Current Events > How I would fix the Mass Effect 3 ending (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Posting it up here as well, since the ME3 board is dead.

One of my main gripes with the ending is the ambiguity about Shepard's survival, and as a result, being unable to interact with your squadmates for some well deserved celebration. I think it was pretty lame the ending "reward" to the players who got high EMS to just see one second of Shepard taking a breath and roll credits.

So what I would do is take away the "control the reapers" and "synthetizing" ending. If the player had high EMS, then Shepard would survive the activation of the crucible, and be found clinging to life in the rubble by Alliance forces.

Then fast forward 2 months. Shepard just came out of a coma in the Citadel hospital. All the surviving squad mates come by to visit him, Then you get out of the hospital and go back to the normandy, where a tribute to Admiral Anderson is underway. After that's done you get a jornal notification which triggers the Citadel DLC. I absolutely love it, but it really felt implausible and out of place for Shepard and the team to be on "shore leave" while millions of people across the galaxy are killed every hour by the reapers. I think that should have been left to the end, all they had to do was tweak the dialogues a little to imply that the reaper threat was over. You could leave everything else in, since the clone has no relation to the reapers. Then you'd end the game with the party in your apartment and the final farewell to the Normandy in the docks, reminiscing with your friends and love interest about the whole journey.

What do you guys think?
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Bump
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Sounds pretty good to me.
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The simple fix was to make it so having a full fleet rating from all the DLC makes the "do nothing/faith in the fleet" option successful and satisfying.
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I just wanted a real showdown with Harbinger somehow. He was so intimidating in 2.

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I think they could have made the endings work if they put more effort into them. Or at least the Crucible should have felt like some major thing that needs a sacrifice.

Destroy would destroy the Reapers but it would also destroy the Geth and all AI life. The epilogue is a typical Bioware ending where you say bye to all of your companions and live with what you did.

Control sacrifices Shepard and his humanity. The epilogue involves talking to your crew through a giant Reaper and seeing their reactions along with making the choice of what you will do as the new Reaper overlord. Steer yourself into the sun? Go dormant until you're needed? Rule the galaxy?

Synthesis would need to be completely changed. Instead of some weird fusion that alters everything it pacifies the Reapers and gives control to the Crucible AI. But the implications are vague.

Star Child should have been completely scrapped or different. It should have been an ancient AI that was originally started by the leviathans who needed to build the Crucible throughout several cycles in order to work. The decisions are left up to whoever manages to complete it and the Reapers continue to attempt to stop you. The Reapers true motivations didn't really need to be explained. They just needed to be stopped. Perhaps they could have left Dark Energy as a loose end for any future games.
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Instead of an 'extended cut' of the ending, I would have gotten rid of the entire scene with the stupid star brat/Catalyst because it was moronic bullshit that went against the entire point of the series.

I would have ended with Shepard & Anderson watching the Crucible go off.

I didn't mind the bittersweet ending-- I minded the badly written Deus Ex Machina choose your color of lasers bullshit. Especially since Bioware producers were famously on record as saying that would not happen at the end of the trilogy. Fucking liars.

pfh1001 posted...

Instead of an 'extended cut' of the ending, I would have gotten rid of the entire scene with the stupid star brat/Catalyst because it was moronic bullshit that went against the entire point of the series.

I would have ended with Shepard & Anderson watching the Crucible go off.

I didn't mind the bittersweet ending-- I minded the badly written Deus Ex Machina choose your color of lasers bullshit. Especially since Bioware producers were famously on record as saying that would not happen at the end of the trilogy. Fucking liars.

It was probably true when they made that comment.

Then the reality of a two year development time hit.
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Not really a *fix* to the ending, but there shouldn't have been a choice at all, especially since it was clear they considered the synthesis ending to be *the* ending.

I honestly don't get how after walking back the final choices in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 they decided that a final choice was what the third game needed.
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Darmik posted...

pfh1001 posted...

Instead of an 'extended cut' of the ending, I would have gotten rid of the entire scene with the stupid star brat/Catalyst because it was moronic bullshit that went against the entire point of the series.

I would have ended with Shepard & Anderson watching the Crucible go off.

I didn't mind the bittersweet ending-- I minded the badly written Deus Ex Machina choose your color of lasers bullshit. Especially since Bioware producers were famously on record as saying that would not happen at the end of the trilogy. Fucking liars.

It was probably true when they made that comment.

Then the reality of a two year development time hit.

Considering it was only a few months before the game came out, I doubt it.

Your choices through the series have impacts all throughout the third game so I think thats good enough.

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I think the synthesis ending is the worst one, and I'll explain why in detail:

When we get introduced to the Mass Effect universe in the first game, you notice that most of the races live with strong prejudices towards each other. Space racism is epidemic, and various huge conflicts helped to shape this scenario (Rachni Wars, Krogan Rebellions, Genophage, Geth/Quarian War, First Contact War, etc).

But then during the next two games, if you go Paragon Shepard, he goes on to pretty much transform galactic politics and diplomacy, helping to close old wounds between the races (curing the genophage, making peace between the geth and quarians, saving the rachni from virtual extinction, etc). This is not only evident in the galactic scale, but especially in your crew. In the first game, your squad mates are very distrusting of each other. But over time they grow to see each other as true brothers in arms.

So one of the main themes of the story of Paragon Shepard is that he ends the conflicts not only between organics, but also with synthetics. Starchild is like "it's inevitable that synthetics will overcome organics". I'm like "lol no? I just made peace with the geth like last week, buddy". Not to mention that you pretty much rally the biggest fleet in galactic history under one objective. So it really doesn't make sense that the solution to the reaper situation is to turn everyone into EDI. By the end of Mass Effect 3, there has been a major transformation in galactic relations, culture, and politics. So yeah, that's why I think the synthesis ending goes against the entire theme of the game, if you're Paragon Shepard.
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Last bump
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Paragon Shepard should destroy the Reapers. I was full paragon until the very last choice. Shepard would never believe he could actually control the reapers.

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