Sunday, March 18, 2012

Mass Effect 3 Ending: What's The Big Deal?

This article discusses a large amount of spoilers for Mass Effect 3, including the ending, and lesser spoilers from the previous titles. Continue reading at your own risk.


Last night I refused to put the controller down until I had triumphed over the Reapers. I had read and seen the rumblings of rage over the ending all over the internet (including our own site) and I was prepared for the worst. Hesitantly I finished the fight and after awaiting a blow that never came I feel I have to say….what’s the big deal?

The ending wasn’t great, in fact it felt a little tacked on and anti-climatic, but it certainly didn’t make me want to cut myself like a vast amount of nerd rage consumed gamers out there would lead you to believe. In fact if I hadn’t read and seen all the backlash I wouldn’t have expected it. With how bad everyone spoke of it, as far as I could read without spoilers, I expected something as bad as Shepard waking up on the ground in front of the first Prothean beacon, the last two games being a prophetic vision.

 Instead what I got was “meh” at worst and “just ok” at best. I truly don’t see what all the fuss is about. Many of the complaints about the ending say that they invalidated the choices of the player in a series that has always been about that very thing. To those gamers I say….huh? How exactly did it do that? I must have been playing a completely different game. While, yes, there are a few endings and none of them involve Shepard riding off into the sunset aboard the Normandy and, no, there aren’t 500 endings so every choice you made mattered you could also argue the same for Mass Effect 1 and 2.

Really when it comes to the end of your game, as far as the legitimate finale, your choices mattered little in any of the games. At the end of Mass Effect 1 you could choose to save the council and they like you, but still ignore you about the Reapers or you can let them die and they don’t like you and still don’t listen about the Reapers.

At the end of Mass Effect 2, sure you could destroy the collector base or give it to Cerberus and your main character can even die. Did it really change how the game ended though? The Reapers were coming,  you worked with Cerberus, and like it or not that’s the same way Mass Effect 3 will start. So really based on the arguments of the many then all of the games are terrible.

Secondly if you’re choices didn’t change the ending then again we must have been playing entirely different games; which is possible considering that’s kind of the point with all the choices. Still I don’t know what choices you the reader made, but personally my ending was ultimately satisfying regardless of the confusing delivery. See, in my ending a race who were near extinction were saved, Geth and Quarian work together to bring peace to a centuries old conflict and rebuild their homeworld, Shepard rallied the galaxy utterly and completely and Earth was saved because of it. Sounds to me like my choices had plenty of meaning.

In the end though the game was fantastic and I had so much fun rallying the galaxy for the final fight. While in every game ever made pretty much your protagonist is the eye of the storm and the weight of everything lays on his or her shoulders in Mass Effect 3 I felt like it really was the case for a change. The virtual relationships my avatar in this galaxy forged with NPC’s and companions were satisfying and more real due then other games. I was amazed that even some of the smallest choices made as far back as half a decade ago by myself in Mass Effect 1 reverberated, even if in small ways, through Mass Effect 3 and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the entirety of the game even if the ending missed the mark.

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