My problem with the ending of Mass Effect 3. *SPOILERS*

I’ve realized that, though my hatred for the Mass Effect 3 ending is equal to (and in many cases greater than) the rage I see online, my reasons are different than what most of the reasons appear to be. Most people argue that the lack of choice in the end destroyed it, but let me ask you this: when did the choices you made up until the end truly factor massively into the end result of any Mass Effect game? No matter what, Mass Effect still ended with you stopping sovereign and Saren dying. Ultimately at the end you were faced with 2 choices – which were the only choices that mattered to the end of that particular game: (1) do you save the Destiny Ascension (yes or no) and (2) who should become the human councilor (Anderson or Udina). Yea, ok, Wrex may have died on Virmire and either Ashley or Kaidan did die. But let’s be serious, was any of that touched on in the end? No.

Mass Effect 2 was better than 1, but it still didn’t do much with the choices you did in the game up until the end. Ultimately your choices prior to deciding what to do with the collector base just effected the number of coffins on the Normandy and who was looking at them. Whether you slept with Miranda or Tali wasn’t important to the end. If you lost the entire crew of the Normandy wasn’t touched on in the end, just what happened to your squad and Shepard.

Mass Effect 3 did the same thing.  The only difference is that it didn’t give you the Illusion that your choices mattered to the end. The only way your more minor choices mattered was the linking of game to game: If Thane dies in Mass Effect 2, he won’t be there to stop Kai Leng in Mass Effect 3. But that does’t change the fact that Shepard stopped the Collectors, just like if Cortez dies, Shepard will still reach the beam.

Others argue that it needs a “happy” ending. All I can say to that is that not all stories need a happy ending. I, honestly like that Shepard had to sacrifice himself for the good of the galaxy.

No, I have no issue with these things, my issue is with the Reapers…

One of the biggest pitfalls in fiction is over-explanation and too much exposition. Up until the last 10 minutes of Mass Effect 3 my imagination was able to fill in the gaps of what the Reapers were. To me, and I’d lay odds a large majority of Mass Effect fans, they were the worst of what machines could become. No love, no hate, no sympathy, no emotion of any kind, simply cold logic. The antithesis to such logic (which can be described as order) is chaos I.E. organics. The cycle of evolution is extraordinarily chaotic, and would be vile to the eyes of something so logic and order-driven. The Cycle was simply as Sovereign said in Mass Effect. “We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution.”

Mass Effect 2 added clues to the mystery of the Reapers in that the Human-Reaper Larvae (or T-1000 as many call it due to it’s similarities to Terminator) was made by the melting down of humans. I.E. we discovered that Reapers were created out of organics – most likely one species per Reaper. However, that wasn’t nearly enough to actually answer the question, and the mind had room to imagine what could be going on here. I remember talking to friends, tying threads together and trying to make sense of the Reapers and what they were after. I ultimately came to the conclusion that there was a second motive in the Reapers return every 50,000 years: reproduction. By the end of Mass Effect 2 I had cultivated this image of the Reaper’s return having 2 motives (1) to cultivate the Galaxy, much like happens when people deliberately start a forest fire: Killing what came before so what comes next may have room to grow and (2) harvesting organics to create new Reapers. Which makes sense because as Mass Effect showed us, not all Reapers survive each cycle.

Mass Effect 3 added another clue: The Reapers don’t control the cycle. This one both worried and excited me, if done right Reapers could have remained the near-demonic destroyers that the previous entries had made them out to be and there would still be potential for a Mass Effect 4 after they are defeated by delving into the ones behind the Reapers. Unfortunately, Bioware decided that it’s best to sum everything up in 10 minutes by making them agents of a being with a very flawed sense of logic. In order to stop Organics from being destroyed (or ruled) by synthetics, we have to destroy them with synthetics. It’s logically the same as “I shot him in the head so he wouldn’t set himself on fire.” Yea, there is a logic there, but it’s flawed. Instead of letting him die the slow and painful death of burning alive, he shot him – ending it painlessly. End result of both is the same: In Mass Effect, Organics are being killed (and in a way, ruled) by synthetics. In my example, the guy still died. I can’t get behind that. It was a lazy way to end the series, and ultimately destroyed the image of the Reapers that had been cultivated for 5 years.

[EDIT] Oh, and one last thing I forgot to mention. I got so focused on the Reapers while typing this, I forgot to mention Shepard’s part in all of this. Commander [insert name here] Shepard, throughout the entire Mass Effect series, was never one just to accept things. Despite his beliefs (which are based on choices the player makes throughout the game) he has never been one to just accept things. No matter what, however, Shepard stood for one thing (The right for organic life to continue) through every game. However, at the end of Mass Effect 3, when the Catalyst laid out what it’s flawed plan was, Shepard doesn’t even bat an eyelash? Despite how tired he was, or how much pain he was in, I find that hard to believe.

Mass Effect 3: A game that was almost phenomenal.

