Mass Effect 3 Ending Discussion

[Bond]

Adam and I think it would be great if the new ending was released with, "Mass Effect 3: Enhanced Edition." The game would include the new ending and Prothean character all for $60.

The new Reaper character would be $10.

[Swan]

They just need to add this video to the end and I will be happy

[Typhoid]

So who here actually enjoys the endings they've gotten?

To clarify I haven't played but it just seems like nobody is happy with how the game ended, and everyone felt like they were watching Star Wars Episode I again. "What the fuck is this shit. I want my money back. This isn't as good as I had hoped. What the fuck. you ruined your own franchise!"

[Combine 017]

The game itself was great, just the last 10-15 minutes of it went to shit real fast. I really like that indoctrination theory and that it was Shepard fighting against his own mind, but if thats true, why didnt they finish the game? Either way, they screwed up, but I still really enjoyed the game as a whole and look forward to some more DLC.

[Fox 6]

Just beat this thing. I am disappointed. I know I have defended this game bu to be fair everything but that last 10-15 minutes was the greatest gaming experience I've ever had. I really enjoy the ME universe and to see it get such a awful ending really sucks. I want closure dammit! What happens next? My Shepard is still alive because I gathered more than half of total galactic readiness, so I know there is more to tell. What happens to all of your companions that I have invested so much learning about and talking to and helping?

I dont get why it boiled down to how synthetic life will always rise up and become violent, so they need these cycles to keep things in check?

The let down comes from working so hard and then having such little closure and more "WTFs?" with the little boy AI and how Liara and Javvik ended up on the Normandy, and why was it in the middle of a jump!?!

And I chose to destroy the reapers, why the hell does that mean I have to kill the Geth too?!?!?

The scene after the credits was a nice touch.

Maybe I'm just sad that its all over? No more mass effect?!

Also, if your Shepard dies because you dont want to bother with gathering all the resources, how do you play the inevitable DLC? or will it just be for the co-op?

[Ginkasa]

If you load up your save again you'll notice it just prior to the Cerberus base mission (which was the point of no return) despite where ever your last save really was. This is to, basically, allow everyone to play DLC without having to start a new game. They will all take place prior to the battle for Earth.

[Combine 017]

Originally Posted by Fox 6

Also, if your Shepard dies because you dont want to bother with gathering all the resources, how do you play the inevitable DLC? or will it just be for the co-op?

Youre galactic readiness has nothing to do with Shepard living or dying. He lives if you destroy the Reapers, but dies if you choose the other options, no matter how many resources youve acquired. You should watch that indoctrination theory video, its pretty well done and explains what they think the last 10-15 mins were all about.

[Dylflon]

I ended up going the synthesis route since control was obviously going to be a fail choice and I didn't feel destroying all synthetic life was the answer either (would feel guilty killing EDI).

But yeah...I was expecting to defend the ending after beating this game but I don't really feel like I understand the effects of my final choice...

So um...yeah I dunno.

[Typhoid]

I want closure dammit! What happens next?

Wait for the plethora of DLC that will never stop being released.

I dont get why it boiled down to how synthetic life will always rise up and become violent, so they need these cycles to keep things in check?

What do you mean "you dont get it" - you literally don't comprehend the concept of it - or you don't understand why they chose that as the theme of the Universe?

Anecdotal assumption alert:

The AI/Organic thing has been addressed as at least a minor theme in the other games - look at the Quarians, they created the Geth to help - the Geth rebelled after gaining thought, and there you go - Mass Effect 1. Mass Effect 2 explored the fact the Geth might be synthetic but they're still "life", but not before a corporation tries bringing Shep back from the dead and making him a living-robot so he can start flying around the Universe with his living AI-ship, dealing with the fact there is an engineered species stealing people to make a giant robotic human simply because they feel superior to all other species and don't trust any of them with their own survival. Which makes "sense", considering you're controlling a human-robot who is flying in a living ship with a sentient robot on his team.
The alien species 'controlling the cycles' maybe views synthetic life as an abomination to real life, being that it is superior and a seemingly neverending threat to organic life because given enough time it will most likely decimate the species that created it if no outside help is thrown in.

It just seems to me that Mass Effect is "about" the combination of living creatures and computers [In the same way that Deus Ex is, but on a larger and more warped scale] - and the problems associated with it - they just fast forwarded thousands of years beyond the "Hey, we made a computer that can play Chess, and we can put a barcode in your arm" part.


I still do want to play the game and experience this horrible unsatisfying ending for myself to see how magnificently let down I'll be. I have yet to see a person anywhere online say "Yeah, I'm satisfied with this so far." - That just makes me want to play it so much more.

[Combine 017]

For those who are curios or like me, will never be able to see the bad endings, heres a vid of every ending side by side.

[Bond]

Originally Posted by Combine 017

For those who are curios or like me, will never be able to see the bad endings, heres a vid of every ending side by side.

Look, just because the designers didn't branch out into secondary colors doesn't mean the endings weren't vastly different.

On a serious note, I had no idea the endings were that similar. That is kind of ridiculous.

[Dylflon]

Now that I've read the indoctrination theory, it's very interesting to think that what plays out in the citadel is just a mind fuck to get Shepard to think on a different paradigm that helps the Reapers (like what happened with the Illusive man).

Are the reapers mind readers? That's the only way they'd know to make the little AI hologram that child. It makes more sense if it's taking place in Shepard's head since that kid is something she's been grappling with the whole game, he's always very much in her mind.

