Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread

@larry:

Regarding your 2nd playthrough:

Make sure and read the codex entries for all the Citadel/Council stuff. They actually customize it based on your decisions in the previous games.

Spoiler:
kyrieee wrote:

Well, I felt really really bad about it. I also shot Wrex, several times.

You are a monster Kyrieee.

About the ending part 3:

Spoiler:

I'm in the denial stage and have been reading a thread on the Bioware forums that the ending is actually a hallucination. Even though it's a stretch and probably not true I want to believe. Shepard is running towards the beam when Harbinger knocks him/her out. Then you could look at the 3 options as:

Control: Reapers win, Shepard is indoctrinated.
Synthesis: Reapers win, Shepard doesn't wake up and humanity merges with the reapers and Contra Boss/Terminator reapers will be the destroyers in the next cycle.
Destroy: Shepard wins, wills himself/herself to wake up from the blast and the real ending takes place through $15 DLC :lol:

BNice wrote:

About the ending part 3:

Spoiler:

I'm in the denial stage and have been reading a thread on the Bioware forums that the ending is actually a hallucination. Even though it's a stretch and probably not true I want to believe. Shepard is running towards the beam when Harbinger knocks him/her out. Then you could look at the 3 options as:

Control: Reapers win, Shepard is indoctrinated.
Synthesis: Reapers win, Shepard doesn't wake up and humanity merges with the reapers and Contra Boss/Terminator reapers will be the destroyers in the next cycle.
Destroy: Shepard wins, wills himself/herself to wake up from the blast and the real ending takes place through $15 DLC :lol:

Spoiler:

It is really sad that I would shell out that money, forfeiting the integrity of all future game design, just have exactly that.

So, honestly, while I see why some folks are pissed about the ending (in any scenario), I just disagree.

Spoiler:

Yes, there are, to me, two enormous gutpunches here: The Normandy won't fly again, and the Relays are gone. But you know what, I consider those the BRAVE endings -- brave endings in really a time honored tradition of brave endings in speculative fiction. Does anyone think Paul got a "good ending" in the dune saga? Or that the 4-book Hyperion series has a "good ending?"

Personally, I chose the "blow it all up" ending, and it felt fantastic. I felt genuine sadness at knowing the Geth and Edi were going to die, and that I was effectively dropping the world back into the pre-Relay era, and I felt GOOD about that choice, if it meant ending the 50k year cycle. I honestly would have felt they took the easy way out if we just had a Halo 3 style "Save the world, have a good funeral, but secretly be in sleep for the next adventure!" ending. Bioware is just better than that.

So I guess I'm a lone voice of dissent in loving it.

rabbit wrote:

So, honestly, while I see why some folks are pissed about the ending (in any scenario), I just disagree.

Spoiler:

Yes, there are, to me, two enormous gutpunches here: The Normandy won't fly again, and the Relays are gone. But you know what, I consider those the BRAVE endings -- brave endings in really a time honored tradition of brave endings in speculative fiction. Does anyone think Paul got a "good ending" in the dune saga? Or that the 4-book Hyperion series has a "good ending?"

Personally, I chose the "blow it all up" ending, and it felt fantastic. I felt genuine sadness at knowing the Geth and Edi were going to die, and that I was effectively dropping the world back into the pre-Relay era, and I felt GOOD about that choice, if it meant ending the 50k year cycle. I honestly would have felt they took the easy way out if we just had a Halo 3 style "Save the world, have a good funeral, but secretly be in sleep for the next adventure!" ending. Bioware is just better than that.

So I guess I'm a lone voice of dissent in loving it.

I don't think the choices are really the reason people hate the ending.

Spoiler:

For me, there are two things that I can't get over and may have ruined the series for me (upcoming DLC notwithstanding):

1) Deus Ex Machina - You might call it a brave ending, but I call it lazy. Rather than confront the decisions Shep has made in 100+ hrs of game time, Bioware chooses to introduce what amounts to God.

To be clear, I am perfectly ok with gut-wrenching endings. I chose to destroy the reapers and all artificial life too, but the decisions were still arbitrary. That kid never bothered to really explain why those three things were the only options you got. I'm sure I'm not the only one to try to shoot that little holographic punk in the face. So rather than roll with the story (for better or worse), Bioware invented God and artificial constraints.

