The thing that gets me about the ending, is that it's 100% on the antagonists' terms. You just get to pick the 3 things IT does and if you refuse it just says "F you everyone died".
@bloodyidit4506 it's not really clear because no one beat them not even the objectively better races. I'm not even understanding how the conventional war lasted as long as it did based what we see happening planet to planet.
that bit about "asking one trillion dead souls" made me realize that, technically, you ABSOLUTELY could do that. The Reapers have preserved every previous cycle within themselves; there's no reason why you couldn't talk to them and get their take. Especially so if, like a piece of concept art depicts, the Reapers had surrounded the Crucible, intently watching as you make your choice (a scene which was turned into a mod, btw).
The problem with the Red Ending is you never have a scene where we see EDI drop dead and Joker crying with her in his arms. Joker doesn’t even look like he’s concerned about EDI when the ship lands. The only reference to her passing is on the Memorial, something you could easily miss. Nor are any of the Geth mourned by Tali. It’s strange how the ending tries to detach you from the horror that ending would entail.
Before the extended cut DLC, we just saw the Relays blow up. In the Arrival DLC, we saw that the explosion of a relay destroying an entire star system which meant that Earth and the entire aramda was destroyed. Hell, even if not, many races are stuck on Earth. Quarians and Turians can't eat our food, Volus can't breathe our air, and Krogan breed by the THOUSANDs. So most likely everyone dies anyway. What if you made peace with the Geth, who now intregated into Quarians suits to help with immunity, do they die as well? will the suits malfunction. its so stupid.
@@TheDancerMacabre Them toning down the destructiveness of the relays being borked was an admirable last ditch attempt to make the ending make SOME kind of sense, but man it was still so bad. With that said I somehow still manage to separate the rest of ME3 (which I thought was super good) and the last 10 minutes. Usually awful endings ruin games for me, but ME3 didn't really do that. Maybe because I'd already braced myself knowing that there was no way in hell Bioware was actually going to pull off a satisfying conclusion and back up their promises. I guess I was expecting it to go out like a wet fart all along, but was happy to have fun along the way. Oddly I can still enjoy memories of GoT all the way up to like 10% of the end for the same reason.
Red is the only ending that isn't too fundamentally stupid to stomach, but it's so tonally at odds with the rest of the series, that it could never feel satisfying. I agree, if the game overall was more gritty and brutal, and if you as Sheppard were less of an unstoppable god hero through the games, perhaps it could have worked.
I've said it before, have the Catalyst not work at all and have the ending depend on your mission readiness and the forces you amassed (Or have it be some Life Reset device that kills everything because of Halo/Deus Ex, I'm conditioned to have a "Burn it all" option) Bad Ending has your fleet lose to the reapers, Mid Ending is Pyrrhic Victory Reapers escape into dark space but you can rebuild, Good Ending is Decisive Victory, you beat back the Reapers and hunting them down, Perfect ending is Shepard, his LI, and most used Squadmate putting Adm Anderson's name on the wall (Like the MEHEM) And the Burn It All option is pretty much what "refusal" became. We see that Holocron with Liara on a grassy field fading out as it loses power, but we hear birds chirping as a way to say that Life will continue,
The actual theme of mass effect is "Diversity overcoming Uniformity". The reapers are a mechanically perfected, perfectly intelligent and malevolent force that pose an existential threat to existence BECAUSE they hate the diversity of sentient life and want to control/contain/genocide it, and its only by everyone coming together to oppose them that they can be defeated. Which is why focusing only on the theme of "AI vs Organic" makes no fucking sense. EDI, Legion, and all the other Geth are a part of the greater diversity of peoples that leads to the Reaper's defeat. To undercut their contribution with "they will always ultimately betray organics, or vise versa" rings hollow and goes directly against the whole underlying theme of the series. Honestly they didn't need a twist, they didn't need to explain anything about the reapers, they didn't even need a big finale 3 options for endings. All they needed was the narrator to tell us how things end, and where characters end up as a result. Choices throughout the series could impact what you hear from the narrator, and that would have been enough for everyone.
I'm not sure you can say it's a theme considering the Reapers were all built for a completely different plot, which was about the Reapers basically turning organics into supercomputers in order to figure out a solution to a problem that could hasten the heat death of the universe. The reason they genocided species the moment they achieved space flight is because this problem was related to the usage of element zero which all species ended up using the moment they achieve interstellar spaceflight, and the Mass Relays were built as a band-aid so species could travel throughout the galaxy without using Element Zero to feed their FTL drives. Even in Mass Effect 2 is hinted at with Tali's mission, that's all about a star dying way too fast, this was supposed to be a hint to the real problem.
Like a win state or a bittersweet lose state based on your war readiness. Make your choices in the trilogy affect that value, but it's more about the combo of choices making different values so that none of those individual choices retroactively become right or wrong.
