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”
Really did hate this ending to the point I immediately wanted to get rid of the game. The game was so awesome up until these last 10 mins, and I really don’t feel like holding out for DLC this time around. Mass Effect I had problems with, but still was glad to beat it when I played ME2, which was incredible. The MP was a little better than expected, but that definitely ain’t going to stick with me, all I asked for this game was to end decently, if it did, I probably could not have asked for a better game, as it is, I’m just disappointed in the end.
Joe hits my reason for reacting with a ‘wtf was this shit?’ to the ending when I finally beat the game. I just spent 30+ hours watching some very intense gratifying storytelling up to that point. From Mordin’s sacrifice, to Thane’s final bad-ass sequence and touching final words with his son, the game is full of well done moments that really invested me into the game. The biggest one for me personally though was Legion’s death. “The answer to your question is yes’ As it turns out Machines do have souls after all. That was a massively satisfying, sad and bad ass moment.
BUT WAIT! As it turns out, Legion died for nothing, all the work Shepard did was wrong! Utterly and completely wrong. In fact you were just wasting your time saving the Geth, helping EDI learn to live and fighting for the rights of all life to exist. Why no, the only correct options are either to commit mass genocide/murder by destroying all the Geth/killing EDI, or forcing evolution on every living thing in the universe. Or it turns out the illusive man was right all along and you should just become a god!
Or, the ending was shit, and didn’t fit the themes of the rest of the game in any way, along with all the other problems Joe lists. I’m not bothered by all of them, but for getting so invested in the story, the last 10 minutes ruined it. I’ve no desire to ever play this series again if its going to end like that. Thanks for producing the video Joe, keep up the great work!
I like how people are taking all this time to argue the ending of a videogame, when they could be using this time for somthing more important.
those who cant see how the ending is open are delusioned spoiled children who want it their way and have never picked up a decent science fiction book in their life.
open to what? plot holes and massive deus ex machina?
And you’re spending your time trolling people with genuine concerns with an ending to a story they’ve invested their time and effort, a story they’ve become invested in.
Congratulations you trolled me, you win now go away.
its an arguement spouted by delusional people, who want it their way, and have never read a actual good science fiction novel in their life. it was vague because it was left open to interpretation, but we live in a fast paced society that dosent like to think for itself and instead wants everything explained to them like they are children, and ultimatly their arguements are invalid because they are acting like children
can you truely name 1 plot hole? I cant. everything I did in the previous games led to their ultimate conclusions and I was satisfied with every one. and can you name any science fiction story without a deus ex machina?
Watch the video: Several are directly named.
It isn’t “society’s” fault that Bioware promised us a completely different bill of goods than they provided. Are you honestly trying to say that we should never raise a comment over being directly lied to by companies?
Hell, I loved the movie The Grey, it had a vague ending that was open to interpretation. That’s not Mass Effect 3, which is just a shitty railroaded plot that was outdone by the endings for both 1 and 2.
Let’s See: The Rowan by Anne McCaffrey, well all of them actually. The Recluce Saga by L.E. Modesitt, Star Wars episode 4-6 (Luke has to trust in himself in 4, setting aside the machines and such. The bitter ending to 5 as Luke loses a hand, Han gets frozen in carbonite, and the group as a whole is left broken, and in six, the Death Star is destroyed by Lando and the rebels, Luke finally redeems his father), should I keep going, or do you want to retract that run of yours?
Here’s one though: *YOU* are taking all this time to argue the ending of a video game, so way to lampoon your own point. To quote Ep 4 “Who is the bigger fool? The fool, or the fool who follows one?”
So by your logic, Star Trek The motion Picture was better than Star trek 2 because it was open to interpretation and had ideas unlike Star Trek 2, which had a decent ending.
My crew members teleportation.
There’s one of many plot holes, your troll fu is strong.
what a tool this magruber
It’s Bioware’s product, they broke they’re back on making the game and they can do whatever they want with the ending because they wrote the series. The fandoms don’t hold copyright over the game it is the bloody developer.
Another thing I’d like to add to the list of things to hate about the ending is the God-child’s half-assed explanation on how advanced species are ‘preserved’ in reaper form like some sort of archive. The three reapers you’ve had a chance to speak to throughout the series (Sovereign, Harbinger and Reaper Destroyer #2312353 or whatever on Rannoch) display no differences whatsoever that could be attributed to unique origins. All have interchangeable personalities and the only differences are voice actors and filters used to mask them. So unless all the species of the previous cycles were smug, portentous drama queens, there’s very little we get to see that has been in any way been ‘preserved’ of them.
It’s kind of like saying how eating a strawberry and then defecating it has preserved it in poop form. It is totally indistinguishable via sensory input from the poop that used to be the slice of bread you ate before the strawberry.
Well put, something that was really bothering me about the reapers as well.
I almost wished there was a way to laugh in the kids face, preserved? not in any recognizable way kiddo.
!!!Angry Joe!!! Whatch this: /watch?v=PZ7bsIpEKIg
It explains a theory how this really is. That nothing is real about the mass relays getting destroyed etc. Really WATCH IT pls.
Thank You
Holy crap . . . here I was bad mouthing bioware . . .Dear god it all makes sense. DEAR GOD BIOWARE YOU GOD DAMN BRILLIANT ASSES. I lost hope but hope was only hidden beneath the rage.
I liked the ending no matter what folks are saying. In my opinion the ending is supposed to signify the start of the galaxy/s without the reaper influence (hence the destruction of the mass relays.) Obviously fleets will be stranded near earth/Sol System but thats just the way it is, they were in the middle of fighting so how are they all going to get a heads up to head to a relay before everything goes to hell in a hand basket. Joker is aboard the fastest ship in pretty much all the fleets present and its not like the Citadel didn’t give off a bit of a glow as it powered up to give him a small head start. Most of the other ships probably wouldn’t have made it to a relay before it was destroyed but maybe the Normandy barely made it and thats when you see the whole escape scene. With a non space worthy craft and no means of communication the survivors have to start a new life on what looks like a garden world. As for why certain folks hop out of said ship on said planet I still cannot explain. So for me it all makes sense, thats just what I gleaned from all this.
“As for why certain folks hop out of said ship on said planet I still cannot explain.”
Yeh the ending does make sense and is nice if you refuse to think about it at all.
“Joker is aboard the fastest ship in pretty much all the fleets present and its not like the Citadel didn’t give off a bit of a glow as it powered up to give him a small head start.”
Seconds maybe assuming he left instantly the moment the citadel changed color not only is he an amazing coward (he’s not but let’s assume he is for you.)
people can like the ending but trying to defend it with any sort of logic falls flat…hard.
JOE – this video earned back the 10% respect I lost for your MASS EFFECT REVIEWS.
I just felt you coddled BIOWARE in the face of overwhelming EVIDENCE and posts for WHATEVER reason.
I look forward to your ME 4 review or the $25 dollar DLC: REAL ENDING MASS EFFECT 3.
-AngryJ
it’s ok joe we will get a full ending with everything we want for about $15 in a dlc NO I WANT MY ENDING ON MY GAME BIOWARE
i would pay for it….
