I do not like the ending. Shocking, right? I've read a few things about the ending and I have very little to add to the discussion beyond personal input. I agree with everything stated in this article on GameFront. This article was posted on Kotaku recently and is a great read because I agree with everything in it as well. I can relate to it especially well because I do feel like the ending disrespected me as the player and my character as a collaboration between myself and Bioware.
The journey I have taken over the Mass Effect series has consumed literally hundreds of hours of my life. I played through Mass Effect 1 and 2 three times each. I played all three games back to back with hardly a break in between. I started the first game in May of 2011 and had a lot of fun but I didn't finish it. I kept getting distracted by other things. It wasn't until September of 2011 that I really got into it. That's when I started playing the game heavily and continued to do so until November. In November I completed my third trip through the first game. I immediately went into Mass Effect 2. I completed my third trip through Mass Effect 2 in mid Feburary 2012 just a few weeks before the launch of Mass Effect 3. Since then I've spent my time in my first time through Mass Effect 3.
So my experience - while certainly not unique - is different to most. I played the games back to back with only a small pause while waiting for the third game to come out. The lore is fresh in my mind. The decisions and events are all fresh. There's no haze imposed by a few years between games. The largest part of my gaming life for the past 7 months has been consumed by a single game series.
The Mass Effect series is unlike anything I've ever experience before. It truly felt like a collaborative effort between myself as the player and Bioware as the writer. The series taught me to care about my characters and how to give them stories and motivations and justifications for their actions. Prior to Mass Effect I never put any thought into that. Games are narratives to me similar to a book. I consider myself an outside observer to the narrative itself and am only responsible for handling the gameplay portion. I've never viewed the character in a game as my avatar nor do I role-play the character or live out some fantasy as if it were me doing those things. It's not me, it's just a story I'm watching unfold and that's a large part of the reason I play as female characters. I would simply rather watch a female kick ass than a male.
That changed with Mass Effect and extends beyond it. In the first game I kept noticing something. I was pausing to think about the choices when they would come up. I wasn't thinking "what would I do", though. I was thinking, "What would my Shepard do?" I was beginning to think about my character beyond what was presented in-game and she was developing a history and a personality of her own that existed within the framework Bioware provided. There's surprisingly a lot of freedom in there despite the obvious constraints. The more I played the more the character became my own. She became personal to me.
It turns out the seed for my Shepard's back-story started from the very beginning. I gave her a custom name and appearance. There was something else I did, though, that turned out to have a huge impact on the character although at the time I didn't really know what I was even doing. At the start of the first game you are asked to pick a couple options about Shepard's pre-service history. I arbitrarily decided my Shepard would be a ruthless colonist.
As a result of choosing "ruthless" during the creation of my Shepard she is known as the "Butcher of Torfan". It's in reference to a an action on Torfan where she sent her squad to die. She completed her mission but lost a lot of people in doing so. The choice I made provided just a little bit of flavor text and occasionally somebody will reference it in-game but it's relatively minor. Somewhere along the way, though, I realized something about my character. More specifically, I realized I was doing something with my character as a result of the decision to go with the "ruthless" option. I realized that I was using it to ascribe to her a trait where she would always seek a way to resolve a conflict without endangering her squad - or others. Without being aware of it I had begun to allow the past events in my Shepard's life (events I did not participate in) to influence who she was now. She developed the resolve to never allow the Torfan situation happen again.
This is reflected in my game. There are 26 names on the memorial wall on the Normandy. The first lost was Kaiden Alenko. The majority of the others were lost when the original Normandy was destroyed by the Collector's. The only names added during Mass Effect 3 were Mordin Solus who chose to sacrifice himself to cure the genophage, Thane Krios who was going to die either way due to Kepral's Syndrome and Legion who died due to stupid plot contrivance (I strongly disagree with Legion dying but that's a different discussion).
That doesn't mean my Shepard always went the Paragon route, though. Indeed it doesn't mean the Paragon route was always so nice, either. I remember watching my Shepard push a defenseless guard out the window a high-rise on Illium. I recall hearing her threaten to break an elcor's legs (A Paragon choice!). Perhaps the best was on Illium when Shepard pointed out to Vasir that she was also a Spectre. One who had sacrificed the council and unleashed the rachni on the galaxy. She pointed out that taking a hostage wasn't going to work. A stone cold bluff, of course, but an effective one. There was also that one time when a stupid quarian admiral named Gerrel tried to blow up a ship Shepard was on. She punched him and threw him off the Normandy as a result.
The series had an effect on me that I now think about my characters in other games. My Dragon Age characters behave a certain way because I think about how they should behave. My character in Skyrim tends to be nice and doesn't threaten people or steal from people. The same is true for my character in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Mass Effect taught me to think about and care about my characters.
Now we come to the ending of Mass Effect 3. All that is thrown out with the presented endings. I went into the ending with an effective military strength of over 8000 so this is the "best" possible outcome for each of the three endings and how those outcomes do not match my Shepard at all.
