I just finished playing Mass Effect 3. It took me roughly 37 hours, and I played probably another 10-15 in the multiplayer, which boosted my military strength and made it easier to get the best ending, from what I've read.

My Effective Military Strength was about 4800 when I finished it, and...

*SPOILER ALERT*

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The end of the game was intense. Fighting on earth, it was insane how much was going on while trying to survive and take out that Destroyer, and then running towards the beam was awesome.

I thought it was kinda weird after getting to the top and having the kid from the beginning be the Catalyst. But I'm under the assumption that just like when inside the Geth computer, it took shape as something familiar to Shepard.

I chose Synthesis and Shepard died, destroying the Reapers and the Mass Relays in the process, and the moment coupled with that sad music from the beginning really brought out the emotion and was a great way of finishing Shepards story.

Then the Normandy crashes on Earth, and everyone lives happily ever after, I guess.

Then the cutscene after the credits shows that Shepards legend lives on, and some time has passed, and people are pretty much back to where we are now, dreaming of space, with the future ahead of them. 

How is this not a good ending? It brings everything to a close perfectly, in my opinion...

Someone at work told me that if you imported a saved game you got that one particular ending that people seemed to hate. But if you didn't then you got another set of endings. Not sure how accurate that is but there it is.

Originally posted by Sovrath

Someone at work told me that if you imported a saved game you got that one particular ending that people seemed to hate. But if you didn't then you got another set of endings. Not sure how accurate that is but there it is.

That could be it, maybe I'll youtube it. I didn't import any games, since I played the first two on my PC, and  3 on my PS3.

My primary problem with the ending is it didn't reflect the war assets you were assembling over the entire game.  I would expect different aspects to the ending depending on specifically which war assets you gathered.  It was just lazy of them to use an aggregate "score" to determine the endings.  That was my main problem.  Other than that though I really enjoyed ME3.  If you bothered to dialogue with the NPCs throughout it really sucked you in emotionally.  It made me sad saying the goodbyes for instance right before the final push LOL.

Originally posted by Gajari

I just finished playing Mass Effect 3. It took me roughly 37 hours, and I played probably another 10-15 in the multiplayer, which boosted my military strength and made it easier to get the best ending, from what I've read.

My Effective Military Strength was about 4800 when I finished it, and...

 

*SPOILER ALERT*

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The end of the game was intense. Fighting on earth, it was insane how much was going on while trying to survive and take out that Destroyer, and then running towards the beam was awesome.

I thought it was kinda weird after getting to the top and having the kid from the beginning be the Catalyst. But I'm under the assumption that just like when inside the Geth computer, it took shape as something familiar to Shepard.

I chose Synthesis and Shepard died, destroying the Reapers and the Mass Relays in the process, and the moment coupled with that sad music from the beginning really brought out the emotion and was a great way of finishing Shepards story.

Then the Normandy crashes on Earth, and everyone lives happily ever after, I guess.

Then the cutscene after the credits shows that Shepards legend lives on, and some time has passed, and people are pretty much back to where we are now, dreaming of space, with the future ahead of them. 

How is this not a good ending? It brings everything to a close perfectly, in my opinion...

 

A few things....

One, it isn't Earth it crashed on.  Joker was trying to outrun the explosion from the ME relay, even though 30 seconds before he was in the thick of the battle.  It really makes no sense.  One of them includes the person you saw get blown to bits in London.

Second is all the plot holes the ending implies for fans of the genre.  If the Catalyst was true, the plot of the first Mass Effect makes no sense.  Nor does the "I created a race of synthetics to wipe out organics so organics don't make synthetics who in turn wipe out organics."

Third is it removes the ideas of choice.  All 3 endings are identical.  The Mass Relays are destroyed, a galactic cataclysm occurs.

The "old man" telling the story implies that your story he is telling didn't really happen the way you played your game.  It's a Shepard myth.  Analogous to creation stories of various cultures, things told to children as inspirational stories, but not real events.  (This is obvious far into the future, and a society that cannot yet reach space.)

The ending provided also no closure.  after all the investment into the characters, it ends.

And finally...... if you choose the "destroy" ending and you have enough assets, after the jungle scene, a man (or woman) in N7 armor is shown awakening in the rubble of London.  A strong implication that what occured actually didn't happen.

That's why people hate the ending.

