Explain to me why this ending was so bad. I've only played

It's not so bad, people are overreacting as always

>>389444247

It's pretty unambitious, both in concept and execution. Considering they had the opportunity to end the serious any way they wanted, what they came up with was disappointing. But maybe a lot of that disappointment comes with playing through the whole series. The more you build it up, the further there is to fall in terms of expectations.

It's the exact same thing as DXHR's ending, which was mysteriously savaged in all reviews, there's nothing excessively unique about them, and you get the same slideshow with some variations, and a different voiceover, depending on how shitty you did in the game, and since a lot of people didn't do side missions and beelined to story ones, most people got an ending with a somber/unsure voiceover

>>389444312
My first thought was that it was just an overreaction, but I can't help but feel a more underlying issue lies within this controversy. Although I could just be over thinking it.

>>389444247
It's filled with tons of inconsistencies, holes, errors. Joker just outright leaves the frontlines of the battle prematurely without Shepard.

It's just really bad, I hate it.

>>389444247
Because it fuck the main theme of the game that by cooperation (willingly or force) you can beat every challenge. And the main bad guy being a bug I.A was retard.

>>389444412
>But maybe a lot of that disappointment comes with playing through the whole series. The more you build it up, the further there is to fall in terms of expectations
I suppose that is indeed a good point.

I don't think it's particularly bad. It's just that the lead designer said that no two games would end the same way for people.

He even outright said that there wouldn't be an A, B or C ending.

>>389444247
>after doing some research about it.
I sincerely doubt this because it's really, really fucking obvious

You don't end a trilogy that pretends your choices have meaning with a meaningless "pick a colour" shitfest where nothing you've done matters in the slightest.

>>389444610
>He even outright said that there wouldn't be an A, B or C ending.
I would like a source for that. I find it hard to believe a designer would lie so blatantly.

>>389444734
My research into this controversy hasn't been very expansive as of yet, while I agree that visually the endings don't have much variation, aren't these endings very different on a thematic level?

>>389444585
This. I'm sorry but the Destroy ending is the best and ONLY ending. Also it's shit because:

>starchild
>ancient organics created synthetics to prevent other, newer organics from creating synthetics by wiping the galaxy every X years, but got wiped out themselves

>>389444247
There's nothing wrong with it*, people are just mad that everyone they've come to know and love basically die or are assumed dead. The only reason anybody pays attention to any of the other criticisms is because they're looking for "rational" excuses to shit on the game because their fee fees got hurt.

As someone who was really put off by the """"suicide mission"""" and general tone of 2, I appreciated the tone shift in 3. I actually played it a little after release, when people were already bitching about the ending, and it was like a dream come true to find that the thing people were shitting on was actually exactly what I'd wanted since 2 came out.

*That isn't already true of most, if not all, Bioware games

>>389444247
before the game came out, the director talked about how the game definitely didn't have an A, B, or C ending, and that it would take into account all of the choices you made through the 3 games
it turned out to have an A, B, or C ending that DIDN'T take any of your other choices into account; and not only that, but the ending cinematic was EXACTLY the same for all 3 choices, but with the colour of the energy swapped between red, blue or green
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPelM2hwhJA

there was no final boss, or anything close to it, which is where the marauder shields meme popped up from, because the last guy you fight in ME3 is a random grunt who dies in about 2-3 hits

the "star child" came out of nowhere and made very little sense, which acted as complete mood whiplash for the player
imagine you are playing the game and it's building up and building up, and then something happens which stops all your emotional connection and just makes you confused and angry from a story design perspective; that's what the starchild did, it instantly broke your immersion because it was never alluded to before this and came out of nowhere from a writing perspective

not only this, but the whole ending was rushed and things happen without explanation; one moment you are coordinating with your team about the final battle, then it fades to black, and suddenly your are just running down a hill towards something, and your team mates aren't with you, then it shows in the ending cutscene they were on the normandy with joker (even though he was dogfighting with reaper forces in orbit at the same time as you were all on the ground)

tl;dr version the ending made no sense, characters teleported thousands of miles in scene transitions with no explanation, the director outright lied about the ending, the final cutscene was lazily handled for all 3 choices, there was no final boss, none of your choices mattered except the final one

>>389445074
What exactly did you cover in your research?