If this is the case, then my selection of synthesis could be playing into the reaper's hand now that I'm trying to compromise rather than stop them. Could that AI have been fucking with me and lying outright. Some of the things he said are out of line with the things the Reapers have said throughout the game.

The idea that this cycle preserves life could be the lie that helps fuck with Shepard's head enough to not destroy the Reapers while the Reapers could be acting in self interest to ensure that no being would ever advance enough to be on par with the Reapers.

Plus there's a lot of weird stuff that happened like Shepard's gun going off at Anderson, but Anderson not being wounded. Then later in the exchange Shepard is bleeding from the spot where it seems she shot Anderson.

The only thing I regret now is taking the two people I cared about most on the last mission since it seems they got vaporized.

I wonder how the rest of the people made out in the battle...


The more I think about it, the more I like how the game ended. It will be interesting to see what happens now that Bioware is adding to it.


The only thing I see as a failure is the fact that the final battle didn't involve many hard choices. I would have liked something akin to the last mission in ME2 wherein you have to organize squads to help you get to the beam. The last moments would have been a lot better if the game forced to make hard choices and sacrifice some of your friends for the sake of the mission. It doesn't seem as though that would have been too hard to do and I think a mission of this caliber would have limited a lot of people's disappointment with the end of the game.


Edit:

The biggest success of this game is that it's gotten all of us thinking about it a lot after finishing it. What other game can boast that?

[Dylflon]

Last stage of dealing with end of Mass Effect:

Played through ending again. Indoctrination theory is everyone just grasping at straws.

The ending was the ending. It wasn't the worst thing ever. Get over it, crybabies.

[Typhoid]

It would have made more sense if they hadn't tryed to explain the reapers origins, and the whole cycle was just the reapers procuring the future of their species, ensuring their survival.

I like the concept that they're doing it is because they're so technologically advanced that they feel so complexly superior to every living thing, and have a massive God complex. I think that sounds a lot cooler than them simply trying to survive.

Wrong about that. In ME3 you get the chance to see stored Geth memories and its the Quarians that start the war with the Geth. There are several memories but there are key ones where the Quarians are trying to shut a geth down (kill it) and the geth is just asking what it did wrong and how it wasn't broken, trying to figure out why they wanted to kill it.

They talk about that in ME2 too, if you talk enough with Legion. He plays the recordings for you.
So then after the Quarians tried to shut off (kill) that geth, the geth contemplated why they creators (Gods) were attempting to destroy them and rebelled, right?

Just because I said the Geth rebelled doesn't mean I meant they were the first to start the war - but they were still the synthetic ones to rise up and rebel against the organic creators.

1. Cerberus is not an evil corporation

I never said they were evil. I just said they were a corporation.


Anyways, all I was trying to say with my post before was my opinion on the theme of the series - that the whole Synthetic Life/Organic life and the struggles between them and combination of them seems to be at least a minor theme in the whole series - to me. Almost everything in that game is the cause, problem of, or the solution is some type of genetic engineering, and the struggles of choices between combining organic life with synthetic life, or altering organic life to become 'better'.

It seems to be about "At what point is too much". Look at the Illusive Man. He wants to secure the human race at the top of the Universal ladder- at what cost though - synthesizing people to make them stronger and better, essentially making them less organic, less 'natural'. Then there's the Solarians and the Genophage, and the fact the Krogan were genetically engineered in the first place, and then decimated afterwards with some genetic altering. And especially the shit the Reapers are pulling, and have previously pulled.

AI in the series was originally presented as evil with the Geth, but then slowly towards the 3rd game (to my understanding from playing to the second and from what I've heard about the 3rd) they try to make you understand that just because their life isn't organic, it's still life [Even through the course of 2, with EDI - she starts off with a sketchy sort of vibe to the character, but by the end of the game she has become very 'human' in her interactions, cracking jokes, getting to know the crew, and possibly even 'becomes' the ship - turning her into an actual physical object rather than simply data]- so is it morally okay to destroy them - when is it morally okay to stop genetic engineering, when is it okay to do it etc. Maybe it's just me who sees it that way, I'm not too sure.

The biggest success of this game is that it's gotten all of us thinking about it a lot after finishing it. What other game can boast that?

Even if that's not what they were going for at all, I definitely agree.

Hey Dylan, after you decide to be through with this abomination of semen-filled excrement [No rush] I call dibs - because I don't really want to drop 70 bucks on a game everyone has been shit talking for weeks - it's not a very good selling point.


*shrugs and walks away*

[Combine 017]

If you gave Legion to Cerberus in ME2, you end up fighting him somewhere in ME3.
And if you chose Morinth over Samara in ME2 (like anyone did that) she comes back as a Banshee near the end of the game.
Also your Space Hamster from ME2 is running around in the engine room where Jack used to be, go catch it!

Just read this on IGN which I found kind of funny. Its in the description of a planet from ME1.

Klencory is famously claimed by the eccentric volus billionaire Kumun Shol. He claims that a vision of a higher being told him to seek on Klencory the "lost crypts of beings of light." These entities were supposedly created at the dawn of time to protect organic life from synthetic "machine devils." Shol has been excavating on Klencory's toxic surface for two decades, at great expense. No government has valued the world enough to evict his small army of mercenaries.

And a description from the same planet in ME3.

Klencory is famously claimed by the eccentric volus billionaire Kumun Shol. His once-ridiculed visions of "beings of light" protecting organic life from synthetic "machine devils" don't seem quite so far-fetched now. His private army of mercenaries are well-established on the planet, waiting for husks to come knocking in on their door. In all likelihood, they will be obliterated by the molten metal of a Reaper orbital bombardment, on its way to somewhere important.