2) No Closure - I'll take a Fallout 3 or DA:O style narration over pictures over utter uncertainty when it comes to the end of a series. If Bioware tries to retcon or add to the ending of Mass Effect 3 with DLC, I think that is the single worst action they could take. This is supposed to be the definitive end of the series. There are rumors that an upcoming DLC will talk about what happens after the game ends. If that's true, I don't know what to say without sounding like a petulant child on the internet.

Maybe it's just me though. Maybe I'm ok with no closure in stories. Plenty of people seemed ok with the ending of Lost anyway.

tl;dr: I don't think Bioware earned the last ten minutes of Mass Effect 3.

rabbit wrote:

So, honestly, while I see why some folks are pissed about the ending (in any scenario), I just disagree.

Spoiler:

Yes, there are, to me, two enormous gutpunches here: The Normandy won't fly again, and the Relays are gone. But you know what, I consider those the BRAVE endings -- brave endings in really a time honored tradition of brave endings in speculative fiction. Does anyone think Paul got a "good ending" in the dune saga? Or that the 4-book Hyperion series has a "good ending?"

Personally, I chose the "blow it all up" ending, and it felt fantastic. I felt genuine sadness at knowing the Geth and Edi were going to die, and that I was effectively dropping the world back into the pre-Relay era, and I felt GOOD about that choice, if it meant ending the 50k year cycle. I honestly would have felt they took the easy way out if we just had a Halo 3 style "Save the world, have a good funeral, but secretly be in sleep for the next adventure!" ending. Bioware is just better than that.

So I guess I'm a lone voice of dissent in loving it.

You're not alone.

Spoiler:

There are a lot of reasons that I loved the ending. From the beginning, this series has been about sacrifice, about what you were willing to give up for the greater good. I actually felt better about my first ME2 ending, which involved the death of two team members, because the final shot of Shepard brooding over the flag-draped coffins was so effecting. Indeed, the deaths of Mordin, Tali, and others were genuinely gut-wrenching in the best possible way.

The ending follows this theme. This isn't thwarting a single Reaper ship or defeating the collectors in what amounts to a skirmish. This is a tooth and nail fight to undo a cycle of destruction that has continued for eons. Shepard slogs through pain, suffering, and death to the final moment, and discovers the truth: The Crucible would stop the Reapers, but it carried a tremendous price, both for Shepard personally and for the galactic races as a whole. No matter what Shepard chooses, no matter how prepared you were for this final battle, it's a Pyhrric victory.

And in my mind, this is exactly the right way to end. The price must be paid. If the Reapers are to be stopped, everyone involved has to suffer, and the few who survive to tell the tale should bear terrible scars. There's no magic happy ending. I don't want Shepard to walk away in a triumphant strut. I don't want the Citadel to be back to business as usual a week later. I don't want Joker and the big-breasted toaster to raise a passel of panini presses. That would feel cheap and gimmicky, and wouldn't do this trilogy justice.

So I've just spent a fair few minutes reading through the spoilers on the last few pages.

I'm not going to get into the detailed discussion except to say that I agree with whoever it was (maybe multiple people) who said this ending, for them, cheapened the entire series of games.

I hate all the choices offered. None is a satisfactory tie up to the story. Some of the details that are there in all the endings were predictable and not nearly as stupid as some others, but the actual substance of the ending itself, the context of it, is completely silly. And worse, and some have talked about, it completely invalidates one of the best moments in the entire series that happens earlier in the game.

Massively disappointed. I played Mass Effect 2 I think four times through. I doubt very much I'll ever be able to bring myself to play the singleplayer in this one again. The ending ruins the entire thing as far as I'm concerned.

They had this amazing buildup and then they took the absolute laziest possible route to ending the series. Absolutely terrible.

I guess I'm just happy with a story well told. Endings always piss off someone. Most people hated the endings to most of my favorite games. To me the last 5 minutes of Mass Effect was no more or less an important five minutes than:

Spoiler:

Thane's prayer, finally being with Liara (I never romanced anyone) after hours of tension, Jack's entire arc from start to finish, Mordin's ending, etc.

