow Broker was going to end up actually being important but as far as I can tell he never made it past side quest status.

By that standard the only character you "need" in ME1 is Liara, and she doesn't need to be a party member to accomplish her role.

I know. I said so earlier. One thing I've always wanted is for Bioware to more closely integrate their parties into the stories of their games. Parties in RPG's have always seemed so unnatural to me.

LordofHats wrote:
There were multiple allusions throughout ME1 to the Alliance's corruption, racism, and questionable ethics (blowing up a ship to create biotics, the consequences be damned!).

The ship was, as I recall, was Cerberus; though that may have only been brought up in ME2. I do know it was never fully attributed to the Alliance, though; at best it was "suspicious".

But, either way, all the Council races were shown to be corrupt, racist, and possessed of questionable ethics to some degree (Genophage). The only ones that got any kind of free pass were the Asari, and it was the sort of pass that stems from not wanting to get one's hands dirty.

LordofHats wrote:
In the game it was presented as they were behind Shepard as a means to advance their political position, not because they really liked him or anything.

Why else would they be behind him?

Can you imagine any realistic state (and ME went to some lengths to inject a semblance of realism), even granted suspension of disbelief, advancing a candidate for an elite multinational agency because he was just a really nice guy?

LordofHats wrote:
Most people thought that the Alliance would end up becoming a major obstacle in ME2, but then it turns out Cerberus is actually really powerful and important rather than a random terrorist cell no one likes (as they appeared to be in ME1).

I didn't get that vibe at all. The Alliance seemed like a normal government, just like the other governments that were presented in the game.

LordofHats wrote:
I know. I said so earlier. One thing I've always wanted is for Bioware to more closely integrate their parties into the stories of their games. Parties in RPG's have always seemed so unnatural to me.

I mean, they are unnatural, for the most part. No real person is going to traipse off with a random hero after knowing him for a few minutes. I actually think ME did a pretty good job of integrating the supporting characters. Garrus was already tracking Saren, Tali was running from him, Ashley got rescued in tutorial from him, Liara happened to be in his way (and her mom was following him), and Wrex is just a crazy old Krogan who likes to fight.

The most natural "party" I've ever seen in an RPG is Witcher II, and even there its not a traditional party, and it trades on a whole ton of independently written back story.

Here's the epilogue everyone wanted

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vG4EyfXOTJ4

I think the Mass Effect series does a much better job of explaining your party members and incorporating them than... oh I don't know, every JRPG ever created? (Mild exaggeration).

Well I take that back. Skies of Arcadia did alright.

Shepard is a badass, a Spectre, a Hero, and ... charismatic? Well, at least he's supposed to be. I think he says the right things at the right time at least.

People naturally follow him, it's part of the story I think. And for the most part I think it's pretty well written. A lot of the characters are eccentrics and driven in their own rights, so a little leeway can be given in those regards.

You know, when I think about it, it actually makes sense that destroying the Reapers would also destroy the Mass Relays. They build them after all.

Anung Un Rama wrote:Here's the epilogue everyone wanted

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vG4EyfXOTJ4

OMG that is awesome XD Love the ones for Jacob, Tali, and Wrex

Yeah, but the MagicalStarChild says that if I kill the Reapers I die too.

I didn't die.

Lies! So what else did that little snot lie about?

I'm all in for the Reaper Indoctrination theory. Not as a mechanism to mitigate any disappointment that I might have had with the ending, but because it holds up to narrative scrutiny far better than the literal interpretation of the ending does. It also doesn't completely ruin the setting, as occurs when you take the ending at face value, and we all know that EA has plans to take the Mass Effect franchise beyond the first three games.

All of the scenes with the Child, and Shepard's reaction to the Child felt...weird. Off. Almost like tonal lapses on the part of the writers. My character was the Butcher of Torfan, sacrificed close friends to the horrors of the Collector Base and incinerated 300,000 Batarians, but she can't get one random kid out of her mind? That would be uncharacteristically bone-headed writing on the part of BioWare if taken at face value. But as an indication of Shepard's Indoctrination (something that they've been teasing since Arrival at the latest)? It's a subtle and well-played take on how strong minded individuals like Saren or Beneziah could be brought into the fold by the Reapers.

If this firestorm of negative feedback has any effect, it will be to cause EA/BioWare to release the game's Epilogue DLC for free. I fully expect that we'll see two or three paid DLC packs before then, party members and missions that take place before the final assault on Earth. And then, they can close the book on the first Mass Effect trilogy with one final downloadable pack.

Here's a VERY thorough written analysis of the finale

http://www.destructoid.com/fans-compile-logical-breakdown-of-mass-effect-3-ending-224120.phtml

There's an awful lot of nitpicking in there for something that claims not to be nitpicky

Either way, people are getting refunds from Amazon because of the ending:

http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/amazon-offers-some-customers-refunds-if-they-hated-mass-effect-3s-ending/

http://kotaku.com/5895215/bioware-is-working-on-a-modified-mass-effect-3-ending?utm_source=Kotaku+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a738b0b46e-UA-142218-8&utm_medium=email

Starting to look like the indoctrination theory is just an example of how much smarter Bioware's fans are than Bioware. The way I read the article, assuming it is accurate, it sounds like the ending was the actual intended ending.

Even if the indoctrination theory is a complete load of nonsense that Bioware nevr intended, they'd do themselves a big favour by making some DLC that changes the ending to fit that theory (or extends the ending, really, with an epilogue/final chapter).

No a game's ending should never be DLC, but I'd take that over the ending that was given.

Agreed. I think the indoctrination theory provides the simplest way for them to transition to a more suitable ending. Ideally, I'd hope they'd release it for free.

If they were actually planning a DLC (free) ending all along, it would seem like a poorly executed but fun idea. At least to me.

Now we'll probably never know though. There's so much speculation, argument, and hearsay that you can't tell between the smokescreens and the teasers.

It could be argued that holding the ending hostage via DLC, even if it's free DLC, would stop people from trading in the games... making them more likely to buy other DLC that's released before the 'ending' DLC.

But I'm starting to get more into the DLC discussion rather than the ending discussion.

If Bioware make a new ending, what do they do about people that either chose Synthesis or Control?

Renegade is established as Paragon because it's meant to be an illusion and fighting against it is the right thing to do.
If not the right thing to do, the only option that Shepard really has of winning.

It kind of throws the whole concept out of the window.

Destroy - You wake up in London, 'finish the fight'.
Synthesis - Indoctrinated?
Control - Indoctrinated but can resist somewhat? This is what Saren/TIM thought they could do.

Will the crucible actually work?

It's a bit of a clusterfeth.

I sorta like the uncertain future we're facing.

They've already admitted they're doing something about it... so I'm ready to bring my speculation-train to a halt and focus back on rocking the Multiplayer.

I also really really really wished Shepard started calling The Illusive Man TIM in the series. It's just so demeaning and I find it hilarious.

For those that haven't seen it yet, Ray Muzyka has released a statement re: the hate for the endings:

http://blog.bioware.com/2012/03/21/4108/

And here is Forbes' analysis:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/21/bioware-co-founder-apologizes-to-fans-for-the-mass-effect-3-ending-sort-of/?feed=rss_home

Chemical Cutthroat wrote:I also really really really wished Shepard started calling The Illusive Man TIM in the series.

To be honest I started doing that in ME2 Whenever someone said Illusive Man, I said "Huh? That's Tim, who the hell is Illusive Man?" XD

Nice to see Bioware finally doing some damage control on this. If the rest of the game really is as good as I keep hearing, it'd be a shame to leave the ending as it is.

If the rest of the game really is as good as I keep hearing, it'd be a shame to leave the ending as it is.

You've... played ME3 right?

Chemical Cutthroat wrote:You've... played ME3 right?

I through means I will not discuss played the last hour of the game (and I might through those same means be screwing around in multi-player). I've resolved to boycott purchase for a few months. I'll get it after Q1 when sales are less important to play through the whole thing.

LordofHats wrote:

Chemical Cutthroat wrote:You've... played ME3 right?

I through means I will not discuss played the last hour of the game (and I might through those same means be screwing around in multi-player). I've resolved to boycott purchase for a few months. I'll get it after Q1 when sales are less important to play through the whole thing.

Kharn! KHARN! KHARNNN!!!

You can't judge something without having seen or experienced the whole thing!

Totalwar1402 wrote:You can't judge something without having seen or experienced the whole thing!

How many historians have actually experienced the events they are describing? I doubt most sociologists have ever actually experienced true poverty. I've always laughed at the idea "You haven't played it so you can't comment on it." I doubt you know anything about the plot that I don't at this point.

I've also made no comment on the ME3 game as a whole. Just ending, which I played through to see the full thing (EDIT: If anything it would ideally leave me less biased as to its nature cause I'm not emotionally invested in the rest of the game, but I'm a biased douche so that doesn't really mean much ). Most youtube videos are just the ending cinematic and decision and I wanted to investigate the evidence for the indoctrination theory. But that's moot cause its become obvious Bioware didn't plan it now (I'm sure many people are sad).

On the happy side co-op gets the Triple Hat Rating of Approval for Awesomeness.

I would say this is less related to being a historian and more in line with being someone who yells at the TV during a football game.

Honestly I think the bigger question is why would I spend so much time reading up on a game I haven't played through

To which I answer, "Nothing better to do." XD

If wasting time were an Olympic Sport, I'd be have a wall of gold medals by now.

I'd say 'trolling', but you haven't been.

I'm not hating or anything, but I feel if you haven't played the game, then you lose the emotional attachment that certainly colors your opinions on the ending. Maybe that's a good thing though.

Nah. There'll be some emotional attachment when my roomie gets back and finds his N7 score 200 points higher than when he left it ;D

That's gonna be hilarious.

What is the N7 rating about in multiplayer by the way. I see the numbers, but I have no idea. It also occasionally flashes up with a full N7 screen after a battle.

It's basically how big your Mass Effect **** is. It has no standing other than a global leaderboard/friend list ranking.

It doesn't unlock anything or do anything fancy.

It increases by leveling up characters, and by promoting characters. Promoted characters go to the Single player campaign and are added to your Fleet Score or whatever it's called.

It's a good way to powerlevel your Single Player Odds if you happen to be a really crappy negotiator and end up at the final battle with like... three ships and a few road flares.

Whether or not the on disk ending is in fact the true end, I set out to destroy the Reapers and that exactly what I done. Even if it made me sacrifice the geth.

I do hope that this ending is not the end.

LordofHats wrote:

Totalwar1402 wrote:You can't judge something without having seen or experienced the whole thing!

How many historians have actually experienced the events they are describing? I doubt most sociologists have ever actually experienced true poverty. I've always laughed at the idea "You haven't played it so you can't comment on it." I doubt you know anything about the plot that I don't at this point.

I've also made no comment on the ME3 game as a whole. Just ending, which I played through to see the full thing (EDIT: If anything it would ideally leave me less biased as to its nature cause I'm not emotionally invested in the rest of the game, but I'm a biased douche so that doesn't really mean much ). Most youtube videos are just the ending cinematic and decision and I wanted to investigate the evidence for the indoctrination theory. But that's moot cause its become obvious Bioware didn't plan it now (I'm sure many people are sad).

On the happy side co-op gets the Triple Hat Rating of Approval for Awesomeness.

If you are considering the experience of an actual game then yes. We're not discussing facts but how we felt. If I watched the ending to Star Wars Return of the Jedi without having seen any of the films then it wouldn't mean anything to me and would actually be pretty rubbish.

Another example would be when Fox did a show on Mass Effect one with a panel of experts in sociology refering to what it represented about society (screwing blue aliens in a video game) without having even watched the actual scene being discussed; let alone understanding the context. ie claiming it represented male objectification of women without even realising you could play femshep.