>>389444747
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/01/10/mass1525-effect-3-cas5ey-fdsafdhudson-interviewae.aspx?PostPageIndex=2

>Yeah, and I’d say much more so, because we have the ability to build the endings out in a way that we don’t have to worry about eventually tying them back together somewhere. This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.

he literally said it

>>389445206
>The only reason anybody pays attention to any of the other criticisms is because they're looking for "rational" excuses to shit on the game because their fee fees got hurt.

Dumbest shit I've read all day. They were valid criticisms. Bioware even responded by fixing the errors in the Director's Cut. The ending, by virtue of closing off the trilogy on a thoughtless, unsatisfying whimper is reason enough to hate it. Stop being a retarded contrarion.

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>>389444247
>Build up the bad guy for 2 games
>Last game is OK, pretty rough in places
>Introduce a completely different conflict in the last 10-15 minutes of the game
>Palette swapped video and stolen art ending
>Picture is the last message of the trilogy

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>Promised all your choices matter and that there wouldn't just be three different coloured endings
>Mass Effect 3 eliminates all meaning of choice and gives you three near identical endings
Now, imagine how pissed people were when they waited six years for that conclusion.

>>389444247
We got basically nothing on how we changed the galaxy and what all happened to it.

>>389445361
>>389445436
Well shit. I am starting to understand where the anger comes from.

>>389445435
Mostly articles from gaming journalists about how gamers felt they were entitled to a different ending.

>>389445709
>articles from gaming journalists
There's your problem. Get some sources from forums or even archives of here, people were very unhappy.

>>389445709
>Listening to fucking journalists
Even the Bioware forums filled with fanboys entered a rabid hatred for the company. The games websites kept spinning it as "hurr you just wanted a happy ending" when the truth was people just wanted their choices acknowledged like they were promised, instead of being fucking lied too.

>>389445905
And whats so bad about a happy ending?
It would have been better to the trash we got.

Shepard go nuclear kills everything and stabs a bunch of reapers.
The game is a fanfic anyway so who cares, about muh artistic art

>>389445771
>>389445905
Admittedly gaming journalists are not the best source of information but I do like to cover all sides of an issue when conducting research. I will most certainly be going to forums and the archives here later on. I find this ending controversy to be rather interesting topic.

>>389444450
DXHR wasn't hugely varied in its endings but at least it engaged the audience in that it made you take a stance on the philosophical issues the game put before you, and the potential ramifications of each ending are at least thematically different in theory

Casey Hudson and Mac Walters had absolutely nothing to say with Mass Effect 3's endings, they just being deliberately obtuse and vague because they think a convoluted ending for its own sake=true deep art

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>>389446095
Covering all sides of this is definitely worthwhile. I think the main problem will be the fanatics on both sides, there was very little middle ground on this.
I know, becaues I'm eternally mad.

>>389444247
People just expected their choices to matter more. Save or Kill the Rachni in the first game? Doesn't matter, the Reapers get them anyways. Sell Legion in 2? His hologram appears anyways. Destroy the Human Reaper? Illusive Man (who loses all agency as a character) retrieves it anyway. These aren't little sidequests, they're the bigger decisions in the series, and none of it changes anything except how many points you have at the end.

It doesn't help that ME3 was rushed out the door. All things considered they -did- manage to wrap up the major conflicts, but a lot of plot points (dark energy) and characters were just outright dropped. The leaked script showed that a lot of things changed for the worse.

Coming up to the ending itself, Earth as a level sucked and had a lot of technical blemishes. Despite being the final showdown, NONE of your squadmates die or are even in danger. Compare to the suicide mission, where you can fuck up and potentially end up with nobody. This is supposed to be the final hour, but there's no stakes. even when the devs have free reign to do whatever they want.

