Posted on: Sunday, March 18th, 2012
Posted in: Featured
Comments: 825
Top 10 Reasons We Hate Mass Effect 3′s Ending
Angry Joe lists the Top 10 Reasons Why He Hates Mass Effect 3′s Ending and shares with you fan reaction and discussion on how the amazing sci-fi franchise from Bioware failed to deliver promises made.
What are your Top Reasons You Hated or even Liked the Ending? Grab a beer with Shepard and Garrus and leave your thoughts below!
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825 thoughts on “Top 10 Reasons We Hate Mass Effect 3′s Ending”
Actual fact from Collectors edition art book: Originally there was an idea that the Illusive man was turned into a Reaper creature and that was the final boss.
The creature would have been more about wise fighting than brute force despite it´s large form. The idea was abandoned because they wanted the final boss to be someone the players knew.
So to make final boss more memorable they took out the Illusive man and replaced him with the Starchild no one knew or cared about?
Logic makes Bioware brain hurt
Wow…So what you’re telling me is they went like
“Okay no…Epic battle with a cunning and clever creature that was once Illusive man – A guy who tried to fight for Earth and horribly failed – NAH THAT FUCKING SUCKS- Let’s throw in a Starchild and go along with our day “Zippety-Fucking-Dooda”
That is so fucking retarded!!! If it was EA’s idea to put a fucking child as the final boss in the game, then I understand, because EA ARE NATURAL BORN DONKEY-DICK-SUCKING BITCHES!!!!!!!!!!
Some more Reasons Joe overlooked or didn´t want to make the vid longer ^^
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QT4IUepvrU1pfv_B95oQj0H84DlCTUmzQ_uQh1voTUs/preview?pli=1&sle=true
the endings are bad in the way that the players have no choise
i wuld like the “total victory/happy ending”
Thank you.
Thank you for understanding; for being unbiased and open-minded unlike a lot of other reviewers out there.
For seeing what these games could have been but now will never be – and showing, in such an easily-understandable and succinct manner the flaws that other reviewers pretend aren’t even there.
It’s easier for them to point to disappointed fans and say “they’re entitled little prats and the endings are awesome”, than to admit that they didn’t know enough about the story themselves, or weren’t invested enough in it, or worse yet – were paid or otherwise convinced not to offer disserting opinions.
Well done, sir. Hold the line.
The game being great up until the ending only magnifies how bad that ending really is, how much it rips you right out of the game, and makes you go, “Wait, what?”
This is similar to my problem with FF-XIII, that people are like “It gets really good like 25 hours in!”. That’s not a plus, and in fact calls more attention to the 25 crappy hours of linear corridor-cutscene-linear corridor-cutscene. Other Final Fantasy games managed to give you an open world feeling within about 20 minutes at most.
0:23 “Bioware will not do a Lost”
That’s funny ’cause i have this constant feeling the endings were written by JJ Abrams. -_-
damn, i don’t know if i wanna play this game now … looks like all the endings are sad as fuck .. i dont esnt my shepard to die! he is awesome!
guess i will stick with 2
This ending even makes angry joe calm down.
Good summery to the inherent issues with the ending, though I will as if any one else was pissed about there being no ending boss fight aboard the citadel? That’s the most disappointing thing about the ending in my opinion!
The only defense I can come up with for why Shepard doesn’t argue with the God Child is that their chest is practically blown open and they’ve lost a lot of blood, probably about to pass out, and not really in the proper condition to argue philosophy with some weird kid who just walked up to them.
Even that is a flimsy excuse though, as Shepard really wouldn’t just take those lazy options without at least arguing, even if they are choking on their blood the whole time.
Your point two makes even less sense when you put it with this video that they cut.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3PQT4c_r7Q
That’s right. Whomever you bring with you at the end gets toasted. They will still show on the ship despite all this. Bioware cut out a cutscene that was pretty damn relevant to the ending. According to Casey Hudson they cut a lot of the end, including a volley of dialog with the Catalyst. They, “wanted to end it on a high” and not be bogged down by words.
I think when it comes to this ending, the only highs that anyone is feeling right now are the people who decided to give the go-ahead, because they must of been smoking something if they thought that it was acceptable.