Then you are stupid… This is exactly what they want, you are just giving them more reason to do it again and again
Then you are stupid for calling him stupid. I am having a hard time believing that anybody who was this dissatisfied with the ending will stop purchasing any Bioware products because of the plotholes and stuff.
If that were possible then Resident Evil should have not have turned into a mega franchise after 3.
I’d pay too, I don’t think Bioware meant this intentionally. They are a good enough company to allow some room for error. It’s ok to admit you might have missed the mark, we’re all human. It’s only fair to meet them half way, and paid DLC is a compromise I’d make.
rofl brainwashed sheep you are….
I feel sad for you, they steal your money and then you want to give them even more rofl XD
Cant blame the companies when people are THIS dumb
I didnt say ‘companies’ I said Bioware. If they establish a trend of doing this shit no one will buy their games (at release?). They’re getting there, but I still think they have some integrity.
Bioware is being controlled by the biggest money grabbing corporation. If it was just Bioware, and they pulled this shit, I would be furious. As it stands, I know that Bioware didn’t green light this shit, it was EA all the way.
It’s one thing to be brain washed and follow like sheep, it’s another to throw something completely under the bus because someone else forced them to pull a shitty move.
oh yeah like bioware didnt have the power to say no? You are so blindly loyal its scary, germans in wo2 era werent even this blindly loyal to hiter
Thank you Joe. You get why so many are mad, this isn’t just nerd rage. Up until the godchild I was thinking “this is so bad-ass. how could all those fanboys think this was bad?! no way they could mess it up now.”
*You hit every point that made me so disappointed/mad(especially the Deus Ex ripoff) save a few:
-Why couldn’t I even ASK about the choices and why they were my only ones?
-Why can’t I simply ask the AI, ghost, god…thing to deactivate the reapers or call them off?
- Why does every choice involve the relays exploding? it makes sense for the ‘renegade’ option which destroys all tech in existence but for the other two it seems to be there just because they couldn’t be bothered to make different cut-scenes.
p.s. I loved this series, for five years i’ve played and replayed these games, watching the cause and effect of all my actions play out. Up until the ending i was actually planning on a marathon play through of all three to see how making the choices i never made play out, now i’m not sure if i want to pick them up again, at least not for a long time.
I made my own video on Youtube about the Mass Effect 3 ending. The worst part for me was the fact that Bioware actually can make a good, satisfying ending to their games. Dragon Age: Origins and KOTOR are my primary examples.
I’ll be honest i feel that the fans are overreacting. this ending has a lot of issues, but seriously? these ten reasons are not air-tight. i personally liked both the “god-child” (classic sci-fi trope) and buzz Aldrin’s performance.
Not air-tight? they all make sense and are straight forward opinions. The last 10 minutes of the game completely invalidate the last 89 hours of game play, that’s air-tight. You can like the ending all you want but please don’t pretend that complaints against it make no sense.
My sheperd has fought through absolutly insane odds just to have some deus ex kid pop out of no where and tell me “These are your only options I’m the catalyst and I say so” No sorry I don’t buy it.
I agree with Darkcerb. 40K on facebook and counting! Hold the Line!
Compared to the over 800,000 people who purchased the game and are alright with the ending?
All I can say is I really hope the indoctrination theory is correct. I don’t care if it’s $20 DLC. I will buy it just to see how this game REALLY concludes.
are you stupid? This is exactly what they want, you are just giving them more reason to do it again and again
I think your missing the point…the reason why people wouldn’t mind buying a 20 dollar dlc that is the actual ending of the game, is not because we are sheep, and that we agree with what EA is doing, no! We (myself included) wouldn’t mind doing that because we love this series so much, that to just be left with this shitty, inconclusive, contradictary ending, and just except that, would be an injustice to this great series. So call us sheep all you want. If they do make and actual ending dlc, I won’t be doing it for EA, or Bioware, I’ll do it for MASS EFFECT, and it alone…and if they do screw us over with it, there will be blood.
the should give it for free retard…
You already payed full price for a 80% finished game, the other 20% should come for free
Ok, I’ll confess: I am the one percent.
I mean I’m among the one-or-so percent of players who really enjoyed the end a lot and I am in fact in complete disagreement with virtualy all of Joe’s points.
So here’s my take down:
Number One is not a plot hole:
There’s one good reason Joker would leave the battlefield: if someone above him in the hierarchy ordered him to leave.
We see Shepard still talking with Hackett while inside the citadel: chances are that the whole fleet heard the last conversation between Shepard and the Catalyst and decided to leave the Solar System as fast as they could as soon as they heard “whatever you do, the Mass Relay will be destroyed”. In fact, I could easily imagine Hackett himself giving the fleets the order to disperse: The entity wich created the Reapers just capitulated, so it makes sense to try to avoid having tens of millions of millitary personnel starving above a ruined Earth.
Number Two is not a plot hole either
Cortez evacuated Shepard’s Squad after s/he was hit by Harbinger beam.
Now, I, for one, would have loved to watch a scene showing Cortez pulling all the stunts he knew to slalom between Reapers and reach the Normandy while Shepard was limping in the citadel, but the idea that Shep’s squadmate managed to find a way to escape at the very last minute is not totally inconceivable.
Number Three: still not a plot hole
Ok: a little math: the Milky Way’s Volume = 2,5 sextillion times the Soldar System’s volume: Arrival shows a Mass Relay blowing up and destroying one star system; Mass Effect 3 shows a few dozens of Mass Relays emitting a radiation which fills the much much much more voluminous galaxy.
Number Four: Nope: not a plot hole
Even if you do not accept my hypothesis for Number one, Starships in the Mass Effect universe are stated to be able to go faster than 4.000 times the speed of light. So even if the fleet does not leave the Soldar System before the destruction of the Mass Relay, there still is the possibility for them to go to the nearest stars: the Quarians have been able to survive three centuries in jury-rigged starships: organizing a “stranded” fleet might be logistical hell at the beginning (hence why I find it not unbelievable at all that Hackett may have given to every ship which would the order to leave the Solar System), but not necessarily a death sentence to everyone on board.
Also, there is little risk of starvation for the Quarian as we clearly see their “liveships” following the rest of the fleet. At worst, Turians will have to borrow some blueprints from the Quarian to turn their dreadnaughts into farming ships.
Number Five… Ok, that complaint is legit
Number Six
Giving Buzz Aldrin the last word in the story was Awesome, end of story.
I’m not disagreeing about the fact that the ending is probably too short and could have been slightly more detailed, but in the end, finishing with a distant vague but optimistic finale was the best way to finish the story.