Then Starchild comes around. For some reason this random kid who Shepard saw for two minutes and for whom he wasn't even in the position to save has given him PTSD. And the explanation of "The Reapers come whenever AI gets too advanced" is shit. THIS is the unfathomable answer Sovereign was spouting about in the first game? Then you pick your favorite color of Kool-Aid and get THE EXACT SAME CUTSCENES with minor differences. The worst part is that Synthesis is presented as the "third, better choice" but the whole idea makes NO FUCKING LOGISTICAL SENSE and is basically "Space magic, lol, guess we're all part robots. Now Joker can bang EDI."

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>>389445582
>The last words of the mass effect series were "downloadable content"

>>389444247
I could write up an entire essay on why Mass Effect 3 itself was a huge disappointment, not just its ending. The game is riddled with so many issues, Kai Leng, Cerberus and The Illusive Man losing any morally grey aspects, most ME2 squad mates being shafted, the Reapers losing everything that made them Lovecrafian Horrors and so much more. The whole game was a fucking shitshow.

>>389446624
Also
>lmao on-disc squad member who is important to the story is PRE-ORDER ONLY
>So you wanna bang Jessica Chobot? :^)

>>389446095
during this time it was a HUGE debate between journalists and gamers
this is the period where "entitled" entered the gaming lexicon, as journalists called gamers entitled for not wanting a shitty ending, and gamers started to wonder if bioware were paying them to say that, because the ending was an atrocious trainwreck

the directors cut extended ending fixed some things (for example >>389445361 mentions your squad mates disappearing off-screen, in the extended ending they added a cutscene of joker coming down to pick them up before you charge down the hill; and also they added a fallout-styled epilogue showing what happened to races/characters whose stories you influenced), but bioware insisted it was THEIR artistic vision and therefore kept the ending largely the same in terms of story direction

I've not bought another Bioware game since ME3 and I never will
admittedly most of their games post-ME2 have been shit, Anthem looks pretty good but I'm never giving bioware money ever again

>>389446624
Holy shit I remeber thateaked script aeons ago. Where can I find it? Do you guys think the leak made the team change the ending or, since me3 came after two blunders it was just par for the course for bioware to make shit games?

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>>389446715

>>389444247
>battle at earth for no reason
>we need to enter a beam even though we have no idea what it does, how it works or if the reapers can't simply deactivate it
Also cutscenes show how the beam enters through a hole in the Citadel's armor, so it's not your only way inside
>small Reapers can suddenly be killed by a single Cain shot
>good thing Harbinger didn't bring his big, ship destroying lasers and only works with smaller ones
For the original ending:
>you never get to know what happened to the squadmembers you took with you
For the DLC ending:
>Normandy somehow comes to your position in about 5 seconds and doesn't get destroyed because Harbinger is a nice guy and stops firing
>no bossfight
>Harbinger takes off, because scanning for lifesigns is below a cybernetic god
>there are no survivors reported, but somehow Admiral Hackett later knows that you are on bord the Citadel
Man, I'm getting tired here...
>somehow all Anderson, TIM and you end up in the same location (wherever that is)
>yada yada yada
>Shepard is almost dead but gets lifted up via magic floor tile
>on top of the deus ex machina device, which the story evolved around, we now also need one to end the story
>hello starchild
>either get no explanation (original) or a flawed one (DLC) why the Reapers need to harvest organics to save them
How many of these "saved" species did we kill at this point, by the way?
>you can choose red, blue or green
>green is the obviously the best when we ask the starchild, even though we don't know how it should work or why this is a good idea
>endings are the same only colourswapped
For the original:
>get no info what happened to everyone
For the DLC:
>see meaningless slideshows, where only Zaeed's and Jack's are informative enough to assume what their live looks like

Well, those are the big flaws that come to mind right now. Didn't play ME3 for a while though.