I feel like the value of choice in narrative games is seeing how they branch into other circumstances. So I'll be real, choosing an ending doesn't mean much when it was meant to be the story's very end. As in, this ending was never meant to be followed up on. Edit: lol I commented without having started the video
or even no star chid but the same endings, just the only way to pick is by your actions over the course of the game + which friends lived or died. Still would have been cynical and blegh but so much better even for the same endings.
One of my favorite Ending Mods removes the ending choice having Shepard's journey end laying there with Anderson while the Crucible fires on it's own or gets obliterated depending on the readiness you built up. Shepard dies(?) and it falls on everything else since Shepard's choice no longer matters. Then again that mod also adds extra context about targeting the dark matter in Reapers specifically. Honestly I feel like a much better ending would've involved all remaining squadmates in the entire series reaching the "catalyst" together and all throwing in their 2 cents at the end. But it all comes down to EA~ I mean "The Reapers" not giving enough time to really make anything worth while. Doesn't excuse the Legendary Edition not having a better ending though..
Yeah I loved that mod. Shepard dying with Anderson but saving the galaxy is honestly a much more satisfying ending. It really put into perspective how much the Starchild killed the mood and pacing with his exposition dump. I was much happier just not knowing all that stuff.
One of the ending mods I used (MEHEM?) has some Alliance Bois pull Shepard's ass out even if it is illogical considering the timing of the Crucible firing.
Honestly props to Woolie. I conceptually hate the idea of the destroy ending but he's managed to describe an alt version that's much more interesting and palatable
It is interesting to me that on release, I came to the conclusion that Destroy was the most right ending, even for my pure-blue paragon Shepherd. But after they edited the ending, I concluded that Control was the most right ending, although shout-out to Rejection as a close second. I forget the exact details of my logic, but it had to do with my paragon instincts of "AI united with Organics before, it can happen again. The Star Child is too invested into the system to see the good that can come from it all, he needs to be removed."
Honestly I always choose Destroy specifically because by that point in the trilogy, reapers are shown to not only be fallible but straight up wrong about synthetics and organics. The fact that the star child essentially ignores any of your legit points made the ending to me feel like it was them arguing any point to survive, and I found that just getting rid of them entirely was safer and the most ethical option. Sure, they say geth and other synthetic life dies, but they've been wrong before, and I'd bet they were wrong this time too.
@@jimbob1862 I honestly still don't really understand what it is about the destroy ending that wipes out all synthetic life, especially in terms of EDI and the Geth, they might lose their physical frames and hardware bodies but there's no reason to assume they couldn't just backup themselves and reupload into freshly made physical forms. Even going beyond that though and assuming they couldn't all just be preserved, the lesson of sentient synthetic life being of equal significance to organics has been learned, all of organic life in the galaxy uniting to face the reapers wasn't the key factor that broke the star childs cycle, it was the fact that all organic life united with the synthetic life of that cycle to protect each-other, the fact the geth followed the quarians into battle against the reapers, the fact that EDI has formed a romantic attachment with Joker and a close friendship with her crew and Shepard, and it's astounding how all of this STILL isn't brought up even in the extended cut.
That thing you say at the start is exactly what I've always felt was wrong about ME3's ending almost verbatim. If the series is all about choices and those choices leading to different outcomes. Then the ending of the game should not be a choice, it should be the ultimate summation of all of your past choices up to that point. Having a choice at the end just goes against everything the game was building up to because it means you can be playing peace-loving paragon shep for 3 games and then suddenly get the "kill-em-all" ending, or be shoot-first-ask-questions-later renegade shep and suddenly have a change of heart at the last minute and go "maybe we can control the reapers instead" and so on. It probably wouldn't be a massive improvement, but honestly if it were me I would have simply removed that final choice and made what the Crucible does be based on the kind of character you are instead. Ideally there would be a lot more variations on what can happen of course, but ultimately the point should be that this is the ultimate consequence, not the ultimate choice.
Yeah an ending just based on choices would be nice. like I hate that the star child just goes "yeah you proved us wrong and made peace between organics and machine, but your body and choices deciding to destroy still kills you and anyone else with a pacemaker and all the Geth." Like that's so dumb. We kill so many non reapers if destroy is taken at face value. It's dumb it went with that way.
I just hate how Uncle Ruckus the SC just says it's all the synthetic's fault and no matter how your Shepard deals with EDI and the Geth he just immediately agrees and follows along. Like no matter how you played your Shepherd was secretly a Synthe-Racist all along. Even post EC you never get a chance to bring up how the Reapers tricked the Geth into warring OR the peaceful ending to Rannoch. Like that is a MASSIVE flaw they just ignored.