Also: will Wrex tells story to his Children about Shepard? If you look at the Map, the Krogan DMZ is actually close to Earth, so he has a good chance to come back home relatively fast. Most other species will have to plan years long travel to go back home, but no one should be too screwed, except for the Quarians who live at the edge of the Galaxy (but what’s a few decades more when you’ve waited for three centuries)
Number Seven
Why not making a happy ending? Because the last episode is buit around fatalism: the Reapers are too strong: conventional warfare won’t work against them, and the crucible is a last ditch attempt at doing something -anthing- against them. Turning the Crucible into a magic happy-ending delivery system: THIS would have been a betrayal of the plot. Revealing that the Crucible -which the allied races are rebuilding without understanding exactly what it does- and the Catalist -about which the allied races know nothing except “very-important-to-make-McGuffin-work” are not what most player would expect them to be was clever writting. Showing that the McGuffin, instead of bringing the triumphant victory expected by most players, brings only bittersweet cornelian dilemmas is not only coherant with the tone of the game but an exemple of an ending where the author does not pander to his audience.
Number Eight: the Catalyst’s logic is not circular, just alien
Try to put yourself in the place of a Lion: Panthera Leo: one of the apex predators of the planet. Not so long ago, the Indian subcontinent was your backyard, until this race of bipedal primates came in, virtually exterminated you before deciding that you and your kin were to live “prootected” inside 350.000 acres where your population is going to be closely monitored. If you try to leave and colonize other areas, you’ll get killed; if your numbers raise too fast, your children will get killed, and if you try to challenge the creatures who came up with this stupid idea, you’ll get killed, yet the bidepal primates are certains that they are doing you a favor, and they are so much more powerful that you that you can’t do anything about it.
Well, the Reapers/Organics relationship is similar: The Reapers and the Catalysts consider that turning sentients beings into gray goo in order to keep their DNA protected is an acceptable way to “preserve” them. And for millions of years, they have had such a gigantic advantage against organics that until Mass Effect anyone disagreeing with their logic simply had not the firepower to give them pause and rethink their postulate.
Number Nine: Shepard is half dead and on the verge of loosing consciousness for good: what did you expect? That s/he would turn into Nietzsche and forsake the de facto God of the Milky Way through a well reasonned philosophical argument? At this point Shepard has lost too much blood, to much strenght to keep on fighting: he can either stay there and let the Reapers destroy the allied fleets or take his/her chances with one of the solutions.
Number ten: If I may spoil Dragon Age: Blight happens, Archedemon gets killed, Hawke fly to Kirkwall, Anders freakout, Mage-Templar War starts. Or Fallout: Super-Mutants Vat gets destroyed, Master of the Super Mutants dies, Enclave suffers more and more crippling defeats, New California Republic becomes the dominant power in the Western Wastelands, Purity Project succeeds. Or Suikoden: Queen of Falena is murdered by her own bodygyard, civil war ensure, victorious faction turns the country into a parliamentary democracy. Or why not looking at indy games with Exile/Avernum: Emperor Hawthorne is murdered, Empire invade Avernum, Gray-like Vahnatais join the Fray then try to genocide the surface dwellers, etc, etc, etc, etc… Many games with “multiple endings” especially games which are part of a series, tend to end up with very similar conclusions regardless of the player’s choice: it’s merely a consequence of the limitations of the medium.
Cortez was shot down as was the second shuttle from the normandy, and you’re telling me the crew up and left instantly and even if they did that they made it through the now overwhelming reaper forces? and even if they did that joker then instantly left?
No, my crew wouldn’t instantly bail not when the last hope for the galaxy was just dalec death rayed.
Friend, for any of your ideas to stand, you have to make a lot of speculations that are based on zero evidence from the game. Maybe Joker received an order or…maybe he just chickened out. Any of these theories is just as valid when the game itself gives you nothing to go on.
Why would anyone order Joker, of all people, to flee the battlefield, when this was an “all or nothing” war and when no one other than Shepard knew what the Crucible can do. Also, why would Joker flee from Earth? Where else in the galaxy could Joker go, when the reapers have invaded the entire galaxy? Throughout the game, they are constantly attacking random planets and star system.
There’s no reason to believe that Hackett, or anyone else, heard Shepard talking to the Catalyst. Nothing in the game suggests that and you have to make enormous leaps of faith and grasp at straws to make that scene have even the slightest semblance of sense.
blind fanboy reported
For #10, the main story in Fallout may end similarly but there are big differences in how major subplots play out.
In Fallout 1 for example, the BoS could either become good guys who slowly reintroduce pre-war tech to to the wasteland or they could become a fascist dictatorship known as the Steel Plague. Shady Sands could actually be destroyed, meaning no NCR. The Hub could either flourish or be destroyed by Super Mutants.
In Fallout 2, there are 3 or 4 endings for each town/faction. NCR either flourishes, have its expansion slowed, get mired in corruption, or become a military dictatorship. New Reno has like 10 different endings.
Then there are games like Fallout: New Vegas and Witcher 2, which have very different endings based on your decisions.
In response to #3 the Charon Relay was discovered/activated on Pluto meaning it’s WITHIN the sol system.
# 4/6 ships can only travel that fast using the mass relays “Mass relays function by creating a virtually mass-free “corridor” of space-time between each other. This can propel a starship across enormous distances that would take CENTURIES to traverse, even at FTL speeds.”
# 8/9 WAT. Destroy organics with synthetics to prevent organics from destroying themselves with synthetics….Shepard has lost alot of blood? seriosly? Dude had JUST come back from DEATH in #2 and he was still able to keep his head and ask questions.
If you’re just going to throw glaring assumptions around knock yourself out. Anyone can finish the story any way they want, in their own head. I don’t play the game for hundreds of hours, and have expectations about how it will play out storywise (promoted by Bioware I might add) to have to imagine what happened. Or plug the holes, thats why I pay for a game with a story.
I have many examples of great Bioware stories, with great endings/epilogues. They could have basically removed the whole last 10 minutes and posted up their Shepard beat the Reapers yay! Buy our DLC, textbox (hah that was great). Then at least we’d both be able to imagine our own endings with out at least one of us feeling like we just got shafted.
Cortez was shot down as was the second shuttle from the normandy
He could have taken another shuttle. If you allow him to get past his depression, he’s alive and well before the No Man’s Land assault, so even if he can’t fix his shuttle, there is no way some brass would have refused to give a shuttle to the guy making the liaison betwwen the ground and the Normandy.
***
No, my crew wouldn’t instantly bail not when the last hope for the galaxy was just dalec death rayed.
Here’s a timeframe of what most probably happened
• Shepard gets hit by Harbinger along with most of the assault forces
• Orders to retreat from the vincinity of the beam are clearly heard when Shepard is waking up from the shock: either Cortez or another pilot rescue Shep’s squad but can find Shep.
• Hackett hear Shepard and Anderson talking within the Citadel, Shep’s team goes back to the Normandy, read to jump back into the fray if necessary
• Hackett, still connected with Shepard, hear about the Catalyst and the imminent destruction of the Mass Relays; give the order to every ship fast enough to go toward Charon and reach less damaged Star Systems
• The Normandy is one of the fastest ships of the fleet, but because Joker hesitates/refuses at first to leave, he reaches the Mass Relay to late and get caught by the primary-colors radiation.
See: there’s no need for a bail out or a sudden case of cowardice on Joker’s part to make the ending events coherents.