BTW Historians have to study primary sources to gain an insight into the time. Which is the equivalent to knowing what they are saying. If you state something without evidence then you would just be laughed at. You can only form an opinion through a reading of the evidence. Are you saying you would write an essay without any background reading or primary sources? So they still count under the 'you haven't read it so you can't comment on it'.

I think that main reasons why people dislike ending are:

-There are many unexplained things and many plot holes in the last 10 minutes of the game.
-Instead of some super powerful anti-Reaper weapon we get 3 choices, all of witch have bad result - the destruction of Mass Relays.
-Shepard dies. (this is probably the main reason giving the emotional attachment to the love interests liek liara, Tali or Garus)

johnscott10 wrote:Whether or not the on disk ending is in fact the true end, I set out to destroy the Reapers and that exactly what I done. Even if it made me sacrifice the geth.

I do hope that this ending is not the end.

Don't know if already been said but Bioware have stated that they are doing ending DLC

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/mass-effect-3-ending-dlc-confirmed-by-dr-ray-muzyka-co-founder-and-ceo-of-bioware.250104293/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPro-9wvskg

(smug statement) There, clear as day.

Totalwar1402 wrote:If you are considering the experience of an actual game then yes. We're not discussing facts but how we felt. If I watched the ending to Star Wars Return of the Jedi without having seen any of the films then it wouldn't mean anything to me and would actually be pretty rubbish.

Honestly, I think emotionally I don't need to play the whole game to find the ending emotionally underwhelming. That's just the nature of the ending.

Another example would be when Fox did a show on Mass Effect one with a panel of experts in sociology refering to what it represented about society (screwing blue aliens in a video game) without having even watched the actual scene being discussed; let alone understanding the context. ie claiming it represented male objectification of women without even realising you could play femshep.

I'd actually say the biggest problem for that fox report is that the 'expert' cited eight sources and only 3 of them actually related to video games at all. Of those 3, none had anything to do with what was being discussed. A wonderful example of what it looks like when someone talks out their ass as opposed to at least reading up on it. Besides I fail to see the comparison. I've no only seen the ending I've already played through it and I know the rest of the games plot cause the internet roles that way (and its not like I'm a moron). THis is the biggest gaming backlash I've seen in years. Even MW2 on PC wasn't this epic (MW3 on PC was way more underhanded and a lot of people don't even seem to know what happened with that one!). I'm following it because as someone interested in games and the industry I want to know what is going on.

BTW Historians have to study primary sources to gain an insight into the time.

So they read something written by someone who experienced the event. You realize that's what I've been doing right? This is the modern age. I don't need to read a book, watch a movie, or play a game to know what happens in it. Further seeing as I've probably spent as much time catching up on what happens in the game as it would take to actual play through it, I'm feeling pretty safe and confident (and I didn't have to pay EA which is the only real reason I'm waiting).

BTW

If you state something without evidence then you would just be laughed at.

Evidence? What's that? The internet disagrees

LordofHats wrote:[

BTW Historians have to study primary sources to gain an insight into the time.

So they read something written by someone who experienced the event. You realize that's what I've been doing right? This is the modern age. I don't need to read a book, watch a movie, or play a game to know what happens in it. Further seeing as I've probably spent as much time catching up on what happens in the game as it would take to actual play through it, I'm feeling pretty safe and confident (and I didn't have to pay EA which is the only real reason I'm waiting).

To gain an insight into their opinions and an inkling about what THEY experienced. For example, I can only vaguely comprehened the effect living in Georgian London might have had on Hogarths artistic works. I might study evidence as well as his works to gain insight onto his views. But, if I had an animus and could go there and experience living in Georgian London then I would have an immensely greater understanding and on a more relatable level about this. First hand experience does trump second hand.

Its not about knowing what happens in it. Its about making a qualative judgement about a game without having experienced it. For that you do need to have played the game. You can consider elements like structure or even segments like the ending but you can't seriously evaluate the entire game without having played it. I mean you could narrate to me what happens in Alien and I wouldn't be impressed at all. Or Lord of the Rings for example. But you would never convey the experience of a film like that and would need to experience it for yourself in order to value it.

Totalwar1402 wrote:You can consider elements like structure or even segments like the ending but you can't seriously evaluate the entire game without having played it.

And as I already pointed out I've made no comments about the game as a whole. Just the ending because that's the part people complain about. If I can find it bad with little emotional investment past the events of ME2, I can imagine pretty well the impact on people who actually played through the whole of ME3. Besides, most of this thread hasn't been about emotion its been about logical consistency.

I mean you could narrate to me what happens in Alien and I wouldn't be impressed at all.

That's because I'd suck as a narrator. We'd need to bring in the guy who does those monologues for movie trailers

And besides, a story is (ideally) engaging regardless because story is independent of format once you've moved beyond language. If you aren't impressed, that just means Alien's story isn't that good removed from its medium (possible) or the narrator wasn't very engaging.

I typically agree with Totalwar about keeping out of discussion when you haven't taken part. But LordofHats has been fairly constructive and more insightful than trolling. I think we can get back to the game at hand and our wild speculation, rather than arguing over the right to have an opinion.

Unless we've talked all our angles out of course, then go ahead and slug away.

I just beat the game and everyone had me worried about the ending with all these threads I managed to avoid. I think it's fine. I'm actually impressed they don't give you a choice in the end but your Shepard does based on this life you've lived for him. All in all: great game.

Don't worry people, there will be DLC with alternate ending in April or May.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I just beat the game and everyone had me worried about the ending with all these threads I managed to avoid. I think it's fine. I'm actually impressed they don't give you a choice in the end but your Shepard does based on this life you've lived for him. All in all: great game.

My first impression was simply the lack of an actual epilogue explaining what happened. That was my overwhelmingly main criticism of the ending that it just petered out and left you to guess what happened. Since we know that they'll be using a canon ending to continue the franchise; not addressing your Shephards choices like that wasn't on.

The ending also contradicted several established points about the Reapers and why they were doing what they were doing.

For example

*They claim to preserve organic life, but do so by gooping everyone and putting them in jars...

*They then claim this is the right thing to do and in some way different from killing organics. Remember Reapers are still machines and described as such by Jarik and the Geth. They are thus not a real solution at all to organics destroy synthetics they simply intervene when its likely that other machines might do so (Metacrom and Geth) then kill everything. Nothing really solved.It had been pretty hinted at that the Reapers only motivation was either complete machine insanity or a simple process of reproduction. In fact you have a conversation with EDI on the subject of the purpose of synthetic life. EDI suggests that if synthetics are like organic life then there only purpose is to pass on their genes through reproduction; at which Shephard points out that empathy, altruism etc also defines people. Given that the very process the reapers use involves mass genocide its hard to believe that their motives could ever have been as benign as the kid makes out. In fact the Reapers consitently talk like maniacal chaos gods means it doesn't fit. Nothing with a shred of empathy or emotion would suggest that doing what the reapers do could ever be construed as good. Indeed EDI implies that she has observed this trait in the Reapers as being only motivated by reproduction. An altruistic motive for the reapers makes no sense.

*If saving organics were their goal then why did Soveriegn offer the geth a body and Harbinger claim that he was investigating if the geth could be uploaded. If the aim was to save organic life then why were they looking at incorporating a synthetic race?

etc etc.

I could ignore that as simply bad writing/re-writing if they had just made an epilogue and not cut it short with the crew being stranded on a planet to make an Eden reference.



Also, a little tidbit on the reaper indoctrination thing (probably already mentioned), the codex entry actually says that indoctrination involves the person being manipulated by 'dream-like visions' and vivid hallucinations; which can even manifest as the victim hearing voices inside their head. Not sure if this entry was created for the third game but there was never any mention of dreams for, say Saren, it seems odd to bring it up when Shephard is also having quite demoralising dreams.

I actually find the dreams fairly straight forward. The kid who says Shepard can't help him, Kaiden/Ashley whoever died having a voice over in the second dream repeating their last words from Viremire, and I'm not entire sure but I think the third one has every party member/Character who has died calling out Shepard's name. I know I heard Mordin, Thane, and Legion in the video I watched, and there were others (Samara I thought but I couldn't tell). Legion's is the easiest to spot cause he adds commander to it, the others I had to listen for several times to guess at it.

The child (I think) is a representation of everyone Shepard couldn't save, which makes the Catalyst appearing as the child rather... what's the word I'm looking for... I don't know. Symbolic I guess but there's something more specific and I can't seem to remember the word now.

EDIT: One of my friends who is working on this ending issue with me has proposed that Shepard is starting to crack under the strain of the war with the Reapers. He cited the scene at the end of Thessia but I haven't gone and looked at that one yet.

LordofHats wrote:I actually find the dreams fairly straight forward. The kid who says Shepard can't help him, Kaiden/Ashley whoever died having a voice over in the second dream repeating their last words from Viremire, and I'm not entire sure but I think the third one has every party member/Character who has died calling out Shepard's name. I know I heard Mordin, Thane, and Legion in the video I watched, and there were others (Samara I thought but I couldn't tell). Legion's is the easiest to spot cause he adds commander to it, the others I had to listen for several times to guess at it.

The child (I think) is a representation of everyone Shepard couldn't save, which makes the Catalyst appearing as the child rather... what's the word I'm looking for... I don't know. Symbolic I guess but there's something more specific and I can't seem to remember the word now.

The thing thats going to save everyone appears as the thing which has been a symbol of Shephards melancholy and sense of impending failure? Thats not really very symbolic unless you suggest the kid was his hope 'going up in flames' and now its there bright as day.

Also, on what you said earlier about the ending DLC just clarifying what the edning already is. I'am sure Bioware said that they wanted to wait for everyone to have finished the game before they released DLC. If all they wanted was to add an epilogue and a few extra paragraphs of dialogue to the catalyst then why would they even need to wait since nothing would have changed with regards to the ending. Also, they could have simply written a memo from the writers explaining why the reapers did what they did and what there artistic reasons were for ending the game the way they did. Most writers do stuff like this deliberately to get a point across. If there worry was that we 'didn't get it' then they could have simply said 'you just didn't get the ending' and then provided an explanation.

Totalwar1402 wrote:The thing thats going to save everyone appears as the thing which has been a symbol of Shephards melancholy and sense of impending failure?

Yeah but I find the whole ending weird like that. Whenever I try to explain one part one way it turns around and doesn't work cause of something else. I wouldn't suggest the Catalyst saves everyone though XD. Mass Relay's going up and all that. The Catalyst could have just taken that form cause it would be familiar to Shepard (Contact reference ) or maybe its some symbolic statement of Shepard trying to make the right decision for everyone whose been lost? I don't know. The ending is just too damn ambiguous which I think is what Bioware wanted, an open ended ending. I think some people just find it too open ended for their liking (setting the issue of logical inconsistencies aside for the moment).

EDIT: Its a fun puzzle in a way, but also headache inducing

If there worry was that we 'didn't get it' then they could have simply said 'you just didn't get the ending' and then provided an explanation.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure that's what they're thinking. But this is a PR issue. Telling your audience "you just didn't get it" means your audience will hear "you're all idiots" and Bioware doesn't want to do that. Its not good business to insult your consumers. EDIT: Quick someone send a memo to Ubisoft and Activision! Oh wait, too late XD

Totalwar1402 wrote:*Snip*

To be fair, if it were commiting genecide of another species multiple times or saving the human race, I would make that decision thinking I was doing the right thing. Would I enjoy it? No. But I would do it.

Kill or be killed, ya know.

I liked the ending. I mean I am actually doing my second playthrough on hardcore mode. Its is really fun combat. Especially with weapon customization.

Plus all the bonuses that you unlocked after beating the game. Like this time I saved the Hanar and the Spectre agent. I still lack Kasumi and Zaeed though. (Apparently I missed some stuff too.)

