Mass Effect 3 EC - thoughts and final verdict

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Spoilers. No real way to hide them here, sorry.

(note: re-posted from my livejournal)

I suppose I need to begin this post by stating that I was actually fine with ME3's ending as it stood before. And I know that's where I'm going to lose most of you, but that's fine.

I found myself rather disappointed at the backlash, but speaking for myself, I suppose I'd gotten used to games (as well as television series, movies, and even books) with less than stellar endings. As I continued to replay ME3, I did come up against more than a few things that bothered me, but the ending ranked rather low on that list, to be honest.

The biggest reason I felt this way, was that I was able to interpret events the way that I wanted. The announcement that the Extended Cut was in the works was met (by me) with a blend of "yay! free, more stuff!", "what? but I want other, more exciting single player DLC to play through instead, why beat a dead horse?", and finally "they'd better not go and tell me my interpretation was all wrong!"

So in the end, this is what I took away from it.

I want to say that I went into it with absolutely no expectations, but I think that would be a lie. After all, it did seem like they took quite a bit of time with it.

I'm disappointed that they told us to load up the game so early (clearly just an effort to get us to play multiplayer, but my EMS was sitting at over 11,ooo). I did have a few hopes that the actual battle would now take said EMS into account, but no, everything played out exactly the same "less than 50% of Hammer has reported in". So I found myself a little bit irritated by the time I actually saw new content (because this took me through hours of gameplay before I saw anything relevant, and as somebody who's played the game through 7 times, well, I'll just say again that it was irritating, and move on).

Seeing the Normandy pick up my ground team mid-run to the beam was neat, but still made no sense, just as having them magically appear on the Normandy made no sense before, but I did love the hell out of Kaidan's "don't leave me behind!" and James's anguish-face in my subsequent romanceless playthrough (the sad face there reminded me a lot of Alistair in 'Origins' for some reason).

As I watched things play out the same with TIM, I knew that what I was seeing was not going to be something that was going to radically change the minds of those who hated the ending as it stood before. They did keep everything that happened before the same, just added a few lines of dialog, and of course, some visuals and cutscenes onto the end. I think the post-save message was a much better one this time, you can see that they do, in fact, value their fanbase, it's just unfortunate that this amount of care wasn't put into it the first time around.

I find it kind of hilarious that Joker had to be bullied into leaving Shep behind, since I'd seen so many "Is Joker a traitor for splitting during the final battle?" threads up on the BSN. But I did notice that all allied ships split the system before the pulse left the crucible, and that was a nice addition.

I will say that actually hearing ghost-boy say he was a machine, and therefor, a Reaper, as I'd always thought he was, felt rather gratifying. I'm glad he didn't claim to be God. I like the idea of the first race that conceived and built him and the Reapers ending up being harvested against their will, because, hey, they F'ed up. And all the ending flashes with Krogans on Tuchanka, Quarians on Rannoch, and then, finally seeing the Normandy lift off of the jungle planet all went right along with my belief that the fleets were not, in fact, stranded in Sol, and that FTL travel is completely possible without the Mass Relays.

Granted, I'm only okay with destroy, and I can't, for sure, state that I'd still be happy with things if I didn't think the crew was going to find Shepard at some point, but watching youtube vids of Synthesis let me know that, yup, I still think that's disgusting and wrong, and Reapers rebuilding London is funny, but a little too ridiculous to sit right with me.

I miss seeing Joker as Shep makes her choice on the Citadel, I see Anderson, EDI, then love interest now, but I did get something I never even hoped for:

Thane

Thane-mancing Shep (Jade) saw this right where it should be, where mainShep saw big-smile Kaidan, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that Storm is going to see Garrus here when I get around to playing with her.

MainShep saw Legion, Thane, then Mordin during Hackett's speech about "those we've lost" and I got choked up during it. Also, just loved the hell out of images of Wrex and Grunt together, poor Kasumi continues to sit alone with Keiji's graybox, and I LOLed at Zaeed in a lawn chair.

In summation, I'm happy with it, but a little bit happier that it's overwith. I'm hoping for DLC with some meat on it, soonish. I can't say that BioWare has redeemed themselves with this, as I'd never felt they'd needed to be redeemed before. I think it's worth playing, for sure, if you're an ME fan. but if you hated the ending with a passion that burns with the fire of a thousand suns, I'm guessing it's not going to change your mind.

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darkchocolatebrownie's avatar
darkchocolatebrownie
THANK YOU!

I never actually got to finish ME3 until a couple months after I got it, but my friend finished it almost immediately and she was telling me how there was such a big uproar about the ending. I didn't really believe her until the complaints started popping up EVERYwhere. So I was really apprehensive when I played the ending, but I didn't mind it! I mean, it wasn't that great, but I liked how a lot of it was open to interpretation. Sure there were loop holes and I thought it was neat how they added the Joker scene to explain why the Normandy wasn't caught in the blast in the EC, but, I mean, do ME fans really need to be spoon-fed every single little detail? I mean, what happened to imagination? :?

I totally don't mean to complain about the EC, though. I liked the additions, and I really appreciate the extent bioware went to for their fans, but I just feel that those people complaining and threatening to boycott bioware needed to calm down. Personally I felt that the original ending made a little more sense, but yeah synthesis was definitely weird. I do think it was a really interesting obvservation, though, the idea that everything evolves into a super-organism at the end. But I didn't want to end a series bent on destroying Reapers by keeping them alive. :P

I have to say, I was very happy with them lowering the EMS rating, though. I'm not much of a multiplayer and I totally can't do shooter multiplayer (as you no doubt remember ;)). But I really wish they hadn't made it so that you could only get the best ending with the multiplayer. Still it was definitely fun haha. I can't wait until they do a dlc for Aria taking Omega back, though. (I really hope they do). :P