You just had to accept that the world may have been destroyed at the end of your epic 70 hour RPG (Talking about FFVII, here) and never knowing what happened aside from a brief video of a destroyed Midgar.  You saw Red XIII and his kids a 100 years (or 300.....anyway, it was a loooooong time after everyone was dead) and your actions always led to this semi-conclusive ending.  And yet, to this day, many consider FFVII the greatest RPG ever made.

Now, we get ME3, the end of an insanely epic journey.  Featured a story that was beyond epic.  Some people are pissed that they ever made any sort of decisions or grew attached to the characters or anything because of the ending.  I can feel their pain but I really enjoyed the journey.  With Mass Effect 3, this series just kicked Gears of War off of the top of my personal list as The Franchise of this console generation.  The ending wasn't perfect but I don't know of any story driven game (as for the guy that said MGS4.....don't get me started.) that resolved everything flawlessly.  Hell, I just finished Valkyria Chronicles and when Faldio broke out of prison and killed the final boss I thought it was pretty stupid but I wasn't mad.  It was the story the creators wanted to tell.  The Mass Effect journey was a wonderful one and the ending is whatever you want it to be (though it's still not a particularly happy one).  I'm fine with that.

I've missed out most your post as it contains endings I've not seen yet but from before a choice is made, I don't see how this story is that far fetched.

How I understood this was the idea is that an extremely advantaced race found a way to preserve themselves in the form of AI and non-organic matter. It decided that other races around it would end up either destroying them or themselves so took it upon themselves to do the same to these other races as it did to themselves. This was the solution to the chaos created by different species, to bring order in the form of unification in a single race. Every 50,000 years they repeat, taking advance races away leaving young races to grow and develop before the advance races destroy them. The original race would have had incredibly advanced technology to do all this, after all, they did create the mass relays which was used to dictate new races developments.

The final choice was an odd one but I presumed the AI within the citadel essentially had decided that due to the presence of an organic, their  plan was no longer working as the organic races were fighting back. This part could have been more well thought out. 

I've missed out most your post as it contains endings I've not seen yet but from before a choice is made, I don't see how this story is that far fetched.

How I understood this was the idea is that an extremely advantaced race found a way to preserve themselves in the form of AI and non-organic matter. It decided that other races around it would end up either destroying them or themselves so took it upon themselves to do the same to these other races as it did to themselves. This was the solution to the chaos created by different species, to bring order in the form of unification in a single race. Every 50,000 years they repeat, taking advance races away leaving young races to grow and develop before the advance races destroy them. The original race would have had incredibly advanced technology to do all this, after all, they did create the mass relays which was used to dictate new races developments.

The final choice was an odd one but I presumed the AI within the citadel essentially had decided that due to the presence of an organic, their  plan was no longer working as the organic races were fighting back. This part could have been more well thought out. 

I don't feel that's the case though.  My interpretation was that the citadel was created to work with the crucible, the blue prints for the crucible were left for organics by that A.I.  If they ever reached the point for the crucible and the citadel to be united then organics have evolved enough to the point that they can make a new solution.  I personally believed that the idea was that you'd have to be united to hold off the reapers long enough and to build the crucible, if species evolved to the point of working together they're mature enough to create a new solution cause the old solution isn't valid (They've resolved chaos for life in the current galaxy, all that's left is to decide what to do with the reapers).  Is there lazy writing behind my interpretation?  Yes, but I feel that's what the lead writer was going for with the ending, though they just should have left a 4th ending where if you're really disjoint you don't even make it up to the Citadel.

Gonna leave this thread, I promise!  Just wanted to say that maybe you didn't make it up to the Citadel.  Maybe you're still laying on the ground, burned all to shit by the laser and you're dreaming about going into the beam of light and seeing a resolution to your story.  Makes about as much sense as anything else I've been seeing.

I believe you quoted the wrong person

Regardless, I don't want the topic to be an argument about HR, so best we can do here is agree to disagree. Just wanted to make a quick point to d21.

The plot holes are really secondary here. I could live with those; they're a minor annoyance.

The problem is that you are given no control at all. Creepy starchild narrates this stuff which is clearly complete bullshit (like synthetics being destined to destroy their creators) and Shepard just stands there and nods, and accepts what he's saying despite the fact that he's the Reaper overmind. Let's go through these endings one by one.

1) Control. Yes, this is going to work despite the fact that Illusive Man tried it, and the renegade Protheans tried it, and presumably everyone has tried it at some point, but that doesn't matter because Shepard is special and magical.

2) Destroy. Sure, you can just destroy the Reapers, but for no adequately explored reason this will destroy all synthetics in the galaxy. The Reapers are not regular synthetics. They are much more than that. They have nothing in common with Geth.

3) Synthesis. Dear god. So now this child can cast space magic that will alter DNA to make it partially synthetic? How is this even remotely believable? Why has this possibility never even been mentioned before? Wouldn't this destroy the very core of the being of every creature in the galaxy? It makes no sense at all.

Then all of the mass relays are destroyed, which no longer causes supernovae, apparently, and leaves everyone stranded around a now ruined planet Earth.

All three of the solutions are stupid, and 4) Tell the Reapers to screw off and leave us alone makes a lot more sense than any of them. You would think this infinitely wise star child would know that. Incidentally, why is he even asking a puny organic for a decision?

The idea that a race of organics miraculously turned itself into a killer race of demonic robots and decided to terrorise everyone forever is absurd, and it's even more absurd that the king killer demonic robot is suddenly fed up with the whole thing and decides to give you a bunch of nonsensical options which will solve nothing.

It would have made perfect sense in the context of indoctrination, because Starchild's ideas sound exactly like they're coming straight from Harbinger, who is trying to influence you to make their domination complete.