*WARNING: THIS IS A WALL OF TEXT*

After weeks of soul-crushing depression and a surplus of anger focused on the creators of my torment, I’ve finally calmed down enough to have a coherent thought on those blasted endings. They suck, not in of themselves, but through sloppy execution, SPACE MAGIC, god damn star kid tom-fuckery, and expecting players to anthropomorphize the galaxy (NOT EVEN MORDIN CAN DO THAT BIOWARE!). I know what Bioware was going for (I think), but, with the recent Final Hours of ME3 ending justifications I’ve seen, I may be giving them too much credit. This is a very long analysis of what went wrong for me.

WHAT WENT WRONG

1. Removing the personal, emotional payoff from the climax.

The end felt hollow for me, and I’ll tell you why; I always knew Shepard would save the galaxy. Aside from an expected ‘bad end’ from intentionally fucking up royally along the way or rushing blindly through the game, I think we all knew galactic salvation was going to be the end result of this years-spanning space opera. It’s a reasonable expectation to have when it comes to an epic saga like this. There’s no inherent sense of accomplishment from reaching a forgone conclusion. "I saved the galaxy. Yay?“ The part I, and quite a few others, were looking forward to seeing was how the characters we’d grown attached to fared in the end. What we got was maybe a minute of nonsensical bullshit that left their fates unsure in such a disjointed, confusing way that there was no real hope to be found. These were the people that made us love the series, the ones that made us keep playing through multiple playthroughs through multiple games, they were what made Mass Effect special and where the largest part of the emotional investment in the story came from. They deserved more than RANDOM BLAST THEY SHOULDN’T BE CAUGHT IN KNOCKS YOUR MAGICALLY TELEPORTED SQUADMATES AND SHIP TO RANDOM JUNGLE PLANET FOR RANDOM CUTSCENE THAT INSPIRES FRIDGE HORROR. It was like Bioware expected us to infuse a galaxy, a mind-bogglingly large entity, with as much personal investment as the faces we knew that reside in it. The logic likely going ,"Galaxy Saved =’s saving everyone in it” which, to be fair, it does. However, without some reminder of the far smaller-scale, personal payoff, I believe the positive impact, or really most of the impact, is lost. My exact reaction was, “Great. Saved the galaxy. I just so happen to have also royally screwed the great majority of characters I cared about. WELP, I feel absolutely terrible.” No, that’s too reasonable and coherent, it was more along the lines of,“ WHAT THE HOLY FUCK!?” aka, see my original reaction post.

tl;dr In the always awesome words of Mordin, “Can’t anthropomorphize galaxy. Need personal connection."

2. Sudden, unexpected shift in genre.

Remember how I called Mass Effect 'epic’? I consider that true of the series in a literary and scale sense as well as where it comes to the archetype of hero that Shepard fits. Let’s use Lord of the Rings and the ORIGINAL (Screw the prequels) Star Wars trilogy as comparisons here. Both series center around a main, heroic, character (I consider LotR to have TWO in the form of Aragorn and Frodo) out to oppose a great evil and defeat it with the aid of friends and allies they acquire through word and deed throughout the saga. To me, the message from these kinds of stories is that, despite the odds, one person can make a difference. An uplifting message, an OPTIMISTIC message, one a lot of us enjoy because, more often than not, an individual has very little chance being able to enact any sort of great, positive change or being able to rally enough supporters to make that change in the real world. (As a side note, I would like to say that I have no real preference for happy endings, a heroic epic can be both of those things, heroic AND epic with one that is bittersweet with a hefty helping of the bitter, as long as it’s executed well, but more on that later.) Up until that conversation with the Catalyst, Mass Effect fits into this category perfectly but, in that last ten or so minutes, the story clumsily shifts, rather abruptly, to philosophical sci-fi. There’s sadly little build-up to the moment that shattered the universe I’d come to know and love. To reuse a comparison many before me have, it was like sticking the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey (A movie I greatly enjoy) to the end of Return of the Jedi. I hate to say it, but the damn MATRIX TRILOGY did what Mass Effect was trying to do at the end far better. The neo-Jesus theme was always present and built upon, the real philosophical questions were presented before the climax, and the ending fit with the series as a whole (I consider only the original film to truly exist fyi, the others were the result of reading fanfiction after being awake forty-eight hours studying for back-to-back World Religion and Philosophy finals and taking a healthy dose of LSD). In Mass Effect it doesn’t entirely fit, is unexpected (Like opening up a large pony-sized and shaped present and finding a statue of a pony made from horse shit sort of unexpected), and lessens the series for its sudden importance.