- Blue/Control - In this ending the squad lives but Shepard dies in order to gain control of the reapers. My Shepard would never work with the reapers. She would never attempt to control the reapers. She would never attempt to control anything.
- Green/Synthesize - In this ending Shepard dies but causes all life in the galaxy to be rewritten as a synthetic-organic hybrid. This doesn't fit my Shepard either. She fought to preserve all life in the galaxy. She released the rachni queen, she cured the genophage and she brokered a peace between the quarians and geth so that all races could live. She would not try to homogenize them even if it meant galactic peace because it destroys the identity of everything.
- Red/Destroy - A chance to destroy the reapers? For her squad to survive and for her to survive? That sounds like my Shepard. The ultimate uncompromising but brutally efficient warrior and peace maker.
So what would my Shepard do? Most likely she would talk the Star Child into ceasing the galactic harvesting. I'm unsure if she would convince the Star Child to destroy the reapers or simply withdraw them but this is probably what she would do. Her backup plan? Destroy the Star Child. This would either throw the reapers into disarray without their master controller allowing a conventional victory or allow her to shut the reapers down, turn them against each other, et cetera.
My Shepard absolutely would not do any of the provided endings, though. That's where the disrespect comes in. I've been allowed for the past 100+ hours to work hand in hand with Bioware on shaping this character and then when it comes to the single most important decision in the entire franchise I'm forced to sit back and watch my character do something she would never do. Something that makes absolutely no sense at all.
The most egregious offense of them all is that the end just doesn't make sense. The Star Child uses the logic that synthetics will war with their creators and so organics must be harvested. First, if that is the case then the synthetics are the problem, not the organics. Second, Shepard, my Shepard disproved that. She brokered a peace between synthetics and organics. Synthetics were helping - of their own free will - fight the Reapers. Synthetics were helping - of their own free will - rebuild Rannoch with the quarians. They maintained Rannoch - of their own free will - for 300 years after they drove the quarians off. The synthetics of our cycle did not want to destroy their creators, they simply wanted to exist. This doesn't even touch on EDI, another synthetic who does things of her own free will. A synthetic who falls in love with a human.
The other offense I take at the ending is the lack of explanation. Yes, the Star Child was alluded to earlier in the game. I cannot remember where but there was a passing comment that the reapers were controlled by something. At the time I thought this was foreshadowing to set up future non-Shepard Mass Effect games. Topping this series in scale is a monumental task. How do you top a galactic annihilation the reapers represent? You make the reapers a tool of something else, something powerful enough to control reapers which are already so far beyond the current cycle. No, it turns out that little bit of foreshadowing was for the Star Child. Lame.
Anyway, about explanations. One of the things I love about this series is it explains itself so well. When significant gameplay changes are made the lore inside the game explains the change in a plausible way. Nothing is just slipped in there with no explanation. For example when Mass Effect 2 switched to thermal clips it was explained that the geth learned that using a thermal clip and changing that allowed more shots to be fired than simply firing slower so the gun doesn't overheat. During the lead-up to the game I wondered how Omni-blades would come out of the Omni-tool. As it turns out Omni-blades are fabricated on the fly. What about the removal of Omni-gel? Liara makes a comment on the Shadow Broker's ship about that change.
All the technology and the powers are explained in the game. There's no magic voodoo powers, biotics are explained. Faster than light travel and the mass effect itself are explained. They even explained how Shepard is able to go into virtual reality worlds like Project Overlord and the Geth Consensus. It all has a believable pseudo-science explanation behind it. Except the most important part of the game. Instead we are given an unexplained Star Child and the delicious magical galaxy altering skittle beams. Its insulting at best.
Before I give my final thought on the ending I want to address the Indoctrination Theory. Before reading any further please make sure you've seen Angry Joe's video on the Indoctrination Theory (embedded now):
First I wish to say I am familiar with Angry Joe's work. He's a smart guy but more importantly he's passionate about this stuff and I appreciate that. I've seen his passion in his other videos so I'm sure he put a lot of time and effort into this video.
However, I'm afraid I can debunk the Indoctrination Theory in a single word: Vendetta. It seems Joe (and others I guess?) forgot about Vendetta, the prothean VI you meet on Thessia. Shepard cannot be indoctrinated or Vendetta would have never interacted with her. Kai Leng's appearance on Thessia is revealed by Vendetta moments before Kai Leng steps into view. Vendetta says that he detects an indoctrinated presence and goes into a security lockdown mode. Kai Leng then appears.
If that is not proof enough that Shepard is not indoctrinated then let's also take a look at what happens on Cronos Station. Shepard and squad meet up with Vendetta again. Vendetta allows Shepard to override the security lockdown and explains what the Catalyst is. There's no way Vendetta would allow an indoctrinated person to override the security lockdown, otherwise the Illusive Man would have done that instead of hack the VI.
The next thing that happens in the game is the assault on Earth. So no, it doesn't seem like Shepard was indoctrinated after all. Vendetta has the ability to detect indoctrination and his actions very clearly indicate that Shepard was not indoctrinated.
