I didn't think the ending was that bad. I just beat it. I thought it was on par or better than the rest of the games storytelling.
Which, I don't think is that high. And Definitely lower than ME1 or 2 level imo. 

This game has definite issues.

I'm not going to bash this game to high hell like some will. I still think it's a good game.

I think the edi's being overly critisized. Her cameltoe just is barely noticable most timesand the characters (main are pretty detailed. I do think it's kind of silly. But that's kind of the whole point I mean, her and joker give some lightheartedness to a game that takes itself (imo too) serious. Maybe I'm taking it the not intented way. But I took it as general fun sillyness.

I love it when people generalize their opinions and everyone that disagrees with them can't posibly know what a good story is.

Having said that, I haven't seen the endings myself, but unfortunately someone already spoiled me:

That they pull a Deus Ex in the end, and as I said before in this thread, long before know it, that's what I wanted to happen in the end. Heck, that's what I was wanting ever since Shepard got those cerberus implants who made him look a la Saren (especially if you full renegade him during ME2), thus somekind of iteration between the Reapers and Shepard would eventually became possible. 

Maybe I'll like the endings, maybe I won't, that doesn't give me or anyone the right to say who's entitled to say what's a good story or what isn't. So far, ME3 has been a very good follow up to the previous game's stories, so I'm liking it. 

Oh, btw: EDI's camel toe? What camel toe? Even her standard costume is as flat down there as the Light Armours on ME1. I bet you couldn't play ME2 then, since Miranda would then shock your sensibility to death.

I'm gonna have fun with this poooost! Ready for EDI cameltoe? I got it covered! (Or not..if you see what I'm saying, it's quite pathetic)

Also, its a 'deus ex machina' -god in the machine - contrived plot device to solve some sort of problem - not a 'deus ex'. Unless you're talking about how the options for the ending are completely the same as the first Deus Ex game. Funny because it's true. 

Wanna know the reasons why the ending you're talking about doesn't make sense?

In the synthesis ending, you can choose to merge organic and synthetic life with thanks to the energy of the catalyst in an attempt to end the endless cycle and create a race that will not create synthetics that kill organics. Ok, problems:

1.How the hell does that work exactly? Magic? Random energy beam conveniently merges organic dna with electronic programming? There is no precedent for this technology in the known Mass Effect lore. Oh, wait there is one exception, that is...

2. The reapers. They absorb organic life and intelligence into their synthetic body/life whatever. So to stop the endless cycle of the reapers continually destroying advanced organic civilization we're...creating a race of reapers?

3. If the mystical kid that controls the reapers had this bloody device all along that he says will end the cycle (even though I've just shown that's illogical) ...why didn't they just use it already???? I mean come on. Come on. 

4. When this new race of synthetics/organics is created, whats to stop them from advancing technologically and creating syntehtics that want to kill them all over again? Nothing! Not addressed or explained away at all.

5. The funny thing is, every sentient AI up to this point that aren't the reapers can be shown to be 'human'. EDI gains a human attachment to Joker, an organic, and the Geth now live alongside us, and have free will, jsut like a human. (if you chose that path in the story). 

Anyway, I don't think it is down to opinion whether the endings have massive plot holes or not, I just think they either have plot holes or they don't. 

Here's the EDI picture, I took down the embedded one so as to not spoil anything this..ahemm..big.

http://i.imgur.com/ViG7k.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/flQEC.jpg

I appreciate how good you guys have been about using spoiler marks while I was away. Good on all of you.

I'll probably beat ME3 today, and I'll post my thoughts on it then.

I think it's going a bit far to say that "choices don't matter" on the whole, though, considering the ways that all of my previous and current choices have come together to change the face of the galaxy for thousands of years.

And guys, that stuff about EDI is spoiler-times, please stop. I actually find the whole thing with EDI pretty funny - yes, it's cheese, but it's unironically hilarious cheese. You take a series where every robot is as non-gendered as possible and when EDI can make a body for herself she makes an art-deco-ish sexy robot lady more suitable to the serial sci-fi stories of seventy years ago? THat's fantastic, come on.

Also man, here is something that's hard for me to cope with as a Vanguard player:

Warp Ammo is now way better than Incendiary Ammo for Vanguards. In ME2 that wasn't true! But since shotguns have lost their bonuses against Barriers and the crowd control effect of the Burst has been toned down, Incendiary Ammo just doesn't cut it in a lot of situations any more!

Thanks for the answer guys. That 97% on Biowares forum is ...unfortunate :/

Click for EDI cameltoe.

