After watching four endings I must say that almost all of the things I disliked were addressed. I understand what the Catalyst is now and he makes more sense. Where the Normandy was makes more sense, and I appreciate that they made it more clear the Mass Relays were just damaged. In fact I understand now what I thought was all the Mass Relays blowing up in the original ending was actually just the “Catalyst Wave” propagating itself.
I still would have preferred a more specific “This is what happened here; this is what happened there” type ending like other epic games have but this was definitely an improvement. I also appreciate that they removed the fact that you must play multiplayer to get the best ending. The old way was frankly insulting given all the hours I played all three single player games. Overall, I would agree Bioware has made things right.
Thank god for that change. I’m not entirely sure what things I did “wrong” - though I did smart off to the Quarian general who was perfectly happy to throw me and my crew under the bus in ME3.
Regarding your spoiler: [spoiler]I watched a video because I didn’t want to grind back up again, and missed that it was actually a half-intact Citadel. Still don’t think that concrete was really common in it, but OK.
But - and I haven’t checked the other new endings that in-depth - why is that only possible with a Destroy ending? Why does Shep die if you pick Control or Synthesis, but have a chance to live with Destroy?[/spoiler]
I still have… issues with the original 10-15 minutes and what little sense parts of it made, and the U-turn of expectations in plotting. However, this was at least better than a slideshow. It’s an improvement, if poorly executed.
[spoiler]Issues with you all getting seemingly blown up by the Reapers and yet you somehow sneak onto the Citadel and the two teammates you were with are fine but not with you while a spotter is saying “yeah, all of em are dead, wow this sucks, fall back,” not only that but Anderson sneaks on before you and describes stuff you’re not seeing, Illusive Man WTFery, out-of-nowhere Star Child interference (oh hai, this wasn’t a superweapon in the way you thought, and we’re using Weird Alien Logic to explain we have to kill you Organics via Synthetics to save you as data or something), everything you did not really mattering all that much in the end, Shepard goes from space-race symbol to literal Christ figure, etc.
As for the new changes, I thought the narration was schmaltzy and kind of dull. I got bored watching the videos and only watched one (Destroy) and a little part of Synthesis.[/spoiler]
My recommendation, however, has probably shifted. I would probably tell someone who hasn’t played it at all to go ahead, but warn them that the ending was a little weird.
To be fair I think that was a large part of it, absent of anything else the fanbase inferred the worst - that the fleets were stuck around Earth, that either Tali and Garrus starve or everyone else does, that civilisation is doomed without the relays. This is most shown by the u-turn with the Normandy crash; I think one of the only bits they cut out of the original ending was one of the Normandy’s engines exploding and its damage on the surface, clearly showing that it was stuck there. I really don’t know what they were thinking there, but at least they fixed it at the cost of making the entire scene pointless.
On why [spoiler]Shep still dies in Control/Synthesis, I don’t take issue with it - Starbrat made it clear that that would be the case, although the little shit still lies to you about Destroy and hints that you will die “Even you are partly synthetic.”
I think they stuck too closely to the suckiness of the original, like the weird TIM conversation. Part of it was addressed in that at least you can argue with Starbrat (although you still can’t point out that the geth/quarians are working together).
The ‘refusal’ ending was obviously put in to address Indoctrination Theory, but I think the fans may have been happier if they embraced IT to explain the shitness and then bundled on a load of completely new stuff rather than somewhat awkwardly add new scenes for the same effect.[/spoiler]
What is clear however is that BioWare has listened, the amount of new scenes and what they address is evidence of that. Not sure it was the best way to do it, but still a thousand times better than the rushed nonsense we got to begin with.
So everyone still thinks that synthesis was the “correct” ending? I prefer the destroy option, but after viewing the three endings I thought they made it clear that control was the best ending
Also I might have missed something but where do you get that the next cycle beat the reapers? I didn’t see that…
On a completely 180 separate note: I never posted in the original run of this thread, and re-reading it I saw that no one mentioned that this game is ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL to look at. I swear I could spend hours just looking at the background of each level (the beginning scene and Palaven) and watching everything happen. Just the way it looks, the depth, the sounds (the reapers main gun sound is gorgeous) everything just looks perfect. I have never played a game with such beauty in the backgrounds before
ETA: I also want to credit Bioware for listening and doing something about it. It’s rare nowadays when a company does something like that to placate an angry fanbase, even if it isn’t EXACTLY what we wanted.
[spoiler]Sythesis to me was and still is creepy as hell, as is control. If anything the EC has just underlined that with it’s friendly abominations from dark space who were just trying to harvest your entire species.
Destroy at least shows that the galaxy can now finally move on and rebuild on its own terms, completely free of Reaper influence.