I don't get hung up on them all that much, and like I said, I actually dug it.

BNice wrote:

About the ending part 3:

Spoiler:

I'm in the denial stage and have been reading a thread on the Bioware forums that the ending is actually a hallucination. Even though it's a stretch and probably not true I want to believe. Shepard is running towards the beam when Harbinger knocks him/her out. Then you could look at the 3 options as:

Control: Reapers win, Shepard is indoctrinated.
Synthesis: Reapers win, Shepard doesn't wake up and humanity merges with the reapers and Contra Boss/Terminator reapers will be the destroyers in the next cycle.
Destroy: Shepard wins, wills himself/herself to wake up from the blast and the real ending takes place through $15 DLC :lol:

Spoiler:

Found that thread too, and it is how I want to read the whole ending as well.
Clearly this wasn't Biowares intention, but conveniently enough some of the actual ending isn't even contradicting this. For one, Shepard seems to be alive in the destruction ending, which would be just a bit unlikely if she were on the Citadel while it got destroyed, but not totally impossible if she is still laying on the ground where the Reaper hit her.
Also makes some sense that the child she have had nightmares about earlier shows up in her new 'near-dead dream'. Much more sense than the Citadel/Catalyst deciding to use the boys image anyway.
As people in the thread points out the whole Citadel sequence seems like a dream to begin with. Shepard just "happens" to be teleported to a room which "happens" to lead directly to the Catalyst-wonderkid. Why would the Reapers do that? Shepard also got unlimited ammo.

The only thing I actually liked about the ending was that TIM and Cerberus seemed to be right after all. Controlling the Reapers were both possible and might even be the best option out of the 3 (not very good) ones presented to us. Cerberus being right all along, despite using the wrong means (+the whole indoctrination issue), would have been a very acceptable twist ending for me. Hell, The Illusive Man could have shot Shepard at the end, preventing her from making a catastrophic mistake, basically saving they day, and I would still have been fine with it.
I would also be fine with only having somewhat unhappy and "dark" endings. Shepard could die, Earth could be destroyed etc. As long as the endings just made reasonable sense, were consistent with the rest of the story and didn't seem to come out of nowhere.

I mean, the Wonderkid just happens to have a laser beam which can 1)rewrite DNA and 2) Mix DNA and tech. Very impressive.

Sure, trichy, but they can do all that without crapping on everything else you've ever done in the series.

Grubber covered it best.

Grubber788 wrote:
Spoiler:

1) Deus Ex Machina - You might call it a brave ending, but I call it lazy. Rather than confront the decisions Shep has made in 100+ hrs of game time, Bioware chooses to introduce what amounts to God.

To be clear, I am perfectly ok with gut-wrenching endings. I chose to destroy the reapers and all artificial life too, but the decisions were still arbitrary. That kid never bothered to really explain why those three things were the only options you got. I'm sure I'm not the only one to try to shoot that little holographic punk in the face. So rather than roll with the story (for better or worse), Bioware invented God and artificial constraints.

And it's just that. It's lazy.

rabbit wrote:

I guess I'm just happy with a story well told. Endings always piss off someone. Most people hated the endings to most of my favorite games. To me the last 5 minutes of Mass Effect was no more or less an important five minutes than:

Spoiler:

Thane's prayer, finally being with Liara (I never romanced anyone) after hours of tension, Jack's entire arc from start to finish, Mordin's ending, etc.

I don't get hung up on them all that much, and like I said, I actually dug it.

Agreed. I don't like this ending, I actually find it really bad, mostly because of how little sense it makes in the whole story arc, but it doesn't ruin my view of those 100+ hours which came before it. Contrary, playing ME3 the past days has reignited my interest in picking up ME1 again at some point.

Given the level of reveal over what happened starting in ME1, I'm DYING to go back to the beginning. I'm hoping to mod out the boring bits.

All y'all are just polarizing me on my liking the ending, so, well, i guess that makes me an idiot.

rabbit wrote:

Given the level of reveal over what happened starting in ME1, I'm DYING to go back to the beginning. I'm hoping to mod out the boring bits.

