Argh.
Just saw what must have been a Destroy+4K Readiness video. Lots of blah blah blah, we’ll rebuild, etc., etc., your crewmates put your and Anderson’s name up on the memorial wall on the Normandy, etc. Then there’s the breath-drawing scene and nothing else about that - it cuts right to Buzz Aldrin talking to a kid about whether that all really happened. :mad:
Having just watched the endings on YouTube
The writing for the endings are terrible. It feels like a terrible attempt to be a rousing, inspiration speech, but fell flat due to stumbling around cliches. Maybe the writers are busy on another project, or they worked on it with little or to noenthusiasm?
Instead of saying what happen to each race, like “The Krogan homeworld is rebuilt and krogran children now runs the street”, or “The Geth no more serve the Quarian, but are treated as equal” or some sort, we get some generic sappy gurgle.
Some of the ending cutscenes are sloppily done too. The asari, for example, started cheering just after the Reapers took off. They could be going anywhere; how did they know the Reapers won’t be coming back, or it was a re-deployment. Looks of puzzlement would be better than outright cheering. Unless the news were radioed to them.
Thank goodness the pictures are rather nice to look at, though it takes a while for me to figure what some are for. Like what’s Jacob doing in the room full of people?
However, this extending ending may not be what the producer wants in the first place. I still believe this is an olive branch, and lots of feedback was incorporated, even some incompatible ones. Why did the Normandy have to land on a jungle planet, then only to take off from there again? There’s really no need for a crash landing scene in the first place.
It could be just me over-thinking it.
Of the three endings, my preference are Destroy, Control and Synthesis. I know that Bioware has Synthesis as the best ending, but the build up to it was appalling lacking (I believe they introduce EDI as lead-up, but this plot thread is badly under-developed and only seems to appear in the third game, and only hinted at in the first two). What sort of life-form are we talking about? Do they still crap and give birth? Do we re-produce, or clone a copy of ourselves and reproduce. Just giving everyone green eyes is not enough!
Control features Shephard as a space-god of sorts; I like it because there is a hint that someone was previously in Shephard’s place (perhaps the Starchild?) but because Shephard is dedicated to peace, justice and all the goody-two-shoes stuff, he will never consider wiping out entire galactic civilization as the solution to anything.
Destroy is the tightest ending there is. but damn shame no one remember you save the Geth for a couple of hours before wiping them out. Though is that Shephard alive at the end?
I think Bioware done ok with the Refusal ending; they are still pretty much tied to their original ‘vision’ of choosing your ending right before the game ends instead of all your little choices accumulating, like the Witcher 2. I guess some people are still tied to the idea of being able to kick the Reaper’s ass by their own might. However, it be more gratifying to show that the next cycle actually managed to defeat the Reaper but…if the Crucible is just a power source, then actually little good it will do.
In the end, some things don’t make sense. The superweapon they were building turned out to be a power source for the Reapers. I felt trolled for the entire third game.
For the record here are the endings.
Actually it’s a link to one of them, an option I didn’t even know existed (I think it’s new) called “refusal”. The others are linked really easily.
My take is that they pretty much just made what used to be the “correct” choice now into the wrong one, and every other option was more correct.
Crowbar, about Destroy:
You got that shot of Shep taking a breath at the end in the original game, too, if you had over 4K preparedness and picked Destroy. People wondered how Shep could be taking a breath in the middle of smashed concrete - found on Earth, not really on the lovely shiny metal space stations - and this led to the theory that you’d been slowly Indoctrinated by all that Reaper tech exposure and the last 10 minutes were just hallucinations designed to lead you into making The Wrong Choice. There were all kinds of possible clues (like Good Stuff music when you went near the Destroy button, Bad Stuff music by the others) that made a ton of sense when viewed in context, and this all explained why the last 10-15 minutes were so fucking nonsensical. Sadly, though this was a great theory, it’s not looking like it was real.
Not to ruin the extended ending (unless the OP or a mod says otherwise):
I agree entirely. One review of the ending pointed out that what’s so jarring about it is that Mass Effect has since its inception been hardcore scifi. Except for the whole eezo-McGuffin to get past those pesky laws of relativity and to add some space-magic to the mix, everything is fleshed out in painstaking detail. The whole theory behind mass effect is consistently used. Even such silly details as the kinetic energy of projectiles, rules of planetary bombardment, chronicles of wars and conflicts that are never directly references and the neat spectrum effect of a ship traveling FTL are explained and referenced in manuals and in dialogue. This is a fictional reality with very clearly stated laws and boundaries. Nothing happens if it can’t be explained through in-universe techno-babble.
Yet…suddenly we have a bunch of endings which are more Star Wars than Star Trek.
How did this magic signal just move right across the galaxy? What about to systems without Mass Effect gates, is organic (and perhaps synthetic) life unaffected there?
Suddenly Shepard goes from being a space-race reference to a Christian one? (Even more so than in the previous ending)
Suddenly a magic green signal can rewrite and modify the genetic structure of every living (or maybe just sentient?) being?
