Uh oh.... (Mass Effect)

[Logan Darklighter]

So. Been watching this thread with interest. I'll let you know that I've got ME1&2, but not 3 yet. Its been interesting seeing what's been going on with the players and Bioware.

What really interests me is that a lot of people think that the 'Last ten minutes' didn't happen. Really.

I don't know which link I followed to find it, but I've got an interesting article that a player wrote that gives pretty good thought to those 'Last ten minutes' being a dream sequence or something similar.

Article here.

Logan, would it make you happier to see it this way?

I'm impressed with the reasoning and the analysis. And agree with all the reasons on why nothing in that sequence makes ANY sense at all. 

As to whether it would make me happier? 

*tilts hand back and forth* 

Eh... sort of. 

Anything is better than taking what we're presented at face value - both what we're told, and what we're shown. But it's sad that fans have to jump through these kinds of mental hoops in order to make any sense out of the ending. And we could still be wrong. 

I mean, I agree that all the choices laid before us are bullshit. It makes much more sense that the starchild is the avatar of a Reaper (Harbinger?) and that he's outright lying his ass off and misleading Shepard who might be finally beginning to be in danger of succumbing to indoctrination due to her implants and the stress. It does fit. 

But why be forced into making sense of the ending through theorizing like this? If this theory is the correct one, why wasn't it made more clear that this is what was happening? Why not simply SHOW the players/audience what's really going on? 

You know what this reminds me of? And I'm utterly shocked I didn't see it before now! This reminds me greatly of the last two episodes of the original Evangelion TV series. The acid trip episodes? Maybe not to that extreme of hallucinations/reality bending. But maybe the lead writers of Mass Effect strayed off their meds like Anno did? 

Just please dear god don't let a "real ending" to Mass Effect be as nihilistic and bleak as End of Evangelion. I don't think I could take that. We're already halfway there as it is. 

[Logan Darklighter]

On the betrayal of hope in Mass Effect 3's endings.

I've been struggling in my own way to articulate why the ending of Mass Effect 3 invalidates all that came before. But I may not be doing a very good job of it. 

The guy at the above linked post just FREAKING NAILS IT. 

Please, please click the link and read what he has to say. He's MUCH better at getting to the heart of the problem than I've been so far. 

Fair warning, it's a pretty big wall of text. But it's well laid out and he's broken it up into easy to read segments. 

Edit: 

I still think anybody would be well served by reading the whole thing, but I wanted to single out the central point. The actual hammering of the point home. 

The Betrayal
So here we are, standing at the culmination of three hundred hours of joy and tears, brought about through a profound exploration of the power of hope and inclusiveness in the unlikely form of a video game. We're watching every race in the galaxy: humans and turians, krogan and salarians, quarians and geth, and even the ageless, arrogant asari all come together in equal partnership to fearlessly face down an enemy of unimaginiable power and ancient evil, riding into a battle they cannot hope to win conventionally, prepared to fight and die for just the smallest hope of victory, fighting and dying to buy just the smallest chance that their friends and loved ones might escape utter and complete annhilation. And at the climax of that battle, we find ourselves confronted by the very avatar of intolerance, ruthlessness, cruelty, and arbitrary authority in the Starchild. And what does Bioware *force* us to do?

Bend our knee to it. We have to meekly accept the vile, unacceptable principle that there must always be winners and losers, that some battles are just too big to fight, some evils too powerful to defeat. That we must choose to bargain with the devil instead of spitting in his eye.

In other words, that everything Mass Effect has taught us is a lie. At the last moment, it strips of us of our unity, of our hope. It denies us the chance to pull together and win through to a glorious victory, or even to stand and die as free beings beside our brothers-in-arms. We must, it tells us, choose sides at the last. We must become the monster we despise, or accept a hateful amalgamation with an evil and soulless foe, or betray and sacrifice those who respect and count on us to achieve a broken and hollow victory.

And that, I believe, is what so many of us are *really* incensed about. Because we instinctively reject this insidious calumny as the end of the epic we've come to love. We reject the idea that we can't all work together to achieve greatness. That we can't stand together to become a whole and complete galaxy, greater than the sum of its parts and its petty daily grievances and indignities.

And that is what the "Retake Mass Effect" movement is really about, in my opinion, whether we articulate it or not. We are following the example Shepard sets. We are standing together in the face of a great philosophy that has been perverted to cynicism and division, and saying, "Dammit, give us back our hope."