It really would be nice if choice heavy games (Bioware is especially egregious on this one) stop giving you a decision at the very end that defines your ending, and instead uses the choices you've made up to that point to determine what you get. Beyond just being more satisfying to my mind at least, it also avoids the problem of making it hard to get invested in the final choice when you're just a quickload away from getting every ending.
@@buckmoonmedia5113 I adore how Silent Hill 2 did it. More games should have how you play impact the story, not just what choices you make at the signposted choice moments.
Pillars of Eternity 2 did this beautifully. As you go through the game you are, knowingly or not, helping/hurting the various factions, and so while you get to pick the one you side with, that's a well-before-the-end choice. And then the final boss fight is with the non-them faction you have made strongest, and depending on how strong you have made them it is a MOTHERFUCKER
(Also it does a great job of giving all four major factions obvious benefits and problems. Welcome to the Fantasy Carribean! Nationalism, capitalism, and individualism are all having an extremely ugly puberty at the same time and everyone trying to find a balance between them is armed to the teeth!)
It's a shame that they didn't do the Dragon Age Origins type ending where you can alter your characters fate based on choices on the final night, but the actual choices during the final battle don't really matter. DAO makes its final battle feel super unsettling no matter whether Morrigan gets her way or not, because if you slept with her, you genuinely don't know if it'll work and you'll live. If you don't you know you're kind of just walking into your own grave.
Ironically EA tried to learn from their mistake and be more hands off with Bioware after that. SWTOR was basically subsidizing the 5+ years dev cycles on all their subsequent games like a mini FF14. The problem is that Andromeda and Anthem both suffered from being kinda listless ships that never nailed down a firm vision for what they were even aiming for. So before ME3 they had too much publisher interference, and after they didn't have nearly enough to hold management accountable to milestones.
It makes me appreciate Dragon Age because those games do what he wanted. What you do will create domino outcomes later down the line. Some examples were where Liliana if retaught compassion will end her quest line murdering someone in cold blood rather than show forgiveness or arrest them. If you don’t save the mercenaries Iron Bull will quietly end his friendship with you and pretend to be cool right up until the quinari show up and he betrays you. Cole if taught to embrace humanity will become more empathetic and even fall in love. Even the twist villain in the DLC has a different outcome if you became his lover during the main story. The story is built around character development and the end is less about how you deal with the bad guy and more about where everyone ends up after it.
@@Broomer52 I can not stand it, nothing beside remains around the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare low and level sands stretch far away. (I am describing the quest design and content in the open world, the choices and consequences, and anything that resembles the setting from Origins.)
here's the thing about 'Destroy'... if you play 'Arrival', and Bioware certainly expects you to, it's already a fact that Shepard would blow a mass relay up along with a populated star system just to slow the Reapers down, so they may as well have forced the 'Destroy' ending on players and made them feel bad about it if they felt EDI and the Geth deserved to live
Woolie’s idea about synthetics giving their voice is cool but doesn’t consider the fact that the Geth might be already extinct by the time you reach that point.
It's almost like they shouldn't have promised that your choices would matter if they couldn't write enough scenarios to account for all the various big choices and consequences that might have happened along the way. I agree with you! Just saying. This is still purely on Bioware talking up a big game they couldn't handle.
@@GuiltyKittheir writing biting them in the ass all over again just like with Sovereign saying "I am beyond your comprehension" only for the Reapers to have a perfectly explainable motivation and origin.
@@SoaringLettuceI mean nothing about him was beyond comprehention in ME1 either. Its just high and mighty villain talk before he gets punked by a cripple.
The problem with Synthesis is that it assumes and only works in extreme good faith, as in "this is de facto objectively speaking the best for all lifeforms", and it's certainly how it's written. It's just that even if you assume that's true, you have to assume so in explicit contradiction to a game about the strength in differences and how a united front is not an homogenous one. Cuz like, the three endings are not arguments, they're conclusions to arguments you're supposed to have gone through for 3 games. It is pretty terrible then that the arguments aren't really that well thought-out: Red Ending implies Shepard's journey has been one about putting *organic life* on top of anything else and complete disregard for synthetics, when I think it's pretty clear that Renegade is way more about humanity first, and only by association disregards synthetics. Blue's version of control is literally all you've been fighting since the first time you walk out of the Mako, which makes it pretty funny to even consider simply going "what if *we* were the party indoctrinating others?". Which makes it very distracting that there is never a real argument for Green. The points at which man and machine make something more are either stuck in DLC (David) or completely about synthetics achieving their own version of sentience that we can recognize (EDI and Legion), not about both working together in one body. There's cooperation between organics and synthetics, sure, but that's just not the same. Biotic Augmentation is a core part of worldbuilding but it affects nearly nothing of the active setting and has no impact on your character, biotic or not. It just... comes out of nowhere as the clean, neutral path forward that allows all characters to be happy, gaining something and losing very little. Ostensibly, at least. Cuz you don't get to ask anyone. Shame, cuz I'm not ascending to godhood and I'm not killing EDI. I guess they're gonna have to sue me.