As you asked, what about synthetics? Did Eve get ovaries? Did the Geth’s balls drop? The idea is nice, but the concept of all life keeping their previous vessels after synthesis is absurd.
And okay…so now we have utopia…do we really? Do all the races in the galaxy just stop infighting because a common threat has been defeated? It feels like they made the ending extra sappy to just shut the fans up, but it doesn’t hold up. So the Urdnot Wreav just saw the light and became a swell dad of millions of little Wreavlings who will spend their days delving in pottery and post-modern architecture? Aria didn’t employ violence to retake Omega Station?
The Mass Effect universe not only makes it very clear that people act within their own personal ethical boundaries often at the expense of others, but makes it a core part of gameplay. If your Shepard sees no problem in shooting the Volus pawnbroker and stealing his money to perform good deeds with, then that’s his prerogative.
The schmaltzyness of the endings counteracts this entirely.
Spoiler tags are appreciated guys, by now everyone and their dog knows that ME3’s ending sucks more than a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner but the EC is just out.
Just started the assault on Cronos Station, got a new achievement I’ve never had before - “Master and Commander - 50 G - Deliver most of the Galaxy at War assets to the final conflict.”
Synthesis is supposed to be the “best” ending but it creeps me out to no end. By brokering a peace between the Geth and Quarian, I proved Synthetics and Organics can live in peace without having to change fundamentally what either was. Frankly seeing all the people with Bio organics was horrifying.
I’ll take Control thanks very much.
SPOILER. GODDAMN. TAGS.
Is it me or is the fight with that twat Kai Leng a whole lot harder? I get to the part where he summons the fucking phantoms then get my ass handed to me. Since when do those bitches use ranged attacks?
I found out the hard way that (ending choice spoiler)
shooting the Catalyst Kid triggers the “refuse” ending, where he says (apparently in Harbinger’s voice) “So be it. The cycle continues.” Then the Crucible turns off and the Reapers win.
Oops.
Hmm. Well, messed that up twice. There’s nothing new until you reach the beam, as I thought. Unfortunately my proclivity for pissing about + unskippable cutscenes is biting me in the arse.
[spoiler]First time after chatting with Anakin Skywalker (they really bumped the channels, you can definitely tell Meer and Hale voiced him too) I told him to piss off - that dialogue choice was just irresistible, resulting in SO BE IT and and ending where a future cycle finds Liara’s time capsule thing. How they defeated the Reapers is anyone’s guess.
Next time I went through it all again aiming to go for Destroy, which is what my Shep would do. Instead I decided to find out what would happen if you shot the little shit. SO BE IT, same ending. Must…resist…temptation to shoot![/spoiler]
Honesty, I don’t think the extended endings are worth the replay. The last part of the game is the worst in the entire series.
In fact, its a problem with the entire premise of the crucible. It felt like one big troll
I’m honestly surprised at all the negativity. I thought that the new endings were great. Of course they should have been in the game originally, but they were free and I thought they were good enough to justify the wait. My opinions:
The positives:
First, I’m glad that they showed how my squadmates left earth and got to the Normandy. I thought it was a bit cheesy that the Normandy would come in right next to a Reaper, but the moment of emotional connection that I got with my LI more than justied my suspension of disbelief.
Next, I was thrilled to actually learn something about Starbrat. I thought that they played him in the best way possible: an AI gone wrong. The fact that his creators were his first victims, though perhaps unoriginal, made him a believable character and no longer a jarring interruption in the flow of the game.
I liked that you could reject his choices, and the consequences are logical. Hackett himself says that the reapers could not be destroyed conventionally.
The epilogue explained the aftermath decently. I think it would have been forced if they had explicitly spelled out what happened to every single character.
The negatives:
Let me save my goddamn game whenever I please! I don’t want to go through that long conversation; I just want to see all of the endings without resorting to Youtube.
I haven’t actually played through Synthesis, but the concept still doesn’t make any sense. That was the one part that I thought would be completely irredeemable. Starbrat’s explanation doesn’t exactly make sense. Again, given that I actually know what Starbrat is, I have enough of a frame of reference that I can comfortably suspend my disbelief (and I’m a biologist, so that’s saying something).
I wish there was some sort of reunion scene, even something as little as a drawing. In fact, a drawing would be preferable since writing such an emotional scene may be beyond Bioware’s abilities (although they pulled it off pretty well in ME1). To me, this would have made the ending perfect. As it is, they made the aftermath pretty clear and I don’t have much trouble imagining the rest now that I know that my crew made it off the Garden of Eden (and Joker won’t be having little brittle children with my Ash).
Overall, I give it an A- or an A. I feel that Bioware has redeemed itself. For reference, the original ending garnered a solid F in my book and eliminated my desire to play the game. Now I think the ending is worthy of the series.
Right, just played through Destroy.
Things I liked:
Asking Starbrat about the creation of the Reapers and what he is.