tl;dr Don’t have Palpatine make Luke choose between three similar crapsack futures based on a philosophical argument, just let Darth Vader kill Palpatine and Lando blow up the goddamn Death Star, then cue the damn dancing ewoks.

3. Downer endings are not BAD endings.

Children of Men, Se7en, Never Let Me Go…the list could could go on really. What do these have in common? Downer endings. What else do they all have in common? I loved the damn endings. Why? They fit the overall tone of the story and were most excellently written and executed. There was closure, catharsis, and, in the first two at least, a vaguely hopeful ray of light to keep their viewing audience from going to go jump off the nearest bridge because humanity is a terrible beast that they are unfortunate enough to be a part of…(Never Let Me Go does that. Excellent as it is, I can’t risk watching it again because I don’t think eating three pints of Chunky Monkey in a four hour period is necessarily a healthy way to talk yourself out of depression and hatred induced suicide.) Mass Effect tries, and I empathize tries, to do this…and fails absolutely spectacularly. There is little closure, no sense of catharsis, and the 'hope’ they try to infuse the ending with is probably the biggest damn downer in the entire thing. The player is left with the feeling that they may have just screwed the galaxy, their friends especially, bigger than the Reapers ever could. If that was what they were going for, yeah they should be pretty proud of themselves, but I don’t think it was, and that really makes it a failure of an ending. That aside, they did the whole concept of a downer ending wrong for the sort of series Mass Effect is. It’s a heroic epic and Shepard may be the most determinatorist determinator of them all. 300, in my opinion did a downer ending for a heroic epic right. The protagonist dies, those loyal to him die, and the bad guys pull out victorious. That’s a downer ending, but we don’t remember 300 for that. Why? Because, at the very end, we see that their sacrifices were worth something and because of it the people they were fighting for were able to get their damn acts together, unify, and go right back to kick the bad guy’s ass. The Determinator did not fail; death may have killed the man, but it didn’t kill what he was fighting for. Keeping on the Frank Miller train, let’s look at Sin City too for downer ending comparison; in the three major stories presented in it, in only ONE does the protagonist survive. Hartigan and Marv both end up dead in their respective sections, but they go out with a damn BANG after completing what it is they set out to do. Nancy was saved and Goldie’s avenger in the night avenged the fuck out of Cardinal Roark.(…and a shit load of other people LOVE YOU MARV) Did Shepard destroy the Reapers and save the galaxy? Meh, it’s debatable, and that’s not how you do an 'uplifting and victorious’ (*trollface*) ending to…well, ANYTHING.

tl;dr If you’re going to do a downer ending, it has to be just as good as a happy ending, just make it fit.

4. Plot holes. GOD DAMN PLOT HOLES.

I’m not going to rant too much on this one…oh fuck it, yes I am. Usually, I’m not one to let plot holes bother me, one only need to look at my fondness of alien invasion movies to know that, but the STAGGERING amount of huge ones crammed into the short span of ten minutes at the ending of ME3 is too much for even me to ignore.

Plot hole I can ignore:

In the above case, I can happily and willingly suspend my disbelief. Anyway, everyone knows Sir Issac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space…until cutscenes kick in.