[Logan Darklighter]

And along the same lines as the above, and also similar to something I said earlier about a 4th "FUCK YOU" option. 

Right. Fucking. Here. This would and could be the REAL ending. 

110% agreement with the poster who states: 

Bioware had almost 2 years to write an ending and failed.


You wrote it over breakfast and won.


I hope the development team feels ashamed of themselves.

[s3yang]

y'know, I half think the ending is Bioware's answer to EA pushing them on a too early release.
A sort of "See? this is what happens when you make us release too early?".
Seriously, the ending seems almost _designed_ to enrage the players.

[Logan Darklighter]

y'know, I half think the ending is Bioware's answer to EA pushing them on a too early release.
A sort of "See? this is what happens when you make us release too early?".
Seriously, the ending seems almost _designed_ to enrage the players.

Wow... that's a thought I had not too long ago this morning. But I dismissed it as too calculating and prone to backfiring. I think simple arrogant blindness and/or one or two writers rushing the ending without consulting the rest of the staff because they've got to get this thing out the door by the deadline is more likely. 

Hanlon's razor:  "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

[Sofaspud]

I think the problem, Logan, is that we're coming at this from completely different perspectives.

*I* am invested in My Story Of Commander Shepard.  It seems to me that you're invested in The Story Of Commander Shepard.

Only one word is different, but it's a helluva difference.  Let me try to explain.

From ME1 and through everything since, I have shaped MY story the way I like it.  To use an analogy, I have paid Bioware to produce the film of my story, but like all films, it deviates from the book.  Mostly I'm okay with this, because they helpfully included the cut footage and I can splice it back together the way I like (what the *hell*, Bioware, I specifically said Shepard was *female*...).  The story of MY Shepard is fundamentally different than what the Bioware crew has produced.  But again, that's fine -- I didn't pay them all that much anyway and they recorded most of the bits I wanted, I just need to spend some time in the editing room.

From my perspective, it's MY story, and I can change it however, whenever, and to whatever I want.

It seems, based on your posts, that you have ceded ownership of THE story to Bioware.  You're not creating it, you're experiencing it.  And because of that, yeah, I suppose I can see how you'd get so fired up over 10 minutes of footage that, in my world, wound up on the cutting room floor.  Because you don't feel you *have* that option.  You feel it's Bioware's story, not yours -- and if that's the case, then yeah, they done fucked up a helluva good tale.

For me... I'd like to see them re-shoot the final scene.  But I only paid them $50 and they've given me a couple hundred hours of spectacular footage.  At anybody's going rate, I've still come out on top.

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

[Ankhani]

It's somewhat irrelevant, but every time I think of the ME3 Ending, I imagine Shepard standing in the Council Chambers with the Council, Anderson, Hacket, and the Normandy crew saying "Congratulations!"
---

The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."

>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI

[Dragonflight]

That alternate ending is epic. I love it. It's what should have happened.
I try not to think too much about what we were given, because that other rant at the top of the page also nailed what's wrong with the ending.
It's not that there's the chance for a bad, or flawed ending. It's that all the choices we were given resound mightily of fatalism. That in the end, what we fight so hard to build is in fact a Master Reaper, who "rewards" his creators by killing them. And all because they proved the Reaper-solution is flawed and doesn't work in all situations. In short, the Master Reaper is throwing a temper tantrum and smashing all the toys. And we're supposed to accept this.
The existing endings are just totally wrong. That said, I enjoy the multiplayer, and have played it a fair bit. I love the games aside from that ending. And if you look at the entire third game as and extended "ending", then you *do* get to see how all the plotlines are tied up. It's just the *final* plotline they totally dropped the ball with.
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[Logan Darklighter]

That's a very interesting take on things, Spud. My -first- reaction was sort of "Bwah? But I -am- invested in my Shepard!"
But... after thinking about it a minute, I kinda see what you're saying.
Let me re-tweak the wording of your idea. I totally get that your head-canon will replace whatever is in the game if what's in the game doesn't fit. Now - I would not say that I'm "ceding ownership" of my Shepard's story entirely to Bioware. Otherwise I wouldn't be so angry about this.
But I'd say that I cede the -world- of Mass Effect to them and I'm experiencing and living in it on their terms. I -do- in fact have a personal "head-canon" for my Shep.  But it's all in her personality and outlook. Everything inside - sense of humor, courage, fears - is my own ideas and how I see her reacting to that world. But I do acknowledge and work with what happens -outside- her own skull.
Up until now, that is. From what I've seen of the footage, it pisses me off so thoroughly because not only is the WORLD screwy and doesn't make sense. But they are making Shepard herself act in ways that are completely contradictory to both official canon AND what I see of her personality as I imagine it! (Gotta stop myself from going on another rant on the specifics because I'd just be repeating myself. Just see above for everything I said, etc.)
Anyway - semantics aside, I think you've essentially found the problem between our two outlooks at this point.