All y'all are just polarizing me on my liking the ending, so, well, i guess that makes me an idiot.

I'm not up on the details here, I'm guessing you didn't actually finish the first two? If you'd never played the previous two games to completion I could see how the ending of 3 might seem ok. To me, having played through the entirety of the previous two multiple times it feels very much like an incredibly lazy betrayal of the entirety of the series up until those last ten minutes.

Thin_J wrote:

Sure, trichy, but they can do all that without crapping on everything else you've ever done in the series.

Grubber covered it best.

Grubber788 wrote:
Spoiler:

1) Deus Ex Machina - You might call it a brave ending, but I call it lazy. Rather than confront the decisions Shep has made in 100+ hrs of game time, Bioware chooses to introduce what amounts to God.

To be clear, I am perfectly ok with gut-wrenching endings. I chose to destroy the reapers and all artificial life too, but the decisions were still arbitrary. That kid never bothered to really explain why those three things were the only options you got. I'm sure I'm not the only one to try to shoot that little holographic punk in the face. So rather than roll with the story (for better or worse), Bioware invented God and artificial constraints.

And it's just that. It's lazy.

Spoiler:

I guess I see it a different way. Shepard finds herself at the end of this long path, and realizes that her decisions made very little actual impact on the course of events. I have no difficulty believing that the Reapers were coordinated by a third party, and I like that when Shepard is finally facing this being, everything boils down to a fairly simple choice that has no good options. This is a cycle that has been going on for this long, something that the Protheans and all others that came before them were helpless to stop, and I like that the decisions of one individual have very little effect on the resolution. This is a plan that was set in motion by beings much, much smarter and ancient than Shepard. As such, I think it's much more realistic that Shepard's choices ultimately make little difference.

I understand the negative reaction to the ending. But I was genuinely disappointed when, fifteen minutes into the game, Shepard is told, "Those unstoppable god-machines are here, and we have no way to stop them at all. But luckily, we've found the plans for a cosmic popgun which will send those space squids running with the flick of a switch.". The ending took that idea (which has been used is countless forgettable games, movies and books) and flipped it around in a way that I, at least, found shocking, provocative, and thoughtful.

rabbit wrote:

I guess I'm just happy with a story well told. Endings always piss off someone. Most people hated the endings to most of my favorite games. To me the last 5 minutes of Mass Effect was no more or less an important five minutes than:

Spoiler:

Thane's prayer, finally being with Liara (I never romanced anyone) after hours of tension, Jack's entire arc from start to finish, Mordin's ending, etc.

I don't get hung up on them all that much, and like I said, I actually dug it.

On the CC I recall you saying that you were going to youtube the ending to ME2, so maybe you weren't as invested to begin with. I don't mean to invalidate your opinion, I just think it's a different perspective from most people posting in this thread.

Also

Spoiler:

The problem with the ending is just as much or more in the execution than in the fact that it's such a downer. Nothing you've done matters, you get to the citadel either way. That's not a great start, considering the whole game was about preparing for the attack. I read that if your fleet isn't big enough the Crucible wastes Earth for no apparent reason, other than to justify that green readiness bar I guess.

Furthermore, how can you introduce a completely new agent, which amounts to God, in the last 5 minutes of the game and then predicate the entire ending on that? They just dug themselves into a deeper hole while trying to get out of the one they were in, and his explanations don't even make any sense. Didn't EDI and the new peace between the Geth and Quarians prove that organics and synthetics can co-exist? That point is never even adressed.

The exposition is bad, it has so many holes and any attempt at writing something like that always will have. That's why it's better to not even try to explain it. If you can only answer questions by introducing even bigger ones then you're not accomplishing anything.

And again, the ending makes is so that nothing you did mattered. NOTHING. I don't think that's brave, just like killing yourself isn't brave. It's just the easy way out. It didn't have to be a feel good ending, but it didn't have to take a big dump on everything you did throughout the series either.

I don't think enough of you are considering that (ending spoilers, duh)

Spoiler:

the destruction of the Mass Relays means the effective annihilation of many of our favorite species.

1. A Mass Relay blowing up is the equivalent of a star going supernova.
2. Even if that doesn't kill everything everywhere, or they're just disabled, or whatever, most of the galactic races will still die being stranded in the Sol system.