Shepard *is* the argument for Synthesis. They’re 30% machine, as confirmed by EDI. The catalyst looked and you and went “Hmm, this could work” if you did a good job uniting the galaxy and gives you the option for Synthesis.
Whole heartedly agree. I've always chosen destroy and one of the biggest pushes to doing it is that during one of EDI's code altering questions, she says she see's Joker as someone she would risk her self to protect. Shepard says she found her Humanity and asks what its worth (something close to that) and EDI's response is "To the death".
I think you could have easily made the Reapers a conventionally defeatable threat, no macguffin required. Make it so only the Sovereign size Reapers have the power to make it to the galaxy from dark space with FTL, and have the bulk of reaper forces still trapped in dark space. If the reapers reach the Citadel and activate it's relay, like Sovereign tried to do, then it is game over.
I was a huge fan of the fan-made indoctrination ending. Basically the end sequence is Vancouver Kid pulling out all the stops, lying/deceiving you in one last ditch effort to prevent you from blowing them up. Realizing shepard has been able to resist traditional methods, it uses the one "weakness" of Shephard/The player... compassion, to try and save itself. "If you blow us up all these things will die/bad things will happen, but if you do what we say they can all be saved" The player picking anything but destroy is seen as Shephard succumbing to indoctrination.
I mean that b.s. alone is what makes the ending entirely stupid within the logic of the game itself. Like the entire past two games was Shepard and the crew of the SR2 learning to work with AI in the form of EDI and the Geth. Like we the player know the organics v.s. synthetics choice is a false dichotomy but I'm guessing/hoping the writers they brought in at the last minute didn't know that.
The fact that you are presented with any options at all other than destroying the Reapers is so insane. Regardless of your choices, whether you're paragon or renegade or whatever, destroying the Reapers has been the one goal since day 1 that we played an entire trilogy of games to achieve, so why would we ever even consider doing anything else? And I imagine that if EDI or the Geth/Legion were there, they'd tell you to do it, even if it meant they died. If it meant the rest of the galaxy was free from the threat of the Reapers, I think that's a sacrifice they would 100% be willing to make.
The non destroy endings are also antithetical to EVERYTHING the games had said up to that point. Convincing Saren into suicide during the Citadel Battle requires you to straight up call out synthesis with the reapers is a lie and that he's already indoctrinated also they would have total control over you as you joined them. Then in ME3 Javik tells you time and again that The illusive Man is already fully indoctrinated, because leaders in his cycle also believed they should stop trying to destroy the reapers and should instead try to control. He says that control is lie they plant in the indoctrinated so they can continue the cycle.
Out of universe I choose green every time but in universe there isn't a Shepard who exists who would choose synthesis and control only exists for very specific kinds of Shepard.
control is the only good ending. destroy doesnt even make sny srnse if it blows up all the geth and Edi it should slso destroy every ship and computer in the galaxy.
@@ZangelinConsidering the reapers have been shown to be full of shit time and time again, and EDI herself states she would protect her new humanity to the death, I always get in Destroy. You get rid of the reapers and properly broke the cycle before you even got to the crucible, and I think Shepard having faith that the synthetics he has helped and who have shown to be stupidly resilient won't actually die is the only one ending that remotely makes sense with the context of the entire trilogy.
Mass Effect 1's plot is inspired by Revelation Space: an archeologist studying a long-dead species and a spec ops dude discover that races who become sufficiently advanced are wiped out by a race of machine gods (itself taking inspiration from Saberhagen's Berserker series). The way they resolve this in the series is by appealing to another race of machine gods to save them; for humanity to win on its own would be ridiculous. Given the revelation of what the Geth are becoming in 2, I think we can see which dominoes are being set up.
The original ending planned for ME3 was so much more interesting. If I'm not mistaken, the gist of it was, the galaxy or the universe was dying out due to a strange and unexplained phenomenon with dying stars, the reapers were created as a way to try to find a solution to the problem by incorporating the different species in each cycle in order to see if one of them would result in a breakthrough. So the ending would be choosing to destroy the reapers and doom everything (eventually), or allow the reapers to harvest everybody so that they may continue to look for a solution. It would be bittersweet either way and it's a legitimately hard choice to make, what we got in comparison is so lame that even the Indoctrination Theory makes it more interesting than what we got, which is basically just three face-value choices that kind of all suck
Love that Woolie points out how fucked up the Synthesis ending is. I've seen so many people over the years since ME3 glossing over how horrific fundamentally changing everybody like that would be.
The game doesnt show they lose their mental autonomy. Its not like people turn into zombies. We can't deny the shock of the change is, but unless they give me information of the effects. I want to save the most sapient life I can.