Originally posted by gainesvilleg

My primary problem with the ending is it didn't reflect the war assets you were assembling over the entire game.  I would expect different aspects to the ending depending on specifically which war assets you gathered.  It was just lazy of them to use an aggregate "score" to determine the endings.  That was my main problem.  Other than that though I really enjoyed ME3.  If you bothered to dialogue with the NPCs throughout it really sucked you in emotionally.  It made me sad saying the goodbyes for instance right before the final push LOL.

And it is what made the ending worse.  I don't want to hear synthetics and organics will inevitably always war.  I just brokered peace between the quarian and the geth, and dammit, it wasn't easy.  There was a ton of emotional buildup and absolutely no payoff whatsoever.

Originally posted by iceman00

Originally posted by gainesvilleg

My primary problem with the ending is it didn't reflect the war assets you were assembling over the entire game.  I would expect different aspects to the ending depending on specifically which war assets you gathered.  It was just lazy of them to use an aggregate "score" to determine the endings.  That was my main problem.  Other than that though I really enjoyed ME3.  If you bothered to dialogue with the NPCs throughout it really sucked you in emotionally.  It made me sad saying the goodbyes for instance right before the final push LOL.

And it is what made the ending worse.  I don't want to hear synthetics and organics will inevitably always war.  I just brokered peace between the quarian and the geth, and dammit, it wasn't easy.  There was a ton of emotional buildup and absolutely no payoff whatsoever.

You made peace with the Quarians and Geth? Wow. I sacrificed pretty much the entire Quarian population in order to upgrade the Geth with Reaper technology and make them sentient or whatever. I figured there was no way to make peace, and either one or the other had to go.

In any case, I thought the payoff was there in spades.

Closure with the ending. I decided to finish up the last few missions last night instead of waiting for something that may never come.  DLC explaining what just happened.

The indoctrination theory is sound.  Matter of fact I don't see how someone couldn't of picked up on it.  From about three or four missions out from the ending that was a HUGE subject. When you go to get the relic is where it's starts getting thrown in the players face over and over and over and over.   
 
So the question is when did Shepards indoctrination start? Right after that beam hit Shepard or after he went through the transport beam.  If he didn't even make it through the transport beam then how did the alliance fair in the fight?  It's safe to say at some point in the Mass Effect timeline the alliance won.  The scene with the old man and boy tells us this. 
 
  It also tells us that Shepards fight wasn't the last either.  So did the reapers get killed off and a new threat with someone else leading the charge happen after? Or did the reapers win / withdraw at this point in time with someone else leading the way. Did Shepard live or die? What about everyone Shepard cared about? 
 
The game up to the ending was great. It was also sold on being the end of these chapters if I am not mistaken.   They left a plot hole so bloody large that it's essentially confused a great deal of people or flat out pissed them off. I personally don't care if Shepard dies or lives. I just want to know what really happened after those few minutes.  Something I think the players have earned. 
 
If Bioware is going to leave it as is they may very well piss off and loose a large portion of their player base.  This would be the second time in a very short period of time in which they missed the mark on one of their top single player titles.  
 
The whole thing simply screams dlc, if those of us who want to know are lucky, or a new series which may never answer the questions.

Originally posted by JayBirdz

Closure with the ending. I decided to finish up the last few missions last night instead of waiting for something that may never come.  DLC explaining what just happened.

The indoctrination theory is sound.  Matter of fact I don't see how someone couldn't of picked up on it.  From about three or four missions out from the ending that was a HUGE subject. When you go to get the relic is where it's starts getting thrown in the players face over and over and over and over.   
 
So the question is when did Shepards indoctrination start? Right after that beam hit Shepard or after he went through the transport beam.  If he didn't even make it through the transport beam then how did the alliance fair in the fight?  It's safe to say at some point in the Mass Effect timeline the alliance won.  The scene with the old man and boy tells us this. 
 
  It also tells us that Shepards fight wasn't the last either.  So did the reapers get killed off and a new threat with someone else leading the charge happen after? Or did the reapers win / withdraw at this point in time with someone else leading the way. Did Shepard live or die? What about everyone Shepard cared about? 
 