This is unambiguously bad, and that's why, for me, the endings are utterly terrible. While I'd like to know what happens to the Normandy (I mean, seriously? That final scene was ridiculous!), I'd also quite like to know what the hell happens to the Elcor! Are they cool? They good? Please tell me they good!

The bottom line is that I wanted some clarity. Nothing is explained, and that bothers me.

Hyetal wrote:

I don't think enough of you are considering that (ending spoilers, duh)

Spoiler:

the destruction of the Mass Relays means the effective annihilation of many of our favorite species.

1. A Mass Relay blowing up is the equivalent of a star going supernova.
2. Even if that doesn't kill everything everywhere, or they're just disabled, or whatever, most of the galactic races will still die being stranded in the Sol system.

This is unambiguously bad, and that's why, for me, the endings are utterly terrible. While I'd like to know what happens to the Normandy (I mean, seriously? That final scene was ridiculous!), I'd also quite like to know what the hell happens to the Elcor! Are they cool? They good? Please tell me they good!

The bottom line is that I wanted some clarity. Nothing is explained, and that bothers me.

Spoiler:

I doubt Bioware has thought about it when they created the ending (like they didn't think about so much else), but blowing up because someone destroys a Mass Relay and blowing up because of a self-destruct mechanism might not be the same thing in terms of destruction.
Everyone would be stranded though, I bet Bioware didn't think/care about that one either. In the end it shouldn't matter that much I guess, only the military forces would be in the Sol System, most species should be able to survive. Humanity would probably be hit the hardest, when all those species stranded near Earth want food and shelter, and got more than enough guns to actually fight over it.

Apparently someone at Bioware likes to read their ending in a specific way as well.

Spoiler:

Bioware CM Jessica Merizan: "that's kind of how I interpreted it as a dying hallucination, but I'm not a dev so I don't know what was intended."

Shadout wrote:
Spoiler:

I doubt Bioware has thought about it when they created the ending (like they didn't think about so much else), but blowing up because someone destroys a Mass Relay and blowing up because of a self-destruct mechanism might not be the same thing in terms of destruction.
Everyone would be stranded though, I bet Bioware didn't think/care about that one either. In the end it shouldn't matter that much I guess, only the military forces would be in the Sol System, most species should be able to survive. Humanity would probably be hit the hardest, when all those species stranded near Earth want food and shelter, and got more than enough guns to actually fight over it.

Spoiler:

That's what it comes down to. It's just not explained.

And for the Turian and Krogan, at least, those military forces would be a very significant portion of their population.

I'm just going to try to repress it. Thane and Mordin didn't die, either, so that's good. (for what it's worth, their deaths were handled brilliantly)

I envy the people that enjoyed the ending and don't want them to view it the way I do. I wish I could walk away from the series satisfied like Rabbit but the last 10 minutes felt like Casey Hudson walked into my house and punched me in the face. After playing through ME1 three times and ME2 twice I have zero desire to even touch ME3 again because of that ending. I've always been a Journey > Ending kind of guy and thought the majority of the game was phenomenal but that just shows how awful I thought that ending was. Every decision, every relationship and everything about Mass Effect was cheapened in 10 minutes. I think I just need to avoid all things Mass Effect for a while because I keep thinking about how much that ending bothers me.

Spoiler:

I really hope that theory I linked before is true...

Ending spoilers

Spoiler:

I'd broadly agree that IF any of the three choices had any degree of agency or effect, that they would be better than they are. However, I did not get the sense that they're not.

For instance, Catalyst mentions that the Reapers were his solution, presumably to a repeating problem. Vendetta refers to a repeating pattern that occurs outside of Reaper influence. Destroying the Reapers doesn't solve this larger problem, it just resets the Galaxy to a situation before any solution was instituted since, as Catalyst says, Shepard being on the Citadel indicates that his solution will no longer be viable for many more cycles.

Controlling the Reapers may or may not resolve this either. We don't know if Shepard will behave just like the Reapers have, what effect 50 000 years of perspective will have on a human in Reaper form.