Technorganic synthesis already exists in the universe prior to the ending and has no damaging effects to anyone, in the most technical terms possible there is a suggestion that the synthesis ending has already been chosen before, by the Shepard that came before Shepard
For everything being fucked, and your ending is just you picking your favourite flavour of fucked, I absolutely love that for Mass Effect's ending, it perfectly matches the kind of sci-fi that it is. My biggest problem with the endings, besides them just being short and uninvolving, is that they don't take your previous choices into account at all. It's just dial-an-ending. I honestly think, in this rare case, it would be better with LESS player agency. In this moment, the Shepard you've made is out of your control. The choices you've made up until that point lead to your Shepard making the choice that makes the most sense to them based on their past, and you get the ending you get. That alone would've made it more satisfying, made it feel like what you've done up until that point mattered.
My Ending Ranking goes in terms of achieving the goal of destroying the influence of the Reapers and returning the galaxy to complete autonomy: 1. High EMS Destroy 2. Low EMS Destroy 3. Refusal 4. Paragon Control 5. Renegade Control 6. Synthesis
Biggest issue for me is that there is no way to destroy the Reapers while sparing the geth/EDI. An article I read back in the day said the best outcome would be Shep and Garrus clinking drinks on a beach while the camera zooms out to show a Reaper husk in the ocean. I agree with this.
Personally, i always thought the ending coice should've been this situation: The Crucible will destroy the Reapers, but the energy output to channel it across the Relay System is so massive that it will cause the local Mass Relay to explode, destroying Sol and Earth. Alternatively, you can adjust it to the energy output is more forcefully pushed through saving Earth, but causing SEVERAL MRs throughout the Galaxy to errupt. Do you sacrifice Sol to save the Galaxy, or sacrifice half the Galaxy to save Sol?
I’ve thought a better ending would be a choice between destroying the Reapers, or Liberating them. The first would also sabotage all reaper tech, disrupting the relays, and anything else with reaper tech installed. Everyone in the Sol system would get stuck there. Liberation would restore individuality to Reapers and Husks. Some might keep fighting, but they wouldn’t be cohesive. Some would go mad. Some would run.
I think the only thing about the dialogue about the ending is it opens up more options. For control, if a single overlord is too much, what about a council with a representative of each planet or something. If synthesis violates bodily autonomy, what about editing the crucible to only assist those who accept the change? If red is locked in from their perspective and the synethics fight to survive, what if you dont want to pull that trigger? I'd rather just have gotten the dark matter plotline instead of this fundamentally flawed organic vs synthetic framing.
I think a good fix to the synthesis ending would be making it only work for people with cybernetics already, basically the reaper code update that the geth got, but for the cyberware that everyone in the setting has for their omnitools
the destroy ending never specified that destroying the reaper would obliterate synthetics as that universe knew it as much as it was just a mass emp,like what’s stopping anyone in that universe from rebuilding/reprogramming the geth or EDI?
True, but it would still be a massive loss of life, assuming you believe synthetics are a valid form of life. And you would be the one pressing the genocide button.
I'm not a smart person, but I knew the story was screwed the instant they did the whole "we are incomprehensible" thing with the Reapers clear back in ME1. If you do that as an author, you now have two paths open to you and they're both equally bad dead ends story-wise. A) Never explain them. Pretty unsatisfying unless it's actual Lovecraft territory, which ME is very much not. B) Explain them and walk back the "incomprehensible" thing, but also be aware that anything a human author writes is going to seem pretty petty and pathetic and unworthy as a rationale that they boasted was "beyond your understanding". Because whatever a human comes up with... is going to be perfectly understandable by a human reader. And that's the best outcome where the author's rationale makes sense. And it's still awful. Mass Effect took option B but either way they went would have been equally bad. Writers, if you have a mysterious antagonist, unless you intend to have a moment of humility and self-reflection in your antagonist later on, NEVER have them boast that their plans or motivations or existence is "beyond human understanding". That's so bad unless you're literally writing about eldritch abominations, which the Reapers aren't. They're wholly understandable and easily contextualized. Which isn't bad for a villain. Unless you promised that they can't be understood. I would even accept "Sovereign was lying to try and intimidate you" but that's not how the games play it off.
I can think of a couple stories where the weird shit remained unexplained without being necessarily 'eldritch'. Movie adaptation of Christine, you never find out why the car is alive, it just is, and it's honestly better than the book where it's haunted by the previous owner. Parasyte manga and anime, the body snatchers themselves don't know where they came from. Are they aliens? Are they the Earth fighting back against humankind and our pollution? Who knows. Steven Spielberg's first movie, Duel, you never find out why the truck driver wants to kill the main character. It obviously helps that they never boast about their "unknowableness" but it's clearly doable, those stories are still engaging, even if we don't know everything.
