How should Mass Effect 3 have ended?

In many people's eyes the ending in Mass Effect 3 is considered to be one of the most dissapointing in gaming with the choices required at the end.

The question is how do you think it should have ended.

I was satisfied with the way it ended...

I didn't think it was all that bad myself but I though that the 'Indoctrination Theory' was fantastic and wish that they had actually done it this way.

I liked the ending. Personally I dont think Synthesis should have been there because I dont get this whole gene altering machine that the Reapers had.

Other than that I was perfectly satisfied with the ending having played all the DLC (except Citadel) before it though. I dunno why ppl are all butthurt

should it have ended ?

I do not understand why anyone can be accepting of the ending. It did nothing right.

Guys, Mass Effect 3 came out 2 years ago. I think we can stop talking about the damn ending now.

Better. It should have ended better.

Personally, I found the story of the ending(s) to be OK. The Synergy ending made the most sense to me as far as a good conclusion to the series (it was very BSG), but I was annoyed by the following two things:

1) All the great choices that you made throughout the game boiled down to little more than a numeric score at the end of ME3. Actually, this is a complaint about the entire game in general. In the end, nothing you did really mattered so long as that score was high enough.

2) I dislike games where the ending is determined by a multichoice selection at the end of the game. I greatly prefer games where the ending is determined by a culmination of your previous choices and/or playstyle. So much stuff changed in ME2 based on what you did in ME1. How little impact your choices had on the final ending was dissapointing.

-Byshop

Pretty much this. Most (if not all) choices needed to have some sort of impact on the story. I would have loved to have seen cutscenes that showed the allies fighting the reapers. Quarians and Geth fleets working cooperatively to take out a reaper or seeing the a Rachni swarm attacking a horde of husks.

I was fairly satisfied with the ending after the Extended Cut was released.

I was fine with the ending. That said, I had little expectations when I played the Mass Effect games. As indicated above, it seems a lot of people were more pissed off about the fact that the choices they made didn't really matter in the end than the actual narrative elements of the ending. That's not to say the ending can't be criticised in the latter department, but well, in all the comments I've read I saw a lot of valid criticism, but sadly noone really offered a detailed alternative (desired) ending.

This thread is still young, so maybe it'll happen here. I personally wouldn't really know, though. Then again, I've only played the game with the extended ending and Leviathan dlc and it never really bothered me. i don't know, I wonder if people would have reacted differently if they hadn't gotten the three (or well, four) choices at the end, but just one of those endings based on their choices during the game. It would have been pretty much the same, only without the option to change your mind at the last moment.

Did Deus Ex: Human Revolution get the same hate for its ending (since that ending was pretty identical in its three-choice structure)? Or was the expectation that your choices would matter much higher when it came to Mass Effect? I played Deus Ex much later on, so I've never really seen discussions about that game...

Since mass effect 1, I told everyone that your choice will have little affects on the end. That part was as I expected but the end was still bad. Does the extended ending still have the star child in it? If so the the ending still sucks.

Indoctrination theory was actually a great idea.I know it isn't true but i'll just pretend this is the true ending.

Mass Effect 3 should have had a detailed, complete ending that left no cliffhangers like Mass Effect 2 did where you saw consequences for every choice you made play out. One final paragon / renegade choice allowing you to decide the fate of galaxy like originally intended. Not that control, destroy or synthesis crap. That star child bullshit could have been DLC like Arrival, setting up the story for the new Mass Effect if they wanted to keep that in there.

I was late to play Deus Ex HR, but I do remember seeing discussions about people expecting more than an eni, mini, miny moe ending. Any story driven game that ends like that is nothing more than laziness on the writing team.

Bioware did at least try to make amends with the Extended Cut and The Citadel DLC. But after 5 years and 3 games of having different play throughs just to see various possibilities, I can understand people's bitterness. What I don't agree with is the way they went about expressing their frustration.

Too bad the lack that your choices affects that ends was not even that big of a problem when you look at the rest of the problem with the ending.

I hate the ideal that they are just upset that their choices didn't matter. I was expecting that the choice would not affect the ending, and I still found the ending if ME3 to be one of the worse for any game out there.

@wiouds: Mass Effect's biggest downfall was when the lead writer for Mass Effect, Drew Karpyshyn quit for whatever reason. If you recall Tali's loyalty quest in Mass Effect 2, it focused on dark energy and Drew wanted to flesh that out more for Mass Effect 3's ending. Even Cerebus was supposed to be a throw-away group of pro-human radicals that were side quest villains and nothing more.