[Logan Darklighter]

It's somewhat irrelevant, but every time I think of the ME3 Ending, I imagine Shepard standing in the Council Chambers with the Council, Anderson, Hacket, and the Normandy crew saying "Congratulations!"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(deep breath)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-Logan
--------------------
Metatron: "Anyone who isn't dead or from
another plane of existence would do well
to cover their ears right about now."
--------------------
(Yes I'm being overly dramatic for the sake
of comedy. Deal. )
--------------------

[dark seraph]

And then Reaper Rei turns everyone into tasty tasty Tang.

[Logan Darklighter]

Or perhaps Cupcakes!
- "No matter what color you choose, they all taste the same";

- "No matter what color you choose, it's all vanilla ;-D"

- "We rage because we love"

[dark seraph]

Ending aside, there are some interesting things in ME3, Probably the thing that stuck out to me the most was the evolution of the Asari in terms of design.

ME1: Asari had smooth, near flawless blue skin.

ME2: Here, they started to get a slight scale pattern around the base of the head tendrils, along with some rather nice facial tattoos.

ME3: Liara leans in and now I see her skin is covered in this odd sort of scale pattern that's really detailed and some what eye catching.

Where their any other aliens than underwent such a level of design evolution in the ME games?

[Dragonflight]

Garrus is the one that stands out the most, but that might be because he went from being "just another Turian" to the patchwork Garrus in ME2. Then in ME3, he still has the scars from the previous game, and has just as clearly made no attempt to cover them up. By the last game, he's got a lot of character.
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[s3yang]

y'know, I half think the ending is Bioware's answer to EA pushing them on a too early release.
A sort of "See? this is what happens when you make us release too early?".
Seriously, the ending seems almost _designed_ to enrage the players.

Wow... that's a thought I had not too long ago this morning. But I dismissed it as too calculating and prone to backfiring. I think simple arrogant blindness and/or one or two writers rushing the ending without consulting the rest of the staff because they've got to get this thing out the door by the deadline is more likely. 

Hanlon's razor:  "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Maybe, but I've found that in life, stupidity is sometimes obfuscated malice.
In fact, I think you'll find that the primordial internet troll is more or less based on that concept.

[Logan Darklighter]

Another example of excellent analysis of why the ending fails. It's kinda long, but well worth it because it's both spot on, and in parts it's very funny! (Replaying parts of the ending with the hologram kid, but overlaying it with Benny Hill's Yakity Sax music is just almost indescribable win! But then, most things are made inherently funny by Yakkity Sax. )
I especially appreciated him bringing up the point that dark story moments are not necessarily profound and that
there's nothing wrong with rewarding players with a bit of hope. I'm
just going to quote him directly since this is something that's pretty damn important to me.

"Get the mood right:
Back
in the olden days, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and the
internet backlash about the ending was just starting, many people
assumed that the primary objection to it was that it too dark or too
sad. This wrongheaded assumption lead to a wrongheaded retort, which is
that people are fine with sad, they just wanted the ending to make sense
on some kind of basic level. I don't necessarily disagree with this
retort so much as I think it gives credibility to a false choice.
People have been confusing dark with profound ever since the first
obnoxious 10th grader started writing terrible poetry. Dark is not
necessarily good, nor is bright bad, nor vice versa, nor any combination
of anything in between.
Mass Effect was entertaining because
it hit more than one note. Sure, there were dark things about the
story. Remember the impaling and the robot zombies? The codex entries
that told you that more than a million humans were dying every day for
most of third game? The psychological horror of indoctrination? The
body horror of being turned into a husk or worse?
But that's not
all there was. There was also drunk Tali, and Elcor Hamlet, and the
Garrus and Joker Comedy Hour. You had opportunities to build close
relationships and do real good. Moreso than there was light and dark
there was balance, variety and contrast. The grimness of circumstances
was offset by the humor and hope of the personal element. The ending
shouldn't be saccharine, but neither should it be depressing. And it's
ok to reward the player with a little bit of happiness after they've
gone through so much."