The game up to the ending was great. It was also sold on being the end of these chapters if I am not mistaken.   They left a plot hole so bloody large that it's essentially confused a great deal of people or flat out pissed them off. I personally don't care if Shepard dies or lives. I just want to know what really happened after those few minutes.  Something I think the players have earned. 
 
If Bioware is going to leave it as is they may very well piss off and loose a large portion of their player base.  This would be the second time in a very short period of time in which they missed the mark on one of their top single player titles.  
 
The whole thing simply screams dlc, if those of us who want to know are lucky, or a new series which may never answer the questions.

 

 

 

The way I see it, I'm either not thinking about it enough and enjoying my straight-forward reaction to the ending, or everyone else is overthinking it and finding stuff to hate.

But now that I think about it...  if the idea of choosing Synthesis killed Shepard because he was partially synthetic, why was EDI alive at the end when it took down the Normandy?

And I figured all the character were part of the Hammer team for my trip to Earth, so shouldn't they have been following me while running to the beam? I would assume that if no one made it to the beam as was said in the dialogue following being hit by it, that they would have all been dead or injured or something. But I guess all but Shepard just high-tailed it back to the Normandy? Or maybe they sawShepard was taken down and they thought they'd better rethink things and regroup as was said over the comm, but Shepard ended up living and finished it..

I would also ask why Shepard was in his casual outfit after the blast rather than beaten up armor as I was wearing, but I would assume that was because they didn't wanna have to design a beat up version of every piece of gear you might be wearing at the time just for this one part.

There are, indeed, some unknowns here, but I don't think the entire thing was a hallucination.

The problem lots of people have with the ending are that they generally don't really make any sense (full of plotholes) and that it basically renders any choices you made irrelevant.

In addition to what others said, Arrival set up that when a Mass Relay is destroyed, it supernovas and wipes out the system it is located. In every ending, you destroy every Mass Relay. So congratulations on killing everything?

And even if this destruction is special and it doesn't cause a supernova, then you just left the army of every race in the galaxy stranded on Earth's system. What the hell are they supposed - or are going - to do?

Finally, no matter what choices you made throughout the entire trilogy, the endings only depend on that arbitrary "Effective Military Strength" number. No matter what choices you have made, or if you didn't even make any at all, your endings will be the same anyways with just small deviations depending on that EMS.

This is only the tip. If you try to look at that scene closely, it's riddled with plotholes to what the kid is saying (if he IS the citadel, why did the keepers need to trigger anything in ME1? Why couldn't he just opened the arms anyway?), to how the hell did Anderson end up there before you (despite him saying he entered in after you), and so forth.

Originally posted by Gajari

Originally posted by iceman00

Originally posted by gainesvilleg

My primary problem with the ending is it didn't reflect the war assets you were assembling over the entire game.  I would expect different aspects to the ending depending on specifically which war assets you gathered.  It was just lazy of them to use an aggregate "score" to determine the endings.  That was my main problem.  Other than that though I really enjoyed ME3.  If you bothered to dialogue with the NPCs throughout it really sucked you in emotionally.  It made me sad saying the goodbyes for instance right before the final push LOL.

And it is what made the ending worse.  I don't want to hear synthetics and organics will inevitably always war.  I just brokered peace between the quarian and the geth, and dammit, it wasn't easy.  There was a ton of emotional buildup and absolutely no payoff whatsoever.

You made peace with the Quarians and Geth? Wow. I sacrificed pretty much the entire Quarian population in order to upgrade the Geth with Reaper technology and make them sentient or whatever. I figured there was no way to make peace, and either one or the other had to go.

In any case, I thought the payoff was there in spades.

Spoilerific!

I believe the criterion are if you reprogrammed the "heretics" in ME2, go through all the missions leading up to the final decision, and have sufficient paragon rep (helping Tali IN ME2 might've been required to) you can use a paragon line to demand both sides stand down.  The geth are upgraded with the reaper tech (Legion gives his life in the process) and you are confronted by a boatload of geth primes who begin talking, and pledge to help the quarians rebuild their homeworld, and both sides mobilize their fleets on your side.

Was a rather well done scenario.

Originally posted by iceman00

I believe the criterion are if you reprogrammed the "heretics" in ME2...

This is unneeded. The Shep I ran through destroyed them and I still had both Paragon and Renegade 'IWIN' (=P) options.

Originally posted by JayBirdz

Closure with the ending. I decided to finish up the last few missions last night instead of waiting for something that may never come.  DLC explaining what just happened.