***
Friend, for any of your ideas to stand, you have to make a lot of speculations that are based on zero evidence from the game
Zero evidence from the game? Are you kidding me? Was I the only one who actually paid attention to what was happening? There is a lot of evidences pleading in my favor:
Complaint One: The game belong to the genre millitary scy-fi: higher-ups giving desperate last-minute orders are a staple of the genre
More importantly, the games also inform you that starships are in fact fast enough to do the Earth-Charon trip in mere seconds, and during the fleet arrival, they even show it with an enormous fleet easily crossing the distance between the Mass relay and Earth in one puny minute while staying orderly. Since a sudden dispersal of the fleet is established as possible by the game lore, it makes much more sense than imagining all the combined fleets staying above Earth waiting for the Mass relay network to go the way of the dodo.
Complaint Two: We clearly hear an order to evacuate the zone: that Shepard Squadmates would return to their ship after the apparent failure of the ground assault is the outcome which makes the most sense: they’re not going to stay alone in the wasteland, they’re not part of Anderson’s earthbound apparatus: where else would they go?
Complaint Three: If ou don’t believe me, look it up: but the Milky way beeing waaaaaay bigger than a single star system is pretty much an obvious fact: and a f***ing plot point as the concilian races are stated to have explored only a fraction of the Galaxy, and its very volume being the reason why species are so easily seduced by the Mass Relay network in the forst place.
Complaint Four: The speed of Starships is given during a conversation with Ashley, players spend three games traveling from star to star within any given star cluster without using Mass Relays, and rewatch the arrival of the fleet: the Quarian farming ships are clearly visible.
Complaint Six: once again: look at the game’s map and observe the distance between the Krogan DMZ and the Local Cluster.
Complaint Eight: The “Harvesting” process is both detailed and shown through the three games, and the Reapers repeatedly repeat that their “harvest” is “salvation” for organic races.
Complaint Nine: SHepard can barely walk, is bloodied, is about to lose consciousness right after Anderson’s death and can’t even get up when Hackett calls: that’s actually a lot of evidences that s/he just caught a bad case of imminent death.
***
In Fallout 1 for example, the BoS could either become good guys who slowly reintroduce pre-war tech to to the wasteland or they could become a fascist dictatorship known as the Steel Plague. Shady Sands could actually be destroyed, meaning no NCR. The Hub could either flourish or be destroyed by Super Mutants.
And most of the variations are either negated or confirmed by the sequels. There is a powerful NCR in New Vegas, so there is a conon ending for Shady Sands. any “liberty of choice” is pointless, since it does not carry over.
***
the Charon Relay was discovered/activated on Pluto meaning it’s WITHIN the sol system.
Doesn’t matter: the radiation waves created by the crucible fill a much bigger volume than the alpha relay explosion: even if the amount of energy released is identical, the color waves are dispersed throughout a volume billions of billions of times bigger than the Bahak system.
ships can only travel that fast using the mass relays “Mass relays function by creating a virtually mass-free “corridor” of space-time between each other. This can propel a starship across enormous distances that would take CENTURIES to traverse, even at FTL speeds
The Galaxy radius is 50.000 light years which means that to go from one extremity of the Galaxy to the other, in a straight line, with Ships traveling at more than 4.000 times the speed of light, it would still take you 25 years: now factor in the fact that in Mass Effect verse ships using FTL produce a lot of static electricity, have limits of fuel, and cannot cross the galactic core because gravity is too strong here: they would need to stop often to discharge their Eezo cores, stop as often to renew their fuel reserves, and avoid the core which would make the distance to cross much longer; then, factor in the fact that 99% of the galaxy is uncharted, which means that you’d have to send a vanguard of scoots to analyse all the Star Systems you’re passing trough: Mass Relays were so useful to the organic species who used them because thanks to them they did not need to build a complex and dense and costly infrastructure of their own. It takes centuries to traverse the Galaxy without the Mass Relays not because the Ships are slow, but because the infrastructure is lacking: it’s like having an expensive sports car and living in a region devoid of roads: your car still have its 550 horsepowers, their mostly useless.
Destroy organics with synthetics to prevent organics from destroying themselves with synthetics….
The thing is, Reapers do not see their deed as mere “destruction”, and they’re used to never being contradicted by anyone capable of forcing them to listen.
Dude had JUST come back from DEATH in #2 and he was still able to keep his head and ask questions.
Dude had spent two years between brain death and deep coma during which half his organs had been changed: the last minutes of the game show a Shepard physically broken down beyond its cybernetic implants capacity to fix or shrug off.
your still making desperate assumptions. Whereas we know shepherd and his crew can do and often refuse orders, if you think your crew would ditch you that quickly good for you.
It just makes no sense. And Are you seriously going to tell me that in a 10 minute time span my crew got off planet now that they’re completely outmatched and make it to the normandy which would be in combat and then they instantly flee…You’re making such huge leaps here it’s baffling.
If you like the ending fine but your defense of it makes as much sense as the endings themselves.
in ME 1 Shepard and the entire Normandy crew disobeys orders, steals the Normandy, and heads to Ilos. They all mutinied in order to chase Saren down. So yes, Shepard and their entire crew can easily disobey orders in order to do what needs to be done.
Also consider that this is the -final battle-. Everyone knows this. So why the hell would any order to retreat be made? They know it’s now or never, nobody is going to back down and they’re giving it all they got. The presumption that a retreat was ordered is ludicrous.
And most of the variations are either negated or confirmed by the sequels. There is a powerful NCR in New Vegas, so there is a conon ending for Shady Sands. any “liberty of choice” is pointless, since it does not carry over.
Except Black Isle/Bethesda/Obsidian never actually promised to have your choices carry over to the next game.
The player’s choices aren’t pointless since they’re going into the game knowing that it’s a self contained story.
And by your logic, any choice in any RPG will be rendered pointless because the franchises have their own canon and there will always be potential future changes in the franchise.
The choice the Bhaalspawn made at the end of the Baldur’s Gate trilogy was pointless because Wizards of the Coast has their own canon and pretty said that the Bhaalspawn renounced godhood.
What happens to The Nameless One is pointless because Wizards of the Coast decided to end the Blood Wars, nullifying The Nameless One’s sacrifice and punishment.
Everything that happened in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines was pointless because White Wolf changed the lore and rules of World of Darkness.
If EA continues the Mass Effect franchise, they’re not going to let the player choose which ME3 ending new games follow, they’ll pick the one they like.
So really, if you’re going to say that “if your choices don’t carry over and make a permanent impact on the entire franchise then they’re pointless” then you might as well not play these games since none of the choices you make are going to matter in the long run to the canon of these franchises.
Exactly, thank you for making those rebuttals.
in ME 1 Shepard and the entire Normandy crew disobeys orders, steals the Normandy, and heads to Ilos.
And in ME2, the entire Normandy Crew abadon ship and leave Shepard behind after having been ordered to do so: By Shepard him/herself
yes, Shepard and their entire crew can easily disobey orders in order to do what needs to be done.