Plot holes I can’t ignore? How, in ALL the millennia of intelligent, space-faring species living on the Citadel, did NO ONE NOTICE THE ODD BIT ON THE BOTTOM OF THE PRESIDIUM? Why is Shepard breathing in space? Why is Shepard just going "lolk little space brah’ to the VI/AI responsible for millions upon millions of years of wide-scale genocide(My full paragon shep would have liked to punch that brat right in the damn face)? You know, just the the whole reasoning of the Reapers in general? How is that their reason boils down to… How is The Illusive Man on the Citadel? How did Anderson get on the Citadel( There was no one behind you when you head through the beam)? WHY is Anderson on the Citadel? How did Anderson, who came in after you, make it to the console first? Why is he uninjured? Don’t even get me started on the different waves themselves…

The list could go on and on…the biggest one, however, has to be the Normandy clip. Just the WHOLE clip. Why is the Normandy making an FTL jump? Why are they alone in wherever the fuck they are? Why is the Normandy damaged by a R/G/B wave that, two out of three times, doesn’t even damage the Reapers themselves? Hell, why is it damaged by a red wave that doesn’t damage anything but the Reapers? How in the name of Blasto did one of the crew members making the final run with me end up on the Normandy, perfectly fucking uninjured, when, at best, they should be back at the FOB while Hammer either continues on the good fight or is scaling back for a retreat? Nothing, not a damn thing, makes sense about that clip. Why is it even there? There is no reason for it to exist other than to, in spite of what could have been a pretty decent chance for a heart-warming reunion one could head-canon if they wished, completely cut off Shepard from what remains from his/her squad even if one were to get the 'best’ ending.

tl;dr I like swiss cheese on sandwiches, not in my conclusions to epic trilogies.

5. Laziness.

I’m not going to go heavily into the laziness bit. You only need to play through parts of the game to see it in action. In summation…

Just look at the technical problems of the endings themselves. Reused textures everywhere, glitchy enviroments, and GHOST KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID. Yes, I consider ghost kid a lazy cop-out in the vein of having the Quarians wearing helmets during the Rannoch flashbacks- the devs just didn’t want to have to make it. Seriously, of all the things the Catalyst could have looked like, you go for spectral god kid…really!? A disembodied voice would have been more effective and, dare I say it, epic. Also…this.

This is where the illusion of choice comes in. Yes, the ramifications for each of these endings is different, but just from what we see there are only a couple differences. Color, Reapers floating off or falling down, and whether or not the buildings and/or marines caught on fire. It’s not laziness from those that rendered the cg or the art department, I blame them for nothing when it comes to the steaming shit-pile of an ending, but it’s laziness from those in charge of the story.Instead of trying to deal with the fallout each of these endings could/would have resulted in, factoring in your individual choices and representing them appropriately, they slapped some different colored paint on the same cutscene and then said YOU MAKE UP THE REST…oh, and BUY OUR DLC THAT WILL LIKELY IMPACT THE END RESULT IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM kthxbai.

tl;dr Captain Obvious says: Maybe the end of a trilogy is a really bad fucking time to go lazy with execution.

There’s more that bothers me about the ending than just the above, but those are the biggies. I know a lot of fellow angry fans have latched onto the indoctrination theory as their new canon. For one, I don’t believe the indoctrination theory is what the developers intended. I think Mass Effect 3’s ending is another example of bad, rushed writing that tried to do something that would have required time, editing, and streamlining in order to be done right. Right now, realistically speaking, I would be happy with a patch/DLC that would add content that makes the endings, as they stand now, make more sense…and maybe just DELETE the whole Normandy scene if they can’t change it from RANDOM CRASH ON RANDOM PLANET FAR AWAY. Sure, I’d like for a fourth option to be presented, maybe where Shepard gets to tell that little shit at the end to go suck a bag of dicks before shooting his CPU then watching as the newly weakened Reapers get blown all to hell the old fashioned way, but I don’t expect to get it. And Bioware already knows I would pay all the money that ever existed to get an ending where my Shepard and Garrus retire somewhere tropical and beachy, living the high life from their numerous vid royalties, surrounded by their many adopted Krogan, Turian, and Human war orphans…a possibility I would happily head-canon if the Normandy scene were to go back to the pit of hell it came from. Bioware could do that, I hope to hell Bioware will do that.

tl;dr I WILL HOLD THE LINE