I also looked at the Control (Blue) ending.



But me being the Paragon i was I went with the destruction ending. Yes I know the geth and EDI were killed but it ain't that bad. Just means the Quarains will rebuild a few of them again and the geth are restarted especially in the home systems. Colonies of the Citadel Races will be fine as they can support themselves. In my opinion I liked the endings to the point of not wanting to return the game. The only 10 games I have ever returned are...

Slarg232 wrote:

Totalwar1402 wrote:*Snip*

To be fair, if it were commiting genecide of another species multiple times or saving the human race, I would make that decision thinking I was doing the right thing. Would I enjoy it? No. But I would do it.

Kill or be killed, ya know.

But, thats the point. We all assumed the reapers had an evil Darwinian survival of the fittest ethos where they simply turn the galaxy into a giant reaper incubator. Instead, they turned the reapers into the benign protectors of organic life from the evil synthetic menace. That is a massive leap from how they are portrayed in the games. If it had been survival of the fittest then I wouldn't have had a problem. To my mind that is what the reapers think. But its what makes them evil. Its not like Shephard choosing save my people or kill the council. its more like the Illusive man having his way and slaughtering every other alien race so that humans can dominate the galaxy.


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Asherian Command wrote:I liked the ending.

.....

Why? Everything past Andersons death (a good death ) is throw away IMO.

As I pointed out earlier Asherian, the Asari actually were on the verge of being able to build functioning Mass Relays (revealed in ME2) independent of the current network. So the network could just be rebuilt. It would take a long time, and galactic trade would pretty much drop to a 0 until it happened but it would supposedly happen (and given the Asari life span the original discovers of the technology, assuming they aren't dead, could potentially rebuild the network before passing).

LordofHats wrote:[

If there worry was that we 'didn't get it' then they could have simply said 'you just didn't get the ending' and then provided an explanation.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure that's what they're thinking. But this is a PR issue. Telling your audience "you just didn't get it" means your audience will hear "you're all idiots" and Bioware doesn't want to do that. Its not good business to insult your consumers. EDIT: Quick someone send a memo to Ubisoft and Activision! Oh wait, too late XD

So, speaking hypothetically. What exactly was Bioware trying to 'get at' during that ending?

For me it seemed pretty straight-forward. The only solution to the irreconcialable differences of machines rising is to find symbiosis in which we can all understand one another. Shephard also has the option of sticking with what he promised to do stubbornly. Or he can control the reapers and avoid making a difficult choice. Beyond that, I don't see what else there is. Its quite simply embrace trans-humanism and solve all our problems in the ME universe in an instant: lack of trust, lack of understanding, fear of being surpassed, simple difference of phusical form. These all cease the second we think like and have the same bodies as synthetics and vice versa. Then we can live and act together without any violent struggle being neccesary. Beyond that, I really don't see what they were explaining that hadn't already been looked at. The geth/Quarians as well as EDI prooved that synthetics and AI could co-exist with organics even without the synthesis. That theme was already resolved by Rannoch.

The trouble is, I always thought the reapers were the ANTI-THESIS of this solution. Not its proponents since what they do to organics is so monstrous. They don't build bridges like EDI or the Geth. I assumed that Bioware would push that what they did was the way forward in terms of resolving that thematic conflict. They all had to then join forces to defeat 'the old machines' who represent the real obstacle to lasting peace between organic and synthetic. Thats how I had it down. To argue that the reapers actually wanted to stop organics and synthetics killing eachother, is; odd.

Totalwar1402 wrote:So, speaking hypothetically. What exactly was Bioware trying to 'get at' during that ending?

No idea. That's why I find the indoctrination theory so tempting but at the same time I just have a hard time buying into it. The ending is confusing as

The trouble is, I always thought the reapers were the ANTI-THESIS of this solution.

They are. While contradiction is common in the real world, in fiction I find this form of contradiction to be story breaking. Its horribly oxymoronic for an armada of synthetics to go around committing genocide to prevent genocide. I'd guess Bioware just wanted to avoid the "we're gonna destroy everything cause we roll that way" villain cliche but they're alternative is imo bad writing.

To argue that the reapers actually wanted to stop organics and synthetics killing eachother, is; odd.

Dogma's explanation makes more sense (that this is all part of Reaper self-preservation), but accepting it requires reading into the ending a lot and I'm not a huge fan over overly reading into things that aren't clear in fiction.

Well, I think I mentioned it before. I never thought the reapers had any higher motivation beyond breeding like locusts. I thought that was simply a collossal form of ego and an arrogant justifcation for their 'ascension'. They see organics as weeds. Also, they do give off the classic demonic adversery vibe. I mean they could almsot compare notes with 40k daemons in terms of dialogue.

The possibllity that these awe-inspringly powerful, repeatedly described as god-like entities might actually be psychologically flawed if not outright insane is one I found particularly appealing and kind of made sense. A machine virus gone out of control like a grey plague. Only rather than nanites they are giant tentacle machines that have had to accomodate their hunger with available food supply.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

LordofHats wrote:[quote=
Dogma's explanation makes more sense (that this is all part of Reaper self-preservation), but accepting it requires reading into the ending a lot and I'm not a huge fan over overly reading into things that aren't clear in fiction.

I assume your friend means that the repaers know that if synthetics wipe out all organic life in the bioshperes then the reapers can't reproduce. I agree that would be a very clear motivation and explain their callous attitude. It has two clear problems story-wise.

1-The catalyst basically allows you to break this process of reproduction. The reapers are guardians of organics according to the current ending; which would end the purpose of the reapers. Really, the catalyst would have tried to stop you if that were the case since you arguably place the reapers in danger by allowing the races to survive and advance in terms of technology. Never mind that he lets you blow every reaper up with alarming casualness. .

2-As i said above. It was stated in ME2 by Legion and on the collector ship that the Geth could have been uploaded to a reaper body. Thus the struggle wouldn't have mattered and the reapers could just keep to the harvesting schedule.

Totalwar1402 wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I just beat the game and everyone had me worried about the ending with all these threads I managed to avoid. I think it's fine. I'm actually impressed they don't give you a choice in the end but your Shepard does based on this life you've lived for him. All in all: great game.

My first impression was simply the lack of an actual epilogue explaining what happened. That was my overwhelmingly main criticism of the ending that it just petered out and left you to guess what happened. Since we know that they'll be using a canon ending to continue the franchise; not addressing your Shephards choices like that wasn't on.

The ending also contradicted several established points about the Reapers and why they were doing what they were doing.

For example

*They claim to preserve organic life, but do so by gooping everyone and putting them in jars...

*They then claim this is the right thing to do and in some way different from killing organics. Remember Reapers are still machines and described as such by Jarik and the Geth. They are thus not a real solution at all to organics destroy synthetics they simply intervene when its likely that other machines might do so (Metacrom and Geth) then kill everything. Nothing really solved.It had been pretty hinted at that the Reapers only motivation was either complete machine insanity or a simple process of reproduction. In fact you have a conversation with EDI on the subject of the purpose of synthetic life. EDI suggests that if synthetics are like organic life then there only purpose is to pass on their genes through reproduction; at which Shephard points out that empathy, altruism etc also defines people. Given that the very process the reapers use involves mass genocide its hard to believe that their motives could ever have been as benign as the kid makes out. In fact the Reapers consitently talk like maniacal chaos gods means it doesn't fit. Nothing with a shred of empathy or emotion would suggest that doing what the reapers do could ever be construed as good. Indeed EDI implies that she has observed this trait in the Reapers as being only motivated by reproduction. An altruistic motive for the reapers makes no sense.

*If saving organics were their goal then why did Soveriegn offer the geth a body and Harbinger claim that he was investigating if the geth could be uploaded. If the aim was to save organic life then why were they looking at incorporating a synthetic race?

etc etc.

I could ignore that as simply bad writing/re-writing if they had just made an epilogue and not cut it short with the crew being stranded on a planet to make an Eden reference.



Also, a little tidbit on the reaper indoctrination thing (probably already mentioned), the codex entry actually says that indoctrination involves the person being manipulated by 'dream-like visions' and vivid hallucinations; which can even manifest as the victim hearing voices inside their head. Not sure if this entry was created for the third game but there was never any mention of dreams for, say Saren, it seems odd to bring it up when Shephard is also having quite demoralising dreams.

I feel like i do know what happened. The Mass Effect universe as we know it is over.

The reapers preseve organic life by "pruning" it. Making sure it doesn't get out of control and destroy itself with it's own creations. You may not agree with this but that's ok you don't need too. They are the villians and they're trying to kill you. You're pretty much supposed to be offended by their reasoning.

As far as indoctrination theory. I don't really buy it but I think Bioware will adopt it because the fans demanded it and actually my main criticism of Bioware is that they actually listen to their fans too much. As far as I know Indoctrination involves a lot more subtle manipulation. If it were a dream then this version of indoctrination is like full blown Matrix style alternate reality that can be acheived in 1 minute flat. I haven't seen anything in the series like that before.

My only question is I seem to recall the last time a Mass relay exploded it destroyed an entire star system. So are all the systems with Mass relays destroyed? Like Earth and Thessia and pretty much all the galactic capitols? Obviously, that's a big deal if they are.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I feel like i do know what happened. The Mass Effect universe as we know it is over.

That doesn't make sense from a purely financial standpoint. BioWare stated they wanted to release DLC for the game. If they end the universe no matter what happens in the game, why would people pay for DLC for that universe? Hell, as the game stands right now, unless they either confirm Indoctrination is correct or plan to change the ending, I won't buy any DLC for the single player campaign because none of it will make any difference at all.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:The reapers preseve organic life by "pruning" it. Making sure it doesn't get out of control and destroy itself with it's own creations. You may not agree with this but that's ok you don't need too. They are the villians and they're trying to kill you. You're pretty much supposed to be offended by their reasoning.

I can understand why people buy this theory on the surface, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a purely logical standpoint. Logically, why would the solution to advanced civilizations destroying themselves via synthetic development be for another race of synthetics to destroy said advanced civilizations? It's like preventing a kid from burning his hand on the stove by killing the kid as soon as he's tall enough to reach it. There has to be some alterior motive behind the Reaper Cycles, and reproduction/self preservation makes the most logical sense. If their goal was preserving organic life, you would think they would only destroy species that became destructive. More likely they are killing off advanced species that could possibly challenge them and using the harvested material to replenish their numbers in the process.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:As far as indoctrination theory. I don't really buy it but I think Bioware will adopt it because the fans demanded it and actually my main criticism of Bioware is that they actually listen to their fans too much. As far as I know Indoctrination involves a lot more subtle manipulation. If it were a dream then this version of indoctrination is like full blown Matrix style alternate reality that can be acheived in 1 minute flat. I haven't seen anything in the series like that before.

Indoctrination can take two forms. Per the Codex entry, it can be slow, subtle manipulation that preserves the subject until his goals are complete (The Illusive Man, Saren), or fast domination that leaves the body nothing more than a mindless husk doing the bidding of the Reapers (Husks, Marauders, Etc...). The dreams experienced by Shepard, and the humming noises James speaks about are clear indicators of slow Indoctrination attempts in order to make Shepard useful over a long period of time. The hallucination at the end is a swift means of Indoctrination that was meant to prevent Shepard from achieving his goals. Either it works, and Shepard dies or is Husked, or it doesn't work and Shepard survives, hence the choices, and the fact that Shepard only survives if you choose the seemingly Renegade option that he has been trying to achieve all along.

Also, what's wrong with listening to your fans? Taking fan criticism into account in the right way can lead to better products.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:My only question is I seem to recall the last time a Mass relay exploded it destroyed an entire star system. So are all the systems with Mass relays destroyed? Like Earth and Thessia and pretty much all the galactic capitols? Obviously, that's a big deal if they are.