Stoping Sovereign from kickstarting the Reaper invasion: what needs to be done
Flying impotently around the Citadel while Shepard gets desintegrated: definitely not what needs to be done.
***
your still making desperate assumptions.
I’m not making desperate asumptions: I paid attention to the lore. It’s happening again: people do not pay attention to the game, then suddenly complain about some “plot hole” or some event which would make perfectly sense to them if they had paid attention about the story.
This is FF XII all over again: “The story makes no sense! The villain has no motivation!” -> “Did you actually talk to the NPCs? Did you actually read the tidbits of informations about the game’s lore accessible when you killed enough ennemies?” -> “Wait: what tidbits of information?” (and after that, people still wonder why Squarenix botched the thirteenth episode): One of the biggest plot point of the Mass Effect: the Size of the Galaxy, and the fact that the Mass Relays are used to constrain space-faring civilizations is being completely ignored by an audience who cannot see how a Star System is but a fraction of a Galaxy and gets all flustered because the Reapers’ honey trap is gone. I wonder how long it will take until Bioware decides to stop trying and starts ditching bland JRPGs in western dressing.
***
I don’t play the game for hundreds of hours, and have expectations about how it will play out storywise (promoted by Bioware I might add) to have to imagine what happened. Or plug the holes, thats why I pay for a game with a story.
Aaaaaaaand, that’s when I’m remembered that most gamers are not readers and demand to be spoon-feed their stories.
This is why JRPGs became so bland: the most noisy fraction of JRPG players also demanded to be spoon-fed unchallenging familiar stories, so the developers eventually obliged; and that’s why Western RPGs are most probably going to become blander and blander. I guess I’ll eventually have to wait until African-style RPGs emerge and pick up the torch.
***
And by your logic, any choice in any RPG will be rendered pointless because the franchises have their own canon and there will always be potential future changes in the franchise.
Why, yes: that why I wrote that the lack of real significant player choice is merely a consequence of the limitations of the medium.
So really, if you’re going to say that “if your choices don’t carry over and make a permanent impact on the entire franchise then they’re pointless” then you might as well not play these games since none of the choices you make are going to matter in the long run to the canon of these franchises.
Of course, unlike so many players who went into the Trilogy deluding themselves about the relevance of their shepardian embodiement of power-fantasies, I went into the series knowing that the farther I’d go in the story, the less relevant my previous choices would become: since I never expected more than a few cameos from m previous choices in Mass Effect 3, I was not disapointed by the end result at all.
You sum up the main pointers why i find this ending epic fail literally, also it seems corporate commander has worked his way into EA and Bioware… I’m just so disappointed with the ending, not really mad. It’s like being slapped by a purple dildo in the face.
Just to be 100% sure that this was “it”, i replayed it on Insanity with 6000+ Assets, and it made no difference what so ever lol.
PS.
I’m really don’t think i will be buying anything more from Bioware, since DA2, and now this… I’ve been a loyal fan to them since Baldur’s Gate, and that’s quite some time imo.
/ Sweden
My reasons – quick draft:
nonsensical scenes – grandpa scene, Shepard gasping for breath, Normandy’s escape, squad members teleporting
contradiction of previously established lore – Shepard cannot challenge/reject the Catalyst, mass relay explosion, Reapers demystified – proven to be simple tools of the Catalyst
lack of choice – Shepard cannot challenge/expose/reject the Catalyst, all endings lead to nearly identical outcomes, Shepard cannot alter the fate of his crew => in all endings, crew always crashes on jungle planet
lack of closure with squad members. what happens to Shepard’s friends?
lack of catharsis – emotional build-up goes nowhere, leaves player emotionally unfulfilled
Normandy’s escape – why are Joker & crew fleeing the battle, Cortez’s shuttle was shot down – how did the crew get on-board?
squad members teleported onto the Normandy – land on Earth-like jungle planet => doesn’t Joker break all bones in crash? And either Joker or Garrus and Tali starve due to lack of compatible amino-acids, right?
crew abandons Shepard (LI included)
mass relays blow up => galaxy stranded (quarians, Wrex, turians)
space magic – gun with infinite ammo, crew teleports onto Normandy, Citadel explodes with Shepard on it in Destroy ending, but Shepard somehow ends up gasping for breath on Earth, surviving a free fall from orbit
purpose of war assets? we never see them fighting. (elcor, batarians, asari, Salarian STG, rachni queen, Aria’s merc gangs, Jack’s biotic squad, former crew members, etc).
Abandoned subplots – Harbinger, Haestrom Dark Energy
all endings lead to the same battle; all endings lead to the same Normandy crash on the exact same planet.
choices throughout 3 games rendered meaningless (giving quarians their homeworld, uniting the krogan clans under Wrex, brokering peace between krogans and turians, geth and quarians)
deus machina ending – Catalyst introduced in the last 10 minutes, contradicts lore, contradicts Shepard’s previous achievements, contradicts Shepard’s previously established personality, uses circular logic riddled with fallacies.
*Optional: anticlimactic TIM confrontation => mirrors Saren’s last moments but without a final battle
wow man i’m exhausted lol. Good points
Reason #8:
Does nobody seriously understand that the entire explanation for the Reapers was basically “Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann” only much less epic and 100x more stpuid?
Seriously, go watch “Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann”, the manly, epic show that it is, then come back to Mass Effect 3. It’s the same damn logic only in Gurren Lagann it’s done awesomely and not at the last minute to hastily wrap everything up.
I know you are upset Joe but look at this link it might help you understand more to the ending.
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Damous/Why_Bioware_has_NOT_betrayed_us#comm-64012
Even assuming the Mass Relays don’t blow up solar systems, two of the endings still make no sense or have horrible consequences.
In the destroy all synthetics ending, how does the pulse distinguish between a sentient computer and a non-sentient computer? If it can’t then it would have either delete all software or destroy all computers, maybe even all electronics. That means everyone on space ships and space stations are dead, and so are everyone who uses cybernetic implants, like biotics, and races that rely on technology, like the Volus and the Quarians.
In the synthesis ending, how exactly does the pulse make everyone half synthetic? Wouldn’t that kind of thing require major surgery? And the pulse just magically makes it happen in 5 minutes? Not only that but the pulse works for all organic life, even for races that are biologically completely different from each other?
As for all the people who say that Shepard was indoctrinated, no, just no. The logic they use is as far fetched as the logic George Lucas defenders use to defend the prequels by saying that they’re some kind of super deep political stories that parallel real life events like Caesar taking over Rome or Nazis taking over Germany.
Joe you left out one more reason. reason number 11:No final boss battle. Mass Effect 2 and the arrival DLC set up that Harbinger was the leader of the Reapers and the thing you have to get pass to stop them. Heck we fought a incomplete reaper in 2 why not break tradition and do a space battle with the Normdeny against Harbinger. That was something I was looking foward to and it was like shot to the gut that I didn’t even fight TIM. nop just choose and game over. If the truth is true I want to see an end to what should have been Shepard’s greatest foe.
