1861

I think it’s a reasonable and valid ending, but it is a lot shorter in terms of content. I guess there’s less point in seeing what happened to everyone when they all got killed by the reapers though.

1862

I got a tiny bit of satisfaction out of shooting little space Jesus. But really, I only wanted to use the Crucible as it had always been intended.

There is no best ending for Mass Effect 3. It’s really just a matter of personal preference.

1863

It’s the worst ending because the subsequent cycle uses the Crucible to choose from the same three choices Shepard had. If they were all going to end up in the same place, then Shepard put the galaxy through genocide for nothing. He could have made a choice now and saved everyone all the suffering. Nothing is accomplished by not choosing now.

1864

The Reject ending is essentially Destroy but worse. While there are a few interesting thematic elements to Reject, as you’ve pointed out, they are washed out by the fact Bioware states that the next cycle just builds the Crucible before the Reapers invade and picks the from the choices your Shepherd didn’t have the balls to take.

Reject SHOULD have be about actually rejecting the Crucible’s choices and finding another way. It isn’t.

1865

Where did you get this information? I played through that ending, and there was no mention of what happens in the next cycle. They only show that you passed on the information from this cycle onward. I would assume that they would pass on all the information, including the closed choices that the Reaper AI offers for the Crucible. This gives hope that the next cycle will find a way of defeating the Reapers with the Crucible and its set of narrow choices. There’s no mention of what actually happens, or if the next cycle even builds the Crucible.

1866

Apparently Bioware put it on their forums, but in my opinion, that doesn’t count. If it’s not actually IN the ending it doesn’t matter what someone posts on a forum about it.

1867

Yeah, totally. That’s no more official than any fan fiction, IMO.

1868

The next cycle manages to defeat the Reapers without even fighting them according to the voice-over, with a shot of a rotating Crucible hologram on the screen with Liara’s buried. It’s merely implicit in the game as opposed to explicit from the devs. Irregardless, Destroy still has a better outcome since you only sacrifice a single sentient race to free the galaxy from Reaper tyranny instead of dooming all of the organic space-faring peoples, standing gormless as the Reapers destroy everyone you swore to save. I think if they had been willing to rework the endings to give the Destroy outcome to the Rejection choice, they might have been on to something at least satisfying.

Trying to apply any logic is fruitless anyhow, I suppose, the Crucible is an artifact designed by countless galactic civilizations working on it piecemeal with no idea of what it was supposed to do or even interface with. I spent most of ME3 expecting it to be a Reaper trap, a massive waste of resources that accomplishes nothing.

1869

Well I finished a couple days ago and have been reading this and other threads on the game since then. I had avoided them until now (although it was impossible to avoid the “bad ending” controversy) and it has been interesting reading the thoughts in these threads.

My thoughts?

I didn’t hate the end. Didn’t like it either. It just seemed to offer nothing to the story you had spent so much time working on. Learning afterwards that all the endings were basically the same didn’t help the feeling that the always anti-climax of finishing a computer game was amplified by this ones generic quality. In the end it didn’t matter what Shepherd did.

As for the rest of the game. Really good. Talia and Samara both commit suicide. I wipe out the Quarrian race. Mordin dying a hero’s death along with Thane. If you weren’t at some point emotionally involved then you just weren’t human.

I don’t know about the indoctrination theory, but the little boy stuff was probably my least favorite part of the game because, past the initial guilt of not being able to save the kid on earth, the dreams involving the kid make no real sense to the story. And then to have the “kid” show up again in the end as some sort of uber being, well, I just didn’t get all that.

I will put the game aside, and a few years from now break it out and play it from the beginning again.

1870

You are a horrible, horrible person.

1871

I guess in ME2 I must have chosen poorly.

1872

I just finished Mass Effect 3 for the first time…spending most of my free time with Mass Effect trilogy incl. all DLCs this past month, transfering save games between games…it was quite an experience.
Very happy with Mass Effect 3 and its ending. I assume in its original form it must have been quite a WTF, but with Leviathan, From ashes and extended edition it made sense to me and was very moving. I chose synthesis, similar decision I made in both Deus Ex 1 (merging with Helios) and Deus Ex 2.