I feel like this whole affair is some sort of “editorial mandate” from the higher-ups at EA in an attempt to just milk more cash out of this cow, whether it makes sense or not. 99% Epic ruined by a 1% EPIC FAIL.
I thought you all might appreciate this.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a341/Mr_Hat/New%20Pics/KirkLine.jpg
never been truer words
Thanks for making this video Joe. As ever representing the gaming community overlooked by publishers in it to make a quick profit without giving a damn about art, story or satisfaction.
I really fear for bioware and I’m not ashamed to say that especially the introduction did get me really emotional.
Thanks Joe.
Nailed it Joe..
BioWare please listen to your fans. You always say how you take fans critisism seriously.. and NOW is the time for you to prove that, don’t let this one ending ruin what could have been a great conclusion to an amazing franchise. It leaves a bitter taste, and leaves the player feeling betrayed and empty. BioWare please just do SOMETHING, anything is better than this ending as long as there is closure.
I think the most striking thing about this review is how you don’t even sound angry, but just rather depressed about the whole affair. I can’t say I blame you either. It’s just a shame to see such an injustice done to such a legendary series.
13:50 was so true
Thank you so much Joe! This was incredible summery of everything that had been pissing me off since I finished the game.
Especially Number 8, 9 and 10 – such complete and utter bull. I too wanted… I looked all over the platform for any option to punch that stupid God Child. Anyway out. Something that would be in character for Shep who had rejected Sovereign, the Reapers and Collectors. My Shep would never fold like this – especially after uniting the Geth and Quarians, EDI and Joker.
The Number 10 – The complete 180, pulling a Diversity is bad, we must remove diversity to bring peace. Either by destruction or removing the diversity through blending. GAH.
Dragon age Origins. A game -Bioware- made, had a ton of much, much better and varied endings.
The appearance of the kid in the dreams worked fine, as a method of showing Shep dealing with his/her survivors guilt over the loss of so many. Why did it turn into creepy god child in the last five minutes??
Chris Posted on Why, in this long and vibrant diicssuson, has nobody mentioned Alias? It is THE perfect shot at creating a female superhero movie that has ZERO baggage attached to it.Wonder Woman will always have to contend with too-many-cook syndrome, as it’s one of the big three DC properties.The Marvel characters, as was pointed out, have to contend with their male name-sakes.But Alias has everything you could ask to take a no-risk shot at making an amazing movie. The character is new enough that everyone has to be introduced to her to some degree, mainstream and in-the-know-nerds, yet she’s squarely built into the Marvel universe now.She has the best of all hero journey stories she doesn’t want to be a hero, tries her best to do right without her powers, and then in the thick of things steps up to the plate.And to a certain degree, you’re not selling people on the idea of a superhero movie, but a thriller where the hero just happens to be able to, later in the movie, fly and toss cars around.And, cameo, Power Man.Also, Thor = awesome. It has to be remembered Thor was the great equalizer. For some (women readers apparently) the realistic human storylines were enough, but for some (male readers apparently) there was always one small problem with the Marvel Universe it didn’t have Superman. But damn if it didn’t have Thor (first person to say Sentry gets disowned.)
Your video sums up pretty much all of my problems with the ending perfectly, although there is one thing I feel compelled to say.
The ending is a literal Deus Ex Machina. From wikipedia: A deus ex machina Latin: “god out of the machine”; plural: dei ex machina) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.
In this case we have a literal god from a machine.
I also don’t care for the blatantly manipulative character of the little kid, and while some people claim said kid himself is a hallucination, I believe, based on human nature and statements from the developers, that the indoctrination theory is not true.
I believe it was all bad writing, probably influenced by EA for marketing purposes.
I’d also like to point out that this isn’t the first RPG franchise that was published by EA that managed to take a piss all over it’s fanbase *cough Ultima 8 cough*.
U8 wasn’t *this* bad. It basically ignored the franchise (and then mostly went back to it in U9, which had its own flaws). It didn’t drop trou and dump all over the players.
Conflicted over everything. I liked the ending, but I would take another ‘better’ ending as well. For every thing I see that is good coming from the movement for a new ending, there’s countless actions as well that make me want to pretend I’m not a gamer.
One thing that I found very odd with the last portion of the game was the complete lack of a final boss battle. I was seriously looking forward to get to take out Harbinger in a more personal way.
