The Mass Effect 3 ending is was so bad that I'm boycotting Bioware. I'm not buying another game from them. I cancelled my subscription to TOR. Since I there isn't anyway for me to get my $80 back. I keep see examples of other games with bad endings being brought. The comparison is flawed. Why? Mass Effect is a trilogy. People have spent five years on this franchise and to be given that putrid excuse for a conclusion is unforgivable.
Casey Hudson, Mike Gamble, and Mac Walters flat out lied about the ending of the game. Then when they get called on their bullshit they start hiding behind artistic integrity. If they had artistic integrity Garrus wouldn't have been in Mass Effect 2. Archangel was a new character that they changed to Garrus in response to his popularity with fans. The same is true of Tali in ME3. She was added into the game because of her popularity. The squad banter in ME3 was added because of fan demand. Don't alter the course of your game due to fan input then hide behind artistic integrity. Don't promise fans various endings depending on their choices and hand them a badly plagiarized Deux Ex ending.
I mean where to begin. They introduce a character in the last 10 minutes that attempts to explain the motivation of the Reapers in 14 lines of dialog. Usually you can question in NPCs, yet Shepard eats up every word Catalyst says like gospel. Even when the explanations given makes no damned since. "The created will always destroy the created. The Reapers were my solution." So Synthetics will always kill organics, so you turn organic civilizations into Synthentic Dreadnoughts that kill organics. Side note: The Catalyst's whole premise can be nullified, by EDI and the Geth depending on your Shepards choices BTW.
The Endings. Lets call them what they really are:
Genocide (Destroy): Prove the Reapers are wrong for slaughtering organic life by doing the same to synthetics.
Status Quo (Control): Take control of the Reapers and continue the cycle as Shepard sees fit. You become the Catalyst.
Biological Violation: (Synthesis): Forcibly alter all life in the galaxy via space magic without permission. I'm sure everyone will have peace now that the terms synthetic and organic no longer apply. I mean organics never fought amongst themselves and neither did synthetics. So everyone being the same solves all our problems.
So you get to end and Shepard gets three Reaper choices. The Reapers commit genocide, biologically violate all life in the galaxy as they see fit, and they do so in a cycle. The same things Shepard gets to "choose" at the end. In doing so you ignore the themes of the series. Throughout the series Shepard gets people of different origins and creeds to work together in spite of their differences.