Synthesis is ultimately the best-sounding solution, though it still sucks because the end sequence looks IDENTICAL to each of the other solutions, suggesting that it doesn't really mean anything, either.

So we have a question framed badly, and no definitive feedback is given on the result of your choices, and what difference they make on the cycle and against each other.

The contract in a game involving choices is that once you choose, the game gives you feedback on what that choice meant. ME3's ending does not do that, even for just the one question and the three choices it presents.

Thin_J wrote:
rabbit wrote:

Given the level of reveal over what happened starting in ME1, I'm DYING to go back to the beginning. I'm hoping to mod out the boring bits.

All y'all are just polarizing me on my liking the ending, so, well, i guess that makes me an idiot.

I'm not up on the details here, I'm guessing you didn't actually finish the first two? If you'd never played the previous two games to completion I could see how the ending of 3 might seem ok. To me, having played through the entirety of the previous two multiple times it feels very much like an incredibly lazy betrayal of the entirety of the series up until those last ten minutes.

I did not finish ME1 (but will this week, I imagine). I played ME2 through to two different endings - a good ending and the worst ending, just this last week.

"Betrayal" seems an awfully charged word for "I didn't like it." There is no contract between author and reader that the author handle things a certain way. You can certainly hate it, but the idea that somehow you were entitled to have the story conclude in a certain way seems, frankly, a bit absurd. I TOTALLY get why some folks are all "the ending sucked." But the idea that somehow they just phoned it in after 100 hours of storytelling, rather than making a deliberate, authorial decision, is hollow and false on the face of it. You may DETEST that authorial decision, but it is still an authorial decision.

By that logic, I could forgive George Lucas for his crimes against Star Wars. If your story becomes beloved by so many, no amount of authorial authority can prevent people from feeling a measure of grief when the story takes a turn that the audience cannot understand. It's a perfectly natural reaction.

Just did Thessia mission... damn.

Spoiler:

Feels a little like Arrival. No matter what I do, I'm screwed. I really dislike unwinnable fights. I might as well be playing on Story Mode. I wouldn't have wasted 3 medigels reviving my teammates and used a ton of grenades trying to kill that idiot. :mad:

Post mission there was one of the best serious conversations with Joker ever:

Spoiler:

He went off on Shep, after I told him to stop joking, pointing out how his home planet was screwed and nobody cared. And then how Anderson had asked him to keep an eye on me, and then into some guilt about how it was his fault Shep died in the ME2 prologue.

Good stuff.

Also I have no idea how you could play this game without the DLC Character. He had two huge moments during that mission, and one post mission with Liara. Holy crap.

I suppose other characters fill in in some other way in those spots? But damn, I just feel more and more like the game would have been incomplete without this character around.

rabbit wrote:

"Betrayal" seems an awfully charged word for "I didn't like it." There is no contract between author and reader that the author handle things a certain way. You can certainly hate it, but the idea that somehow you were entitled to have the story conclude in a certain way seems, frankly, a bit absurd. I TOTALLY get why some folks are all "the ending sucked." But the idea that somehow they just phoned it in after 100 hours of storytelling, rather than making a deliberate, authorial decision, is hollow and false on the face of it. You may DETEST that authorial decision, but it is still an authorial decision.

Spoiler:

The amount of time is irrelevant. The amount of loved showed towards a series, I think, is relevant. If I go to a restaurant because they serve a wonderful dish, and I keep coming back because I love that dish, it feels awful when they change the ingredients or the way they prepare it to the point that it tastes lousy to me. They fulfilled their obligation to provide me food in the same way that Bioware fulfilled the obligation to provide me a story, but even if they felt like they made the right choice in changing the ingredients, they lost me as a customer.

I talked up the ME series and the authorial decisions of ME1 and ME2 to people who don't even play video games. I was championing it as one of the greatest sci-fi stories I have ever experienced. If they had just ended it with more clarity or with more simplicity consistent with their established themes I would have continued to. Now, it all seems invalid.

It just makes me sad.

Findaer:

Spoiler:

I don't know that that's a reasonable position to take. There are a lot of top-level decision making going in the world that makes everything a lot of people do seem inconsequential and pointless. The ending is badly executed, but the concept of what might go down isn't bad.