After spending almost the entire second game being antagonized by him via the Collectors, I really wanted to get to settle the score with him in ME3. Alas yet another disappointment.
yeah had the same problem
oh yeah wanted to slap that control right out of his claws and laugh over his flaming metel werkage
I guess we all just have to hope that the indoctrination theory is true and pray that Bioware release it as free dlc.
Free? I am sitting here, with cash in my hands, crying and begging them to take it, just so I’d get a happier ending. I’ve been indoctrinated and I don’t care; I know this is the desperation they are counting on, so here it is!
We already paid for a good ending and we didn’t get it.
I AMEN and MOTTO everything you said and would like to add some more reasons:
- the destruction of Geth. I cared about the Geth, I united them with Quarians, I cried when Legion died. I supported their right to live as real people – machines or not. They get screwed and so does EDI in the non-Green ending
- Technology is bad? I’m suppose to believe that this place will be a wonderful eden? Ever lived in a country? I have, it was tough. There’s no “paradise” waiting for them there but terrible, harsh labour. How long do you think Joker will survive there? What about the non-human crew members, will they be able to eat everything the humans can?
- Kaiden was my love interest, I took him for the final push, I assumed he died (yes, tears again, and I mean AGAIN) and then he’s on Normandy. So Joker picked him up AFTER the beam and he’s unharmed? Why didn’t he follow me?!?!?! He promised to be with me till the end and then he goes “LOLBYE” on my ass?!?!
- Hey, Wrex, sorry that you’ll never see your kid.
I totally believe the ending was Shep’s hallucination. The end.
Summed up VERY well. This explains pretty much everything.
Joe, you’ve just said everything I’ve been saying for a bit over a week now. No matter what you do, the galaxy is completely screwed.
Excellent video. I’ve been taking part in discussions on the BioWare forums since finishing the game myself and this neatly summarizes all of the fans’ main points of contention.
A few seconds before Harbinger tries to blast you to hell, your two squadmates disappear, nowhere to be seen. A couple of days ago, it’s revealed that they were blasted by Harbinger IN A DELETED SCENE. It’s baffling on why Bioware is self-destructive on their own franchise…
Where’s the option where I tell the god child to take his reapers and get the fuck out of our galaxy? The galaxy was fine until you showed up. Destroying all the mass relays is actually a terrible ending and it would have been better if the reapers won.
if every reapers a nation then they could of harvested all of us into one massive reaper that all agreed the ending sucked
Maybe the real ending is there in the game and on one day it just unlocks and we find that shepard’s body just lied in London the whole time. Anyone extracted the files, and all that?
Unfortunately yes a lot of ppl have.. No more endings. The best “find” so far is pieces of cut dialog, an extended version of Shep’s last conversation with Anderson (GREAT btw, very touching, i think it was a horrible decision to cut it..) and some one-liners by Joker that suggest he got to London to save the day during the final push that fit in with the earlier version of the script that got leaked. I don’t think there’s anything more since fans datamined the sh*t out of the game since day one.
Thanks for this video Joe! All of these reasons are pretty solid for hating the ending to ME3, personally I wanted a happy ending, I feel that if you bust your butt and get a high enough EMS rating then yeah, you should be able to come out alive in the ending.
I agree with you, Joe, in all cases. We demand a better ending! We are supposed to get a better ending! WE WILL FIGHT FOR IT!
Great video Joe and I do agree the ending could have been much better but I didn’t hate it at all. I thought there was a decent amount of closure between all of your teammates and it still managed to make me sad toward the end. If they just made it so that the kid never existed and make it so that Shepard had to sacrifice Him/Her self to fire the Crucible then that would’ve been good to me.
Exactly, Angry Joe!
Where is our Babylon 5 style “Get the Hell out of our Galaxy!” ending?
THIS – If they were going to pull a cycle of the galaxy stunt, why is there no option to reject it??