[Logan Darklighter]

Garrus is the one that stands out the most, but that might be because he went from being "just another Turian" to the patchwork Garrus in ME2. Then in ME3, he still has the scars from the previous game, and has just as clearly made no attempt to cover them up. By the last game, he's got a lot of character.

"It's not the years, it's the mileage!"   ^_^

[Logan Darklighter]

Oh also - in the video above, his description of the section on Tuchanka and how Bioware got THAT part so incredibly spot on RIGHT makes me have a couple of reactions -
 - It makes me almost want to buy the game just so I can get to that section alone. ALMOST. I'm still not going to give Bioware money unless they fix/replace/redo the ending. But DAMN it's a near thing!
-It highlights the incredible WIN of the entirety of the rest of the 3 games - even Mass Effect 3 itself for 99% of it. Such that the ending is Even MORE confounding! How could they POSSIBLY stumble so badly on the final section? When everything else was gold! How is it possible to stumble SO badly that you ruin not just the ending, but the entire franchise!?
ALL MY MONEY, BIOWARE!!! YOU COULD HAVE HAD IT!!

[Ankhani]

It may just be my cognitive dissonance speaking, but I really don't think it is possible to ruin an entire franchise of three fantastic games and hundreds of hours of playtime (unless you really try, which they weren't). I can understand your Ending Aversion and reluctance to cede to "their" ending; but I refuse to let anyone spoil my enjoyment of the game, even if it is the developers themselves. I've put too much time and money into it to just flush it all down the drain and cry "RUINED FOREVER!!" because some idiot made a crapsack ending scene.
---

The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."

>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI

[Black Aeronaut]

I've put too much time and money into it to just flush it all down the drain and cry "RUINED FOREVER!!" because some idiot made a crapsack ending scene.

I think you got that wrong.  It doesn't really take one person to ruin things.  It usually takes a committee.  Which is what Bioware essentially has - their writing staff.  Unless of course this was a case of one of the executives coming down from on high and going... "You know what?  Change of plans.  Keep everything how it was, but we're gonna do this instead with the ending."

[Logan Darklighter]

I can understand your Ending Aversion and reluctance to cede to "their" ending; but I refuse to let anyone spoil my enjoyment of the game, even if it is the developers themselves. I've put too much time and money into it to just flush it all down the drain and cry "RUINED FOREVER!!" because some idiot made a crapsack ending scene.

(emphasis mine above)

(Edit: Oh - I should mention that what follows makes the assumption that the ending either won't be changed or that it won't be changed enough to satisfy the fans.

Yes - I know that people are assuming that the statements by Bioware's founder in recent days mean that they will be changing the ending to suit the fans wishes.

I hate to break it to anyone who thinks that - but you need to look at what the man actually said. He didn't promise to change the ending. He said they'd clarify the ending. That's a HUGE difference. He's left it open to interpretation as to what they are actually going to do and hasn't committed to anything.)

I actually did not spend money or time on ME3. So unlike most Mass effect fans at this point I'm in the unique position of being able to withhold my financial support. Which I will, despite much temptation. As mentioned above, the Tuchanka sequences alone sound EPIC.
If I had spent money and time, I think I'd be more tempted to try to justify it all. That's a completely normal and understandable reaction. But I'm not. So I won't.

(BTW - Please don't take this as my being smug about not buying the
game. It's only by sheerest luck and timing that I didn't! I was less
than two days from my planned purchase of the game when I started
hearing about the controversy.)

It may just be my cognitive dissonance speaking, but I really don't think it is possible to ruin an entire franchise of three fantastic games and hundreds of hours of playtime (unless you really try, which they weren't).

You may, as someone who has played the games and found your own peace with how you deal with the ending, be able to not let it ruin the franchise for you. Many people will be like that. And good on you for being able to do that. You'll be able to enjoy it.

I may be able to find my own way to deal with it and be able to still play the first 2 games after some time has passed. Perhaps I'll come up with my own head-canon inspired by other fan-fiction. Perhaps I'll even write my own!

But - I disagree that it's not possible to ruin an entire franchise with 10 minutes of botched ending. It depends on just how bad it is. And this ending is an epic failure of already legendary proportions. I'm far from the only person who's having difficulty looking at the rest of the story and thinking that everything we did was utterly futile and that re-playing those sections would now carry an air of melancholy and despair when it should actually be uplifting and fun.