Another reason that the endings don't make much sense. The Relays are destroyed in all 3 options, which means a cataclysmic wave of energy akin to a supernova obliterates everything in every major system. Every major planet is wiped clean of life, and the massive fleet of ships you assembled at Earth is annihilated, reducing the military strength of anything surviving the event in shambles. Most races are wiped out completely and it might be even MORE destructive to the galaxy than having the Reapers achieve their goals. But, if the ending is a hallucination and that doesn't actually happen, then everything Shepard worked for can actually be achieved by fighting off the Reapers and breaking the cycle in a way that doesn't murder everything everywhere.

BioWare has a couple of options concerning this problem:

1-This was their plan all along and the endings are literal. The wave of energy destroyed everything advanced and the galaxy was rebooted. No Reapers, no advanced civilizations, nothing.
2-The Indoctrination Theory is correct so nothing needs to be done. There is no destruction of the relays so they don't need to explain it further.
3-They need to invent some reason why the Mass Relays DON'T wipe everything out if they intend for the current galactic races to re-build.

The first one seems odd because we clearly see that SOME people survived. Joker was in the middle of a Relay jump (which in and of itself was strange for many many reasons....why would a relay jump take any measurable amount of time? It's supposed to be near instantaneous) and so the Normandy crew was stranded on some backwater planet. Shepard survives if you do the ending right which makes no sense because Earth should be destroyed in that scenario, and the Stargazer at the end suggests Humanity at the very least survives past the endgame. The second and third options are most likely one way or the other. BioWare might have been well past the writing stage when they released Arrival and didn't realize the conflict until it was too late, then hoped noone would notice. In that case they can come up with some narrative BS to explain it away.......Either that or Indoctrination is correct and there's no problem.

Aldarionn wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I feel like i do know what happened. The Mass Effect universe as we know it is over.

That doesn't make sense from a purely financial standpoint. BioWare stated they wanted to release DLC for the game. If they end the universe no matter what happens in the game, why would people pay for DLC for that universe? Hell, as the game stands right now, unless they either confirm Indoctrination is correct or plan to change the ending, I won't buy any DLC for the single player campaign because none of it will make any difference at all.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:The reapers preseve organic life by "pruning" it. Making sure it doesn't get out of control and destroy itself with it's own creations. You may not agree with this but that's ok you don't need too. They are the villians and they're trying to kill you. You're pretty much supposed to be offended by their reasoning.

I can understand why people buy this theory on the surface, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a purely logical standpoint. Logically, why would the solution to advanced civilizations destroying themselves via synthetic development be for another race of synthetics to destroy said advanced civilizations? It's like preventing a kid from burning his hand on the stove by killing the kid as soon as he's tall enough to reach it. There has to be some alterior motive behind the Reaper Cycles, and reproduction/self preservation makes the most logical sense. If their goal was preserving organic life, you would think they would only destroy species that became destructive. More likely they are killing off advanced species that could possibly challenge them and using the harvested material to replenish their numbers in the process.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:As far as indoctrination theory. I don't really buy it but I think Bioware will adopt it because the fans demanded it and actually my main criticism of Bioware is that they actually listen to their fans too much. As far as I know Indoctrination involves a lot more subtle manipulation. If it were a dream then this version of indoctrination is like full blown Matrix style alternate reality that can be acheived in 1 minute flat. I haven't seen anything in the series like that before.

Indoctrination can take two forms. Per the Codex entry, it can be slow, subtle manipulation that preserves the subject until his goals are complete (The Illusive Man, Saren), or fast domination that leaves the body nothing more than a mindless husk doing the bidding of the Reapers (Husks, Marauders, Etc...). The dreams experienced by Shepard, and the humming noises James speaks about are clear indicators of slow Indoctrination attempts in order to make Shepard useful over a long period of time. The hallucination at the end is a swift means of Indoctrination that was meant to prevent Shepard from achieving his goals. Either it works, and Shepard dies or is Husked, or it doesn't work and Shepard survives, hence the choices, and the fact that Shepard only survives if you choose the seemingly Renegade option that he has been trying to achieve all along.

Also, what's wrong with listening to your fans? Taking fan criticism into account in the right way can lead to better products.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:My only question is I seem to recall the last time a Mass relay exploded it destroyed an entire star system. So are all the systems with Mass relays destroyed? Like Earth and Thessia and pretty much all the galactic capitols? Obviously, that's a big deal if they are.

Another reason that the endings don't make much sense. The Relays are destroyed in all 3 options, which means a cataclysmic wave of energy akin to a supernova obliterates everything in every major system. Every major planet is wiped clean of life, and the massive fleet of ships you assembled at Earth is annihilated, reducing the military strength of anything surviving the event in shambles. Most races are wiped out completely and it might be even MORE destructive to the galaxy than having the Reapers achieve their goals. But, if the ending is a hallucination and that doesn't actually happen, then everything Shepard worked for can actually be achieved by fighting off the Reapers and breaking the cycle in a way that doesn't murder everything everywhere.

BioWare has a couple of options concerning this problem:

1-This was their plan all along and the endings are literal. The wave of energy destroyed everything advanced and the galaxy was rebooted. No Reapers, no advanced civilizations, nothing.
2-The Indoctrination Theory is correct so nothing needs to be done. There is no destruction of the relays so they don't need to explain it further.
3-They need to invent some reason why the Mass Relays DON'T wipe everything out if they intend for the current galactic races to re-build.

The first one seems odd because we clearly see that SOME people survived. Joker was in the middle of a Relay jump (which in and of itself was strange for many many reasons....why would a relay jump take any measurable amount of time? It's supposed to be near instantaneous) and so the Normandy crew was stranded on some backwater planet. Shepard survives if you do the ending right which makes no sense because Earth should be destroyed in that scenario, and the Stargazer at the end suggests Humanity at the very least survives past the endgame. The second and third options are most likely one way or the other. BioWare might have been well past the writing stage when they released Arrival and didn't realize the conflict until it was too late, then hoped noone would notice. In that case they can come up with some narrative BS to explain it away.......Either that or Indoctrination is correct and there's no problem.

When you beat it you come back out pre-final battle. All DLC will take place before the final battle. I'd bet the first significant DLC will be the battle of Omega. That is a major unresolved storyline.

Yes, I also think the Reapers are protecting themselves/reproducing too. It's all win-win as far as they're concerned.

Uh, there is a hum in the shuttle bay. Don't you hear it? It's really annoying.
In the turbo boosted indoctrination there's no need for trickery. You just have full control. Like TIM did in the final scene. Your almost husk like. You just control the person they are not in the matrix or anything like that.

Art isn't a democracy. You make your choices and then that's it. Otherwise I'd start a take back midle earth campaign and really rework the The Lord of The Rings. There's a lot I'd like to cut there.

Not every system has a relay as you can see by flying around in the Normandy. Just all the important ones.... As I said it's effectively the end of the ME universe, and I'm sad to see it go but I'm also ok with that. It's not a happy-hollwood ending it seems that everyone wants.
It certainly is a definative one though.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:[


The reapers preseve organic life by "pruning" it. Making sure it doesn't get out of control and destroy itself with it's own creations. You may not agree with this but that's ok you don't need too. They are the villians and they're trying to kill you. You're pretty much supposed to be offended by their reasoning.

And the Chaos gods are really just there to ensure that a single diety like the Emperor can never enslave all life and to protect mortal free will.

Yeah.

Right, thats what they're saying. That is a huge leap in theme from what they were driving with. They expect me to relate and forgive these things for what they did. The very concept of me reasoning with the reapers given their actions makes no sense. Something that is willing to do that to organic civilizations could NEVER, short of insanity, believe that it was doing the right thing by preventing a hypothetical robot apocalypse. There are a million other solutions that might have been concieved of, including syntheis given the technology in the reapers possesion. To go with the 'kill them past a certain height to stop them shooting themselves' isn't something a benovolent AI would think up of since it invalidates any human concern you might have for individual welfare and the like. The closest analogue would be the AI off I. ROBOT and that robot did so because it was shackled to cold unfeeling logic. Yet in the end the reaper kid is portrayed as offering 'salvation through destruction!'.

Totalwar1402 wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:[


The reapers preseve organic life by "pruning" it. Making sure it doesn't get out of control and destroy itself with it's own creations. You may not agree with this but that's ok you don't need too. They are the villians and they're trying to kill you. You're pretty much supposed to be offended by their reasoning.

And the Chaos gods are really just there to ensure that a single diety like the Emperor can never enslave all life and to protect mortal free will.

Yeah.

Right, thats what they're saying. That is a huge leap in theme from what they were driving with. They expect me to relate and forgive these things for what they did. The very concept of me reasoning with the reapers given their actions makes no sense. Something that is willing to do that to organic civilizations could NEVER, short of insanity, believe that it was doing the right thing by preventing a hypothetical robot apocalypse. There are a million other solutions that might have been concieved of, including syntheis given the technology in the reapers possesion. To go with the 'kill them past a certain height to stop them shooting themselves' isn't something a benovolent AI would think up of since it invalidates any human concern you might have for individual welfare and the like. The closest analogue would be the AI off I. ROBOT and that robot did so because it was shackled to cold unfeeling logic. Yet in the end the reaper kid is portrayed as offering 'salvation through destruction!'.

It would seem you don't care for the Reapers and their ways. I think that most people in the ME universe would agree with you.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:[ It's not a happy-hollwood ending it seems that everyone wants.

...

This isn't 40k. You don't make a massively depressing game where it emphasises 'you are doomed!' and then have it end with the main character dying completely alone and half the galaxy being killed by relay explosions. That is a terrible way to end a series. Also, Bioware has set the trilogy up as analogue to a space opera Hollywood blockbuster; how can you not expect the ending to be a happy one? Being bittersweet isn't endearing in this context. The series was never grimdark enough to warrent such a depressing ending. Really, I was expecting a Return of the Jedi ending before the game came out.

I actually think the structure of how endings are unlocked disproves the indoctrination theory (I actually did not know this information prior to an hour ago).

If your War Assests are below 1,750, you can't make a choice at the end of the game. The choice is made automatically by shepard (control or destroy) based on your decision at the end of ME2. That's actually kind of odd, cause the ME2 paragon choice results in the Renegade ending while the ME2 Renegade choice results in the Paragon ending? At the same time no Renegade or Paragon value is directly attributed to the ME3 endings, its just assumed by fans (unless I'm forgetting something).

The Synthesis choice is only available if your War Assets are at least 2,500.

I see no reason for Bioware to structure the ending this way if its all just a dream.

Yet in the end the reaper kid is portrayed as offering 'salvation through destruction!'.

Its not really an odd concept on its face. The Christian Apocalypse has some pretty rough gak in it. Pretty much everyone dies before JC comes back and makes it all okay with his savior-i-ness. The idea of change going hand in hand with the destruction of the old is an ancient cultural concept.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:[quote
It would seem you don't care for the Reapers and their ways. I think that most people in the ME universe would agree with you.

You don't actually think the cuttlefish were justified in what they were doing? What gave them the right to make these decisions? Why are they so certain organics can't get along with synthetics when both the geth and EDI can get along.

In fact, they actually could have simply uploaded the reaper code which turned legion from a consenus of AI's into a complete personality (which EDI states is what makes an AI able to prevent its own logic systems from 'devalueing the lives of those around them'). Why couldn't the reapers JUST. DO. THAT. TO. EVERY. SYNTHETIC. Its their own tech and it solves the issue instantly without resorting to super-genocide. All that god-like intelligence and they never considered telling the machines and humans to get along? That is too much of a leap for me to take. If the reapers really are having that motivation then they're just stupid. So no I don't care for the cuttlefishes opinion.