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>>389447089
>>389446715

>>389446715
This right here is what stung the most for me. It showed how much Bioware did not give a single fuck about its consumers and the shit we all just witnessed. I know the message was changed in the Extented Cut but we all know it was just damage control.

Those final words still makes me mad to this day.

>>389447456
I wonder what was going through his mind as he said those words

>>389447239
>>Normandy somehow comes to your position in about 5 seconds and doesn't get destroyed because Harbinger is a nice guy and stops firing
>>Harbinger takes off, because scanning for lifesigns is below a cybernetic god
He didn't attack you because of the Reaper IFF

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>>389444247
>your choices will carry on and matter in sequels
>FINALE: everyone dies, choose red explosion or green explosion

it was fucking retarded thats why im mad. i was hopeful the ending was gonna be amazing instead of some stupid as fuck making JOKER and his fuckdroid the main characters who get away

And that fucking fairytale scene afterwards about daddy telling a tale of shephard was just cringy.
I´ve never bought new bioware games after ME3, its their MGSV

>>389447062
Didn't the original ending have something to do with Dark Energy but after the script was leaked it had to be changed?

>>389444602
Not that anon but for me it felt like spitting in the face of all the choices you made through the game. Hell a lot of ME3's plot did that. All those decisions you made through the game that carried throughout the series? All those squad mates you met, sacrificed, and saved? All of it was meaningless and everything just came down to three ending colors.
Shit, even the start of ME3 kind of pissed me off. Mass Effect 2 ended with all your squad mates in the hanger gearing up, checking weapons, all that good shit looking like they were getting ready to go into the biggest fight of their lives as thousands of reapers closed in on the galaxy but then ME3 comes along and... I guess they all decide to just sort of fuck off and do their own thing with only a couple of them even returning as full party members while the rest just become short lived minor characters.

>>389447825
Were does it say that Reapers can only identify friends/foes via that chip. It could be that I missed a codex entry, but we needed that chip for a mass relay, which didn't have a consciousness like a Reaper does.
Also why do Reapers kill you in that scanning minigame if they identify you as friend? And why not just send the Normandy to the beam if you suddenly have such a big advantage through stealth?

>>389446624
The star child PTSD thing was especially fucking stupid given a lot of the backstory options you had to choose from in ME1. Basically even when he was kid, Shephard had seen people, probably even kids die. Hell, if you picked the slave origin he'd probably seen even worse shit. So how the fuck does one kid getting killed, one kid he doesn't even directly witness getting killed, affect him more than any of the incredibly fucked up shit he witnessed as a kid?

>>389447825
He may not have noticed the Normandy approaching due to the Reaper IFF but he damn well saw it with his huge glowing yellow eyes. Unless Harbinger is fucking blind or something.

>>389446723
Why was Jessica Chobot in the game? She felt like a filler character and considering how rushed the game was it feels like weird thing to prioritise.

>>389444247
they promised the ending would be affected by every choice you did over the course of the entire trilogy but then in the end it was only a matter of that last choice in that last segment, so that's ONE reason why this ending is bad

the other reason why the ending is bad is because it is really weird and vague, it doesn't really explain what the fuck just happened at all, there explodes some shit in either a blue, green or red fireball and then ???, all of a sudden the Normandy is lightyears away and for no aparent reason and then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ suddenly CREDITS

>>389445582
I feel like THIS image is the reason why it got so overblown. The ending was kind of crap and then you just get one last kick in your gut while you're down with "BUY DLC, MORE DLC"

>>389449636
This. That message was probably the final straw that broke so many people.

The ending doesn't make sense on several fronts and relies on a deus ex machina off-switch, when we were explicitly promised no DEM defeat of the Reapers.

When Bioware made the extended cut, they made the mistake of thinking the problem people had with the ending was that it wasn't a happy one. But, no, the problem is that the ending makes no fucking sense and is a completely unsatisfying conclusion to the Reapers.