@SoaringLettuce hi! You have very good points, but I think I need to clarify. I might not have written that out coherently. I'm specifically talking about when an antagonist within the context of the story directly tells the protagonist, I am incomprehensible. I am beyond your understanding. I didn't quite so much mean a story where the antagonist isn't fully explained in every detail. My bad.
@@GuiltyKit no, i got what you meant, that's why i said "it helps that they don't boast about ther unknowableness" fucking hell, Sovereign sounds like a hipster talking about how we could never understand his favorite music, just with an evil voice filter
EDI's voice is involved in the Destroy decision. She says to you beforehand that destroying the Reapers is "worth non-functionality". As for the Geth, permitting the Reapers to do anything but die just to spare themselves is something even they would deem illogical.
Yeah, I have to agree that steering a player towards a single ending is probably the best idea, maybe even have a purely linear Mass Effect 3 that is massively varied to take into account all the choices over the previous entries, although I imagine people would hate that as Mass Effect was built around it's open world, RPG elements. Plus, while the overall plot was grand in scale, I feel like the personal development of Sheperd and his entourage is absolutely what people savoured the most with this franchise, and it should have been centre stage for this ending. How people react and how they intend to rebuild. I imagine that would still require a lot of attention to take into account a lot of minor and major relationship choices, and I'm no developer so I would have no idea where you would even begin to write and programme that all in. Although, judging from the Mass Effect 4 teaser, I feel like they're hinting that the ending was always supposed to be red.
100% agree that there shouldn’t have been an ending choice. Choosing your ending basically invalidates the majority of the choices you made in the prior games
So using this thought and expanding on it : During the final push before you get to Maurader Shields , EDI is given the Cypher for the key code to activate the Crucible , she has to be do a direct upload , heading into the Crucible and so you go with her platform/body to the area you fight illusive man , instead of it being illusive man , it's nothing but the upload Staton. As you begin the upload , a squad of Cerberus lead by TIM in a special Atlus suit arrives and so a final boss battle begins. after you beat them while EDI is uploading it becomes a cut scene battle where illusive man is still trying to convince shepard of "U-manity"/control ending. Shepard is seemingly overrun by Cerberus forces when suddenly the representatives of some of the big choices up to this point in the game arrive to help with the Geth being the brunt of the main force if you helped them and alll led by Anderson. Anderson is able to break through and help shepard just to get fatally wounded by TIM. Shepard can fatally wound TIM in return if they renegade choice or just disable the mech using paragon. From there EDI gives something of the speech the conduit did where she says they have two options , either use the Crucible to destroy all artifical life forms, including EDI and the Geth or give control, Shepard should be torn with Anderson saying it's shepard's choice but he's proud of them either way before dying. EDI and the Geth would chime in with their dialogue with it reflecting the choices of shepard but in the paragon version EDI should be giving a tearful goodbye to Joker if her relationship side quest was completed and the Geth giving their good byes to the quarians(if alive )/the quarians remains (if destoryed). The Synthesis solution would probably come from joker asking if there thees another way when shepard is thinking and EDI getting "creative" using all the war assets (namely all the tech put into the Crucible ) to find out she can 'theoretically' with only a .000001% chance of failure or horrible mutations. All ending with shepard being left alone to press the final button either because the upload fries EDI (destory ending), EDI shuts down to get her form ready for the upload of shepard's virtual self (control ending ) or the process requires a cyborg to use as template (synthesis). Either way from there you get the ending. Instead of Joker running away and crashing he enters the upload room and: - Holds edi's charred remains while looking at shepard's body (destroy with low war assets ) / shepard looking hurt but still alive (destory with high assets ending ), - Attempts to hold EDI just to have EDI not return the hold and then her body leave to go elsewhere (control with low assets)/EDI speaks in a robotic version of shepard's voice that she's gone and that they're sorry before leaving him.(control with high assets ) or embraces EDI And is embraced back as they feel each other's faces with their new body (synthesis ). Thanks for reading , what do you think?
Well, the destroy ending is the real (or I suppose 'canon') ending of the trilogy. Not only do we know that from the teasers of the next mass effect, but there's a secret scene in the destroy ending that shows that Shepard actually survives the ending.
