The endings to ME3 are sounding an awful lot like the last Disc of Xenogears. FULL-OF-F*CK.

Well, I finally got around to watching the ending for myself and you know what? It isn't as bad as people say it is. Don't get me wrong, it's still a tacked-on piece of shiat that looked like it was put together in 10 minutes because someone thought players would complain about not having a choice in the matter, but you could do a lot worse.

/course, it could be because I got in a fight with a sick relative and many things don't look as bad in comparison

kab: scottydoesntknow: J. Frank Parnell: It kind of hits you like the ending in 'Contact' did.

That's a pretty good comparison.

Only difference being I only invested around 2.5 hours for a crappy payoff, unlike Mass Effect's 90+ hours.

So what, in your eyes, would have been a 'good' ending for Contact?


Ellie discovers a message from the creator(s) of the universe hidden in the number Pi?

imontheinternet: shortymac: Here's a question for fark: how would you have ended it?

EDI is plugged in to the Reapers, teaching them to love and ending the war. All the Reaper love is directed at Joker, so he takes command of them. As the new God Emperor, Joker issues a galaxy-wide edict banning all stairs, sharp edges, and unpadded surfaces.

Shepard retires from the military and opens an escort service, featuring all the women who served under him. This ending unlocks a hentai minigame.

And that's still a better ending that choosing what colors I want the space magic to be.

ShadowLAnCeR This just in, war is hell and many gamers can't deal with the fact that it doesn't always end up how you want it to.

* Billions dead
* Worlds destroyed
* Some species made extinct
* The best of the remaining species stuck in Sol system
* Some of those species will starve to death or turn to cannibalism due to inability to eat predominant foodstuffs
* Tech destroyed, sending life back to the stone age, or 20th century Earth levels of tech
* Mass relays destroyed, stranding everyone within their own systems, or relying on FTL that may or may not work (eezo-based FTL is gone, need to rely on secondary fuel source)

What part of the above means a happy sunshine and bunnies ending?

And for giggles, the most advanced ship in the galaxy turns tail and RUNS in the middle of the most important battle, taking your trusted crew who would go to hell and back for you (some even give impassioned speeches about it just a few moments prior), and landing on Gilligan's Planet to form an inbred colony that will die out in 5 generations. Yes, they made Joker a coward. The battle was on Earth, and he goes from fighting near Earth to jumping system by Pluto. To add salt, out jumps Joker and a romance option, all happy and la-di-da.

The very least they could do is offer a small consolation, or have the endings make sense. Until then, the game ends with Anderson's talk, and is a fever-dream of indoctrination.

Thought this was an amusing comment from the PA forums:


"Imagine if at the end of The Lord of the Rings, a glowy figure appeared in front of Frodo and said "Listen, dropping the ring into the lava won't do what you think. So you have to either have to push this button to kill everyone or push this button to let Sauron win". Frodo would go "What the fark? Who are you? Why should I believe you? Why are these my only choices?" "Well, you could fight but you'd lose, trust me. Just press one of these buttons." So with no Sam or Smeogal there to give their input (even if it's BAD advice, it's a second and third opinion), Frodo pushes the button, falls into the lava, dies, and the ending happens. Oh, but you don't really see anything, just different colored lights. And no resolution in any way, and suddenly Strider, Legolas and Gimli are flying on eagles for no reason and crash land on the other side of the mountains with no explanation."

After having played through the game I think the ending could be several times better if they had

1. Not have had the Normandy flying away at the end. This was utterly stupid and has no reason to happen and was the least logical thing in the entire series even above the magical force powers they called biotics.

2. Have an ending that just lets the galaxy continue to go on the way it was. One of the greatest strengths of Mass Effect was the epic universe that they built but it seems that in each ending that entire universe gets screwed and none of the actions you did in the games actually mattered at all since most of the galactic civilizations are going to collapse.

3. Actually have followed through on the promise that multiplayer would not be necessary for the better endings. Multiplayer is fine but that fact that in order to get the best endings you needed to play it was just stupid.

Foxxinnia: Is the gameplay at least pretty fun? If it is I'll get it when it goes on sale, but I won't bother jumping all over it if the story shiats all over everything.

My suggestion, wait for the scene where Shepard and Anderson are sitting next to each other and looking out at the earth, then...
TURN THE GAME OFF

At that point imagine how you feel the ending should proceed from there. You will be a lot happier.

shortymac: You know, I don't think the ending is as bad as people are saying. I do think that they ran into the whole "there's so many different permutations we can't account for all of them" in the ending movie.