Well, that's fine. I didn't say the story can't be criticised for its narrative elements. It most certainly can. The problem is I hardly ever read any suggestions of how people would have wanted it to end... What I read is that your choices don't matter and that the ending sucks. What should the writers have focused on? What would have been a better ending? I mean, if this wasn't the ending it should have been, then certainly you must have ideas about how it should have ended...

It should have ended with Shepard leading the charge against the Reaper forces with a fully united universe fighting for one single cause.

Which it almost was, but they had the whole Crucible thing, and win buttons are such a fucking plague in modern story telling.

In fact before that game released, and I was hyped beyond belief, I had frequently told friends "I hope there's no win button" over and over again. When I played the game, 20 minutes in the admiral is telling me about the discovery of the Crucible and how it could destroy the Reapers. I just muttered "God... damn it" and the whole thing became a little less intense.

All I remember from that ending is Shepard's arm animation when he/she's limping. O hai pinocchio.

They needed to stay with original Dark Energy ending . 80% people didn't even know that the ending of the game was leaked until they read the article about it AFTER the release of ME3 . That article from different websites included interview with Bioware and they explained ; why the ending was changed (Original ending was leaked) . Beta of the game was leaked by Microsoft and it contained dialogues from ending . I hope Witcher 3 won't suffer the same fate .

The dark energy was just as bad of an ideal and they way they introduce it was bad as well. Giving the reapers a stupid reason is one of the problems that the ending has and the dark energy is just as bad. The reapers were better off as just a force that was something that the world has to fight against.

For the ending I would have it where the last part needed is device take make it so organic matter can be integrated into the reaper tech. The weapon just break that connection between the reaper tech ans organic so the reaper no longer works. They know where one was used. The Collectors' old base. Depending on what you did to the collectors' base you get a different mission.

Next, they need a detail scan of one of the older reapers. The first part of the mission is to get a reaper down. The second part is to hold up there until the scan is done. During the scan, Shepard is moving around aiding where he/she is needed. Base on some of your choices the fights now are different. Like if you save the spec-ops team with your teammate then they will be in one place fighting with you.

Once the scan is done, the weapon then release a pulse that take out a large number of the reapers,

Perhaps, but in that case the story was already flawed in the first Mass Effect. There the Reapers were already presented as a mysterious and 'incomprehensible' force with more to it than just the need to destroy galactic civilizations. Also, I quite liked the idea of the cycles and the traces of old civilizations that still remained after a Reaper harvest. The reasoning behind and purpose of the cycles was more questionable in my opinion, but it did add to the scale and the impact your character had on the future.

That sounds reasonable. And especially gameplay wise it looks more interesting...

well i would have moved a lot of ME3 to ME2 and cut down on the ME2 stuff (it seems a bit pointless story wise).

that would have ended with two choices: either continue to fight on against the reapers (leading to inevitable victory in ME3 but with one hell of a butchers bill) or have the relay gates render all the element zero in the galaxy inert (thus making all mass effect technology useless). ME3 would focus on the fallout of effectively cutting off everyone from everyone else and sending society back to the stone age in many ways.

reapers strength comes from ME technology. milky way ships also use it but could possibly get by without it with retrofitting. if repers lost their ability to use mass effect technologies then they couldnt move (any on a planet would buckle under its own weight), they would have no shields (and when they dont have those they tend to die fast) and they wouldnt be able to travel between planets or even move in space. they would be easy pickings

so it would be a choice between sending all society in the galaxy back to the stone age (maybe with a chance to restore interstellar travel by another means...maybe not) and saving many lives or accepting that some entire species are going to be lost and many many billions will die before the reapers are defeated (need to work out the detail on how....virus on the geth overcoming their gods...or something to do with those who can use element zero based powers...or both...maybe)....but the survivors will be able to rebuild everything.

So the star child, a mystery antagonist out of thin air was a better idea? At least the dark energy concept was an idea introduced to us in ME2. Bad idea or not, the dark energy concept would at least have been consistent and connected to what we were introduced too previously. The star child was just lazy, last minute writing to meet deadlines.

The synthesis choice has got to be one of the laziest endings ever imagined. It goes against everything Mass Effect stood for. What's the point in uniting the galaxy for freedom only to merge organics and robotic DNA into one new strand? The whole Geth / Quarian war becomes pointless and a lazy cop out with a yellow, brick road ending.