You left out the indoctrination theory, which has to be and is the only explination. Bioware aren’t stupid, they couldn’t have messed it up like that, they were playing the indoctrination card. Shepard died when trying to reach the beam, everything after that is a hallutination, he’s dead already but the reapers are toying with his mind. In the Anderson and TIM scene, they both represent something. Defeating TIM leads Shepard to belive that he has overcome the indoctrination but in fact the reapers had that all planned. Bare in mind, everything that happens on the citadel did not actually happen, no one reached it. The little boy is only an image the reapers use to talk to Shepard without the latter becoming aggressive. He represents the ones Shepard could not save. The endings you choose never really happen, they are only there so the Reapers could learn what Shepard really would have chosen. I don’t know wtf is up with the normandy ending but everything else has a mindblowing explanation
if that’s the finial explanation that’s great and a cool idea. but my problem with it stems from the fact that is how the game ends.i do not the think that the true ending should have been pushed to dlc if it had gone through it all and then said but wait theirs more that would have been great
I agree, like I said the Normandy ending was just stupid and completely unrealistic. But the indoctrination ending… I just find it so facinating, so deep. You think you’re on top of everything but in reality you never had a chance, Shepard’s dead and the reapers will probably just continue the destructing and carry out what they set to do.
One of the biggest points about the indoctrination theory is that Bioware isn’t just trying to show Shepard’s indoctrination, but is also trying to convey what it is like to be indoctrinated to the player. Think about it for a second, if they released the full ending with the indoctrination theme, it would have nowhere near the impact on your impressions of the end then if they gave you this ending and gave the community time to absorb and analyze everything that is happening in the final moments before the scene is over. I’m of the personal opinion that Bioware did this to provide the player the ultimate meta-game experience at rather large risk to themselves.
i totally agree with your opinion. now they only have to release the FREE DLC ending and explain to everyone what happened on the off chance they haven’t read the articles from fans, then Mass Effect 3, as well as the 3 games as a whole, will take their rightful place as the best sci-fi video game series of all time!!!
I agree with the indoctrination idea but if that is the case then I am still hoping the actual ending will be DLC and free (yer right) otherwise it feels like they cut the last chapter out of the story and expect us to pay extra for it, which may start a dangerous precedent. Maybe they did it just to keep people talking about ME3 but that’s a very strange thing to do to an already loyal fan base
You say everything i have on my mind, before i finished the game i was already planing few other playtrougths whit some things that i wish to do diferently, but when i reach the ending, all that will of replaying the game was complety gone, and was replaced whit pure deception.
Good video, makes clear the major points and problems a lot of people had with the ending.
I can’t even bring myself to replay it. I had a whole god damn trilogy run planned, I was gonna take a week off and run all three games.
But now I don’t care.
Because nothing god damn mattered in the end.
And I swear, if one more person tells me ‘it’s the journey and not the destination’, I’m gonna flip. The journey don’t mean much when it ends in a car crash.
I personally felt that you should have yelled a lot more, I know I have. It’s a good video, but you are mostly saying exactly the same things as other youtube videos and articles are saying, which doesn’t really add any new perspective or even more details here. And there is no yelling. I miss that.
Since Joe tweeted this video to BioWare directly, it’s for the better that he didn’t yell. No need to come off as a petulant child, as PetrosofSparta put it. BioWare is more likely to listen to somebody rational than somebody throwing a hissy fit.
Didn’t read/hear that he was sending it to BioWare, in which case I totally get it. But otherwise, for someone called Angry Joe to be even calmer than usual about what is arguably the biggest “WTF?!” in the history of fiction, is rather disappointing. The reason I like his show is to watch him throw tantrums, just like I watch Zero Punctuation for his delicious sarcasm.
If if his intention was to show it to BioWare though, like you said, it’s completely understandable.
Summed up perfectly in ten points that all make perfect sense without sounding like a petulant child, which unfortunately a lot of people complaining about the endings tend to be.
I especially liked the part about the Happy Ending; a lot of our detractors are making fun of that by saying “Oh did you want Shepard to get ice cream too?” or something like that. Frankly… yes, what’s wrong with an ending where Shepard actually gets to be happy. It doesn’t have to be the only one.
I’ve discussed this ending at length with multiple people, including Shaun K from BT for about 2 hours. What it sums up to me is that no matter what you look at, this ending even if you eliminate the complaints about lack of choice, the God Child, the lack of closure, lack of consequences and general failure to understand their own series. Even if you eliminate that, there’s still a ton of plot holes that can only be explained by massive, massive leaps in logic, by scrambling for scraps to put it together.