Being able to tell him to GTFO, even if it does effectively lose the game. However, this should have been an option regardless, diminishes the threat somewhat if no matter what you do you win.
More explanations around the choices.
The epilogue bit with baby krogan.
The Normandy taking off from that bloody planet. This was the main one for a lot of people, means Garrus and Tali won’t starve to death.
Putting Shepard’s plaque up alongside Andersons.
I got the ‘breathe’ scene, which means the game totted my EMS up differently. Good.
Saying a final goodbye to Liara.
Things I didn’t like:
The convo with the Illusive Man was the main evidence for indoctrination theory, yet the weirdness is never addressed.
It didn’t cut out what really should have been cut out to address naysayers. Rather like plastering over a crumbling wall, sometimes it might have been best just to rebuild the thing. Like the Normandy crashing, which was in retrospect completely pointless.
It’s rather…generic. There’s not really a better way to explain that pointing to something like Fallout New Vegas, or even Dragon Age Origins. So many variables that your character alters, from squadmates to societies each explained. I think it could have been tailored to your Shepard better.
I give it a solid B. It would be B+ if you could skip the cutscenes. If those had been in the game originally there definitely wouldn’t have been such a shitstorm.
Sorry for the double post; missed the edit window. Bioware cut the EMS requirements; you now need only 3200 effective in order to unlock the best ending. No need for multiplayer unless you were anti-completionist.
Excellent. Doesn’t give you too much room to muck around though, I’ve played them all since ME1 and the only thing I did ‘wrong’ was acid-bath the Rachni queen and got 3550. Still, nice of them to acknowledge this annoying fault.
On the Shepard breathes scene, I can dig it this time round - during Hackett’s narration the camera pans across a trashed Citadel not unlike the rubble Shep wakes up under. Having the Citadel shown badly damaged instead of assuming it’s totally destroyed fixes the question of how Shepard survived the Citadel blowing up, re-entry and smacking back down to London. Little things like that are also nice nods.
I also like that, like the much discussed (and let’s face it, ripped-off) endings of Deus Ex HR that there isn’t really a ‘good’ and ‘evil’ ending, they all have their ups and downs. You can’t use the infinite ending generator any more, at any rate.
Another good thing is the new quarian face, seen in synthesis. A bit better than Tali Zorah vas Photoshop.
Also; it was FREE. Stop whining.
They do. They replaced the Buzz Aldrin stuff with dialog showing that the next cycle wins.
I afraid the broken fanbase would start whining “that looks just like a normal human face!” but it’s good enough for me.
It’s great that the DLC is free; there are few ways to look at this: 1) this is how the ending should have been 2) well, they need to release this DLC for hope of any single player DLC to sell.
I appreciate the effort on Bioware’s part, but the refusal option seems to indicate that they ‘don’t get’ why people were upset about the ending, thinking it’s all about baby krograns and hugs/kisses.
The refusal option seems to be the most popular choice by far on the forums I frequent.
Indeed. I say that this ending is at least what was originally paid for. There’s a bit of a fallacy in media production (games, movies, music) that the customer should pay for the work and not the result. If we choose to partake in a piece of media (like watching a movie) we should pay for the damn two hours of our pointless lives we get to wile away in the cinema, which is the fallacy. We don’t pay for wasting time, we pay for the total experience. The audience doesn’t wish to simply have their minds numbed for a few hours, the audience is there to have their hearts spoken to and their intellects stimulated. Even a pointless action flick, if well made, stimulates our baser instincts. This fallacy is why the media industry is centered on volume and mass appeal, because we pay before we have a chance to review the result. The few makers who actually believe in their craft produce the few pearls in the pigshit.
I’d compare this to a restaurant meal. The first two courses were excellent. Well served, thought out and came in a timely manner. Suddenly the dessert is served, and while promising, turns out to be in contrast to the entire rest of the meal, spoiling the whole experience. Parts of it are also poorly prepared. We send it back and get it redone a few months later, still inherently flawed but at least edible. We could have accepted the as adequate (but not fantastic) had they made the dessert properly from the start, but at least the restaurant will get a new chance the next time they redo their menu.
Yep, most people wants to try the refusal option.
Let me explain further; by Bioware not getting it, I mean
People are asking for a “screw you, Tiny Space Hitler” option and want the outcome to be determined by the EMS. That this option leads to an immediate game over can be seemed as “'No, you still have to choose from our three choices that just magically manifest in the last 15 minutes of the game, without any build-up whatsoever”.
If Bioware has put in an option where you refuse Starchild and could win using sheer force of strength (if you manage to get a godly EMS), it’ll be golden. I bet many will be singing Bioware’s praises to the high heavens and beyond.
I know that a popular argument is that the Reapers cannot be defeated with conventional means to begin with. Well, it seems to be a pretty bad premise to build a gun-blazing action-rpg game around. It’s a game where you are doomed anyway unless the writer brings in a Deus Ex Machina. I thought I was playing Mass Effect, not Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