On the next cycle, the replacement for Buzz’s stargazer scene pretty much spells it out that they beat the Reapers due to Liara’s time capsule thing (which is also where they heard about Shep). To me this is the worst ending, all it does is pass the buck to the next cycle while dooming your own.[/spoiler]
Control seemed doomed to failure. TIM believed in Control, and I think Saren was talking about it too, and you see how well that turned out. Synthesis sounded creepy and like you were being controlled - now we’re talking Husks and that sort of thing. Imagine all the races of the galaxy suddenly being cyborged (in either direction) against their will - that’s just complete Body Horror fodder to me. “Hey, evil giant machines from another dimension were going to kill us all, so to save us, this one human decided to get everyone implanted with metal and circuitry - no, stop crying, Billy, it’s OK, we’re not monsters…” Destroy sucked but it sounded like it was the only feasible option, so I went for it.
My problem with Destroy was it was not limited to the Reapers. I could not in good conscience sacrifice the Geth and EDI and any other untold Synthetic races after what I learned about them over the three games.
But, given the ending speech of “I watch over them, I help them rebuild”, plus the scene of the Reapers rebuilding the pylons makes me think that he does, in fact, control everything and is now either the new starchild or at least the new guardian of the universe
Another little thing I like about the EC is how the Control ending changes if Shep was Renegade or Paragon, from benevolent dictator to guarding protector.
[Spoiler]I really wanted to destroy the Reapers and end everything, but I couldn’t sacrifice the Geth and I thought Synthesis was kind of a dick move.
The Catalyst Kid’s mention that “Your Crucible seems mostly intact, but it will not discriminate” finally explains the link between EMS and ending quality. If your EMS is too low, the Crucible gets too banged up during the final battle and it causes collateral damage (e.g. Big Ben going kerplowie, Earth getting incinerated) that appears in the “bad” endings. That also explains why not all endings are available if your EMS is too low: reduced Crucible functionality due to damage.
To me, Control seemed like the best of a set of imperfect options. I liked the epilogue showing Cyber Shepard directing the Reapers to rebuild the relays. I wondered if Control had a “renegade” version so if your renegade bar was mostly full you’d get a different epilogue of you becoming corrupted by your power over the Reapers and restarting the cycle or doing something even worse.
ETA: According to Mr. Kobayashi, it does change based on P/R score.
I was quite annoyed at Bioware requiring us to replay 90 minutes of gameplay to get up to 2 minutes before the “Restart Citadel Mission” load point, just so we could see a 1 minute cutscene explaining why the squad was on the Normandy. They spent the time rerendering the “Joker outruns the asplosion” scene to change things ever so slightly but they didn’t have the time to code in an exception to the “Restart Citadel” load that would kick the game back 2 minutes?[/Spoiler]
I just can’t get it up to replay so much and endure the endless limping, so I can see the EC stuff. Youtube was adequate, and I’ll probably play all three games again in a year or two, and choose from the new endings then.
Given the circumstances, I’m pretty impressed. They clearly tried to fix the glaring logic errors in a systematic fashion, as well as giving us a picture of life after Shepard’s choice. I agree that Starchild is still a giant WTF, but it would have been a tall order to rebuild the ending from scratch.
I imagine if this had been the original ending, I would have felt like they had trouble knowing how to end a fabulous series, but it was OK. Maybe a 5 out of 10. Perhaps 6, because we got to see baby Krogan.
I do really enjoy the fact that they seem to have mimicked this fan artfor the Control ending (which is still the ending my Shep would choose, I think, rather than kill EDI and the Geth, or DNA-tech-raping the whole galaxy).
I originally chose the destroy option when I played it through the first time, because I thought synthesis was just wrong, and I thought control couldn’t be done and it would somehow be a wrong choice. As I’m playing through it a second time now I can tell you straight away that I’m choosing control because, after viewing the new endings, I think it’s the most correct now.
Okay, having played through the Max-EMS Destroy ending, I think it’s acceptable for me to consider it personally canonical.
Preferably with the implied scene of them discovering me still breathing in the citadel wreck post-credits, removing my name from the wall of honor, and the attendant little house on Rannoch with a dozen respirator-wearing adopted babies.
Hey, speaking of the wall of honor, here’s one of the things that Bugged The Shit Out of Me about the new ending, and it relates to kerning:
Holy fuck, who was in charge of making the “Commander Shepard” sign for the wall?! Or should I say, “Commander Shep ard”? OMG, bad kerning. I could not pay attention to anything else when that was on screen.
I’ve seen a lot of complaints that the new “Refusal” ending was obviously intended to be a kick in the fans’ balls from Bioware, and that didn’t ring true to me. In a lot of ways, the Refusal ending seemed to me the most narratively powerful of the four options. It’s very bleak, to be sure, but it offers true hope at the end, and pays off one of my favorite Liara scenes in the game, IMO, lovely fashion. This Forbes article does a better job explaining why that ending works than I could.
Disclaimer: I liked the original endings just fine (probably would’ve rated them 7/10 if I had to put a number on it), and really enjoyed the additional closure provided by the Extended Cut (which I’d bump up to 9/10). So I was never one of the people who hated the endings, and acknowledge that may be part of why I didn’t interpret the outcome of the Refusal ending as a “fuck you” from the writers. But I do really think it works, thematically and emotionally.
