Current Events > The ending(s) of ME3 still piss me off to this day (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

50Blessings posted...

The idea that synthesis was the build up is such a bad take.

First of all, it is explicitly stated by the original writers it wasn't. That was something they literally made up at the last minute.

Second of all, the build up was everyone coming together to defeat a threat to the galaxy, NOT joining said threat.

They literally never said that. The ending was done quickly but they didnt say anything like that.

They dont join the reapers though. Thats oversimplification. Its much more complicated than that. But in short

They get knowledge and reapers get free will.
Reapers help out. They have no set purpose anymore so they try the good guy thing.

Im going to run out of posts from just this one topic guys ~
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the idea that reapers didnt have free will after 2.9 games of reapers individually talking with you and exhibiting individual motivations and emotions is one of the more jarring aspects of starchild
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My ending is the best ending.

1. It all happens the exact same, but when Shepard is given the option to choose he says "Fuck this."

2. Then the star child is like "lol you lose"

3. Then he is like "Now Joker!"

4. Joker flies over with some black hole bomb, the real Deus Ex Machina.

5. Joker is hitting the button to drop the bomb, but the bomb is stuck.

6. Zaeed runs over to the bomb, starts jumping on it to get it free.

7. Bomb comes loose, Zaeed rides it down to the Citadel going "Yaaaaahoooo you goddamn sunnova bitch!"

8. Star Child suddenly turns into Sovereign and says "Well Played, Organic"

9. Bomb hits citadel, it gets sucked into nothingness.

10. All Reapers just shut down. Everyone rejoices.

11. They have a memorial for all the ones they lost.

12. Credits roll.

13. After credits, Shepard and Zaeed wake up on some weird planet in Andromeda.
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SpaghettiCookie posted...

They literally never said that. The ending was done quickly but they didnt say anything like that.

They dont join the reapers though. Thats oversimplification. Its much more complicated than that. But in short

They get knowledge and reapers get free will.
Reapers help out. They have no set purpose anymore so they try the good guy thing.

Im going to run out of posts from just this one topic guys ~

No, I get it guy. It's just stupid as fuck and I'm oversimplifying it because it doesn't deserve the amount of thinking you're giving it.

The point is that the good ending requires you to ignore so much bad shit that it's the stupid ending to pick. It's literally doing all of the wrong things simply because you have foresight to know it's the "good ending"

When in any realistic scenario, and based on all information you are given at the time, you're just giving in to the Reapers who are going to use it to genocide you

Like they did with Saren, and the Illusive Man, and the Protheans, etc. etc. etc.
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When in any realistic scenario, and based on all information you are given at the time, you're just giving in to the Reapers who are going to use it to genocide you

Like they did with Saren, and the Illusive Man, and the Protheans, etc. etc. etc.

The previous two games literally end with a lesson about what happens when you trust the Reapers or when you let them indoctrinate you.

So for the third game to have Shepard even consider the idea of listening to them is insulting.
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Yeah, I feel like a lot of people don't "get" the argument for destroy.

It isn't that it's the "good" ending. It's that it's the ending that "makes sense"

Nobody is saying that Synthesis or even Control are not more beneficial.

It's that it just makes no logical sense to choose them. There is no actual "thing" that shows these are good, logical choices other than a Reaper construct telling you they are good ideas.

Similar to how it makes no logical sense to allow the Geth to upload Reaper Programming into themselves for free will when Mass Effect 2 established that the Geth did not actually desire this. It *feels* like a Reaper trick.

The idea that these would be choices Shepard would make in the midst of galactic extinction are very VERY strange.

It's why I find the second half of ME3 to be so poorly written and rushed. There was more nuance with the Krogan. If I have Wrex and Eve alive, I'm willing to cure to Krogran because I've spent two games now with Wrex and he has shown me that he is absolutely ready to lead the Krogan to a more peaceful existance.

But if it's Wreave who is alive? With Eve dead? That's gonna be a no from me, dawg.