It's been a week now since I've beaten the game and I still can't wrap my head around how stupid the ending was. I don't want Bioware to be forced by their fans to change it, but I have trouble accepting that this is really the ending they had in mind from the start. I just wish we would get a definitv statement from the writers what exactly their intentions were with the current endings, but the way the industry works we'll never hear it.

The problem with the ending is that the bulk of the series was spent building up the Reapers as *the* threat, only for the writers to introduce some god-being controlling things behind the scenes in the end.

The Reapers are supposed to be these dark, galaxy-harvesting machines of death that the writers, previously, took great pains to make the player fear and hate, and suddenly this god-thing pops out of nowhere in the end and it turns out the Reapers are effectively his pawn? That's just cheap writing.

LordofHats wrote:I actually think the structure of how endings are unlocked disproves the indoctrination theory (I actually did not know this information prior to an hour ago).

If your War Assests are below 1,750, you can't make a choice at the end of the game. The choice is made automatically by shepard (control or destroy) based on your decision at the end of ME2. That's actually kind of odd, cause the ME2 paragon choice results in the Renegade ending while the ME2 Renegade choice results in the Paragon ending? At the same time no Renegade or Paragon value is directly attributed to the ME3 endings, its just assumed by fans (unless I'm forgetting something).

The Synthesis choice is only available if your War Assets are at least 2,500.

I see no reason for Bioware to structure the ending this way if its all just a dream.

Yet in the end the reaper kid is portrayed as offering 'salvation through destruction!'.

Its not really an odd concept on its face. The Christian Apocalypse has some pretty rough gak in it. Pretty much everyone dies before JC comes back and makes it all okay with his savior-i-ness. The idea of change going hand in hand with the destruction of the old is an ancient cultural concept.

You know theres a reason the Enlightenment and Voltaire won m8.

Neither a rational nor compassionate being would ever commit wanton slaughter of the sort the reapers do. In fact I think Voltaire used that to disprove that particular part of the bible. Also, given that the reapers repeatedly made their thralls think of them as gods and hold them in awe don't you think the reaper would portray itself as a Christ like figure?

You really are determined to crush my hopes aren't you?


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Ronin-Sage wrote:The problem with the ending is that the bulk of the series was spent building up the Reapers as *the* threat, only for the writers to introduce some god-being controlling things behind the scenes in the end.

The Reapers are supposed to be these dark, galaxy-harvesting machines of death that the writers, previously, took great pains to make the player fear and hate, and suddenly this god-thing pops out of nowhere in the end and it turns out the Reapers are effectively his pawn? That's just cheap writing.

ps this man is right on every count http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/6/

You really are determined to crush my hopes aren't you?

Yes The sooner you lose that silly thing called hope the sooner you'll realize THERE IS NONE!

jk

At the end of the day its either gonna be true or untrue and only Bioware really knows. This is just me trying to read between all the lines and figure out the puzzle XD

LordofHats wrote:I actually think the structure of how endings are unlocked disproves the indoctrination theory (I actually did not know this information prior to an hour ago).

If your War Assests are below 1,750, you can't make a choice at the end of the game. The choice is made automatically by shepard (control or destroy) based on your decision at the end of ME2. That's actually kind of odd, cause the ME2 paragon choice results in the Renegade ending while the ME2 Renegade choice results in the Paragon ending? At the same time no Renegade or Paragon value is directly attributed to the ME3 endings, its just assumed by fans (unless I'm forgetting something).

The Synthesis choice is only available if your War Assets are at least 2,500.

I see no reason for Bioware to structure the ending this way if its all just a dream.

Yet in the end the reaper kid is portrayed as offering 'salvation through destruction!'.

Its not really an odd concept on its face. The Christian Apocalypse has some pretty rough gak in it. Pretty much everyone dies before JC comes back and makes it all okay with his savior-i-ness. The idea of change going hand in hand with the destruction of the old is an ancient cultural concept.

That directly helps the case of the indoctrination theory, actually. The bolded part, obviously.

Karon wrote:That directly helps the case of the indoctrination theory, actually. The bolded part, obviously.

That's a lot of extra work to do (and unnecessary cause getting War Assets that low is something you have to go out of your way to achieve)

And I'm still unclear on if the endings actually have in game defined moralities. Players as far as I know are just assuming destroy is Renegade because blowing up everything (including the allied fleet and EDI) doesn't seem very paragon. At the same time, Control is what Illusive Man was trying to do, and he certainly wasn't a paragon-esque character. It might also explain why the scene with Shepard in the rubble only appears for the Destroy ending (good guys always win?).

LordofHats wrote:

Karon wrote:That directly helps the case of the indoctrination theory, actually. The bolded part, obviously.

That's a lot of extra work to do (and unnecessary cause getting War Assets that low is something you have to go out of your way to achieve)

And I'm still unclear on if the endings actually have in game defined moralities. Players as far as I know are just assuming destroy is Renegade because blowing up everything (including the allied fleet and EDI) doesn't seem very paragon. At the same time, Control is what Illusive Man was trying to do, and he certainly wasn't a paragon-esque character. It might also explain why the scene with Shepard in the rubble only appears for the Destroy ending (good guys always win?).

I recently read this review and it put into context quite well how the ending violated a lot of the themes the game had established like tolerance and such since you effectively become the stooge of the reapers with their bleak no choice inevitable suffering Grimdark view of the universe.

http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/6/

Again I want to believe the Indoctrination theory since HOW could they have delivered such a coup de grace to all of the themes they had established? Even if the reapers had just been insane jerks (which we all assumed anyway) we could at least claim that they are the antagonists to all of the values established by the series. It just seems so inconcievable for the writers to have imagined this would have been good. I mean Casey Hudson said he wanted one that encouraged speculation and mystery. But, theres no real mystery. What the kid says is very simple. It just doesn't fit at all with whats been established and is thus incredibly galling.

Well there is mystery, just a little too much mystery. I honestly think additional context would fix the ending + an epilogue.

One thing I considered but hadn't thought of while playing through the ending is that in the scene where you're blasted by Harbinger, are the party members even actually there? I assumed they were right behind me cause they usually are, but I didn't actually look (too busy watching Harby blast hapless folk ). I want to check it but that means picking back up right at the Illusive man's base and playing through all that again just to check.

EDIT: Oh, and on Thessia the Prothean VI seems to suggest that the Catalyst takes an active role in shaping galactic history, which really raises a mountain of questions about events throughout the series.

LordofHats wrote:Well there is mystery, just a little too much mystery. I honestly think additional context would fix the ending + an epilogue.

One thing I considered but hadn't thought of while playing through the ending is that in the scene where you're blasted by Harbinger, are the party members even actually there? I assumed they were right behind me cause they usually are, but I didn't actually look (too busy watching Harby blast hapless folk ). I want to check it but that means picking back up right at the Illusive man's base and playing through all that again just to check.

No there really isn't a mystery. The kid tells you what he is (super reaper AI), why hes doing what hes doing (to stop synthetics killing organics) and how you can solve this (three colours to rule them all). This isn't 2001 where there you could argue for a vast amount of imagery and symbolism conveying various artistic interpretations of meaning. This is WTF in its rawest and purest form.

Also, I mentioned earlier on about the reapers only motivation being reproduction. Well, just had a conversation with EDI where she said she wanted to change her personality on self preservation because

'The Reapers are abominations. The reapers are about nothing but self-preservation. I'am different'

I still don;t understand. Even if Bioware re-wrote the reapers surely they wouldn't have if anything reinforced the established canon on what they were about. To my mind that does seem to add to the reaper indoctrination theory since HOW could Bioware not realise they were going against what they had said two missions prior to the ending on what reapers are


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LordofHats wrote:

EDIT: Oh, and on Thessia the Prothean VI seems to suggest that the Catalyst takes an active role in shaping galactic history, which really raises a mountain of questions about events throughout the series.

No it just means Deus ex machina. God (Reaper AI) manipulates the galaxy to do what it wants, we've known that the reapers have done so with the mass relays since the first game. The catalyst simply was the tool by organics to try and provide god with more options. Since they never got to use it then the thing doesn't really shape galactic history prior to that point. The reaper god does. Thats near 40k simplicity. Like the Emperor subtly influrncing human society until he became its master so that he could become god and protect it from chaos. No real grand philosophy just a plot device.

Again, I meant what I said earlier about if they retconned the chaos gods to be part of preserving human freedom. This is too much of a jump in motives to make any kind of sense.

I chose to destroy the reapers but I still died for some reason, but I had a gakton of war assets... How do you not die?

Anyway, I hope the ending is improved. I can't have my favorite video game series ever end like that.

GalacticDefender wrote:I chose to destroy the reapers but I still died for some reason, but I had a gakton of war assets... How do you not die?

People have found there are two ways to achieve the best ending. You can get it with a military strength value of 4000 IF you successfully persuade the Invisible Man during the conversation with him at the end. There are unknown values (or a glitch) with the persuade check however as people have noticed that even with max reputation a player can fail the persuasion check.

The second method is to have a military strength of 5000. That way you can fail the persuade check on TIM and still get the ending.

Make sure you have a good Galactic Readiness as it modifies the War Assets value by the %. EDIT: I didn't really have to worry about it when I did the ending. The EMS on the save was like, 7500+ because of all the multiplayer promotions achieved between me playing and the games actual owner. We had like 1000 alone from the N7 operatives asset.

Totalwar1402 wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:[ It's not a happy-hollwood ending it seems that everyone wants.

...

This isn't 40k. You don't make a massively depressing game where it emphasises 'you are doomed!' and then have it end with the main character dying completely alone and half the galaxy being killed by relay explosions. That is a terrible way to end a series. Also, Bioware has set the trilogy up as analogue to a space opera Hollywood blockbuster; how can you not expect the ending to be a happy one? Being bittersweet isn't endearing in this context. The series was never grimdark enough to warrent such a depressing ending. Really, I was expecting a Return of the Jedi ending before the game came out.

Actually I really liked the ME universe because it was such a polar opposite from my other favorite universe: 40K. Everything was new and shiny and optimistic. Alien races working together etc. But then things started to get more grimdark in the second one. Now Ironically it's even more grimdark than 40K! At least in 40K the galaxy is only always on the verge of being destroyed, ME is totally destroyed now. It wasn't all of a sudden, it gets progressively more dark as the series went on. The 2nd game opens with the destruction of the Normandy, the death of most of its crew and Shepard. You spend the entire thing working fo rthe most evil terrorist group in the galaxy for god's sake.
40K is a setting and ME is a story with a beggining, middle and end and there's nothing wrong with it. It's a testament to how well a universe they built that so many feel sad or outraged that it was destroyed.


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Totalwar1402 wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:[quote
It would seem you don't care for the Reapers and their ways. I think that most people in the ME universe would agree with you.

You don't actually think the cuttlefish were justified in what they were doing? What gave them the right to make these decisions? Why are they so certain organics can't get along with synthetics when both the geth and EDI can get along.

In fact, they actually could have simply uploaded the reaper code which turned legion from a consenus of AI's into a complete personality (which EDI states is what makes an AI able to prevent its own logic systems from 'devalueing the lives of those around them'). Why couldn't the reapers JUST. DO. THAT. TO. EVERY. SYNTHETIC. Its their own tech and it solves the issue instantly without resorting to super-genocide. All that god-like intelligence and they never considered telling the machines and humans to get along? That is too much of a leap for me to take. If the reapers really are having that motivation then they're just stupid. So no I don't care for the cuttlefishes opinion.

No, I don't agree with the Reapers. You're not supposed to agree with them, they're the villians.

Actually, I am confused by the ending outrage sweeping the internet. Perhaps they're right about organic life being too chaotic......and they do only target internet capable civilizations....ok, maybe they're on to something. Anybody else hear that hum?


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Ronin-Sage wrote:The problem with the ending is that the bulk of the series was spent building up the Reapers as *the* threat, only for the writers to introduce some god-being controlling things behind the scenes in the end.