People have already said as much, but yeah, making the endings hinge on a final choice is probably the lynchpin mistake because it meant they all had to be delivered in shallow ways. The best way to end such a long-running story would probably have been to hit the dramatic climax, defeat the Reapers, and then provide some kind of more meaningful epilogue. A few hours to cool down with the characters in a post-problem environment. Let us see what people are doing, how they're living, what rebuilding looks like, in a way that's deeper than a few still image pans (or even worse, not at all, pre-citadel dlc). The entire Citadel DLC would probably have been better as an epilogue. That level of content for a post crisis canon. Remove the idea of multiple endings and dial it down to 'destroy the reapers' have the aftershocks be more dependent on war assets and choices on the major planets, (the Quarian/Geth war, the Genophage, plus things like the Rachni and Batarian survivors). It would be fine to spend some time wandering the world they built to see what kind of trajectory it was heading for after the Reapers were gone, no arbitrary combat sections, just character interaction and exploration. I think the steepness of the climax and the sudden shock to credits is what makes any ending so unfulfilling, like, when you get invested in these characters and their stories and you just cut them off at a point like so many dangling threads with no closure or expression, it's awful. Does Garrus rejoin C-Sec or the Turian military? Did Wrex succeed in laying the groundwork for a new Krogan republic? Do Joker and EDI adopt an orphaned Elcor kid as they start to put together their nuclear family? Does Tali find herself deliberating with the other admirals about Quarian-Geth marriage laws? Does Kolyat Krios open an orphanage on the citadel in honour of his father? Does Falere campaign for better treatment or medical research for the Ardat Yakshi in hopes of curing their genetic condition, rather than being relegated to secret monasteries as 'the shame of the Asari people'? Does Maelon take over Mordin's clinic on Omega as a means of making amends with the spirit of his mentor? These questions are all plenty stupid, but exploring any of them and more for a while, just as a means to show us how the galaxy would start to be after the meat of the Mass Effect storyline would have done a lot to make it more 'satisfying'. As it is, ME doesn't fade out gracefully, it just cracks off at the end and rolls credits. And part of me feels like I can blame the multiplayer and marketing exec bullshit like that. I really liked the multiplayer in 3, I thought they did a pretty good job of making a solid gameplay loop with fun additions, but that doesn't change that it never should have been there in the first place. Whatever time was wasted developing that (and part of me wonders if this is also why Cerberus was such a big deal in the 3 story, with their infinite money and resources out the ass, because there needed to be another enemy faction to stack the multiplayer deck) could have been devoted to the real game and provided that much more. But these are all what-ifs and did-thats and ultimately we got what we got. Roll on ME4, I hope you're not as lame as Andromeda.
why i always run "Audemus' Happy Ending Mod" mod. It also makes the game end right where Anderson passes. completely gutting the star child and the choice section. also Its the destroy ending, but where it doesn't nuke the geth or Edi. and like the hidden cutscene where if you're war assets were high enough, shepherd survives. Then you can have it roll straight into the Citadel DLC, as postgame content. removes all mention of the war, reapers, and all that jazz. also the ending is orange
It's veeeery different but I like what Front Mission 3 does. The first time you play that game, you are not making an educated choice, you simply respond to a piece of dialogue and the story is simply the consequences to that one response.
Damn, Woolie really is on to something here. Keeping the ME3 ending as-is, but throwing out the Star Child completely and replacing it with a 3-way argument between Blue, Red and Green argued by The Illusive Man, Andersson and Saren respectively. Well, Saren's dead so someone else would have to represent Synthesis. Maybe EDI? Or Javik, being partly-controlled by Harbringer? Or if the argument took place inside Shepard's head as Harbringer is trying to indoctrinate him, in that case we could bring Saren back for that scene. It might not have made the ending GOOD per se, but it would've made it a lot more palatable than the litteral Deus Ex Machine that is the Star Child.
I view the endings like this: red puts all negative consequences of Shepard’s choice on others, green distributes the consequences amongst everyone, and blue puts the negative consequences on Shepard (at least for how I played my Shepard). The Red ending is the one I never choose since even as massively fucked the other choices are, they still pale in comparison to genocide. I usually go blue, since I feel like my Paragon Shepard would not use the power given to him and just have all the Reapers disappear into deep space forever.
They should have given you 4-5 more hours after the choice to deal with groups that were created/affected by your choice. A group that was affected negatively, positively, and perceived themselves to have been affected negatively. Running missions to fight some and stabilize the situations and head on dealing with the consequences of your actions.
The problem with the ending is its lack of commitment. If they stuck with any 1 of the endings to see it and their consequences through they would have been great. Red making the Geth use their new found independence to make the ultimate choice to save everyone else or fight to the bitter end to stop you if youve been against them. Blue focusing more on Sheppard themselves and the choices youve made and if youre capable of being a leader with that kind of power without becoming the Reapers 2.0. Green ending focusing on the galaxy as a whole and how they come to terms with losing their full autonomy and rights to have chosen whether they wanted to be synthetic. Even the fight option showing the sacrifices needed to be made and give real consequences to your war efforts on bringing the galaxy together while the Vancouver child just offers a more strategic way to beat the reapers or a weapon that helps win battles but not on multiple fronts at once. The fact the endings now are so binary with no real consequence or setup besides "everyone who ever threw out a guess for how to beat the reapers was actually partially right, they just couldnt do it themselves" just makes it silly and like it was never about Sheppard's strength of character that got them to the end, but because they were just a good shoot gunner. Really any spitballed idea for how to write a ME3 is better than the ending we got, I would have been happier with a series that guts the Reapers entirely, all powerful enemies you have to stop in a silly way sucks, focus more on the power imbalance of the galaxy and if its better to get everyone to choose to come together and build a better society or get a leg up over them because you think you can rule better than them and they would probably do the same to you anyway
I've been thinking about this for a while since LE came out, and this is one of the best ideas I've heard. Love the suggestion of a Renegade vs Paragon difference when consulting the Geth about their own potential extinction.