There isn't any sort of variation of that with the Geth. It goes from "We like who we are, we don't want your idea of invidualism, we want to just go off and be on our own in dark space with our dyson sphere."

to

"We're willing to genocide the Quarians over a planet we don't really care about, and we uploaded Reaper programming into ourselves, and now suddenly we want individualism and everything we said we didn't want."

It's just super SUPER fishy and it's why I tend to let the Quarians kill the Geth. I just can't trust them.
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Destroy is actually the only right answer.
So the Geth die, and so does EDI. Guess what? They're expendable, and if the death of the Geth mean the death of the Quarians well then tough luck you all brought it upon yourselves.

You can say the trilogy is about learning to be fwends with machines/AI but it's not, it's always been about survival and there are two key lessons to learn from ME2:
1. YOUR WHOLE TEAM IS EXPENDABLE.
2. YOU'RE EXPENDABLE.

The ending of this clip helps prove this point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JNX9cAC0oc" data-time="

(lol at ugly sheppard)
TL;DW: We're on a mission, you can either fight at my side or get crushed under my heel, but you will NOT stand in my way.

That one line tells you everything about Shepard and his mission. They may all be his friends, he might consider some family by the end of their journey. But they are all a means to an end, which just so happens to be survival.
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Delta_Force posted...

Destroy is actually the only right answer.
So the Geth die, and so does EDI. Guess what? They're expendable, and if the death of the Geth mean the death of the Quarians well then tough luck you all brought it upon yourselves.

But aren't you also destroying the mass relays, and thus basically fucking everything up?
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Doe posted...

Remember that magazine where the guy shits on people for not liking the ending and at the same time admits he hasn't finished the game

remember all that chaos. I still remember people actually defending that ending smh. It was do bad the indoctrination theory actually sounded plausible.
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Its very simple. Destroy will end in death, pain, and nothing changing

Synthesis is Shepard leading people into a new era of prosperity and life that will stop the cycle, its the ending that was being built up.

And it keeps Shepard in character as hes never even hinted at being willing to commit multiple genocide and say oh they are casualties yet somehow only the loud people on the internet

Which is a shame because its just so out of his character.

I cant respond to everything anymore as Ill run out of posts.
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My problem with the Mass Effect fanbase is that they're more upset about the ending of ME3 than the game's squadron selection being crippled to promote day one squadron DLC that should have been part of the main game.

Fucking priorities.

The ending sucked, but it basically had to after how badly the story went astray from the beginning of ME2. It's kind of annoying how much the ending of the trilogy ends up preventing people from noticing that the problems started when the middle game of the trilogy didn't bother to advance the plot at all and then the third game's solution was to have an NPC go "we found a blueprint that we can't understand, we have no idea what it does or how it works but we're pretty sure it will magically save the day", leaving you with absolutely no reason to give a fuck because the game has already directly told you the conclusion is going to be based on an arbitrary deus ex machina plot device doing some random thing rather than based on anything you've actually done.
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frozenshock posted...

Delta_Force posted...

Destroy is actually the only right answer.
So the Geth die, and so does EDI. Guess what? They're expendable, and if the death of the Geth mean the death of the Quarians well then tough luck you all brought it upon yourselves.

But aren't you also destroying the mass relays, and thus basically fucking everything up?

You mean killing everyone? Like the Batarians' relay? They retconned that. Relays are destroyed and everybody is fine. Even if everybody died from the destroyed relays other species could still grow and evolve and they wouldn't have to worry about genocidal machines coming and fucking their shit up. The cycle is broken. Congrats, you are winnar!
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Panthera posted...

The ending sucked, but it basically had to after how badly the story went astray from the beginning of ME2. It's kind of annoying how much the ending of the trilogy ends up preventing people from noticing that the problems started when the middle game of the trilogy didn't bother to advance the plot at all and then the third game's solution was to have an NPC go "we found a blueprint that we can't understand, we have no idea what it does or how it works but we're pretty sure it will magically save the day", leaving you with absolutely no reason to give a fuck because the game has already directly told you the conclusion is going to be based on an arbitrary deus ex machina plot device doing some random thing rather than based on anything you've actually done.

