There were two primary issues with the original ending. One is.. sort of fixed since the Ending Update, and one is still very much present. The thing that got fixed is that the choices are a bit more clear and better explained in the updated ending. I don't recall the specifics, but the original version of the end game options was confusing to a lot of players.
I still looked up a guide, so that's fair.
The other issue, which is not fixed, is that nothing you did actually matters. I think this is a really complex complaint that may or may not even be valid depending on how you interpret the endings and the game, and even your expectations for a what the game could reasonably accomplish.
The trouble is, if you funnel players into one or two outcomes based on their history, you rob them of their agency in the climax. That would've pissed people off more than what we got.
While I strive to play morally consistent characters, I'm always open to changing with new information. If I played a Paragon Shepard but decided Control was the best outcome, I think I should be able to make that call in the moment.
But the complaint is that you can do a 'Pure Blue' playthrough and still choose the 'Red' ending, as it were. Ultimately, your paragon/renegade stuff doesn't really carry through to the end of the game, because no choices are barred to you regardless of the choices you made throughout the games.
Programming 60+ endings based on player choice would've been impossible. Or, impossible for every game that isn't Baldur's Gate 3. (That's not praise for Larian so much as it's acknowledgement of BG3's unique development. BG3 was in early access for nearly three years. Notably, Larian has no shareholders, and they also made $150M from the game's 2.5M early access players.)
The counterpoint to that seems to be twofold: 1.) It wasn't reasonable to expect the ending of a trilogy of games to allow for every possible variation of behaviours and it was always going to have to come down to Shep making a single choice divorced from all of his previous actions. Personally, I think that's a bullshit copout.
They could've included more choices, but it's hard to imagine what those would be. Destroy/control/synthesis are the only ways to deal with the Reapers.
Perhaps the smaller details could've been worked out post-credits. That's how it goes in Pillars of Eternity. All players resolve the main story in two or three different ways, but how you manage your crew and the game's major factions changes their fate. Mass Effect 3 basically did that, they just ignored what happened in 1 and 2.
2.) There is not really any good/bad-paragon/renegade options for the ending because almost any way you played Shep could, in theory, justify any of the available choices. I actually think that's a lot more compelling of an excuse for not greying out certain options at the end based on how you played the games.
Graying out choices is the best solution I've seen, but again, players would be pissed to lose agency after 90+ hours of gameplay.
Anyway, I still think the ME3 ending got WAY more hate than it deserved, and I'd say that is largely because people just had unrealistic or hyper specific expectations for how it should end, not because there was all that much wrong with how it DID end. But I still do think it was weird that all of your choices amount to nothing when it comes to your final choices.
I think that's the right way to look at it.
Unless I'm totally ignorant, I think Mass Effect was the first series to accomplish something like this? I can't think of another title where you play the same character over multiple games, importing player choices/save files. Certainly not at this scale.
- Some ghost kid showing up and telling you to choose out of the blue in the final 10 minutes, instead of the outcome hinging on the combined effort of your actions in the previous 100 hours.
To be fair, they allude to the kid from the prologue.
- That and that only the McGuffin really mattered, not with how well you did with assembling the various fleets - if half the fleet were kitted out with the super shields and liquid metal cannons the Normandy researched in ME2, a conventional battle should have had a scrap of potential for victory if you were super thorough and smart with your choices over all three games
That's fair. I think it strips the ending of nuance, though. If you can just "win," you aren't forced to make any tough choices.
- To get the Shepard Lives ending prior to all the DLC missions, you needed 5000+ war assets, which was only possible by playing lots of multiplayer, there were not enough ways in the base game to reach that figure. Given we're talking about the ending to a trilogy of single player RPGs, this was an incredibly unpopular decision (in fairness, the MP was really good but yeah, a whole chunk of the audience just weren't interested in that sort of thing)
Also fair. I never had that problem because I played
hundreds of hours of ME3 multiplayer.
- Synthesis was positioned as the 'best' ending, while being a massive airy-fairy asspull that made pretty much no sense (melt human, spread their essence across the galaxy, ???, WE ARE ALL THE SAME somehow), on top of the ethical concerns of imposing it on the entire galaxy, non-spacefaring, basic animal lifeforms included. Then the mixed messages of Control and the Illusive Man's plan being right all along but he couldn't do it but you totally can? And why are we believing anything Reaper.exe is saying again anyway?
Personally, I think destroy is the best ending. The whole series was working up to it. Yes, it involves killing a crewmate and wiping out an entire race.
- The final act is boring and undewhelming. Grey, ruined London, slogging through the streets, a random turret section dumped inbetween giving your final farewells to your pals, and the last fight is just waves of banshees and brutes, it's anticlimatic. Plus the forced loss on Thessia to that ridiculous muppet Kai Leng united everyone in annoyance
Completely agree.
While I played this section, I wondered if something inside of me was broken. 95% of the time, I can't wait for the big third-act fight scene to end. Blockbusters, video games, books, you name it. I enjoy The Matrix, Mass Effect 2 (funny enough), and a handful of others. I'm not sure if it's me or if these sequences are often boring as hell. It usually feels like a six-year-old smashing their action figures together with even less dramatic tension. At least I'm unsure if the toys will survive the six-year-old.
- And lets face it, a lot of people wanted Return of the Jedi, they wanted a party and to fly off into the sunset while Shep and Liara/Garrus/Tali/Trainor/Ashley-Kaiden make out. Instead, Shepard is probably dead, the galaxy is in ruins (the relays are all destroyed so travel between clusters should be impossible), Turians and Quarians are stranded in the Earth system with nothing to eat, all our pals on the Citadel are dead, etc.
Yep. I applaud the bravery to make a bittersweet ending. The galaxy-ending threat is gone, but the damage they inflicted will take generations to repair.
- The most appealing ending is Destroy but it means sacrificing Edi and the Geth, which drives most Paragon players nuts because they're so used to painlessly getting their way all the time and can't bear to get their hands dirty, even to remove the threat of the Reapers once and for all
I think it's a reasonable criticism. I called Paragon the "win button" earlier in this thread. Paragons barely face a single tough choice until the game ends.
Me, I was mostly fine with it because I was tunnel visioned on destroying the Reapers at any cost, have no problem with bittersweet endings and, well...MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. But the other folks on my main hangout at the time were pissed, are still pissed, and still whine incessantly about it 13+ years later.
This is where I'm at. Win at all costs was always the plan. We aren't toasting Ewoks in the aftermath, but I thought we were all mature enough to accept that.
Games with a galaxy-ending threat always call it a suicide mission. It's nice that one of them finally proved that out.
As for ME2, it's still the peak for me but I would say that ME has by far the best story, and ME3 has by far the best gameplay and crew interaction, so it's kinda of in a weird spot now.
I get it. I'd say ME2 has the best crew interaction because of the expanded roster. I was never a Garrus guy, so ME3's missions were always a bit painful. Given the option, I ran Liara/Thane/Mordin. I even found Miranda likable on this playthrough.
For the reasons I laid out earlier, ME3 is my favorite of the bunch, but I understand why folks would say that about any of them.