What are you talking about? There was a final boss. His name was Marauder Shields. Never forget his sacrifice/
You think the endings are bad? Wait till you see this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm82gjZDIDU. Look at the pic, and then look at the scene with the stargazer. Look at how the colors change and look at when the vid was posted. And more importantly. Listen, and/or read the lyrics while thinking on the ending of ME3. You will notice the similarities immediately. Also, check the title of the song too. :/.
Now tell me, don’t you hate the ending even moar?
Bioware: the unstoppable stealing machine. First Tali and then this!!!. they were rush to release the game. it had to be. that or they are a bunch of lazy ass mother f****rs
You nailed it joe, 5800 assets 100% readiness and three games worth of decisions right down the drain.
and all those teleportations, where did all these characters get personal teleporters? you gloss over it and I’ll admit I liked the touching moment with Anderson but he teleports to the beam and then ahead of you as well.
I just want I agree with most of what you said Joe. Though number 8 I believe is one thing a lot of people are confuse on.
The Reaper mission is to make sure whatever machine organics make do not get out of control and do destroy everything in the galaxy. Cause if they do this, they will not stop at just the highly advance life forms, but ALL life forms. So everything in the universe would be killed off, which means no more life anywhere.
The reaper left the low tech forms for a reason. So they as well can advance and become the “master” of the galaxy. Though with Shepard that all change. There was no need for the reapers any more since organics and machine can live in peace. Which is why the god-child lets you to the control room area.
Though I am unhappy with how the way it ended, I don’t mind this part that much. Though everything else you said sounds perfectly right. Plus a big thank you for actually explaining it in a rational manner. Though what I’m hoping for is to add on to the ending (And perhaps just change the video of joker leaving the battle…I will highly admit that a HUGE thing they need to change) where you have a ton of more choices to do beside just those three.
Like flipping off the god-child and seeing your forces massacre the reapers. Or fighting the god child and trying to get him on your side rather then the other way around. Anyways I hope you read this and message back. And I hope it clears up number 8 for you.
Which still doesn’t cover that it’s BS we show synthetics and organics can live together.
With Geth and Querians? Of course thats the reason the cycle change. It is BECAUSE Synthetics and organics can live together now. I mean speak with Javik and he tells you that his synthetics rebel against them and nearly killed everyone.
With Shepard and the Geth every thing change. If shepard wasn’t around to make peace, then the Geth would probably killed everyone out of self defense.
No. The reason cycle changed was because Shepard managed to get the Crucible running, which gives the organics a fighting chance against the Reapers. The Catalyst gives you the same options and same dialogue even if you destroyed the Quarians/Geth without any peace.
It’s still BS. Catalyst just ignores Shepard.
And without shepard then Geth and Quarians would have destory each other. Please thank this through. Without our intervention these two races would have destroy each other easily.
Who to say if the Geth won over the Quarians the council wouldn’t have gotten involve to put a end to the geth before they grew out of control? The truth about geth not wanting to kill the Quarians would never have come out. Because if you watch legions vid about the first battle between the two races the quarians were hell bent on killing them.
Also I think the star-child was speaking in PAST tense (If the theory of indoctrination is false) which would make sense in THEIR mind of why they do it.
good breakdown.
personally, if the ending was an honest artistic decision on the part of the writers, then i found it disappointing and unimpressive. however, if it was a financial decision on the part of ea executives, either to rush production or sell dlc, then i find it almost blasphemous.
Spot on! Great Vid! Thanks for making it!
I haven’t played any of the ME3s’ but if I’d play 3 games and ended like this…. wow… where’s my shovel so i can bury this crap…
It’s like the crap ending of matrix.
Or watching the full Pirates of the Caribbean sequence and Jack Sparrow dies.
I was going to play all of them but with this bad ending I don’t see why…. I may play it for the game story but ignore the end. :S
Like a fellow man once said: “The journey is what brings us happyness not the destination.”
Let’s see what the ME3 makers do now.
Later.
P.S. has anybody got the other last breath on ME3 or is it myth? (something about the EMS being higher…)
This summed it up perfectly. I talked with my friend who liked the ending, and while he did like it, he didn’t like it for the reason that I hate it- no closure. No blue babies for me.
this is screwed up, EA is trying to exploit the consumer even more, and I thought they hit rock bottom with the prothean DLC.
We need to spam Bioware with this video.
Just want to say been a fan for a while never posted before. But the ME3 ending was so bad I have had to make a post. You hit the nail on the head with the issues it felt more like a WTF moment.
It was shocking how they let this slide I will never know. Unless the induction theroy is turned out true but if it is then that means ME4 (if they make one) will be TAKE BACK EARTH continued
Just wanted to say how much i loved the video and it summed everything wrong with the ending up perfectly!!.
I personally did not mind the endings so much as some people. i did not like the god child but i was not that angry about it. But i will agree that there should have been closure to all the releationships in the game. But in many ways for me personally. You got that while playing the game SPOILERS (depending on your choises). The rescue of talis homeworld, the geth all becoming self aware, jack learning to trust people. Illsuives man mad schemes undone, The genophage hell even the game plus mode you get a shot of shepard breathing setting up for possible sequal which i dont mind
I understan why people are upset about the ending. But for me it is and always wil be about the journey. And mass effect 3 is one hell of a ride.
I promise you shepard breathing wasn’t a set up for another game, its for DLC, this way they can milk all the money possible out of you.
Why I hate the Mass Effect 3′s ending?
Well, it’s difficult because there are so many reasons and it wouldn’t be productive to mention all of them. So I’m just focusing on one of them. Choices. Choices I made because I was sure it matters. I wanted to leave a mark in the Galaxy. But in the end, nothing really mattered. An example: the involvement of the geth and the quariand in the final battle. From ME1 on my knowledge and my opinion on these species evolved. In the end, I hated and I loved them both. Still it was important for me to bring them together. I wanted them to make peace. Now after seeing the end of the game I’m wondering why I wanted that. To see both fleets arriving in the Sol system an then never see them again? Not in the battle, not on earth? Rly Bioware? There would be no difference if one of them were wiped out over Rannoch. Sure, I got some more EMS points, but they have also no real impact on what’s happening on earth. Why I hate the ending? Simple. A game based on choices ended without giving any credit to my choices.
agree 100%
I was on the fence about picking up this game (being a big Mass Effect fan), but now I am not gonna pick the game up until they fix this crap (if they ever do). However, after hearing about a fan filing a FTC complaint against Bioware about the ending, its just going too far. I would love to see Bioware fix this ending and aspects of the game based on the fan’s anger, but not because they were forced to because of the government. Better or worse, Bioware decided on the ending(s) and if they are sincere then they will rectify it (even if its through DLC, which is possibly the only way they will do it when there’s money involved). I guess I shall wait and see what is gonna happen in the near future before deciding on picking up the game or not.
im buying it used so bioware didoes get any money
I kind of agree with the FTC complaint, it’s not something i’d do myself but Bioware lied. Period. They falsely advertised their product. Period. If this was anything else but a video game there’d be a lot more complaints. I feel that whoever filed the complaint was well within their rights as a consumer.