I have no clue how you're putting this at ME2's feet other than some dumb idea that if ME2 had advanced the reaper plot ME3's ending wouldnt have been as bad, which feels like something you're pulling out of your ass.

NibeIungsnarf posted...

I have no clue how you're putting this at ME2's feet other than some dumb idea that if ME2 had advanced the reaper plot ME3's ending wouldnt have been as bad, which feels like something you're pulling out of your ass.

If ME2 had established a way to actually defeat the Reapers instead of just being a huge sidequest, it would have been a lot easier for ME3 to come up with an ending that would actually be satisfying since it wouldn't be as much of an ass pull. ME2 and 3 both did a ton of things wrong in terms of the main story beyond just the last hour of the final game.
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SpaghettiCookie posted...

Its very simple. Destroy will end in death, pain, and nothing changing

Synthesis is Shepard leading people into a new era of prosperity and life that will stop the cycle, its the ending that was being built up.

And it keeps Shepard in character as hes never even hinted at being willing to commit multiple genocide and say oh they are casualties yet somehow only the loud people on the internet

Which is a shame because its just so out of his character.

I cant respond to everything anymore as Ill run out of posts.

He killed off most of the Batarians! He didn't even repent!
He was like whoops, well at least we bought ourselves some time. Sucks to be Batarian right now, four eyes and they never saw it coming!
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Panthera posted...

If ME2 had established a way to actually defeat the Reapers instead of just being a huge sidequest, it would have been a lot easier for ME3 to come up with an ending that would actually be satisfying since it wouldn't be as much of an ass pull

Didn't that happen? I thought the original ending of ME3 revolved around the dark energy thing in Tali's story in ME2 but they scrapped it when details were leaked.

Either way, you're starting at the conclusion and working backwards to find a spawn point for the shitshow, which is not how things are done.

NibeIungsnarf posted...

Didn't that happen? I thought the original ending of ME3 revolved around the dark energy thing in Tali's story in ME2 but they scrapped it when details were leaked.

Either way, you're starting at the conclusion and working backwards to find a spawn point for the shitshow, which is not how things are done.

No, I'm just not absolving everything other than the ending of blame. ME2 didn't build up any sort of explanation for how the Reapers could be beaten, which made it harder for ME3 to come up with anything plausible. ME3 then shit the bed and went with a dumbass deus ex machina that culminated in nonsense. ME3 also had to dedicate a lot of time to resolving the dumbass Cerberus sub plot (or main plot, really, with how the series ended up treating it) that ME2 devoted itself to. The writing in Mass Effect went downhill long before the ending of the third game.
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SpaghettiCookie posted...

4. Its not like thats the first you Shepard meets AI. He is with the Catalyst and learns that the Catalyst has one goal. Preservation of life. However, Shepard proves this method wasnt working. The Catalyst wants this goal fulfilled more than anyone else. Its literally Catalysts entire purpose.
Shepard is the one who proved Catalyst would eventually fail. So he is given control.
There is no reason for Catalyst to lie, and no evidence anywhere that it was lying to Shepard.

It's abundantly clear that Catalyst considers reapers/geth to be life as well. When given the option to destroy, The Catalyst is making a sacrifice in order to preserve as much life as possible since Catalyst concedes it's impossible to preserve all of it. They are not suddenly changing their stance on machines in general.
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I accidentally got the Synthesis ending the first time I played. I didn't realize that the other endings branched off to the side, so I stumbled forward because I thought I'd have to make my choice when I got to the big energy beam
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UnholyMudcrab posted...

I accidentally got the Synthesis ending the first time I played. I didn't realize that the other endings branched off to the side, so I stumbled forward because I thought I'd have to make my choice when I got to the big energy beam

Same. I had no idea what was going on and I moved a little forward and suddenly I had locked myself into the dumbest thing I could even imagine.

Synthesis is so stupid.

SpaghettiCookie posted...