Fortunately BioWare has already set up on their social forum, a discussion thread to get feedback on this ending. So clearly they are taking notice.
Thank you Joe for this video, I hope if BioWare is at E3 2012, you can bring your attention to them. I mean looking at the “Money Supported/Saved” counter your fans have raised at least $100,000 for this game. That’s gotta count for something.
Good one, bro. Such an epic games requires an epic ending – not some Deus Ex ripoff, aren’t I right?
game*
Very good video. Sincerely I hope that with everyone voicing their disappointment of “these endings”, Bioware will be forced to do something, sequel it, dlc it, patch it w/e. Something must be done. There are so many hearty fans coming up with wild ideas for how it might end, or some great scheme/plot that bioware made to gently mind**** later on. However leaving it like this will be so… so… disappointing… There really is just that.
Great Video Joe ! Mass Effect 3 ending is one of the biggest disappointment in my gaming life. There is absolutely no reason to play the trilogy again. Even if Bioware release free dlc with proper ending it does not matter for me. I will probably never trust Bioware again and I will stop supporting their games.
I’m going to be honest: I didn’t like the ending(s) available, but all of this “we hate them!” hubbub is really turning me off from the cause…
I get the feeling that this isn’t the true end of the game and that’s the worse part because it would have been a great fake out but to put it in dlc that i will have to wait for and buy that’s just not right
The synthesis ending is not the “supposed” perfect ending; that’s destroy. I’m not defending the endings (I’ve never been so depressed after finishing something in my life), but this is just a fact-check.
Well.. I “hate” the synthesis ending more than the others but i can see how it could be considered the “perfect” one. It’s the one with the least death involved. Geth and AIs get a free pass and a lot of organics who would die because of starvation, disease etc after the destruction of the mass relays will probably survive after the… merging.
BioWare also seem to promote it as the best ending, since they insist we can get “the best endings” without playing MP despite not being able to hit 4k+ EMS to get the “sheppard lives” teaser.
So much shenanigans within these “endings”. I just wanted some closure on what I did within the past games, etc. but alas, it just won’t happen any time soon.
Glory to you. May your name live forever.
I hope someone at Bioware sees this. You have pretty much summed up how the vast majority of the fans feel, in an eloquent and humorous matter. Thank you.
The idea is the protagonist is corned, absolutely no easy way out. Hard choices have to be made. ME3 attempted this, but failed in one critical criterion: was it really a legitmate dilemma, a no-win situation?
Luke Skywalker’s encounter with Jabba’s rancor is not such a situation. Fans will ask: Luke has the force, can he fight it? You can’t paint the situation as “Luke has to choose, surrender or death” without trying to establish why Luke can’t win in combat.
In Shepard’s case, spacekid talked for 20 seconds, and then just stood there. I found this “tough choice” situation very sloppy. For instance, Shepard could ask “why should I trust you?” Shepard could argue “Your assumption is wrong, we can have peace, look at the Geth and Quarian” Shepard should have at least tried to ask “is there no other way?” or “I want to warn my man to clear out first to not suffer as much casulty” etc. Without all these things (very in character of Shepard, since he just talked TIM into killing himself, and Paragon/renegade mainly gave him the ability to talk more), how are we to full-heartedly feel the pain and conflict Shepard is “supposed” to feel, and the weight of his decision?
the last example off the top of my head is the new “sherlock” series (*spoilers ahead)
Moriaty planned a devilish plot to force Sherlock into committing suicide. Had Sherlock not struggled (trying desperately to find othe solutions, threatening Moriaty, etc , all ending with Moriaty tellng him “nice try, but no, haha”), his quagmire and ultimate suicide would not have felt heavy at all.
I would argue such a poor decision has nothing to do with “art”, but “logic”
Yes, Finally!
Last 10 min of play.
)))) 
)))) 
)))) >:)))) AHAHAHAH DIEEEEE Oo ….. DAFAQ 
This game up until the ending was phenomenal in my regards but once I entered the ending sequences i just felt betrayed
“BETRAYAL. BE-TRAYAL. BETRAYED ME. THIS GAME SU-HUUUCKS.” – Spoony
We need a quick cut to the classic Spoony “BETRAYAL!” yell here.