The Reapers are supposed to be these dark, galaxy-harvesting machines of death that the writers, previously, took great pains to make the player fear and hate, and suddenly this god-thing pops out of nowhere in the end and it turns out the Reapers are effectively his pawn? That's just cheap writing.

Earlier in the game it's mentioned that the Reapers take orders from some one. Almost every race has a top dog that calls the shots. Most civilizations do. Why should the reapers be any different?

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Totalwar1402 wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:[ It's not a happy-hollwood ending it seems that everyone wants.

...

This isn't 40k. You don't make a massively depressing game where it emphasises 'you are doomed!' and then have it end with the main character dying completely alone and half the galaxy being killed by relay explosions. That is a terrible way to end a series. Also, Bioware has set the trilogy up as analogue to a space opera Hollywood blockbuster; how can you not expect the ending to be a happy one? Being bittersweet isn't endearing in this context. The series was never grimdark enough to warrent such a depressing ending. Really, I was expecting a Return of the Jedi ending before the game came out.

Actually I really liked the ME universe because it was such a polar opposite from my other favorite universe: 40K. Everything was new and shiny and optimistic. Alien races working together etc. But then things started to get more grimdark in the second one. Now Ironically it's even more grimdark than 40K! At least in 40K the galaxy is only always on the verge of being destroyed, ME is totally destroyed now. It wasn't all of a sudden, it gets progressively more dark as the series went on. The 2nd game opens with the destruction of the Normandy, the death of most of its crew and Shepard. You spend the entire thing working fo rthe most evil terrorist group in the galaxy for god's sake.
40K is a setting and ME is a story with a beggining, middle and end and there's nothing wrong with it. It's a testament to how well a universe they built that so many feel sad or outraged that it was destroyed.


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Totalwar1402 wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:[quote
It would seem you don't care for the Reapers and their ways. I think that most people in the ME universe would agree with you.

You don't actually think the cuttlefish were justified in what they were doing? What gave them the right to make these decisions? Why are they so certain organics can't get along with synthetics when both the geth and EDI can get along.

In fact, they actually could have simply uploaded the reaper code which turned legion from a consenus of AI's into a complete personality (which EDI states is what makes an AI able to prevent its own logic systems from 'devalueing the lives of those around them'). Why couldn't the reapers JUST. DO. THAT. TO. EVERY. SYNTHETIC. Its their own tech and it solves the issue instantly without resorting to super-genocide. All that god-like intelligence and they never considered telling the machines and humans to get along? That is too much of a leap for me to take. If the reapers really are having that motivation then they're just stupid. So no I don't care for the cuttlefishes opinion.

No, I don't agree with the Reapers. You're not supposed to agree with them, they're the villians.

Actually, I am confused by the ending outrage sweeping the internet. Perhaps they're right about organic life being too chaotic......and they do only target internet capable civilizations....ok, maybe they're on to something. Anybody else hear that hum?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ronin-Sage wrote:The problem with the ending is that the bulk of the series was spent building up the Reapers as *the* threat, only for the writers to introduce some god-being controlling things behind the scenes in the end.

The Reapers are supposed to be these dark, galaxy-harvesting machines of death that the writers, previously, took great pains to make the player fear and hate, and suddenly this god-thing pops out of nowhere in the end and it turns out the Reapers are effectively his pawn? That's just cheap writing.

Earlier in the game it's mentioned that the Reapers take orders from some one. Almost every race has a top dog that calls the shots. Most civilizations do. Why should the reapers be any different?

1-So I don't actually deserve to win at the end for all my hard work? Or even at least see my characters reaction to my sheps death?

2-No, they MAKE Shephard agree with the reapers at the end of this game. No ifs or buts. He doesn't sit down with the kid and have a discussion about free will, altruism and his own experiences with synthetics and organics. Instead the kid tells him where to go since we're all destined to annialate eachother so the only way to solve it is to meld human and organic. Despite EDI and the Geth disproving the reapers assertion Shephard completely agrees unless he has an Asura's Wrath moment and blows them up. Coz, you know, in the grim darkness of the 3rd millenium there is only war since the machine will rise!!!

3-Yes they have a leader/master director. Up until game three we assumed it was Harbinger. The problem is that the game forces you to agree philosphically with these chaos gods. The thing is insane and is being completely unreasonable. You should have been able to talk the kid out of its own stupidity. You do not kill organics to save organics when YOUR OWN CODE makes you smart enough to prevent you killing organics. The things motive makes no sense. The fact that you HAVE to agree with him and his Darwinian view of the Universe (when you have spent three games disprooving that view) makes no sense. The game puts me in a position where I'am expected to be tolerant of the reapers and forgive them of what they have done completely out of the blue considering they were established as the pinnacle of evil and anti-thesis of what ME verse is about.

Again, I want to think that I'am thinknig about this wrong and that Shephard can't tell Harbinger where to go sinc ehe's being indoctrinated unless he can break the games hold. Shephard did say to the Illusive Man, 'You've gotten too close to the enemy. You're starting to think like they do.' which is what the game forces you to do in the end. Either this is indoctrination and you're supposed to think 'wait a minute' or its terrible writing and Bioware are going to mkae fools out of themselves trying to justify it.

So you're saying that the ending when you blow up the Reapers is justifying them?

I don't really get what you're saying. I think by blowing them up you aren't agreeing with them. All the other options force you to agree with them.

Chemical Cutthroat wrote:So you're saying that the ending when you blow up the Reapers is justifying them?

I don't really get what you're saying. I think by blowing them up you aren't agreeing with them. All the other options force you to agree with them.

Yes, that's the point of this whole argument. If you choose anything but destroy, you are agreeing with them. You have no option to not destroy synthetics and persuade the Reapers to break the cycle. You can agree and choose control, you can disagree and choose destruction, or you can waffle on the choice and choose synthesis which is effectively the same as agreeing in the end. You are given no option to do anything but those three things, which is the impetus behind this argument.

Ah. Well that makes more sense when you say it like that.

It just seemed like something else was being stabbed at, but I thought I wasn't seeing it. Nope, just the same argument I've heard forty times with slight rewording.

Is there really anything left to discuss? Bioware is gonna do what Bioware is gonna do. I don't 'like' the ending, but all I can really do is sit and wait for DLC.

And read forum posts from people waaaay more motivated about discussion than I am it seems. At least it's an interesting read from ya'll when it's not flaming.

I told my brother about the ending and he said the Reapers sound like the Shadows from Babylon 5. They to destroy advance civilations whenever they become too powerful. But without the whole genocide to prevent genocide idea.

Totalwar1402 wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Totalwar1402 wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:[ It's not a happy-hollwood ending it seems that everyone wants.

...

This isn't 40k. You don't make a massively depressing game where it emphasises 'you are doomed!' and then have it end with the main character dying completely alone and half the galaxy being killed by relay explosions. That is a terrible way to end a series. Also, Bioware has set the trilogy up as analogue to a space opera Hollywood blockbuster; how can you not expect the ending to be a happy one? Being bittersweet isn't endearing in this context. The series was never grimdark enough to warrent such a depressing ending. Really, I was expecting a Return of the Jedi ending before the game came out.

Actually I really liked the ME universe because it was such a polar opposite from my other favorite universe: 40K. Everything was new and shiny and optimistic. Alien races working together etc. But then things started to get more grimdark in the second one. Now Ironically it's even more grimdark than 40K! At least in 40K the galaxy is only always on the verge of being destroyed, ME is totally destroyed now. It wasn't all of a sudden, it gets progressively more dark as the series went on. The 2nd game opens with the destruction of the Normandy, the death of most of its crew and Shepard. You spend the entire thing working fo rthe most evil terrorist group in the galaxy for god's sake.
40K is a setting and ME is a story with a beggining, middle and end and there's nothing wrong with it. It's a testament to how well a universe they built that so many feel sad or outraged that it was destroyed.


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Totalwar1402 wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:[quote
It would seem you don't care for the Reapers and their ways. I think that most people in the ME universe would agree with you.

You don't actually think the cuttlefish were justified in what they were doing? What gave them the right to make these decisions? Why are they so certain organics can't get along with synthetics when both the geth and EDI can get along.

In fact, they actually could have simply uploaded the reaper code which turned legion from a consenus of AI's into a complete personality (which EDI states is what makes an AI able to prevent its own logic systems from 'devalueing the lives of those around them'). Why couldn't the reapers JUST. DO. THAT. TO. EVERY. SYNTHETIC. Its their own tech and it solves the issue instantly without resorting to super-genocide. All that god-like intelligence and they never considered telling the machines and humans to get along? That is too much of a leap for me to take. If the reapers really are having that motivation then they're just stupid. So no I don't care for the cuttlefishes opinion.

No, I don't agree with the Reapers. You're not supposed to agree with them, they're the villians.

Actually, I am confused by the ending outrage sweeping the internet. Perhaps they're right about organic life being too chaotic......and they do only target internet capable civilizations....ok, maybe they're on to something. Anybody else hear that hum?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ronin-Sage wrote:The problem with the ending is that the bulk of the series was spent building up the Reapers as *the* threat, only for the writers to introduce some god-being controlling things behind the scenes in the end.

The Reapers are supposed to be these dark, galaxy-harvesting machines of death that the writers, previously, took great pains to make the player fear and hate, and suddenly this god-thing pops out of nowhere in the end and it turns out the Reapers are effectively his pawn? That's just cheap writing.

Earlier in the game it's mentioned that the Reapers take orders from some one. Almost every race has a top dog that calls the shots. Most civilizations do. Why should the reapers be any different?

1-So I don't actually deserve to win at the end for all my hard work? Or even at least see my characters reaction to my sheps death?

2-No, they MAKE Shephard agree with the reapers at the end of this game. No ifs or buts. He doesn't sit down with the kid and have a discussion about free will, altruism and his own experiences with synthetics and organics. Instead the kid tells him where to go since we're all destined to annialate eachother so the only way to solve it is to meld human and organic. Despite EDI and the Geth disproving the reapers assertion Shephard completely agrees unless he has an Asura's Wrath moment and blows them up. Coz, you know, in the grim darkness of the 3rd millenium there is only war since the machine will rise!!!

3-Yes they have a leader/master director. Up until game three we assumed it was Harbinger. The problem is that the game forces you to agree philosphically with these chaos gods. The thing is insane and is being completely unreasonable. You should have been able to talk the kid out of its own stupidity. You do not kill organics to save organics when YOUR OWN CODE makes you smart enough to prevent you killing organics. The things motive makes no sense. The fact that you HAVE to agree with him and his Darwinian view of the Universe (when you have spent three games disprooving that view) makes no sense. The game puts me in a position where I'am expected to be tolerant of the reapers and forgive them of what they have done completely out of the blue considering they were established as the pinnacle of evil and anti-thesis of what ME verse is about.

Again, I want to think that I'am thinknig about this wrong and that Shephard can't tell Harbinger where to go sinc ehe's being indoctrinated unless he can break the games hold. Shephard did say to the Illusive Man, 'You've gotten too close to the enemy. You're starting to think like they do.' which is what the game forces you to do in the end. Either this is indoctrination and you're supposed to think 'wait a minute' or its terrible writing and Bioware are going to mkae fools out of themselves trying to justify it.

I'd say no matter what you don't agree with the Reapers. Either you become their new master, you destroy them or you bring bring about peace through synthesis. No matter what the 50,000 year cycle of "house cleaning" is stopped. That was your objective all along.


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Anung Un Rama wrote:I told my brother about the ending and he said the Reapers sound like the Shadows from Babylon 5. They to destroy advance civilations whenever they become too powerful. But without the whole genocide to prevent genocide idea.

A little bit. They also foster as much conflict as they can.

Chemical Cutthroat wrote:Ah. Well that makes more sense when you say it like that.

