Mass Effect 3 Ending Thoughts (Spoilers)

I LOVE MY ENDING

"You done well for people that used to live in caves." - Javik

So, I've finally got around to finishing Mass Effect 3 and have witnessed the massive controversy that is its ending that everyone has been complaining about. Well, not everyone, but enough that Bioware are creating an epilogue collection to satisfy the never happy entity that is the Internet. Idiots. Anyway, I've read many points for and against how the game ended so here are my thoughts to add to the already talked about enough subject...

Firstly, over the three games you're treated to an epic story based around the invasion of a alien force called the Reapers that are going to wipe out all life in the Galaxy. Your mission as Commander Shepherd is to stop this from happening. Throughout the story you're given various decisions which can dramatically alter various aspects of the story. Friends, loved ones, and whole races can die. You can start or finish wars with various races. Eventually, towards the end of the trilogy, you have to gather together the various races of the Galaxy into a combined war ef---t against the Reapers. The ending then reveals an entity called The Catalyst that is using the Reapers to wipe out all sentient life in the Galaxy because they create Synthetic life that always eventually rises up against their creators and cause chaos and destruction. Wiping them out in a constantly repeating cycle is the only way to keep the balance of peace in the Galaxy. Being the hero of this story, you've now upset this cycle and a new solution is required so you're given three choices (only two depending on some of your decisions).

1. Wipe out all Synthetic life and technology with the understanding that it will once again be created by future generations and Sythetic chaos will reign anew with no Reaper force to control it in the future.
2. Sacrifice yourself to control the Reapers so they no longer attack and wipe out all sentient life leaving both the Synthetic and Organic life to flourish, rebel, and once again cause chaos and destruction across the Galaxy.
3. Sacrifice yourself to combine your 'self' with a giant weapon that will spread out across the Galaxy and create a new life form that combines both Synthetic and Organic thus ending the chaos and destruction forever.

Having chosen option three myself, the Reaper invasion is then stopped, means of travel around the Galaxy is destroyed, your teammates crash land on a planet and (all presumably) survive.

Then we have an epilogue set many many years later of a Father and Son talking whilst looking out into space (which I infer to be on the same planet but isn't really necessary if you want an EA No-Prize). The Father is telling his Son of the legend of The Shepherd (which again I infer to be due to your teammates having spread the tales of how Shepherd saved the Galaxy and you have now become a legend). That is the legacy of Shepherd - save the Galaxy and become a legend.

Now, as an ending, I have no problem at all with this. It's quite cool. Shepherd is given a good send off, single-handedly saving the Galaxy and becoming a Legend. The only part I don't particularly care for, is the other endings. All the other endings yield exactly the same result with the only difference really being your choice. There's some slight variations where Earth gets destroyed before the invasion is stopped, Shepherd is implied to be alive, or some other minor difference to a few seconds worth of cut scene. But essentially, they're all the same.

Now this is sort of what I expected anyway. No matter how you played the game, I expected every ending to be that the Galaxy was saved (or destroyed) - with the only differences being who dies, what races lived, the level of destruction, and other personal things that your decisions over the last three games affected. Everyone gets the same ending but with a slight personal touch. But we got none of that - EVERYONE got the same.

For a game presented with so much choice and decisions that have major effects, for them to ultimately have no effect feels like you got cheated and it was nothing but a gimmick. Why'd they even bother with it?

So that's the problem - a lack of a personal touch to the epilogue, something to reward your decisions, or punish your poor choices.

In the epilogues released later this year, I'd like to see what sort of impact on the Galaxy the choices had:-

1. 1. Technology was wiped out. You and your team help rebuild their home planets and mourn their lost ones.The Galaxy flourishes for another 10,000 years. Sentient life is one again created. They once again rebel. With no Reapers to stop this, all Organic life is wiped out.
2. The Reapers leave. You and your team help rebuild their home planets and mourn their lost ones. Sentient life soon starts to rebel despite the recent alliance, as they always have done and always will. All Organic life is wiped out.
3. A new life form is created. All your friends and species are wiped out. But the Galaxy survives. Syth-Organic life lives on happily forever.

All three sad endings in their own way, which I like, but are the endings I chose to infer from the choices and explanations I were given. These are the endings I have taken away with me regardless of them not being told to me. All three reflect the many choices you've made throughout the series. It would be nice to see them played out in the upcoming epilogues.

They'll probably not match the ending I already have imagined so I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to it or not. I'll certainly check it out. But I blame the laziness* of the programmers not wanting to make all the different endings for everyone's choices and making most of it inferred. They should have left it alone.

They'll probably ruin my ending. I love my ending. My ending satisfies me. It's everyone else's ending I hate. And they'll probably ruin those too and everyone will hate Bioware forever.

*This entry was brought to you by the number three and the word 'inferred'.


EDIT: I have now seen the new endings and thankfully they haven't really changed anything. All three endings still possess the same vagueness for the future of the galaxy which I like, but at the same time they also marginally expand on what each option actually means for the future of the Galaxy. Which as with the original endings, how it all turns out is still down to your own imagination. What the new endings do though, which the only complaint I had about the original endings were them all being the same, is that they show the immediate effects of the choices you make making each ending unique in its own minor way.

Then there's the new ending, the refusal ending, where you don't make a choice and the catalyst continues the cycle which results in you losing the war. I've seen people complaining that whilst it's good they included the ending that everyone wanted, they then went and made it a bad ending. For me, that was a good ending as Liara left her message to the next cycle recounting the war the reapers. This lead to the next cycle eventually winning the war and presumably (from what I inferred) bringing peace to the galaxy. Of the four endings, two brought peace to the galaxy (Synthesis and Refusal) and the other two left the Galaxy in conflict (Control and Destroy).

Since the ending shifted the focus of the game onto the survival of the Galaxy, I can't see how you consider the refusal to be a 'bad' ending. All in all, this took everything I loved about the original endings and kept it, adding some nice bits of exposition, and then taking everything I disliked about it and tweaking it ever so slightly so as not to fundamentally change anything, but make it all good. There is nothing here now that I can complain about.

I feared they would include too much about your teammates and what happens to everyone and the different races, which for would have spoiled the ending, but they didn't. They kept it simple, and for that I thank them.

Fantastic game, great ending. Thank you Bioware.