Too, the personal stories remain the same as they always were, regardless of the results of the overarching plot.

LarryC wrote:

Findaer:

Spoiler:

I don't know that that's a reasonable position to take. There are a lot of top-level decision making going in the world that makes everything a lot of people do seem inconsequential and pointless. The ending is badly executed, but the concept of what might go down isn't bad.

Too, the personal stories remain the same as they always were, regardless of the results of the overarching plot.

Spoiler:

My position probably is not totally reasonable at this state because I had such an emotional high going into this week and I let it become too personal. ME gave me personal stories because I was motivated to play it and make decisions because of the overarching plot. I have rarely, if ever, experienced that in a game.

A cheap shot at the ending, but I kinda funny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRYzM...

rabbit wrote:

"Betrayal" seems an awfully charged word for "I didn't like it." There is no contract between author and reader that the author handle things a certain way. You can certainly hate it, but the idea that somehow you were entitled to have the story conclude in a certain way seems, frankly, a bit absurd. I TOTALLY get why some folks are all "the ending sucked." But the idea that somehow they just phoned it in after 100 hours of storytelling, rather than making a deliberate, authorial decision, is hollow and false on the face of it. You may DETEST that authorial decision, but it is still an authorial decision.

But it isn't just "I didn't like it" it's that the last ten minutes completely invalidates everything you've done in the entire series up to that point. They could have ended it on a down note, which is something I was expecting by the way, without crapping all over every single other choice you made throughout the series. But they didn't and they do, and they do it in the laziest way possible.

The Quarian/Geth thing is perhaps the very worst. Great moment. Amazing even, for a game to get as much out of me as that did. And then 45 minutes later it means absolutely nothing.

I thought it was posted somewhere already but I couldn't find it. A pretty good theory on the ending if you ask me.

Spoiler:

I don't know that I agree with everything, but the child being some kind of Reaper induced hallucination is not entirely implausible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zRLw...

This is not by me:

Spoiler:

-The endgame scenario is Indoctrination/Manipulation from the Reapers (Harbinger) trying to force you into choosing to let the Reapers live.
Shepard is not awake during the final scenes.

-Choosing Control - You can not control them, they control you. Shepard says as much to the Illusive Man moments earlier.

-Choosing Synthesis - Allows everyone in the galaxy to be manipulated by Reaper code, like they have done to the Geth multiple times now.

-Choosing Destroy - Breaks the hold the reapers have on Shepard's mind.

-Choosing to destroy all synthetic life option is more Renegade in appearence. Controlling the Reapers is more Paragon in appearence. The Illusive Man's choice should not be Paragon colors, just as Anderson's choice should not be Renegade. The reapers are saying that Destroy is the worst, Control is worse, and Synthesis is the best. They want you to fail.

-Stating that all sythetic life will be destroyed will give you pause; destroying the Geth can force you to a different conclusion. This choice exists for the illusion of choice; the other choices are ment to sound better.

-Shepard wakes up after Destroy, because the Reaper's hold is diminished. Shepard does not awake in the other 2 "endings" because you are fully indoctrinated by the choices you made to allow the Reapers to win. "Assuming Control!"

-The child does not actually exist. He is an attempt to indoctrinate Shepard. Nobody but Shepard ever sees or interacts with the child.

-When Anderson calls for Shepard at the beginning of the game, when Shepard is talking to the child, Shepard turns back and the child is gone. Shepard has been "snapped out of it".

-When Shepard turns towards Anderson after being "snapped out of it", a growl is heard. In the third novel, when Greyson resisted the reapers they would make a growling noise once they realized they didn't have him under complete control.

-During Shepard's final dream with the child, chatter can be heard over the radio about nobody making it to the beam. Shepard is still in London.

-When Shepard catches the child in the final dream, they are both engulfed in flame. Going with the child (the
reapers) means Shepard's destruction.

-Shepard has spent alot of time around Reapers. Soveriegn, various Reaper artifacts, the Human Reaper, 2 Reaper destroyers, the Artifact from "The Arrival." Its foolish to assume there is not some level of indoctrination.

-When Shepard wakes up at the end of Destroy, he/she is waking up in London, after being hit with the laser.