“Holy shit, they’re actually here,” was the first real thought I had after starting Mass Effect 3. Within minutes of starting the game, I was thrown into a desperate race to reach the Normandy and escape a dying Earth in order to unite a galaxy against a threat that has eradicated organic life time an time again in a cycle that has continued for millions of years. That desperate feeling is something that never truly lives you throughout the entirety of Mass Effect 3.

Despite that constantly looming shadow, the game manages not only to convey the dark heart of war, but also manages to throw in the lighter jests that we loved in Mass Effect 2. I found myself standing at a billboard advertising “Blasto 6: Partners in Crime” listening to every dialogue clip from it, the face Shepard made when EDI said that she only forgets to recycle the Normandy’s air supply when she discovers something truly interesting was priceless, and Joker is the same old guy we’ve loved since the first Mass Effect. However, as a game about galactic war should, it pushed the more lighthearted interactions aside for darker ones. The Citadel was a prime example of how the game showed that this war devastated everyone. Where in Mass Effect 2 most conversations you could eaves-drop on were lighthearted and funny, the ones in Mass Effect 3 referenced people loosing friends, a lover going to war, and even entire colonies being destroyed, and that’s not where the dark tones ended. Two locations in particular on the Citadel changed constantly: Huerta Memorial Hospital filled with patients to the point that you’d walk in to see the sick and injured being cared for in the lobby, and the refugee camp in the dock’s holding area continually expanded with people from worlds that had been overrun by the Reapers.

The Citadel is a mostly peaceful hub world that the war hasn’t truly reached yet, but the effects of the are still felt as you pass by all those effected. The Battlefield, on the other hand, understandably puts the war itself into sharp focus. Everywhere I fought Reapers, I could turn my camera to see decimation left behind by the Reapers, and forces facing off against Reapers themselves. One time that sticks firmly into my head was standing on a ledge while on a moon to see a burning planet in the sky, with ships locked in battle overhead, and down in a valley, a Reaper was laying waste to an entire army. The intensity of that moment underscored the desperate fight the galaxy found itself in, and the almost non-existent odds of success.

As far as gameplay is concerned, Mass Effect is no longer an RPG. Where in the first Mass Effect you personally had a hand in almost everything Shepard had to say, Mass Effect 3 takes it down to almost a decision of “what should the next cutscene be” rather than “what should Shepard say next?” Character customization and leveling is a definite improvement than 2, but still didn’t give you the variety found in games like Dragon Age: Origins and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The shooter mechanics improved it also, making parts of it’s gameplay reminiscent of Gears of War as you roll in and out of cover constantly vying for a better position to stop the hordes of Reaper, Cerberus, or Geth forces.

The shooter mechanics also make the multiplayer an enjoyable experience which understandably drops the weapon and power wheels in favor of the quicker “press RB to use shockwave” and “press X to switch weapons”. The formula of the multiplayer makes me think of what Horde 3.0 might be when Epic innevitably comes out with Gears 4. It takes that holding out against waves of opponents aspect and adds objectives every few waves such as shutting off Reaper indoctrination devices or killing high-value targets (I will never understand how a particular husk is a higher-value target than the husk next to him). The multiplayer also factors into the story by acting as a multiplyer for your war assets which factor into your odds of getting a “perfect” ending once you beat the game.

This is probably the most glitchy Mass Effect I’ve played. The predominant glitch being one that causes characters to sometimes disappear during dialogue. When I played through the game the character who disappeared was my DLC squad member, so I had thought it was simply a problem with the integration of the DLC into the game, but a friend of mine mentioned having the same problem with Ashley and Liara. The other big problem was dialogue fading out before it reached the end. It was a little irritating to be talking to a character to suddenly hear his dialogue fade out then cut to the next line. However, it isn’t the glitchiest game I’ve ever played, and I never ran into a Reaper flying backwards a la Skyrim’s infamous dragon, so that’s a plus.

As far as the DLC is concerned, we all know what it is, but in case someone has been living under a rock, I’m not going to say it. I’d hate to aid EA, Bioware, and Microsoft in it’s efforts of spoiling that DLC for everyone. It’s infamy is also well-known. It’s very hard to believe that this was not an intended part of the game sold separately for added profit, however I still enjoyed it none-the-less. The true beauty of the DLC isn’t the mission, but the character and perspective you get, which is ironically on the disc itself. It should have come with the game, but I can’t fault the DLC it’s self for shady marketing tactics employed by Bioware and EA.

All this considered, I’d give Mass Effect 3 a 9/10… though there is one thing that hasn’t been considered yet. The now infamous endings. I don’t want to spoil the ending for those who haven’t reached it, but as my best friend would say: It’d be disingenuous of me not to say anything about it. I walked away less of a fan of Mass Effect as a result of how this game ended. It damaged, irreparably, the overall feel of the Mass Effect universe by explaining far too much with an explanation completely out of left field. Don’t get me wrong, I still like the Mass Effect universe, it’s just that looking back on everything… it’s not the same. It’s almost like growing up in a way, the magic is gone, and it leaves me feeling empty.

Taking everything into consideration, I have to give Mass Effect 3 a 7.5/10. I still like it, and there is a lot  the game did 100% right. But the last 10 minutes managed to take that all and make it, and everything else in the universe, feel hollow.