BioWare developers explicitly promised that in-game decisions would affect the ending of the game. Reactions to the endings may have been somewhat tempered had BioWare not demonstrably lied regarding their nature.

Game producer Mike Gamble stated,

"There are many different endings. We wouldn't do it any other way. How could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and then be forced into a bespoke ending that everyone gets? But I can't say any more than that...

Whether you're happy or angry at the ending, know this: it is an ending. BioWare will not do a "Lost" and leave fans with more questions than answers after finishing the game.

I honestly think the player base is going to be really happy with the way we've done it. You had a part in it. Every decision you've made will impact how things go. The player's also the architect of what happens."

Those statements were issued less than one month prior to the release of the game. No possible rational nor honest interpretation of the game endings suggest those statements to be consistent with reality. Moreover, BioWare demonstrably lied regarding the necessity (or, rather, the lack thereof) of multiplayer in attaining the "best ending".

mongbiohazard: Is it a problem with just one of the possible endings, or all of them?

Apparently (I've been avoiding spoilers myself, farking TV grenaded itself last night so I can't continue until I replace it) the endings range from WTF to nerdrage. They are inconsistent with everything leading up to them and your decisions really don't matter in the end.

Additionally, unlike what Bioware claimed, multiplayer is all but required unless you made ALL the "right" decisions in ME1, ME2 and ME3 and didn't miss any side quests in ME3.

I'm also sensing that the "real" ending will be DLC in about a month. Much like the events of ME3 are predicated on Shepherd having "accidentally" blown up a Batarian colony in the "Arrival" DLC.

Passive Aggressive Larry: Loved the game, liked the ending. Get over yourselves, nerds. Or shut up and stop buying the games. Pretty simple solution if you ask me.

I liked the ending too, for about 5 minutes into the credits. Then I started asking myself "Wait....what about everything I just did through 1 and 2?" Then I really started thinking about the entire series as a whole. And it didn't piece together.

My first playthrough of the entire series - I paragon'd Shepard hard on ME1 until the end when I decided I've had enough of the council and renegaded. ME2 I decided to be a badass and thought, heck, Cerberus brought me back to life, I'm going to support the Illusive Man. ME3 I played a pretty straight mix (Had to knockout the reporter, amirite?)

But in ME3, where were the options? Why couldn't I go along with the Illusive Man's plan? Did we even have to be enemies?

I concluded that the writers didn't write a conclusion to the series. They wrote the ending for Mass Effect 3. Look at what affects the ending from the previous games - just whether you saved the collector base or not (which I still have no idea how that actually plays into the ending AT ALL) which I believe was an option no matter what path you took during ME2. Nothing else from the previous games mattered. And that's not how you wrap up a trilogy.

You can see it in the game design as well. There is no consistency in any of it. How you level up, weapon mods, weapon layout. Mass Effect really comes off as a set of games like Final Fantasy or Suikoden rather than a real trilogy

Not to mention various other issues.

Spoilers Ahead.


1) if all the mass relays are destroyed, how many billions that depend on food shipments from agriworlds will starve to death now? Note: they are destroyed in all 3 of the main endings.

2) Why was the normandy already fleeing earth? Perhaps the most useful ship in the combined navy just... left at the most important part of the battle for civilization itself?

3) Why were liara and EDI on the normandy? they were my final squadmates, and i saw them get blown to fark and back. Suddenly they are ok, millions of miles away with Joker? Whuh?

4) Why did none of my choices make a difference on my ending possibilities--apparently you have to do every single side mission and quest if you aren't playing multiplayer to get the 4th, "good" ending? You mean to tell me that getting that one minor object for a member of the citadel defense force (who i assume were all dead by the time the citadel was moved to earth ANYWAY) is the difference between the destruction of civilization as we know it, and triumph?

All kinds of bad taste in my mouth. And I loved the rest of the game.

So, they wrote themselves into a corner and had to roach-scurry their way out?

I'll just leave this here:

White.

People.

Problems.

If anyone has a little extra 'donation money' available, after getting the video game fixed, I can recommend International Rescue Committee (new window) as an excellent place to give.

Helping resettle refugees - in this pic a family loses their home in Syria


Helping lessen the impact of drought, famine, and war in East Africa


They have also provide medical assistance and have helped resettle refugees (almost half of which are children) from Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Haiti, Japan...