I never saw Angry Joe so depressed before as he was in the intro of this video. Don’t stay like that Joe, I am sure everything will work out in the end
.
I agree with everything said, but in addition I just want to say the worst thing was how all the characters basically punked out at the end, including Shepard. I mean, I play Femshep and I romance Garrus, seeing him walk out with Joker was like a punch in the tits. I went through 2 games where it was established how loyal Garrus is to her and how he would never leave her to fight alone, even before they started dating. Hell not TEN MINUTES before the Citadel crap they talk about retiring together and having kids. I cannot for the life of me believe that Garrus would leave her behind to die like that. If Shepard died Garrus’ battered corpse would be lying right next to hers.
True Dat Kylenne, True Dat
lol @ the xzibit pic!! XD
And im so glad I didnt buy this after seeing this. I knew I would never get a conclusion after ME2 and past choices didnt matter in ME2 either.
How come you didnt get angry though? This sounds more like SadJoe than AngryJoe
I won’t buy this game,because Legion is my favorite character….and i have heard he will die no matter the option you choose…WHY EA/Bioware?
His death actually has a lot of meaning though, especially if you successfully end the geth-quarian conflict in a peaceful manner.
any deaths in the game, minus anthing in the last ten minutes, is amazingly done. very deep, emotionally tear jerking, scenes that Bioware did perfectly. Then they screw everyone with their so called “ending”. It’s just to bad, they did so much right.
The things ive heard about this game make me not want to play the first two at all. Nice one Bioware. Nice one.
One of my biggest problems with ME3 overall was the lack of Reaper presence. Yeah, they were omnipresent in a sense, but the only time we interact with one is after it’s killed on Thessia (I think it was Thessia). I was really hoping to get to know the Reapers as a true nemesis. Instead, they’re essentially just battleships. The “God Child” was an inadequate explanation. If they wanted that character, they needed to introduce it earlier and flesh it out. The way it worked out, the Reapers are there and not at the same time and The God Child just feels tacked on and confusing, sort of hollow. As far as this indoctrination ending theory, I don’t think that’s what Bioware had intended, but I’ll jump on that bandwagon if it’ll get us a proper ending. I’ll even pay if they’ll release a DLC with a significant amount of missions and legit endings.
How I think the ending SHOULD have gone: (Or at least something that wouldn’t have me this mad.)
1. Cut out the stupid ai child. There’s no need for him, everything he touches turns to suck.
2. Give two choices. 1. Do something that weakens the reapers, such as disabling their shields, allowing them to be destroyed but at a massive cost to your invasion fleet. 2. Send a signal that overrides the Reapers and sends them back into Dark Space until the next cycle, not ending the threat permanently, but allowing the Galaxy to recover and prepare for the next cycle. Less immediate loss, but leaving the future uncertain.
3. Give more closure, not only with an epilogue for each surviving major character, but also for the races of the galaxy as a whole.
4. Give Shephard an option for what to do afterwards. Settle down with love interest? Stay with the millitary? Etc.
Good Ideas. I support
or maybe the real catalyst in the reaper leader. So, a boss fight with the harbinger, get the reaper essence or influence whatever. and then finish the reapers off once and for all using the crucible.. Still its kinda flat ending, but good, much better than those crappy endings..
I kept looking for a paragon or renegade trigger action during the final scene.
After the three choice, I kept thinking where is the choice to tell the starchild (see end of the 1980′s V) that we will take the risk of letting the synthetics live with us in co-existence? How is it any worst that we have our own synthetics kill us then have the Reapers kill us?
B5 did it much better and he had all the choices, let the needless war continue or end it now, and let the Shadows and Vorlon’s leave the solar system, than take their bullshit about self-preservation or total control.
This is exactly why I’ve been an Angry Joe fan for ages, you KNOW how we all feel about this debauchery and you agree, not because you go with the crowd, but because you’re a gamer just like all of us. These petitions and charity drives are such a great thing for gaming because its one of the few ways we can actually get these developers to listen to us and change their greedy and lazy practices, you all should join Retake Mass Effect’s Facebook page because its for the gamers who don’t wanna take this anymore and want a better ending.
I have no position on the ME3 ending as I pretty much predicted it before the firt trailer came out. I’m over the shock, if any shock was to be had, and from that perspective I can say it at least didn’t end with “Conglaturation you beated a grate game!” They also added colourful explosions. I am getting a little tired of the continued reaction of developers and their appologists to their core audience of late.
Game developers everywhere: If you use the word “entitled” to mean we expect consideration and satisfaction we somehow do not deserve, you have our roles reversed my friends. We grew up with your industry. We spent every disposable penny we had in the world (and many we did not) supporting your creations, good and bad, for three generations. We did this as legions of non-gamers, the people you seem so obsessed with snuggling up to, did their level best to destroy your industry and bury it under a tide of nonsensical regulation, half-baked political boycotts, and elitist snobbery. We used any forum we had at our disposal to defend even games we didn’t like, and to silence outsider speculation about who we are, and what this industry is. We joined your ranks, and worked to help you develop your games instead of passively consuming the product. We poured our lives into your corporations over thirty years and gave you everything you needed to evolve a silly child’s toy into a popular culture medium.
Don’t you ever… EVER… use the word “entitled” to refer to gamers again!
Sony, EA, Microsoft, Interplay, Activision, Bethesda, Capcom, and Square Enix, it’s time to wake up and smell the ashes… Nintendo and Apple snatched up all the non-gamer market there was to be had with the Wii and i-Phone apps. There’s nothing left for you. You’re stuck with us. When literally everyone to a gamer, tells you you’ve fucked up, that’s not entitled whining. That’s you fucking up, period.
Gods, this Godchild thing irks me to no end. It was such a very, very cheap way of pulling our strings. See! It’s a child! You have to believe a child! You cannot attack a child!
Bullcrap.
If they absolutely HAD to pull a deux ex machina on us, why not use a form that makes sense? Our love interest, someone of our squad who died. Or, you know what would have really floored me? Avina.
She was there right from the beginning, right under our noses. Hidden in plain sight. THAT would have been as awesome as this whole deus ex nonsense possibly could get.
Before you read this comment know that shepard was dreaming during the final sequence and that it was a hallucination. If you want proof read this http://w11.zetaboards.com/Theorycraftng_HUB/topic/7688087/1
1. The Normandy ran because Shepard wanted his friends/ LI to be safe
2. Again Shepard was dreaming and wanted his friends to be safe
3. The reason that the mass relays didn’t blow up because they launched all their energy just before exploding
4. Shepard was dreaming so it didn’t happen
5. The higher war assets allow you to be resuscitation if you choose the destruction ending
6. I agree but there probably will be a DLC where you see the Shepard getting up and finishing the fight
7. Again there will probably be a DLC in late March
8. Everything after the beam is not real and you are being indoctrinated/ hallucinating
9. When you are dreaming do you question things? No! Number 9 is because you are dreaming
10. The DLC will fix this
Please before hating on this read the article and it will explain everything
Did Shephard also imagine the prompt at the end of the game telling you to go do more stuff to add to the ‘legend of Shephard?’
