I just finished playing through the last couple hours of Mass Effect 3 with the new ending content provided by the Extended Cut DLC. Here are my thoughts. Obvious ending spoilers ahead.
Before I start on the ending, though, let me take a moment to mention how awesome this game is. The Earth sequence at the end of the game is one of the most riveting, intense and horrifying experiences I've ever had in a game. The backdrop of war and chaos serving as the only background music during this section is simple brilliant. The voice actors do a fantastic job of conveying fear and horror at the situation, especially Ash Sroka who does the voice for Tali. There is one part in particular where Tali sounds like she is about to lose it and it's heart-wrenching and perfectly conveys the desperation of the situation.
That's not why I'm here, though. I'm here to talk about the changes to the ending. Bioware said to start from the attack on the Cerberus HQ so I did. I'm not sure why, though, I didn't see a new scene or notice any altered dialog until the final push to the Citadel beam began. That's where the first change comes in.
In the new ending characters get hurt by explosions while running towards the beam. In my game I had Tali and Liara with me and Liara was hurt the worst. The Normandy gets called in to pick them up. There's a huge and obvious plot hole here: Why didn't Harbinger shoot the Normandy? I forgive this plot hole, though because it's not as big as the old series of plot holes of "how did the characters get on the Normandy, why did the Normandy leave the system, et cetera". For me this turned out to be a really touching scene since my Shepard and Liara are a couple. There was actual dialog that related to the relationship and that was great. Overall I think this scene was a good change even though in reality Harbinger would just shoot the Normandy.
The next change I noticed was Shepard doesn't actually get hit by the beam this time. Instead it gets very close to her but it's path looks like it will miss. Close enough to ablate her armor away, not close enough to kill her. It makes more sense if you ignore that my Shepard was wearing a visor and not a full helmet.
Another minor change I noticed is after killing Marauder Shields Shepard doesn't actually run towards the beam and leap in. The screen fades away to a new cutscene where it shows Hackett mentioning Shepard made it to the Citadel. I personally didn't need this scene to be there because of the technology in the Mass Effect universe. I always found it plausible that Hackett was monitoring Shepard's location and knew where she was. The scene isn't bad, though, so I have no complaints with it.
They also changed how Shepard appears on the Citadel. Now instead of showing Shepard just waking up, she is violently projected out of the beam. I'm not really sure why they made the change but it doesn't affect anything either way.
Now we get to some real meat. The changes made to the Star Child section. I applaud these changes but it still leaves a lot of plot holes. Now you can talk to the Star Child at various points and inquire about a few things. You learn who and what the Star Child is and get some better justification for the reapers. It pretty much matches up with what I expected. The Star Child is an AI, of course. One who is flawed but unfortunately for the galaxy had the resources back in the day to make the Reaper Cycle happen.
As the Star Child describes each of the choices you are able to query it for more information about the effects of the choice. You also have the choice to outright reject it which presents a new ending. I have not viewed this ending yet though I will at some point. I noticed a few things about these explanations. They are similar to the non-interactive explanations it gave you in the original endings but some things have been changed. For the Destroy (red) ending it mentions that reaper technology will be destroyed. That would be the reapers themselves, the mass relays and anything else built using reaper technology (EDI?). The Star Child no longer mentions "all synthetic life" nor does it imply Shepard will die. This may or may not affect the geth since most of them only had reaper software when Legion disseminated it's consciousness. I'll get back to the geth. The Star Child says that rebuilding will be easy, too. At some point it's stated that things are only damaged, not destroyed and the Star Child never says the relays will be destroyed.
I still have problems with the Control (blue) ending. It's just too much space magic that doesn't really work in the series which is grounded in reality and offers no super-natural occurrences. The Star Child explains that Shepard will still exist as thoughts and memories and be aware if she controls the reapers. I have a similar problem with the Synthesis (green) ending. It, too, is just space magic that doesn't really sound plausible. All the technology and races in the universe feel plausible but these two endings don't. They still don't even though it's explicitly stated it has something to do with dark energy.
I noticed that the Star Child heavily emphasized the Synthesis ending. It talks about how it tried doing that before but organics weren't ready so the synthesis fails. It explains how it is the end of evolution and how all roads lead to that route. It's logic is somewhat compelling and very nearly makes this sound like a good ending.
After making a choice the game cuts to a new scene where Hackett orders everyone to disengage. The Crucible is visibly powering up so everyone begins to take the relay out. This scene addresses both the issue of "Why did the Normandy leave" and "What about the races trapped in the Sol system" since it shows them jumping out. Presumably the races each went home, though I'm not sure where the humans would go. It's not that relevant, the scene solves more problems than it raises and works well.