 Read this after you beat the game.

A person who cures the genophage, spares the Rachni, makes peace between Quarians and Geth, can have the same ending as someone who sabotages the cure, exterminates the Rachni and sides with the Geth. That doesn't really strike me a "choice matters", the lack of epilogues explaining the consequences of ones actions doesn't help. Jade Empire had them for crying out loud.

Technically EDI did not make her body, just stole one from TIM. And I don't find funny, mostly tacky and using a basic marketing ploy, sex sells. 

That's not a valid criticism, though, in that it's not used for marketing. Hence why it's a spoiler.

And it's tacky, sure, but it's in the context of a universe that has fairly even gender representation, and fairly even sexual representation from myriad sides. It's okay for there to be one character who is basically a cheesy bit of sexy fun, so long as it's played light-heartedly and for humor. Yes, it's crass and it doesn't have the same kind of dignity that they use to treat other female characters, but SHE IS A SEXY ROBOT. THat is hilarious.

And she did change the body of that Doctor considerably in order to reach her current form. She went from a hideous sexless (secondary sexual characteristics, not primary) human-shaped techno-organic monster to a sleek chrone sexy robot lady with a metal thong built in. She even says she modified the body when you talk to her about it.

I have to admit I'm kind of disappointed nobody is talking about, like, strategies and gameplay and stuff. That's the part I've always found more interesting.

Like this: Insanity in this game doesn't add protection onto all the enemies! That changes up my tactics significantly.

Wait, so EDI has one in a costume that it's not even her standard one and that only a person with the DLC: From Ashes can obtain. Yeah...I still don't see why this should even be an issue  

You know, I always hated the Nietschezian way of looking into Deus Ex Machina plots in such an undermined and critical fashion, as I'm not bothered with them at all if they fit into the story's development. Shakespeare's "A Winter's Tale" is a prime example of that. Deus Ex (in VGs) is too, and yet I hardly see it critiziced as well (I mean, the Helios AI doesn't really need JC Denton in order to fully understand humans, as both the canonical endings and the events in Hong Kong demostrate, so your choices are really pretty much invalid, which makes sense in the scope of Deus Ex, as Helios was actually the ultimate counter-part of Bob Page).

As for your spoilers tag, i'll only answer to your first and second questions: 

You say there wasn't any kind of precedent between the merging of both Organics and Synthetics, I say to you that you haven't pay any attention to ME lore at all. What are the common links between the Illusive Man, Shepard and Saren? Both are trials of said mergings.
Saren and the Illusive Man got their synthetic components in the same fashion, by indirect exposure to a reaper huskifying machine (see the comics Evolution), which by the exposure to the same procedure of mineralization of the body's water it gradually creates new synthetic facsimiles. The Illusive man used a similar process in the "ressurection" of Shepard, albeit in a much more "purer" form (since as we have seen, Saren could still be controlled by the Reapers, even though the exposure was indirect). You can fully see in a pure Renegade Shepard the same components that were part of Saren and the Illusive man as well.
With Shepard already being a close proxy to a Synthetic/Organic fusion, merging with the Reapers would be actually be facilitated. 

In essence, this is what the Illusive man wants to do for the entire human race, as he sees in it the full scope of human evolution. The problem with the Illusive man's way is that he wants to control that process and he wants to control the evolution itself, thus giving him control over every sapient life form just as he has control over his synthetic merged cerberus soldiers in ME3. 

As for the Reapers themselves, they don't absorb organic life and intelligence, they take the whole essence and culture of the dominat species of each destruction's cycle and use that as a process of "birth" for every new reaper. One could say that any individual reaper contains a whole species in itself, thus each being a nation, independent of one another, just as Sovereign said. The problem with your assumption is that you believe that they merge the organic remnants of the species when creating the Reaper itself, but it's more complex than that, since they use the DNA of an entire species for the original purpouse of capturing the full experience of the species (that plot device is based on the current theories that DNA can be affected by the enviroment and each individual person's memories and experiences).

I didn't read your other questions, since I haven't seen them in game, so I don't want to be spoiled Everything I've answered to you is based on the accounts of my knowledge of ME lore and the way I have figured things in my head as I played and replayed to exhaustion the previous games (and the comics and the books that I've read).

Also, mid-game spoiler concerning the return of a former squadmate:

Thane's death annihilated me. I didn't romance him as this character, I kind of wonder what it would be like if I had (nobody tell me), but reading from the book of prayers with Kolyat, just that one line - "Why does the last verse say 'her'?" Everything that followed from that, that shit was brutal.

That was a great scene.