It just seemed like something else was being stabbed at, but I thought I wasn't seeing it. Nope, just the same argument I've heard forty times with slight rewording.

Is there really anything left to discuss? Bioware is gonna do what Bioware is gonna do. I don't 'like' the ending, but all I can really do is sit and wait for DLC.

And read forum posts from people waaaay more motivated about discussion than I am it seems. At least it's an interesting read from ya'll when it's not flaming.

You're definetly right there. Waitings just killing me.

The Gamestop review I read described much better than I can about the specific themes that the game jetisoned in the end by you agreeing with the reapers. This is what makes you agreeing with the reapers far more inexplicable in the context of what ME was about.

I also brought up the reaper code and conversations with EDI since it seemed to present massive plot holes. If the reapers could make code that allows AI to become individuals that can interact normally without going psycho then why couldn't they just make a galactic virus that would do that or guide organics and synthetics to get along.

At least I have the MP to keep me busy. It has zero interaction, but it's fun to make up scenarios and stuff in my head while I'm playing.

Since Resh the Turian could not exist in the Single Player game, the badass Sentinel finally gets to take the stage in multiplayer!

*twiddles thumbs* ...yep... is it April yet? I might not even log onto the Internet on the 1st. There is going to be so much trolling people might explode. I really really hope someone at Bioware doesn't do something that they'll regret on that fated day.

Chemical Cutthroat wrote:At least I have the MP to keep me busy. It has zero interaction, but it's fun to make up scenarios and stuff in my head while I'm playing.

Since Resh the Turian could not exist in the Single Player game, the badass Sentinel finally gets to take the stage in multiplayer!

*twiddles thumbs* ...yep... is it April yet? I might not even log onto the Internet on the 1st. There is going to be so much trolling people might explode. I really really hope someone at Bioware doesn't do something that they'll regret on that fated day.

What's happening April Fools' day?

Horrible terrible things that are the stuff a child's nightmares are made of.

LordofHats wrote:Horrible terrible things that are the stuff a child's nightmares are made of.

You know, I think I'll base a character in my Dark Eldar fanfic on you...

LordofHats wrote:Horrible terrible things that are the stuff a child's nightmares are made of.

.....ok. Anything Mass Effect related though?

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

LordofHats wrote:Horrible terrible things that are the stuff a child's nightmares are made of.

.....ok. Anything Mass Effect related though?

I don't think BioWare proper will do anything; but the fanbase will likely go nuts with fake links to material made by people looking to shaft those who expect informative postings.

Totalwar1402 wrote:You know, I think I'll base a character in my Dark Eldar fanfic on you...

Not sure if I should be proud or deeply and resoundingly disturbed

.....ok. Anything Mass Effect related though?

Wouldn't be shocked if they did another multi-player event for it. I vote for painting all enemies pink and that when they die they explode into confetti

Kanluwen wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

LordofHats wrote:Horrible terrible things that are the stuff a child's nightmares are made of.

.....ok. Anything Mass Effect related though?

I don't think BioWare proper will do anything; but the fanbase will likely go nuts with fake links to material made by people looking to shaft those who expect informative postings.

Ok, I guess the internets is up to something. Sorry, if I missed it but have you chimed in on the Mass-Effect-Ending-Controversy-of-Doom yet Kanluwen? What were your thoughts?

*shrug*

It wasn't a dealbreaker for me. With how BioWare did ME2, I figured they would end up having DLC to finish it off.

Is this ending-changing DLC totally confirmed by Bioware? I thought it was just an IGN rumor.

LordofHats wrote:

Totalwar1402 wrote:You know, I think I'll base a character in my Dark Eldar fanfic on you...

Not sure if I should be proud or deeply and resoundingly disturbed

...

That was a joke.

Clever total clever

@Kamikazi it is confirmed they're doing something with it. We don't know exactly what yet.

What LordofHats said.

It's "confirmed" in the sense that they're going to do SOMETHING with it. On my own part, it was an assumption based upon looking at Mass Effect 2's "ending" being extended through things like Lair of the Shadow Broker and The Arrival.

That's a little different. We knew ME2 wasn't the end. ME3: galaxy got blown up.

They say they'll tell us more in April and I'm sure someone will throw a thread up with whatever we learn.

LordofHats wrote:They say they'll tell us more in April and I'm sure someone will throw a thread up with whatever we learn.

And RAEG! about it.

*cough*

Sorry. I actually am holding onto hope on this one... more MP DLC would be nice, but I know they're going to do 'something'... I just don't know what.

As stated before the ending doesn't really make much sense and the indoctrination theory has a great deal of excellent points.

Still, I'd think that if the indoctrination theory is intended, I'd think that they'd launch a free DLC a month after release (which is plenty of time for many gamers to complete the game). For that matter, I'd think the DLC would've been finished beforehand and that the entire ending fiasco is nothing more of a publicity stunt.

It could be that Bioware is waiting for fan reaction and is waiting to assess what the most popular demands are before making a DLC that caters to them.

Its a very convuleted situation.

Well, as I've said before, Prestly on the BioSocial forums said that they aware of everyone's concerns and are waiting for people who bought the game to actually finish it and experience the original ending before they say anything.

It is very likely that the Indoctrination theory holds true simply because the level of incompetence and carelessness represented in the final stretch is extremely uncharacteristic for Bioware.

Like, the pistol never having to reload cannot be anything but carelessness if it was intended as the actual ending, which is something I can't believe Bioware would really do.

I would bet that at this point they are putting the finishing touches on the free ending DLC that they've been working on before release and it is just a matter of days at this point.

Like, the pistol never having to reload cannot be anything but carelessness if it was intended as the actual ending, which is something I can't believe Bioware would really do.

I actually think they did that because from that point on Shepard moves in uber slow mo and can't take cover (and it wouldn't be a first time a gun went infinite ammo at the end in a game). And there's only like, 5? Enemies from that point on to shoot so they probably just never turned it off. After that moment you don't need a gun anymore.

LordofHats wrote:

Like, the pistol never having to reload cannot be anything but carelessness if it was intended as the actual ending, which is something I can't believe Bioware would really do.

I actually think they did that because from that point on Shepard moves in uber slow mo and can't take cover (and it wouldn't be a first time a gun went infinite ammo at the end in a game). And there's only like, 5? Enemies from that point on to shoot so they probably just never turned it off. After that moment you don't need a gun anymore.

No, because it makes no sense to have a pistol be able to reload but never actually have to do it because it has unlimited ammo in that "clip"

That is why its clear that sequence is a "dream", and Shepard is trying to be quickly indoctrinated instead of gradually over time.

Its not clear that the sequence is anything but what it is. Endless ammo just flips on at random, probably because on higher difficulties reloading will get you killed in that section cause there's no cover even if Shepard still had the option.

Dream is one explanation for the ending (though completely unnecessary to fix it imo) but frankly all the evidence of the dream can be explained alternately. Not to mention that if we accept the ending to be a fake one, then the whole thing is really quite elaborate for a fake ending, and yet still poorly written? That just doesn't track for me.

Can you elaborate?

Just based off the four big things:

The Infinite Ammo Gun I think is a plausible hand wave for game play purposes. Especially since after the initial husks and marauders who appear there are no more enemies to shoot so they just never bothered turning it off. Infinite ammo was also used at the end of CoD4, in MW2, and in Black Ops. There are surely other games as well.

The Tentacly Indoctrination Tentacles: For those who don't remember, these also appeared for scenes with Saren in ME1, yet no one ever suggested that Shepard was indoctrinated then. Of course I honestly found the final showdown with TIM fairly straight forward. He, while under Reaper influence himself, is using the research he gathered on Sanctuary to manipulate Shepard. In this sense I think there is indoctrination going on, but Shepard fights it off in the end.

Anderson's Death and Shepard's Wound: I actually don't really get this one. We don't see Anderson's wound. We only know its somewhere in his abdomen, unless my screen failed to render something. Plus, that right arm across the stomach model has been present in every Bioware game since KotOR. Its used by Miranda, Jacob, and Thane in ME3 itself.

The Renegade Ending: This one is confusing, but the Destroy ending also happens to be the only one in which Shepards body isn't outright destroyed or his mind ripped out of it. Plausibly, he's somehow able to survive without his implants (?). The concrete objects are also hand wavable, as slabs also appeared in the Citdel both in ME1 and ME3 when it was attacked by the Geth and Cerberus respectively. EDIT: Or he somehow managed to survive atmospheric reentry, again...

Again I'm never going to say the indoctrination theory is wrong outright, cause it honestly makes a lot of sense (and rejected it means everything that hints at it was just a coincidence and its a lot of coincidence). I'm just honestly having a hard time buying into it. I think the ending is just bad (I'm surprised no one other than me noticed that the infantry born Thanix nuke is used only once in the whole damn game and apparently no body thought to bring more of them XD).

I didn't reload for the entirety of ME1. Just saying.

My only argument FOR the infinite ammo thing is simply that in EVERY other moment of the game where they don't want you to shoot something... they take the ability to shoot away.

Every time.

So why would they suddenly change that now? It doesn't quite make sense.

If they wanted the scene to be MORE tense, they should have Shepard fumbling to reload. They absolutely LOVE to give you game-overs for stupid stuff that ruin the flow of gameplay (I'm looking at YOU Reaper on Rannoch!).

Seriously, they don't tell you that the targeter for that gun is cumulative. I died so many times to that stupid laser, just because I felt I wasn't getting the timing right. Then I look at the screen and realize when I stop sighting the laser down, it pauses the targeter, rather than resetting it.

In every other videogame with a laser-targetting device you have to hold the thing down the entire time, Mass Effect is the first game to do it differently. It totally blew the moment for me when I have that brief touching moment in the APC between Shepard and Tali, and then hop out and get obliterated by a giant laser.

So yeah... another example of a radical departure from the 'usual' of Mass Effect.

Chemical Cutthroat wrote:I'm looking at YOU Reaper on Rannoch!

Thank you! I thought I was the only one. And I died about 6 times before the last shot too.

Anung Un Rama wrote:

Chemical Cutthroat wrote:I'm looking at YOU Reaper on Rannoch!

Thank you! I thought I was the only one. And I died about 6 times before the last shot too.

That part is just badly coded, I think. There are so many bugs. When it goes slow-mo at the end, half the time the laser would bug out and not let me target the Reaper. I would hold the trigger down, press it repeatedly, aim it at every spot I could see, and it wouldn't matter. I got blasted by that Reaper so many times on the final shot because it wouldn't target that I nearly threw the controller at the TV. Bah!

I didn't even touch on the biggest hickup in the indoctrination theory: If Harbinger can blast Shepard with an indoctrination beam, why would he bother when he can just kill him with a death beam?

Shepard problem. Solved.

LordofHats wrote:I didn't even touch on the biggest hickup in the indoctrination theory: If Harbinger can blast Shepard with an indoctrination beam, why would he bother when he can just kill him with a death beam?

Shepard problem. Solved.

I think the idea is, that Shepard is one of the most powerful humans alive and the Reapers are impressed by what he achieved in the last two games. They'd rather have him join them.

Its this thing called plot armor.

If you think the backlash on this ending is bad, could you imagine the backlash if Shepard just dies and we have no idea what happens?

That's honestly not a hiccup at all because you can say that pretty much for the entire game.

Why didn't that Destroyer just blow up the Normandy along with the two transport vehicles? It was clearly visible.

Because that would suck.

I think the idea is, that Shepard is one of the most powerful humans alive and the Reapers are impressed by what he achieved in the last two games. They'd rather have him join them.

Harbinger spends most of ME2 trying to kill Shepard, though for some reason that's still a mystery wants his body intact. Harbinger kind of just dropped off the face of the galaxy in ME3 XD I popped over to TVTropes ME3 page to take a look at it, and its surprising how many times people keep listing that Harbinger had no lines in the game.