Another small but important change is the beam escape scene with the Normandy. In the original scene the Normandy has damage and Joker appears to be struggling to fly it. In the new scene the Normandy has no damage, Joker is intent but calm and the Normandy outruns the beam.
From this point on I'm going to talk about the Destruction ending specifically as that was the choice I made. Some of these points apply to all endings but I'm lumping them here in case they don't.
There's a new epilogue of sorts by Hackett and during his voice over it shows various scenes of the races Shepard helped along the way as well as some of the characters who survived or died. The geth are not explicitly mentioned as surviving but I think I may have saw a geth in the quarian scene. It was hard to tell, though, so I'm not 100% positive on that.
A huge change is the Normandy now leaves the jungle planet it landed on. There's still no word what that planet is but I think it's likely to be Sur'Kesh, the salarian homeworld. I think I see structures to the left in some of the scenes which resemble salarian structures integrated with the surrounding jungle. It's already established that they do that with their buildings. It's also a logical destination to go to since it's relatively close to Sol (Not too many relays to get there) and the salarian's will probably fix their relay first. As I mentioned, though, the Normandy leaves the planet so I guess the crew isn't stuck there after all.
There's also a new scene on-board the Normandy with the crew. I didn't see EDI but that could be due to me missing it. In theory, since she was built on reaper tech, she should have been damaged. This was a very emotional scene as the crew is standing by the memorial wall. Anderson's name was already on the wall and Liara was holding a nameplate for Commander Shepard. It did not show her put it on the wall, though.
One thing that did not change was the secret scene. As before, if going into the final battle with a high enough Galactic Readiness level and choosing the Destroy option, there will be an additional scene of a soldier with N7 tags taking a breath of air. It's almost certainly Shepard since in my it sounded like a female taking a gasp. Further to that it sounded like Jennifer Hale (the voice actress for female Shepard).
With these new scenes I feel the final Star Gazer scene at the end is just pointless and irrelevant. Before it could be explained in various ways when the fate of the crew/galaxy was in doubt. There is no doubt, now, though. It's known who survives and that the relays will be fixed in short order. The biggest issue I have with this scene now is the Star Gazer mentions at one point that Shepard's story happened a long time ago. The child, however, asks when can they go to the stars and what will they find which doesn't make sense in a galaxy connected by mass relays. Even a colony kid would know about space travel, would learn about aliens during their education and would likely see an occasional alien who comes to the colony for whatever reason. It just doesn't make sense now, unless it's bait for a sequel or DLC that involves Shepard. The child asks for one more story about "The Shepard" and Buzz Aldrin (the voice of the older star gazer) says he will tell one more. The game then dumps you onto the Normandy before the Chronos Station assault which puts it before the point of no return. Presumably this is where most of us will play any future DLC.
So what do I think about the changes? I'm okay with them. Yes, some of them open up new plot holes and others don't really address some of the existing plot holes. Overall, though, I think the ending makes a lot more sense and flows a lot better. It provides a little bit better payoff even if it does still come out of left field a bit. I wish they had come up with some more plausible logic behind the Control and Synthesis endings. I'm willing to accept a master AI construct but I don't like the space magic those two choices present.
Now my largest complaint is that it's over. Sure there will be some DLC. Hopefully there will be something involving Aria T'Loak and retaking Omega since that is set up during the game already. Playing again has brought back all the memories and emotions and the enjoyment I had with this series. I still stand by the statement that this is my favorite game, favorite series, favorite universe and favorite characters. I want more Shepard and crew fighting overwhelming odds.
If you think about it, there's really no reason the story of Shepard has to end here. This series takes place in a single galaxy. What if the reapers didn't just hang out and sleep just outside the galaxy? What if they traveled to other galaxies and set up relays between galaxies? What if there were reapers outside the galaxy or in other galaxies who come back? Even if Shepard died she can be rebuilt - again. Reaper tech is now available to the galaxy so they could be better prepared for a fight for the universe instead of just a single galaxy. There's a lot of new stuff they could do even with the existing characters without having to keep track of 3 games worth of choices.
That's probably the biggest fault they have with the endings. They tried to force everybody into the same narrow path so future games don't have to account for dozens of different choices branching out across 3 games. I understand from a technical standpoint why they would want to do this. They can't keep making Mass Effect sequels and have to account for whether or not a character is alive or dead or whether or not an entire race exists or not. Never mind all the smaller choices made along the way.
No matter what happens though, I've enjoyed the journey so far and I can't wait to see what's next.