Even if the indoctrination/hallucination theory is true, that means the player is told even LESS than the original endings. At least in those we know whether the Reapers won or lost. If the theory is true then all the player knows for sure is that Shepard was indoctrinated/hallucinating and then came out of it. For all we know the Reapers could have won with this theory and have already left the sol system while Shepard was snoozing (and then when Mass Effect 6 comes out he can be Day 1 DLC for 10$
).
Sure they could then release DLC with a true ending to expand on the whole theory and give actual closure but that also means that when the game was shipped it didn’t have an ending, only a teaser for a true ending that was going to be DLC all along. Not even looking into how palyers may have to pay for endings and assuming the DLC will be free, how is that acceptable in the least?
This is also NOT how indoctrination has been shown to work in the past. It’s never been shown to distract people pointlessly with intricate illusions, it warps their mind and subtly puts them under the Reaper’s control. This theory does not fit with any examples of indoctrination in the trilogy.
People need to read the facts that people have found about the indoctrination theory before blurting out angry comments on it. The link that Cisme put in his post actually explains some of the stuff that ya’ll are complaining about.
Yes, people do explain how Bioware can possibly be justified in this action because they would be trying to expand on trying to provide something new for the players to experience(as long as the theory is true and the DLC is free).
And yes, there are instances where indoctrination works like this if you bother to read the facts that people have found.
Here is a link to another forum that describes the indoctrination theory and how it was suppose to work in theory.
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/9727423/703
The fact still remains that -if- this isn’t the -true- ending, then they made everyone pay for an incomplete product that was marketed as the end of the trilogy.
That is where the Indoctrination theory falls on it’s face, Bioware/EA deserve the flak that they’re getting for this ending going either direction. You don’t do end game story content through DLC, -ever-.
Hence why it is called the indoctrination theory. No one knows if this is what Bioware really intended in the first place. Most people are trying to find a reason why Bioware, a company known for its amazing story driven games, would make an absolute amazing game and make just an ending with plot holes so big that Sovereign can fly through them.
Sorry, tried using bold on “theory” and it didn’t work the way I thought. There needs to be an option to edit comments.
That doesn’t really make the theory fall on it’s face, just Bioware.
I mean it’s either massive plot holes or they released a “complete” game without an ending. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t, though they will probably be slightly less damned if the ID theory turns out to be true and the DLC is free.
I have to agree with you there. I feel that Bioware would be taking a big risk if the indoctrination theory is true. People could applaud them for trying something new, or shun them for failing to explain their thoughts too late.
Either way, I see one big problem with additional DLC for the conclusion. Not everyone has internet access. If the DLC was free, how would they be able to get the DLC to people who couldn’t even get on the internet?
That makes things even worse because, if this indoctrination theory is true, then the developers would want you to pay even more to get the end of the game. Bullshit. When I pay 60 dollars for a game and (believe it or not) an additional 10 dollars for a’DLC’ character I expect to have the full game, no “Download this DLC to experience the end of the Mass Effect Trilogy.” Fuck That.
This would be true if they made the conclusion DLC have a price tag. But then again, you don’t know if they will charge you for it. Bioware continues to remain silent on the subject.
Makes it worse that where i live a new game costs $108. I got the N7 ed… It cost me $130…
This reminds me of the situation in Babylon 5 where the Vorlons and the Shadows each claimed that this was way it was meant to stay, considering what you said the God-Child claimed, their ideas seem to mimic the ideas of both of these races. Difference being Shepard, another Shepard, homage to B5 perhaps, he chose to end this game, and instead chose to unite the whole universe against Shadows and Vorlon, Even the fallen race in ME seems very like Narn, a race that were enslaved and at constant war with another, Centauri.
After this ending, I think they wanted a homage to B5, but failed to understand, that Shepard in B5 said “no.”
VERY NICE Video! Thanks Joe, I exactly thought that way. Esspecially about the happy end. Why not? Why punish the player? In my game i had to kill all the geth (GENOCIDE…) and then earth got destroyed…
But I think you should have commented on the fact, that all might have been a dream of sheppard…
I fail to see how you could with a clear conscious still recommend people buy this game. “Okay everyone its a good game, JUST DON’T FINISH IT. Okay? All you have to do is when you see the glowing elevator turn off the game and imagine that Shepard is dead and you failed. Its better that way. So remember don’t finish the game.”
six or seven out of ten my ass. its like reading Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, and being promised an epic ending, only he dies, and the publisher hires a new author to keep writing. JUST END IT ALREADY!
There is also the one where Catalyst-brat completely negates Sovereign’s need to conquer the Citadel in ME1 since he could have easily activated the mass relay to let the Reapers in.
Surprisingly low-key, you always do great analysis, Joe. I think you summed up the plot problems the ending created perfectly. I’m still flabbergasted how anyone managed to fill the story with plotholes and completely destroy the game setting in just 10 minutes.
my problem with the ending was what joe commented on in this video. No matter my choices in the others or my playtime to save my entire squad in ME2 the ending and game in general didnt adress my own story to that point.
Me and my brother played ME3 in the same room, my save was from ME1 + 2 and i had saved everyone in ME2, my brother who didnt save more than 6 people decided to play ME3 as it was out the box, no import no backstory other than the few options before the start. What was shocking was the story really didnt change all that much, well not as much as it should of considering my backstory had 100+ hours and his was about 3mins old and random. I saved the rachni in ME1, in his save they were exterminated in this case i said to my brother cant wait to see the concequence for that as were going throu this, it turns out nothing changes he still meets a queen or w/e it was the differance is grunt wasnt there to walk out like the boss he is as his krogen counterpart dies to the onslaught. This is one example of many i noticed in our playthrous. No change atall, why would someone who hasnt played any previous title know who grunt is?? that mission only matterd to me because of the desions i made in ME1 to my brother it was a who,what and why is ur krogen a badass and mine failed.
My brother after watching my story and his is replaying mass effect from the start, not to effect his version of events but to understand why i cared for the named characters were as he didnt for his generic stand ins. To me this is a good point for biowares story telling in the previous titles, but it also showed me that people who play just ME3 wont be upset by the ending or the way we got there becuase to them these characters are just as deep as ME3′s shallow story, to me i gave alot of thought into my desions everytime as i knew “hey maybe if i dont agree with garrus hell go mad and die trying to rambo that reaper to save his world” it added tention my brother didnt care becuase garrus was just as generic to him as the other turians dying in numbers.
And finally when did we TAKE EARTH BACK? 2 hours if that in a generic defend the missile its our last chance to kill 1 reaper was shocking, i thought it would be like ME2 taking the fight to the unknown and fighting every inch to defy the odds and save all those who stood with us in our hour of need, then pushing forward and saving the rest of the galaxy. The ending would always leave holes granted but we didnt save anyone we basically hit a reset button and stopped the ppl getting home to help there people, the reapers basically win wither way the differance is we know we stopped them setting the clock back 50,000 years by reseting it ourselves.