Mass Effect 3: It Ends Here

[Bells]

So, the Extended Cut is out. Shall we blabber about it one last time?

Also, they DID add a brand new ending, actually influenced by the fans! The Refusal ending is now the 4th choice



It's pretty much the definition of "Bittersweet".

Here is the new take on the Control Ending (this one actually works for me now, it was the one i picked the first time and oh boy was i underwhelmed by it...)



And this is the Destroy ending



Mind you that all of these might have variables directed to your own game but the overall framework of all of them is pretty much set as showed above.

Ah and of course, the new Synthesis ending.



Mind you that the way these are all presented, there is no "perfect" ending, there is YOUR ending... what i mean is that it seems all these endings are paralell. There doesn't seem to be an ending above the others or a "true" ending like most games... so one ending can't really contradict the other because they are all supposed to fall into your interpretation of them ...

There might be more stuff to uncover and see, but this is the meat of it, so have at it fellas!

[EVILNess]

The ending of the Synthesis ending.

I swear I expected an elderly Simon to bust out and yell at them for stealing the end of Gurren Lagann.

[Ryong]

Refusal and Destroy are basically idiocy: the endings. Refusal, oh okay you gave the reapers the finger and didn't do shit. Destroy, hey, you killed a lot of people along with the reapers because cybernetics.

Control and Synthesis are similar in the end, but with different means.

Not a bad fix, but still, hey, pick what ending you want at the end.

[Pip Boy]

Im frustrated that there doesn't seem to be an option that leads to the reapers going away without tremendous amounts of meddling in galactic culture/life.

Like a "you and your thrice damned reapers go back to the hole from whence you came and let us keep doin what we were doin" option.

[Ryong]

Originally Posted by Pip Boy

Im frustrated that there doesn't seem to be an option that leads to the reapers going away without tremendous amounts of meddling in galactic culture/life.

Like a "you and your thrice damned reapers go back to the hole from whence you came and let us keep doin what we were doin" option.

It seems they're too thick-headed to get a message across that doesn't involve exploding every mass relay ever.

[stefan]

I like how Refusal is more or less an overt middle finger aimed at everyone who rightfully pointed out how much of a lazy cop-out the original endings were.

Im frustrated that there doesn't seem to be an option that leads to the reapers going away without tremendous amounts of meddling in galactic culture/life.

Like a "you and your thrice damned reapers go back to the hole from whence you came and let us keep doin what we were doin" option.

but we can't have that because HURR DURR BITTERSWEET ENDINGS, DURR HURR I AM LITERARY EXPERT.

Really, I never got why people were so pissily opposed to the possibility of a golden ending anyway, as if it would somehow devalue the game if it was possible to legitimately have an unambiguously good outcome. To which I say, fuck you; three games, hundreds of hours of effort, and countless examples of motherfucking heroism later, I think Shepard and co. have done more than enough to warrant a legit happy ending without any livejournal-esque "happy endings are passe and disney and I hate them because I only like mature bittersweet stories for mature bittersweet people such as myself" bullshit.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by stefan

I like how Refusal is more or less an overt middle finger aimed at everyone who rightfully pointed out how much of a lazy cop-out the original endings were.

Pretty much.

...I suppose it's nice that you can still help the next cycle win and whatnot, but when the other endings all universally allow (most of) your friends (and humanity) to live, it's basically Bioware railroading you into RGB and mocking you if you dare express displeasure.

My problem with the endings isn't so much that they're terrible (the Extended Cut does vastly improve the RGB endings, most notably Control, which is now a legitimate option instead of 'that choice no one with two brain cells would choose'), but rather that Mass Effect seems to no longer have any thematic resonance or narrative coherence.

When the first two games are all about achieving the impossible, persevering against the odds, uniting the galaxy against a threat, respecting all races equally, achieving true independence, a willingness to die before submission, etc., it establishes a certain vision of the kind of person Shepard is -- whether your Shepard is paragon or renegade.
...And then you're basically punished for roleplaying Shepard as the kind of person s/he is and has been since the beginning.

...That's my biggest problem with the new ending(s). I appreciate that Bioware has given the fans more closure and dealt with a few of the glaring plot holes. But every time I'd ever play ME3, I'd feel compelled to choose the 'Refusal' ending because that's what every incarnation of my Shepard would do.
And then Bioware just basically gives me the middle finger for being true to the very themes they originally established.

It's like if Apocalypse Now was 95% the exact same movie, and then at the end of the film a random U.S. marine shows up and starts kicking Vietnamese ass and a heroic orchestral soundtrack swells and the Marine logo shows up: "What are you waiting for? War is amazing!!! Enlist Today!"

Or if just as The Princess Bride was about to end and all the characters are walking off in victory Westley announced that he was actually having an affair with Inigo Montoya throughout the entire story, therefore proving that 'true love' was valueless, leaving Buttercup to commit suicide in despair.

[Ramary]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Or if just as The Princess Bride was about to end and all the characters are walking off in victory Westley announced that he was actually having an affair with Inigo Montoya throughout the entire story, therefore proving that 'true love' was valueless, leaving Buttercup to commit suicide in despair.

I know you are trying to make a point here, but I am currently super distracted by just how much I want to see this now.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

So, it turns out you can polish a turd, but at the end of the day, it's still a turd. They may have expanded upon and improved the endings (yay the relays no longer explode and kill everyone, control is no longer totally stupid), but the core bullshittery and stupid is still there and unchanged (Refusal is just a "fuck you" from Bioware, the Reapers still wiping out organics because they don't want them to be wiped out by synthetics by wiping them out with synthetics, the dialogue in most of the endings is pretty terrible, the relays are still dead for a while until they get repaired in Synthesis and Control (duno if they do in Destroy) leaving everyone still mostly stranded for a while and the Stargazer scene is still really out of place, even more so if you choose Control or Synthesis).

So yeah, improved in parts, but still pretty crappy.

[Ryong]

Man, did you see how the Control and Synthesis ending are now, specially Synthesis?

If that shit isn't golden happy ending forever I don't know what is.