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.
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.