Consistency trumps last minute bullshit any day. You don't cover up mistakes by making more mistakes, building up a story only to take it in a totally different direction at the last minute. If the star child bullshit was at least hinted at in Mass Effect 1, people might have accepted it more, corny or not. In the end, it's the inconsistency that left a bitter taste for those looking forward to seeing their choices play out.

No the star child ending suck.

The dark energy from what I understand from those push it is that the use of the mass effects is cause this dangerous stuff to be created and that the reapers are the one that are trying to prevent or delay it. The problem is that reapers place the mass relays to encourage their use. It make no sense to do so. Sometimes they want us dead is a good enough reason.

The reaper could have lied about what they were doing or even lied to itself. It made a nice threat to fight against.

Also, what do you think about the anit0reaper weapon found at the start of the story?

The original ending didn't really do anything to "complete the series," and it left more questions than answers. I have honestly NEVER played Mass Effect 1. I didn't play until Mass Effect 2 was released but I did a lot of research into how the story had developed up to that point. They should have completed the series better than they did...even after the patch. The patch did help, but the damage was already done. When I played Mass Effect 3, it was one of the best games I have ever played; all the way until the ending. My mouth literally dropped during the space battle scene when Shepard took back Earth. My first thought was that this game is going to end in an amazing way! Oh was I disappointed when I realized it was a generic ending! I still don't think the patch did anything to help. The original ending left you with questions. I can't get past it. Even with its issues, I still love the series and how the game played out.

It should have taken in more variables that the player developed through the prior 2 games. The ending should have been some sort of compilation akin to the ending of Fallout 3.

And the synthesis ending made no damn sense. That whole crucible thing where shephard throws himself in the machine made no damn sense either. But I would have preferred something awesome like the suicide mission in ME2

It should have ended the way the people writing the story to it wanted it to end. After all, it's THEIR story. If people want something to end the way they want, then they should damn well write a story themselves, I think.

The problem with the ending of Mass Effect 3 is that it doesn't make any sense in the context and suddenly brings on a new player where it removes control and gives you a ABC ending where A, b and C ends the same way, Universe destroyed.

How i would have loved it to end? well, with a conclusion or at least some closure on all the things you did or didn't do throughout the game. And also with a real ending that took into consideration how you played it, as best a game can.

I liked the ending, I heard a lot if negative comments about the ending prior to completing M3 so when I actually finished it I couldn't believe what people were complaining about, the build up to the end was amazing and slightly emotional,the actual ending was good and made sense to me. Cleanse the universe so it can be re-born. I played through the ending about three times.

I think when I played the game, 20 minutes in the admiral is telling me about the discovery of the Crucible and how it could destroy the Reapers

You mean the Crucible? I don't know, in the context of the cycles it makes sense, I guess. That said, it's a pretty standard narrative theme. The idea of an (ancient) object that will decide the fight against an enemy has been used countless of times... Not that that's a bad thing, of course. I suppose they should have introduced it (or at least hinted at it) in Mass Effect 1 or 2 for the sake of story consistency. Now it came a bit out of nowhere. But apart from that, to me it was acceptable.

I didn't really mind the ending and I think Shepherd sacrificing himself to save the galaxy was a great way to bow out, however it made a mockery of the choices made throughout 3 games and 150hours+ to just end with "press red for ending A, press blue for ending B...."

The decision as well to personify the reapers as a holographic kid just took away all menace the enemy had. I'd have preferred just a super computer like HAL from 2001 or something a bit more foreboding .

All in all the trilogy is up there as the greatest of all time but could have been handled a lot better than it was.

Personally I'd have liked fireworks above Endor kind of ending.

That the reapers were like a gladiator event, judging and gathering the best race to use as the next indoctrination and model a colossal reaper upon. It turns out there is a larger, darker, more unknown force behind them, something Godlike. Except we never get to see this, we just have to imagine what lies in the unknown. The reaper remain the enemy, the Crucible goes off, destroys all large synthetic life, boom destruction. Shepard just dies. Get a little aftermath ending based on your decisions as the credits roll.

The ending never really bothered me, especially after the extended cut patch. Although I still think that your choices through all 3 games should have played a bigger part in the ending.

My wife however was extremely pissed that there wasn't a romantic happy ending. Shepard and Kaidan living together happily ever after was the only way it could have ended to make her happy.

They need something to stop the reaper and not end up with the ME1 ending.

What sold me was the one scene where the Liara came in to make a record of data.

I can see the data for the crucible being hard to find. Remember that the reapers will change the history after they wipe out all life. One thing they are looking for is records of fighting the reapers which included weapons.