But I think it's much worse than that. I think that it's entirely possible that the IP - the intellectual property - the brand name - of Mass Effect will be crippled by those last ten minutes.

I mean - consider what's already been pointed out in this thread about how utterly ANNIHILATED Earth and the rest of the Galaxy is in the aftermath of the Reaper invasion. Now consider that Bioware wants to sell DLC content for Mass Effect 3.

Really?

As I see it, there's two options for DLC story-based content. Either it's going to be DLC that takes place during the events of the game, or stuff that takes place afterwards. Let's take care of the latter first.

How the hell are you going to sell story based content that takes place after the events of Mass Effect 3? What's there to tell? The world of Mass Effect 3 is now a crapsack universe of almost unbelievable proportions. The important part is - no Mass Relays. So no long range interstellar travel, which was a staple of the original series. I'd even go so far as to think of it as one of the main technical backbones of the setting.

Just as an example - A poster on the LJ mentioned that he couldn't wait for DLC - hoping for stuff related to Aria and Omega, or stuff concentrating on the ME2 characters, since many of them didn't get as much face time in the game as fans would like.

To which I say - is anything dealing with Aria and Omega going to have any point to it? At least in terms of story? I mean, think about it -

Omega is just a huge space station in an isolated cluster. It's own solar system doesn't have any habitable worlds in it. I'm not sure if there are any habitable worlds accessible by regular FTL in the cluster. But I don't remember any. So where do they get all their foodstuffs from? Probably from trade from other clusters that can ONLY come through the Mass Relay. That's all Omega was, a way-station to other parts of the Galaxy. A trade hub for black-market stuff and home base for some mercenary bands.

Speaking of which. It has not just one, but TWO Mass Relays in it. The regular one and the Omega 4 Relay.

So either A) The Mass Relays blow up per Arrival in massive supernova explosions which means Omega and the rest of the system is DOUBLE fried.

-or-

B) Via whatever SPAAACE MAGIC that makes the explosions not supernova grade they simply blow themselves up and leave the rest of the system alone.

ALONE.

Aria and anybody else on Omega is as stranded as everyone else in the Galaxy. So what happens when the supplies run out? And where are all the inhabitants going to go? I foresee Omega being abandoned - after half or more of the population kill each other anyway. Basically - think of New Orleans after Katrina hit. But absolutely no one is ever going to come and help. And there's no way out.

And it's the same story in every system across the Galaxy.

That's pretty damn bleak.

Remind me again... What's my incentive to play any DLC in a Universe that's effectively destroyed?

Bueller? Bueller?

If it comes to DLC that's placed in time during the events of ME3, well - maybe. It could be just as epic as anything else that ME3 depicted. But AGAIN - you run into the problem that we all know where this is going and it's not going to end well at all. No matter what anybody does.

Again... What's my motivation to get excited here?

You could make the point about people having fun in post-apocalyptic
worlds in other franchises like Fallout 3. But that's not the core
audience of Mass Effect, is it?
The only type of DLC that I can see that wouldn't have these problems is stuff for the multi-player. Fine if you're into that. I understand it's really fun, actually. But how much money can Bioware wring out of it in the long run?
My main point here is - for many fans of the series, the re-playability value of all the games has now gone to almost nothing. That's what it currently is for me. And Bioware has effectively destroyed any possibility of future games set in the universe.
So how is this franchise going to generate money now?
Anybody who was -going- to play the games most likely has already bought them by now. I think you're going to see sales of ME3 utterly tank over the financial quarter. Word of mouth is spreading fast.
So yes. I think it's entirely possible to ruin a franchise with a bad ending. I think it's already happening. And Bioware has a limited amount of time to save it. If they want to save it.

[Dragonflight]

The big stores like Amazon.com have already knocked about $7.50 off of the asking price for brand new, and the smaller stores have dropped it by about $15 from the initial cover price.
Bear in mind, this game is only three weeks old. And most of the smaller retailers are already cutting the price.
The writing's on the wall. The biggest concern now is that EA will just order the Mass Effect franchise scrapped. Cut their losses, and if Bioware loses market share over it, just pull off the SWTOR portion and shut the rest down.
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[Matrix Dragon]

Which would be a complete waste. Bioware reshaped their entire setting with the ending. The Relays are gone, this is true. But it's possible they could be rebuilt. And there's still conventional FTL travel. The average speed of Citadel ships is 12 light-years a day. Reapers could manage at least twice that, and they lacked the weakness of needing to discharge their drive cores every few hundred light years. If that was reverse-engineered, the potential is incredible... And from a story telling perspective, you're looking at an entirely changed galaxy. New nations, new civilizations rebuilding on their own. Quantum Entanglement Communicators would keep some in contact, but others would be completely unknown until exploratory ships reached them. Nations not based around species, but location. The stories that could be told that way... You could base entire series in locations that barely have any contact with each other, but have common elements in the backstory.