And it keeps Shepard in character as hes never even hinted at being willing to commit multiple genocide and say oh they are casualties yet somehow only the loud people on the internet

Except he literally does hint at this in certain dialogues in Mass Effect 1, specifically with the Rachni queen.

Not to mention him destroying a whole system in Arrival.

But yeah, keep going on and on about how everything was foreshadowing towards the military super soldier pushing the galaxy into a forced utopia.
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NibeIungsnarf posted...

UnholyMudcrab posted...

I accidentally got the Synthesis ending the first time I played. I didn't realize that the other endings branched off to the side, so I stumbled forward because I thought I'd have to make my choice when I got to the big energy beam

Same. I had no idea what was going on and I moved a little forward and suddenly I had locked myself into the dumbest thing I could even imagine.

Synthesis is so stupid.

Same :/

AlecSkorpio posted...

SpaghettiCookie posted...

And it keeps Shepard in character as hes never even hinted at being willing to commit multiple genocide and say oh they are casualties yet somehow only the loud people on the internet

Except he literally does hint at this in certain dialogues in Mass Effect 1

Not to mention him destroying a whole system in Arrival.

But yeah, keep going on and on about how everything was foreshadowing towards the military super soldier pushing the galaxy into a forced utopia.

Yeah, for real.

It sounds like this dude has literally only picked paragon options in every playthrough of Mass Effect lmfao
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The real crime here is at the end of the series all your choices amounted to war assets.

Fucking waste of time
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apocalyptic_4 posted...

The real crime here is at the end of the series all your choices amounted to war assets.

Fucking waste of time

Another aspect that should receive way more outrage than the ending but somehow doesn't.

How the game forces you (at launch) to engage in microtransaction fueled multiplayer to get the """best""" ending in the hope that singleplayers will drop a few extra dollars to make it go by faster

It's despicable regardless of how good the multiplayer mode is (I hear its great, never played it myself).

People rightly blame Overwatch for the current lootbox shit going on, but also people look over here. I imagine this is where Overwatch got the idea.

NibeIungsnarf posted...

How the game forces you (at launch) to engage in microtransaction fueled multiplayer to get the """best""" ending in the hope that singleplayers will drop a few extra dollars to make it go by faster

I never played the multiplayer and got the best ending.

But I also played every game and made the right choices, I guess :/
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They patched it so that you don't need to play multiplayer to get the best ending now. You absolutely did at launch, but for many that was not much of a barrier because multiplayer was goddamn awesome.

ocelot51 posted...

They patched it so that you don't need to play multiplayer to get the best ending now. You absolutely did at launch, but for many that was not much of a barrier because multiplayer was goddamn awesome.

I played it at launch and still got the best ending.

or at least I got Synthesis. Is there something else I'm missing for "best ending"?
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At launch it was impossible to get the """best""" ending without either playing multiplayer or some shit tier browser game with your origin account tied to it to raise your galactic readiness. They increased the war asset demand in a patch and also added more assets in the DLCs so the multiplayer is no longer required, but that doesn't change what they did or why they did it.

NibeIungsnarf posted...

apocalyptic_4 posted...

The real crime here is at the end of the series all your choices amounted to war assets.

Fucking waste of time

Another aspect that should receive way more outrage than the ending but somehow doesn't.

How the game forces you (at launch) to engage in microtransaction fueled multiplayer to get the """best""" ending in the hope that singleplayers will drop a few extra dollars to make it go by faster

It's despicable regardless of how good the multiplayer mode is (I hear its great, never played it myself).

People rightly blame Overwatch for the current lootbox shit going on, but also people look over here. I imagine this is where Overwatch got the idea.

Yes I almost forgot ME3 was the originator of loot boxes in multiplayer or rather one of the 1st to really popularize it. I'll admit though the multiplayer was actually fantastic in ME3.
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It wasn't impossible, I think you just had to have done everything in the other games to get it.

I also got Synthesis without playing multiplayer my first playthrough.
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I remember a long forum post from somewhere that detailed every possible asset combo that confirmed that you couldn't hit the best threshold without MP.