I would like to ask how Bioware thought Synthesis was the best ending? How does turning everyone into a cyborg solve the supposed eternal conflict between Synthetics and Organics?

I want you to imagine the ending of your favorite series. Let's say for the sake of argument Lord of the Rings. You have a good handle on the world, and you have a pretty good understanding of how the Fantastical elements of that world works. You get to the very end and Frodo is about to throw the ring into Mount Doom. That's been the mission this entire time right? Well after walking into Mount Doom instead of a volcano he whines up inside an empty room. There is a guy in there who tells you that Sauron, the guy you've been fighting this entire time, isn't actually the bad guy. The bad guy has actually been human conflict. And now you have to choose between three choices that will supposedly and human conflict in general. One of the choices involves killing all of the elves because Orcs are descended from elves. Another choice involves taking over and ruling the world. And the third choice involves turning everyone into Elf Orc hybrids. None of this shit makes any sense in the stuff that does make sense conflicts with the stuff you already know. And no matter how much you go back to try and find something you missed it doesn't do anything to explain why any of this is happening. Also no matter what you choose you blow up Minas Tirith and Frodo dies. And that's almost as bad as the ending of Mass Effect 3.

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just gonna dump some pic from the good old days.

>>389444450
>and you get the same slideshow with some variations, and a different voiceover
None of this was present when ME3 got released.

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speaking on cooled endings

>>389449524
Everyone who defends the ending I always asked the same question. How is synthesis possible? How does Shepherd jumping into a beam of light turn everyone in the Galaxy into cyborgs? Mass Effect fields? And why does turning everyone into cyborg stop conflict forever? I asked because with every other element in the game, from biotics 2 weapons to faster-than-light space travel, there is an explanation for how it works. But not the synthesis ending. Of course the other endings have major problems too. Why do I have to kill the Geth in order to destroy the Reapers? Especially if I find the interferometric array which allows The Crucible to specifically target every Reaper in the galaxy. No seriously look it up, it's what it does.

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remember me?

>Mass Effect 1 - WE MUST KILL THE REAPERS
>Mass Effect 2 - WE MUST KILL THE REAPERS
>Mass Effect 3 - APPARENTLY KILLING THE REAPERS MAKES ME A BAD PERSON

Inb4 indoctrination theory

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inb4 its to long

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW2ZxnkUHCY&list=PLEE7764FAB908A8FB&index=5

>>389451290
Everytime I hear the indoctrination Theory I cringe. Because the indoctrination Theory either makes no sense or is the worst form of Storytelling since the original form of Mass Effect 3. I've heard two versions: the one where it's just the Reapers trying to convince Shepard to not kill them and the one where everything that happened in The Crucible is all a dream and if he chooses destroy he wakes up in London. Okay, so if the Reapers were trying to convince Shepard not to destroy them then why is it that destroy is always available no matter what you do? Why is it that the worst a commander I am the less susceptible I am to Reaper indoctrination? And if everything that happened in The Crucible was all a dream then what happens after I wake up in London? I mean the reapers are still here right? We're still fucked right? Basically the indoctrination Theory says that no ending is better than the ending we got.

>>389444247
In a purely narrative sense it isn't that bad. Its bad because it completely ignores all the choices you made throughout the series and makes them all seem meaningless when, for me at least, the branching storylines and the feeling that I was creating a personal story was one of the main appeals of the series. Although ME3 did handle this very well up until the ending.

>>389444247
I need to know why Mass Effect has so much in common with Stargate Atlantis. I love the cheesy 00's sci-fi and I've been ready to start playing again. Wraith=Reaper, Shepard=Shepard, Sleeping with an ancient aloof female=Liara, Stargate=Mass Effect Relay.

Unf. I want to install it right now

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>>389444247
tually, it was much more than just the ending. Gameplay-wise, the game has completely given up any pretense of being an RPG, but it barely worked as aa third person shooter as well. It was extremely dull and repetetive, with poor ballance and annoying, boring enemies up the ASS (You always know the team is lazy when you see charge and shielded enemies being constantly thrown in).