The hatred... I don't get it, I really don't. All the Mass Effect games have followed the same path. You make decisions that influence the characters and some of the events, but the overall path is largely the same. The same major events always happen. You always get the Eden Prime beacon downloaded into your head. You always rescue Liara, the question is if you do it first or later. You lose people on Virmire, but you choose who and your actions determine if its more then one. You always face Saren in the Council chambers, and you alone decide the fate of the Destiny Ascension. You're always thrown into space and revived. You always work with Cerberus, but you decide if it's eagerly or with teeth clenched. You always save Horizon, board a Reaper and decide what to do with Legion. You always end up in the Collector Base, facing off against a barely born Reaper. You decide to destroy the base or trust TIM with it. You always escape Earth, confront an old friends distrust on Mars and decide how to deal with it, build the Crucible as the only chance the galaxy has...

Yatzee summed it up perfectly in an article on the ending the other day; "I picture the Mass Effect story as a sort of eye-shape. You start off on the left at one single point and then it spreads out as it moves to the right as the various options and subplots are established, before they all come back together and meet at the far right in a single point again." That's the way it was for Mass Effect 1 and 2, and it's the same for 3. The destination is always the same, it's the journey that's different. Did you truly cure the Genophage or secretly stab them in the back? Did you manage the impossible and create peace between the Geth and Quarians? What happened to your friends? Who did you help on the Citadel? How did you help them? This is all in the game. It's all there at the end.

I won't deny the ending has flaws. I would've liked more detail on what happened to the Citadel. Who got off, who was still aboard and fighting back. The Catalysts explanations could have used more conversation options, the chance to argue, the chance to tell the rampant AI it was outright WRONG. And it seems that they were wrong in hoping the fans would have a bit more imagination to the rather open nature of the approach they took. But the entire series was, for me at least, a journey that I've invested over a hundred hours in on a single character. And in the end, I stopped the Reapers. It wasn't easy, it wasn't clean. There's no way it could have been. But - and here's the thing - MY CHOICES MATTERED. Be it as simple as resulting in another war asset adding to the score that ALTERED the games ending, or Wrex considering my Shepard a hero and sister to all Krogan, standing alongside me at the end. Because of me, Jaavik believed the Reapers could be beaten, and was looking forward to seeing the world after the war. I convinced Ash to trust me again, pretty much made it clear that there were little blue babies in my future. I gave the Quarians their home back, I ended Cerberus. I saved the galaxy.

In the end, I liked it.

[classicdrogn]

Actually, I tend to hold off on buying properties that are broken into multiple parts until I can get them all and play striaght through, and know at least a couple of other people who do the same... when the original came out, it almost sold me an XBox, but I held off. ME2 came out, and I figured that yeah, much though I loathe Microsoft most likely they were going to get a big chunk of my money once the series was complete. Now...

Well, I am no longer thinking about how to fit an XBox into my gadget stack, or my budget, and I'm not subscribing to the services that manage online content either.

"I picture the Mass Effect story as a sort of eye-shape. You start off on the left at one single point and then it spreads out as it moves to the right as the various options and subplots are established, before they all come back together and meet at the far right in a single point again.

Uh huh... except that was what they specifically promised the ending wouldn't be like... even if you don't consider it a Bad End they railroad you into.

- CD, All Roads Lead to BOOM? Why can't I take one that leads AWAY from it instead?

ETA: I propose a new term for what Bioware has done: Fandom Gank. Where the creators of a property attempt a twist ending that, instead of fascinating and inciting discussion that enhances replay/rerun/etc value, alienates a large portion of their fanbase and creates negative buzz that has serious negative effects, if not killing off the property entirely for a while.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Logan Darklighter]

Fandom Gank. 

Yeah. That sounds like a new trope to add to the list at TV Tropes. And Mass Effect could be the trope namer.