I really do think people forgot about Vendetta because there seems to be some emphasis put on the question, "How did the Illusive Man just show up on the Citadel behind Shepard?" That's easy, because Vendetta said so. Vendetta stated that the Illusive Man fled to the Citadel and alerted the reapers about the Crucible. That explains how the Illusive Man is on the Citadel.
That still leaves the two questions, "How did Anderson beat Shepard to the control room" and "How did the Illusive Man get behind Shepard". Anderson provides the answer for that. He didn't appear in the same place as Shepard and he stated the walls shift and change. It seems reasonable to think he was in a different area and the wall shifted allowing him to reach the chamber first. Likewise the Illusive Man was nearby and the walls shifted allowing him to approach from behind. I'm really surprised so much is made over this portion of the sequence as I found it easy to explain away.
I admit the Indoctrination Theory does have a lot of good evidence to support it. However, just because the hypothesis supports the data does not mean the hypothesis is true. Some of Joe's points can be chalked up to unintentional continuity errors because it's a game. For example, Shepard's bullet wound.
I also have my own thought about Shepard. I'm not convinced she can be indoctrinated. I can think of three occasions during Mass Effect 2 where attempts to subvert her will were denied. Chronologically they were at the start of the game when Shepard wakes up on the operating table during her reconstruction. The sedatives were no longer working and she woke up. The second time was on Omega when the batarian bartender tried to poison Shepard. Shepard somehow survived the poison even though nobody else ever had. Finally during the Arrival event Shepard was once again sedated and once again she woke up on her own.
My thought is that Shepard has some sort of natural predisposition against being controlled. Specifically the fact that sedatives fail to control her on two separate occasions lends some credence to this. However, this can actually work for or against the Indoctrination Theory. It could be argued that Shepard cannot be indoctrinated at all which means the final events in the game are real (or something else I'll get to later). It could also means that Shepard is indoctrinated and that by choosing the Red/Destroy ending where Shepard takes a breath against is her resisting the indoctrination similar to how she resisted the sedatives. In this case it may very turn out that we were sold a game without a true ending.
So what is my interpretation of the ending? Well, I don't have one to be honest. The Indoctrination Theory has a lot of good points but I don't fully accept it. Treating the endings as real is just stupid and I definitely do not accept those. Maybe it's all a dream sequence and the gasp of breath was Shepard waking up with the rest to be continued via DLC? I guess we will find out. Angry Joe's video had some pretty explicit quotes from Bioware employees that certainly seem to suggest there's some ending content on the way.
As the game currently stands I reject their ending for my character. As far as I'm concerned the game ends just moments before Harbinger's beam hits Shepard and the rest is an unknown. Hopefully Bioware will release an ending that makes some sort of sense. Until then I consider the fate of my Shepard unknown which is a pretty poor resolution to such an amazing story.
I do have one other non-ending complaint, though. I have been waiting for a battle with Harbinger for two games now. I figured out pretty early on in Mass Effect 2 that Harbinger was a reaper and not a Collector General as the game was implying. Since then I've been waiting for a Shepard/Harbinger battle. Not only did Mass Effect 3 disappoint in this regard as best I can recall Harbinger didn't utter a single word. Heck, I'm not even sure it was Harbinger that hit Shepard there at the end. For all I can tell it might be reaper #632. I also missed having Harbinger engage with Shepard throughout the game. Think of the fun possibilities of hearing Harbinger comment on your progress uniting the galaxy. I don't consider this a negative but it does seem a bit strange to me that all the reapers in the game are now faceless monsters with no Sovereign/Harbinger speaker to interact with.
The only remaining thing I can think to address is a DLC ending. Let's assume for a moment that it exists. Some think it will be free and some think it will cost money. If it's real what does that mean for the industry and the game itself? If it's free and spectacular I think time will heal the wounds and people will forget. If it is paid DLC I think Bioware will burn about all the goodwill gamers have left after this ending thing. As for me? I look at it like this. I have a lot of time and money invested in these games. While I bought the first game for a few dollars and received the second one free, I still paid for the DLC for them. I also bought a Kinect specifically to play this game with voice commands and I paid for the Collector's Edition of the game. I have close to 250 hours into these games across all the various trips through them and will likely add at least one more trip through Mass Effect 3 (Not counting the time I've spent with multiplayer). This series is a significant part of my life. I have learned a tremendous amount in a variety of subjects directly or indirectly related to this game series. If there is a price on the DLC then so be it. As long as it resolve the story in a satisfactory way then I'm okay with that. However, I understand completely if you do not agree with my view on it and choose not to purchase DLC to take a stand. If it were just about any other game I'd probably refrain from purchasing, too. This series simply means too much to me not to, though.
So, my final thoughts. Despite the ending (and no Harbinger) I consider this to be the best game I've ever played (or at least 98% of it is). From start to Harbinger's attack the game is fantastic. While it is true the ending falls apart in a pretty significant way since it fails to wrap up this game as well as the series I cannot discount the rest of the game. Never before have I felt so many different emotions during a game. These are without a doubt my favorite fictional characters and this is my favorite fictional universe.
Keelah se'lai