The writing was by FAR the weakest in the series, with desperate lack of solid characters and decent quests. Sidequests were more boring than ever, the only one of the main missions that was interesting what Tuchanka, mostly because it featured Mordin, but everything else was incredibly weak (remeber the fucking Geth chapter?).
All ambiguity of the setting and story was thrown a way in favor of "KROGAN GOOD, SALARIANS BAD! GETH GOOD, QUARIANS BAD! etc" binary moral choices. The story was littlered with inconsistencies and bullshit (remeber what was Cerberus like in the previous games, and here) - idiotic crap like the ninja bullshit character, lazy level desing (The hospital on citadel?!). The building your defenses element was completely underused. The game did not actually expand on anything - you don't get to see anything new or learn anything new. The pacing is off. The child dreams were DREADFUL - all new members of Normady are worse than anything featured up till this moment., leading wih Chobot, EDI and fucking muscle-man.
In short, ME3 was really a bad game from start. You want to see a ME game that was good but had really, REALLY horrible ending? That would be Mass Effect 2. ME3 was crap all over.

>we're killing you all before your robots kill you all
hmmmmmmmmmm

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>>389449484
>"i know! lets have an IGN reporter act like an actual reporter in our game!"
>what do you mean we already have characters in game that can serve that role? kill them off damn it! no one will notice".

>how can heavy weapons kill spider reapers?
>Cerberus goes from an Alliance splintergroup to having an army that is stronger than the Alliance
>where did Cerberus get the money to become the empire from star wars?
>how did tim get into the citadel?
>why did legion have to die when he could just copypaste the reaper data?
>why the the qurians chose to attack the geth right under a reaper invasion?
>HURR SYNTHETICS ARE BAD, IGNORE THAT "AI CAN BE HUMAN" THEME WE'VE HAD THROUGHOUT THE GAME
>Create synthetics that destroy all organic life so that other synthetics don't destroy all organic life
>Normandy lands on Earth a splitsecond after being called for help
>A squadmate survives getting hit by an exploding truck
>Harbinger is literally next to the Normandy while the squadmates are boarding it
>He then starts firing after the cutscene, not during the cutscene
>why are there more then three Ardat-Yakshi in the universe all of the sudden?
>Why didn't Miranda just tell Shepard the location of Cerberus HQ?
>Why didn't the Reapers attack the Crucible while it was being built?
>Why don't the Reapers just kill the synthetics instead of the organics?
>Why didn't the Reapers just attack the Citadel in the first place?
>How did Anderson get ahead of Shepard if Shepard entered the Citadel first?
>The new endings did nothing else than adding a few images to a slideshow

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>>389444312
No it was pretty bad for a game like this.
The trilogy was really great up until this very point.
People aren't mad that this game is bad, they are mad because everything up to this point was great and the fans don't feel like they have and actual ending past the Anderson scene.

If bioware would just come back and actually patch the ending and put thought into it instead of writing themselves into a corner at the last second people would be praising the trilogy to no end.

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An ending that tried to be "deep" and "not happy" but ended up being an incoherent mess for the sake of being incoherent.
Destroy ending is the one that makes the most sense, you activate a killswitch that destroys all synthetic life like Reapers and Geth and A.I. alike. It suck balls but works.
Control ending is ridiculous, so Shephard kills himself and that somehow allows him to control the Reapers and make them leave, somehow. Why? How? Where? What then? Fuck if we know, the authors certainly didn't.
Synthesis ending is the most bullshit stupid thing I've ever seen and it's treated like the "best" ending. So in order to stop the conflict between the Reapers and the Galaxy you... fuse everything together? Like, you literally make all organic life part-synthetic, insects and trees and bacteria and cyborgs and androids and humans and aliens alike. No distinction.
How the fuck does that work? How is it even possible? No idea.

You're basically offered to choose between a punch in the gut that denies all work you did the past two games, a smelly turd, or a liquid explosion of writing diarrhea.