Karon wrote:If you think the backlash on this ending is bad, could you imagine the backlash if Shepard just dies and we have no idea what happens?

That kind of is this ending imo XD

But that hiccup is more an argument against the indoctrination theory in a sense because Harbinger blasting Shepard with an indoctrination beam rather than just killing him is a rather big plot hole itself.

That's honestly not a hiccup at all because you can say that pretty much for the entire game.

True. Like that reaper who passes up a perfect opportunity to shoot down the ship with Normandy slapped on the side in big letters during the very beginning of the game You'd think that would be at the top of the priorities list.

Why didn't that Destroyer just blow up the Normandy along with the two transport vehicles? It was clearly visible.

Yeah this. Though honestly I think this is less plot armor and an extremely transparent play on people's emotions. That scene was about the child so we could see how desperate the situation was.

EDIT: Of course, "plot armor" is itself a case of bad writing (A minor case).

There's no super-indoctrination beam. There is like super-indoctrination but it just turns you into a zomnbie, no weird alternate reality stuff required.

According to the in-game codex, Harbinger was one the Reapers attacking earth.

Yeah but you never see him until the very end when he starts machine gunning laser beams in a spiffy light show (and he never says anything). Hence why I say, dropped off the face of the galaxy, despite seeming so much more important in ME2.

Well, I guess that's because he's leading the attack on Earth and you leave earth.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:Well, I guess that's because he's leading the attack on Earth and you leave earth.

I suppose but I don't see why this is really a worthy discussion point, just something I thought was interesting and decided to point XD EDIT: Its not really something that bothers me, but apparently the folk over at TVTropes won't let go.

Actually the thread has been off topic for some time.
I came to see what all the hate is about with the ending. I still don't honestly understand it. Not liking it is one thing but raising $80,000 to change it? I'm embarrassed by that. I've never been embarrassed to be a gamer before...and to think from one of my favorite series too. A complaint was filed with the FCC: embarrassing. The ending didn't ruin the series for me, the way the fans reacted did.

Well technically the $80,000 was for charity

But yeah, I can think of a few big fan backlashes off the top of my head and none of them are as big as this one.

LordofHats wrote:Well technically the $80,000 was for charity

But yeah, I can think of a few big fan backlashes off the top of my head and none of them are as big as this one.

That charity distanced itself from the movement. They said it wasn't right for charity money to be contigent on some video game developer changing the ending to some video game. I'd want to distance myself from broiling massive nerdrage too. So the movement declared victory and went home.

Well sure, but think of the children Canuck

I personally found the PennyArcade article on that charity drive way funnier. Insuing a conspiracy between Childs Play and a bunch of internet nerds is so wonky I'm shocked they published it. Of course Retake Mass Effect is using the charity to push their agenda (while being idiots pretending Bioware/EA actually owe something) but at the end of the day I think I can be happy $80k found its way to charity.

LordofHats wrote:Well sure, but think of the children Canuck

I personally found the PennyArcade article on that charity drive way funnier. Insuing a conspiracy between Childs Play and a bunch of internet nerds is so wonky I'm shocked they published it. Of course Retake Mass Effect is using the charity to push their agenda (while being idiots pretending Bioware/EA actually owe something) but at the end of the day I think I can be happy $80k found its way to charity.

The best part is when some people learned their money wasn't being used to change the ending of a video game but help sick children they demanded their money back. This is why I support the reapers in the efforts to destroy all humans.

You know, I'm wrestling with the idea of BioWare "owing" things to their customers. I find myself thinking on one side of the coin, then coming up with counter arguments to my own thoughts.

On the one hand, I don't think any company that produces an artistic product in any form "owes" something to their fans as far as allowing them to have input in its creation, but I do think they "owe it" to their fans to at least make good on their promises. BioWare promoted the Mass Effect universe as one where choices matter, and your actions can have a massive impact on the world, but if the endings are literal on the disk, then they clearly did not deliver that. All of the endings are 99% identical and the 1% difference is color variation and what characters step off the Normandy at the end, or the inclusion of a tiny cutscene that you don't get if you choose the wrong option. On the other side, if the Indoctrination Theory is true, then they didn't deliver on their promise to release a complete game, and I think they are guilty of false advertising.

So, in a sense, BioWare "owes it" to their customers to produce the game they said they would produce, but they don't "owe" their customers a happy ending, and they certainly don't owe it to the fans to change the ending just because it wasn't bunnys and kittens and cake. If they had produced a game where my actions clearly mattered and I received closure on the various story lines within the plot, I would be perfectly happy with Shepard dead at the end of it all, and even happy with the galaxy in turmoil or near annihilation if there was something that definitively explained that, and gave me some closure. I'd have been OK with it if they had killed the entire Normandy crew, or if Earth had been destroyed in a cataclysmic explosion that destroyed the main Reaper armada as well, as long as some Epilogue told me what became of things after the whole incident, and closed the story, or perhaps if there were three or four different endings based on the choices I made ranging in severity of galactic destruction. Instead, the ending left so many unanswered questions and plot holes that I think BioWare did not live up to their promises set forth when the game was announced, and their silence after the fact makes it a hundred times worse.

As far as the charity goes, that was a blatant attempt to use the name of a large organization to further the goals of a movement, and personally I think it was a cheap trick. I'm very glad that $80,000 made its way to Child's Play, but I'm disappointed to see that it happened in the way it did. As for demanding a refund, it's your responsibility to know what cause you are donating to. Research where you are sending money before you send it, because once you part with it, it's gone and they don't owe you a dime.

Edit: The game also lacked a final boss fight, which I kinda find odd considering the other two games had prominent boss fights followed by hard story decisions that affected the outcome of the game. I think the absence of that kind of fight in this game was a little.....strange.

You can blow up the Earth if you suck.
There's this many permutations on the ending:
http://www.ign.com/wikis/mass-effect-3/Endings

Depending on your level of cynicism you my see it as 18, 7, 3 or even 1 ending.

In the art book it's explained TIM was going to turn into a giant hideous monster and you'd fight him as the final boss but they felt that wasn't really what TIM was about. He was always a thinker and you should beat him with your wits. You could argue that some "wrong" dialogue should result in him shooting you but I'm not sure how much that adds especially if a low reputation score results in you being stuck there.

Here's the thing and this is a cliche but its not the ending but the journey. I feel like this whole game is my ending not just the final cutscene. Javik tells me what happens to him. He said he's going to find the graveyard of his ancestors and shoot himself in the head. (that sucks but that's what he wants). Wrex becomes the most powerful Krogan in the galaxy and directly helps in curing the genophage. Mordin, a chipper but guilt stricken fellow (and hell of a singer) sets his conscience free at the cost of his life. Ashley becomes a Spectre and Jack: Jack becomes a great teacher. Didn't see that coming. I know what happens to everyone, everything I need to know.

LordofHats wrote:Just The Renegade Ending: The concrete objects are also hand wavable, as slabs also appeared in the Citdel both in ME1 and ME3 when it was attacked by the Geth and Cerberus respectively. EDIT: Or he somehow managed to survive atmospheric reentry, again...

).

Thats what I intiially thought until you realise that Shep isn't actually even on the Citadel but is on the Crucible surrounded by nothing but space.

They did have more than one Cain since they blow up more than one of those giant cannons. Thing is that those aren't regular destroyer reapers. Bioware was simply lazy and used the same skin for something thats actually just a large reaper drone. The destroyer needed a full sized warhead. I admit it is ridiculous that one of your several thousand dreadnoughts cannot simply blast the thing from orbit.

Oh I know the Hydra is smaller, but I mean, come on. If one of the mini-Nukes can take out a Hydra, surely six, seven, ten? Could kill a destroyer which then causes me to beg two questions: Why is no one using these in the big fight against the destroyer (Looking at you Turian with a grenade launcher! Get a real gun!) and why do the Reapers only have one anti-air unit and a destroyer guarding the Citadel? Better yet, why are they even giving us a means to get onto it at all

But that may be a little overly nitpicky

@Canuck. Nice endings chart, though going through and unchecking all the spoilers wasted ten seconds of my life lol.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:You can blow up the Earth if you suck.
There's this many permutations on the ending:
http://www.ign.com/wikis/mass-effect-3/Endings

Depending on your level of cynicism you my see it as 18, 7, 3 or even 1 ending.

In the art book it's explained TIM was going to turn into a giant hideous monster and you'd fight him as the final boss but they felt that wasn't really what TIM was about. He was always a thinker and you should beat him with your wits. You could argue that some "wrong" dialogue should result in him shooting you but I'm not sure how much that adds especially if a low reputation score results in you being stuck there.

Here's the thing and this is a cliche but its not the ending but the journey. I feel like this whole game is my ending not just the final cutscene. Javik tells me what happens to him. He said he's going to find the graveyard of his ancestors and shoot himself in the head. (that sucks but that's what he wants). Wrex becomes the most powerful Krogan in the galaxy and directly helps in curing the genophage. Mordin, a chipper but guilt stricken fellow (and hell of a singer) sets his conscience free at the cost of his life. Ashley becomes a Spectre and Jack: Jack becomes a great teacher. Didn't see that coming. I know what happens to everyone, everything I need to know.

I don't pay money to use my imagination. Thats a dreadful thing for a story driven RPG to do. The lack of an epilogue was the main problem with the ending. Its not just that they made a bad ending its that the game just ends without giving any justice to the fact that Shephard just sacrificed himself. It leaves you thinking 'he died for that'. I disagree with your view since the game builds up this final confrontation and its resolution is important. ie 'did we win son'. Without that sense of closure then its pretty moot to just kill off shephard without acknowledging it. They gave Anderson a 'Good Death'. They didn't give Shephard a 'Good Death'. You actually know nothing about what becomes of your team. They could all die on that planet for all we know. Wrex might have died during the final battle. How would you feel if somebody wrote a book where they left all that hanging in the air at the end as to what happens. Lord of the RIngs doesn't just end with Frodo and Gollum at Mt Doom for example. Tolkein specifically says Arithon becomes King, Legolas+Gimili go travelling, Faramir and Eowyn get married, hobbits go back to Shire and Frodo leaves Middle Earth with the ring holders. Thats a good example of how you comprehensively address what happens to your characters when you've put a lot of involvement and work into your characters. You don't just leave it all hanging.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

LordofHats wrote:Oh I know the Hydra is smaller, but I mean, come on. If one of the mini-Nukes can take out a Hydra, surely six, seven, ten? Could kill a destroyer which then causes me to beg two questions: Why is no one using these in the big fight against the destroyer (Looking at you Turian with a grenade launcher! Get a real gun!) and why do the Reapers only have one anti-air unit and a destroyer guarding the Citadel? Better yet, why are they even giving us a means to get onto it at all

But that may be a little overly nitpicky

@Canuck. Nice endings chart, though going through and unchecking all the spoilers wasted ten seconds of my life lol.

Yeah the games massively inconsistent on how tough a reaper is. The codex says that just 4 dreadnoughts can destroy a reaper capital ship. Yet we see a Turian Armada of several hundred ships get owned by six soveriegn-class reapers. Whilst on Rannoch, Shephard has 50,000 Quarian ships fire at one destroyer. Considering that each of those weapons is meant to have the kinetic energy equal to a hydrogen bomb capable of levelling a city you would think the Quarians would have shattered their own planet with that much firepower (lol ); not injure one single destroyer.

I suppose that for dramatic effect they wanted the only capital ships to start blowing up when you get the mother of all fleets. Even then we only specifically see one get badly damaged. TBH I was slightly let down I was actually expecting the whole front line of reapers to explode after that first volley. I mean if you're going to start killing reapers en masse at any point then it should have been then and I think that it should have been more spectacular. Yes, that wasn't epic enough.

I'am not entertained!!!