<_< I guess I am in the minority that feels is Control is the most paragon option of the 3...
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No, it was impossible. Not talking about the 3 main endings, but that shitty little bonus scene added to them if you got high war assets, which required multiplayer.

In the destroy ending Shepard dies, but if you had enough war assets there's a one second scene of them surviving. I don't remember about the other colour endings.

I think they are mis remembering, but at the same token you guys are over blowing it.

You had to play multiplayer, but at launch it wasn't like you had to buy anything to play it. You just had to win a few matches I think.

Oh, I thought you just meant the Synthesis ending.

I never cared about Shepard surviving because him surviving was stupid as fuck in the context of the ending, and I preferred him making the ultimate sacrifice so I guess I just never noticed.
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the endings were all so fucking bad
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Youngster_Joey_ posted...

I think they are mis remembering, but at the same token you guys are over blowing it.

And you are making excuses for a shitty practice that had no purpose other than to force singleplayers into multiplayer which was supported by a microtransaction economy in the hope that they spend money in said economy.

Youngster_Joey_ posted...

You just had to win a few matches I think.

But then your galactic readiness decays over time so if you want to finish the game a month later you had to do it again

Again, there's literally no reason for this element to exist in the singleplayer portion of the game other than to nickle and dime the players.

NibeIungsnarf posted...

Again, there's literally no reason for this element to exist in the singleplayer portion of the game other than to nickle and dime the players.

What part of "you didn't have to buy shit" don't you get?

Calm down, jesus christ. It wasn't that big of a deal, hence why nobody threw a stink fit. All it did was unlock a scene of where you couldn't make out shit and heard a gasp.

Okay you didn't have to do anything.

What reason does this gameplay element in the singleplayer portion of the game have other than to encourage people to pay more money?

If your answer is anything other than nothing you're as much of a shill as you sound.

I had to look it up. Without MP your galactic readiness will stay at 50%. What this means is your war score total is cut in half. Before the Extended Cut, to get the 'best' ending, you needed at least 4000 score, or effectively 8000 because of readiness. According to the wiki, the highest obtainable score was about 7500 thanks to mutually exclusive choices. DLC added a bunch of assets, and the Extended Cut lowered the threshold to 3100, making it much easier to reach in basically any scenario.

NibeIungsnarf posted...

What reason does this gameplay element in the singleplayer portion of the game have other than to encourage people to pay more money?

It encourages them to play the multiplayer, which didn't require you to buy anything.

Seriously, breath and count to ten dude. This isn't worth having a melty over.

Youngster_Joey_ posted...

It encourages them to play the multiplayer, which didn't require you to buy anything.

But you're not giving EA more money if you're not playing the multiplayer, which is why they want to encourage you to play it.

Stop defending scummy business practices

NibeIungsnarf posted...

But you're not giving EA more money if you're not playing the multiplayer, which is why they want to encourage you to play it.

Stop defending scummy business practices

I never gave EA money and I did play the multiplayer.

It wasn't that hard, believe it or not.

I'm not even saying that what they did do with the multiplayer wasn't scummy.

But what you're upset over? Yeah, it wasn't a big deal. You didn't have to pay anything just to play the multiplayer so...

NibeIungsnarf posted...

No, it was impossible. Not talking about the 3 main endings, but that shitty little bonus scene added to them if you got high war assets, which required multiplayer.

In the destroy ending Shepard dies, but if you had enough war assets there's a one second scene of them surviving. I don't remember about the other colour endings.

No, i never had multiplayer, but it is possible to have enough war assets without it and get that bonus scene

Do you want a cookie or something?

I thought it was only impossible to reach if you gave the illusive man the collector base, as that lowered the EMS needed for the best endings for Control while destroying it lowered it for Destroy...
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ME3's multiplayer was like the golden age for microtransactions. It was super liberal in giving you packs. Not that you ever really needed them.

NibeIungsnarf posted...

Do you want a cookie or something?

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