The indoctrination theory is sound.  Matter of fact I don't see how someone couldn't of picked up on it.  From about three or four missions out from the ending that was a HUGE subject. When you go to get the relic is where it's starts getting thrown in the players face over and over and over and over.   
 
So the question is when did Shepards indoctrination start? Right after that beam hit Shepard or after he went through the transport beam.  If he didn't even make it through the transport beam then how did the alliance fair in the fight?  It's safe to say at some point in the Mass Effect timeline the alliance won.  The scene with the old man and boy tells us this. 
 
 

Or does it????

There's no indication the Alliance "won" in the old man's words.  Just that, more or less, something like this happened.  It is obviously far removed from those events, as that society (strongly implied) cannot yet reach space.  It could simply have been a story of humanities last stand.

Here's what I wonder?  What if the protheans "destruction" was simply them being turned into the Collectors?  They became servants of the Reapers, and the "lesser species" were permitted to evolve without the Protheans holding them back.  If that is a race that cannot reach space yet with the old man, could it be simply that the cycle continued, with or without the reapers?

There were a lot of ways Bioware could've done something.  They were onto something.  But it just didn't happen.

Originally posted by iceman00

Originally posted by Gajari

Originally posted by iceman00

Originally posted by gainesvilleg

My primary problem with the ending is it didn't reflect the war assets you were assembling over the entire game.  I would expect different aspects to the ending depending on specifically which war assets you gathered.  It was just lazy of them to use an aggregate "score" to determine the endings.  That was my main problem.  Other than that though I really enjoyed ME3.  If you bothered to dialogue with the NPCs throughout it really sucked you in emotionally.  It made me sad saying the goodbyes for instance right before the final push LOL.

And it is what made the ending worse.  I don't want to hear synthetics and organics will inevitably always war.  I just brokered peace between the quarian and the geth, and dammit, it wasn't easy.  There was a ton of emotional buildup and absolutely no payoff whatsoever.

You made peace with the Quarians and Geth? Wow. I sacrificed pretty much the entire Quarian population in order to upgrade the Geth with Reaper technology and make them sentient or whatever. I figured there was no way to make peace, and either one or the other had to go.

In any case, I thought the payoff was there in spades.

Spoilerific!

I believe the criterion are if you reprogrammed the "heretics" in ME2, go through all the missions leading up to the final decision, and have sufficient paragon rep (helping Tali IN ME2 might've been required to) you can use a paragon line to demand both sides stand down.  The geth are upgraded with the reaper tech (Legion gives his life in the process) and you are confronted by a boatload of geth primes who begin talking, and pledge to help the quarians rebuild their homeworld, and both sides mobilize their fleets on your side.

Was a rather well done scenario.

Yeah I saved them both as well.  I didn't think it was too hard though as I was just making the choices I liked and it just worked out good.  I  think I had gathered pretty much all the war assets I could, other than I had a bugged quest early on that I couldn't complete (Hannar diplomat quest).  The fact that you were supposed to use multiplayer to raise the "war readiness" multiplyer above 50% was pretty dumb though so I didn't bother.  Who in their right mind would play ME3 multiplayer?  It's garbage compared to a good FPS.  The genius of the Mass Effect series was the emotional attachment you had to it.  It really sucked you in if you played it right (explored NPC dialogues, did side quests, etc).

Overall Mass Effect series was fantastic.  I forgive them for the ending because of that, but I do wish it were better...

A few things....

 

One, it isn't Earth it crashed on.  Joker was trying to outrun the explosion from the ME relay, even though 30 seconds before he was in the thick of the battle.  It really makes no sense.  One of them includes the person you saw get blown to bits in London.

Second is all the plot holes the ending implies for fans of the genre.  If the Catalyst was true, the plot of the first Mass Effect makes no sense.  Nor does the "I created a race of synthetics to wipe out organics so organics don't make synthetics who in turn wipe out organics."

Third is it removes the ideas of choice.  All 3 endings are identical.  The Mass Relays are destroyed, a galactic cataclysm occurs.

The "old man" telling the story implies that your story he is telling didn't really happen the way you played your game.  It's a Shepard myth.  Analogous to creation stories of various cultures, things told to children as inspirational stories, but not real events.  (This is obvious far into the future, and a society that cannot yet reach space.)