I have to applaud Bioware, this must have been herculean effort in creating this game. So many decisions and permutations and consequences to create…
In Mass Effect 2 everyone survived, so it was amazing seeing them all again in ME3. Thane and Mordin and Wrex and Grunt and Miranda and Garrus and…god dammit I love them all. And Thane and Mordin went out as bad ass heroes that they were.
Even dudebro space marine Vega was decent.
Quarians and Geth were working together. So were Turians and Krogan. Everyone survived except Thane and Mordin too.
Fantastic experience.
I am sad.

1873

I agree that the ending was about choice - not about all your previous choices, but adding one last big choice, that would implicate an unknown future. It was like that time when I had to choose between killing and releasing the Rachni queen.

My first playthrough tells another tale though. Early on, I decided that I was going to stop doing sidequests, and just focus on the main missions. I read Thane’s email, but I never saw him in the game. Didn’t meet Jacob or Samara, and only encountered Miranda in time to see her get killed by her own father.

An email arrived, from Wrex, announcing Eve’s death in the bomb blast I hadn’t prevented.

On Earth, after Cortez perished in his shuttle, only Jack was there for a chat with the intergalactic phone booth.

And my meeting with space boy ended with the choice between refusal (and forfeiting the war), and burning Earth to a crisp, with Destroy. So Earth burned. The Normandy crash landed, and its door never opened. This playthrough breathed an overwhelming sense of loss.

On my second run, I did everything, reconnected with everyone, got three choices at the end, and chose Destroy again - because I didn’t want Shepard to turn into a god with an army of vengeful angels, and because the promise of eternal peace among the green glowing masses sounded to me like the destruction of individuality for everyone in the galaxy. Sorry EDI, sorry Geth, but sacrifices had to be made. Nothing personal.

My biggest issue with the game was the neutering of the Rachni. After that encounter in ME2, I’d expected this game to be very easy: Shepard makes The Call -> Rachni start singing, descend on Reapers, tear them apart -> Game over, you win!
Granted, from a gameplay perspective, that would be a bit thin on content.

1874

New DLC next month. Omega. Twice as big as any DLC to date. You play Aria and a new character as you take back the Omega Space Station.

1875

Since it has been out for a few days by now and nobody resurrected this thread, I’m assuming people didn’t rush to get the new DLC?

I am about 2 hours in, the end is nowhere in sight, but I’m already bored.

I think the shooting bits in Omega are worse than the vanilla ME3 multiplayer because in singleplayer campaign I am stuck with Shepard, whereas even in vanilla ME3 multiplayer I can play as a Krogan or whoever I feel like, with special abilities never accessible to Shepard.

The story so far is a bit meh. Leviathan at least has a mystery. Omega so far seems irrelevant. The premise is Shepard is helping Aria to take back Omega and in turn give more support to the war effort. But it just seems like a disproportionally long battle for some measly increase in War Asset.

I’m hoping in the end there will be as much pay off as helping the Krogans or Quarians, but I’m not holding my breath.

1876

Sure, I played Omega. It is, unfortunately, nothing special. You meet a couple of interesting people, get some new (temporary) squad members, a couple new guns, shoot a couple new enemies, but that’s about the extent of the novelty. I did enjoy the firefights better than Soma did, but other than that it’s a bit of a mystery to me why they bumped the price up on this one. It’s definitely not as interesting as Leviathan.

1877

Thanks for taking one for the team, guys.

1878

I’ll agree with the consensus on this.

One thing someone in the Bioware forums noted, is that Omega was done by the multiplayer team, not the devs who had done the singleplayer game. If true, that explains to me why some of the firefight levels felt like I was in a multiplayer game. I’ll bet the next free MP DLC will include levels from Omega.

1879

Mildly disappointing to hear this likely isnt too great. I bought this when it came out in my Grand Plan to do another ME3 playthrough.

I haven’t done leviathan either so was planning to do all of the new dlc in one fell swoop. Still plan to do this, but as someone who was upset that they focused as much as they did on multiplayer when the ME trilogy has been exclusively singleplayer, it doesn’t make me happy.

1880

You’re shortchanging yourself if you don’t try the multiplayer, Murbella. It’s really good.