@SkylinePigeon Completely agree with you, provided they come out and say this was all planned, and its free it will be fantastic. If they do this it wont be a incomplete product as per say, but I can see your annoyance. I just hope to god they do it. Before I started to look into it in more depth the ending just left me feeling a bit hollow and I couldn't be bothered with games for a couple of days because I was totally perplexed. Part of that though was being subjected to the media coverage surrounding the game. Its hard to formulate an opinion when all of the news and sites go on about a disappointing ending in their headlines. I didn't read any of them at the time but its hard to escape news like that nowadays.
@SkylinePigeon It wouldn't surprise me if Mass Effect 3's ending is a deliberate ending with the intention to release the rest as free DLC. I read somewhere that the "possible" whole point of the current ending is that it makes you think, and question the ending sequence details. I know that people go on about the indoctrination theory but it makes sense. Especially if you think that by deliberately ending the game where they did they forced people to actually question it and by doing so allow/force people to come to the conclusion that Shepard was indoctrinated on their own.
How obvious from a story point would it have been to just have after the final scene with Shepard another blurry screen before he gets up and continues the fight before you realise "oh wait he was indoctrinated". I don't think people would appreciate the complexity of those last 10 minutes otherwise. If they have done this then by forcing this cry of despair and in depth analysis of the ending from the fans they have done the ultimate thing for a game and engaged the audience to a level which I don't think has ever been achieved before.
Obviously this only works if they planned it all along. Part of me hopes this is the case & that we get a huge piece of free DLC with the "final ending" and that Bioware's Mass Effect become lauded as phenomenal but part of me will despair if it is just a horrific oversight and poor a poor story. I can appreciate the artistic content and "current ending" as some others have stated but when so much just feels wrong with it and rushed, but it still contains so much detail and finesse it does give a ray of hope that it is an even greater piece of artistic work than originally thought..
JarlStreamus' comments