The ending provided also no closure.  after all the investment into the characters, it ends.

And finally...... if you choose the "destroy" ending and you have enough assets, after the jungle scene, a man (or woman) in N7 armor is shown awakening in the rubble of London.  A strong implication that what occured actually didn't happen.

That's why people hate the ending.

This was a pretty good explanation, this and it was poor writing. They really going to do this dream trickery again?

Someone wrote this on youtube:

"Bioware is genius. The last sequence after the laser, Shepard was indoctrinated. The kid wasn't the catalyst, it was Shepard. The Reapers wanted to trick you into letting them live, that is why the only correct choice in the game is to destroy the reapers, thus you wake up at the end no longer indoctrinated. The point of the kid, is to make YOU feel sorry for the Reapers and choose to let them live. If you chose this ending, disguised at the paragon choice, you effectively? lost the game "

You know what, I lost track of the end, and thought I chose the "destroy" option, and turns out I did the "control" option, even though I didn't meant to. lol

But this part kinda makes sense. I watched the destroy option, and it's slightly happier, but you guys are right in that either way, the races are kinda stuck on earth, the Normandy and passengers are stuck on some other planet, etc.

I think the people talking about DLC following up on this have it right. Seems like a lot of stuff to just 'forget'.

Originally posted by Trionicus

A few things....

 

One, it isn't Earth it crashed on.  Joker was trying to outrun the explosion from the ME relay, even though 30 seconds before he was in the thick of the battle.  It really makes no sense.  One of them includes the person you saw get blown to bits in London.

Second is all the plot holes the ending implies for fans of the genre.  If the Catalyst was true, the plot of the first Mass Effect makes no sense.  Nor does the "I created a race of synthetics to wipe out organics so organics don't make synthetics who in turn wipe out organics."

Third is it removes the ideas of choice.  All 3 endings are identical.  The Mass Relays are destroyed, a galactic cataclysm occurs.

The "old man" telling the story implies that your story he is telling didn't really happen the way you played your game.  It's a Shepard myth.  Analogous to creation stories of various cultures, things told to children as inspirational stories, but not real events.  (This is obvious far into the future, and a society that cannot yet reach space.)

The ending provided also no closure.  after all the investment into the characters, it ends.

And finally...... if you choose the "destroy" ending and you have enough assets, after the jungle scene, a man (or woman) in N7 armor is shown awakening in the rubble of London.  A strong implication that what occured actually didn't happen.

That's why people hate the ending.

This was a pretty good explanation, this and it was poor writing. They really going to do this dream trickery again?

My mind is blown.

You're right... this is such a confusing and weird ending... I shouldn't have started this thread and just lived in my dream world. lol

Originally posted by Gajari

You know what, I lost track of the end, and thought I chose the "destroy" option, and turns out I did the "control" option, even though I didn't meant to. lol

Ha, I did the same thing.  You couldn't tell which side to go to in order to get get control or destroy.  I figured when I walked over to one it would tell me which one I was choosing before I selected it but no, once you walked over there it made you choose it.  Pretty stupid LOL.

But, like I said, the game up to that point was very good so I won't get all bent out of shape for a bad ending.  I actually like this ending somebody wrote up on the net and will just assume that was the real ending LOL:

http://arkis.deviantart.com/art/Mass-Effect-3-Alternate-Endings-SPOILERS-289902125 

This is by far the best article about ME3 and the huge backlash regarding it's ending:

http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/

He explains it perfectly as to why so many people are outraged and dissapointed and why they (me included) have every right to be angry.

Let's face it!  The whole game is basically amazing, right up to where the ending starts.

The whole endpart feels short and rushed! Reality is more likely they ran out of time, scrapped all that they promised to deliver and just did the copy pasta job they did with the current endings to quickly wrap it up and get it out of the door!

That's why it's full of plot holes, with tons of things that make no sense at all. Everything you can expect from a rush job!

The last minute Day 1 DLC was more likely done, as they expected the backlash of the current endings and pretty much expected that this will be the only chance to cash in on DLC for this game, as the vast majority won't fork out any more cash for this game for sure!

Not unless they start talking to the community and actually release some "proper" meaningful endings that make "actual" sense and all the choices you made actually matter! You know.... what was advertised and promised???!