For me, getting a perfect ending out of what we got would need only a few adjustments. 1) Change Vancouver Child. It can start out as the kid when it first appears, but over the course of the conversation, change it into a more Reaper/Leviathan form. 2) Give the Crucible a purpose/ Make the Catalyst's plan not stupid. Have it reveal that the Crucible was a Reaper invention set up as a test for organic races. It's just a big ol' emitter and the Catalyst/Citadel chooses the output. The current cycle is the first to ever pass this test, so the AI stops the Reapers dead in their tracks, sending a cease fire signal and possibly live footage to every non-Reaper present. 3) Variable endings. Instead of unlocking more endings as you gain war assets, have them all from the get-go. Simply scale the effectiveness of the choices the same way the Destroy ending has 3 variations (everyone dies/ only AI dies/ Shepard lives). Do that with every flavor of ending. (Control: Shep is overwhelmed and turns evil/ Shep does not turn evil, fights Reapers by possessing them individually/ Shep is good and controls all Reapers at once) (Synthesis: It's crude and everyone is husk-like/ seamless transition, mechs become AI/ seamless and also everyone has free internet in their brains). 4) Epilogue. Possibly the most important, I want a playable epilogue level and not a slideshow. Let us play as a crewmate or Shepard (if they lived) several years later in a big reunion with all of the surviving Normandy crew members. They can all have dialogue about what's happened since the end of the war. This can also include fan-service such as an unmasked Tali (if the Geth survived and helped the Quarians adapt) or Shepard having a kid (if romancing a human or Liara). Maybe even see a bit of Javik's book if he reached that conclusion.
i just came up with something, please criticize: Reaper forces are highly concentrated on Earth, not every single one of them, but certainly enough that if all of those suddenly died, they would lose the war in the long run. Force the 'Destroy' ending on the player and make it so it only affects the proximity of Earth, the Geth aren't at risk. The final choice is wether to call the Normandy to extract you, getting caught by the pulse, losing EDI while nearly dying due to your own dependence on cybernetics, precariously holding onto life at the expense of a synthetic, or tell them to book it, leaving you behind to die as the Crucible collapses, but saving EDI because you believe she is alive and worth saving.
All I wanted from the ending was to destroy all the reapers and for my Sheppard to survive so he could spend his time after with the one I romanced with. THAT'S IT!! In my view it would have been the perfect ending for such a long journey. Woolie's ending would have been so vastly better than the current ones too.
Having just beaten the trilogy myself, here's a little theory that makes the ending better imo: The star child is lying AND freaking out that shepard's about to destroy the reapers. It's some sort of virtual thingy, so hiding it's emotions would be easy. It only just learned what the crucible can do when the citadel was hooked up to it, and is trying to process it. So when Shepard gets there and wants answer, it's stuck going "uuhhhh you COULD do the thing you came here to go or you can uhh uhh take...control of the reapers YEwait that means replacing me. ahhh....Oh! just synthesize everything, obviously this is the best idea." It obviously wants Shepard to pick that, so why even _tell_ Shepard about the other two? Because it's stalling for time and trying to think up a way out of this, which is why it throws in "also the geth and edi will be destroyed so there's some downside to this ending! Also you will also die!" But? BUT? unless i missed it, you do not see a single non-reaperized being get got in the best ending. Not a single geth. The only evidence is Edi's name on the memorial wall(also doesn't make sense. her mind is still in the normandy, not the sexbot body. unless you're telling me the red laser is somehow precise enough to only target that one part of the normandy while still having to hit "every single synth in the galaxy"?) AND in the best ending Shepard is still alive, despite being point fucking blank there. That in it self is evidence the star child isn't 100% right about everything. Of course, there's some flaws to this theory, such as that Edi's name IS on the wall, but i think there's enough evidence to make this believable.
Geth takes on the destroy ending based on Shepard morals. Paragon “Our options are binary, Annihilation or enslavement to the old machines. Human history contains a precedent for this scenario: ‘give me liberty or give me death’”. Middle “The Crucible will destroy all current synthetic life, but does not exclude creation of new programs and platforms in the future. Projections for views on synthetic life are improving, new Geth will be made.” Renegade “The combined alliance assault on Earth provided a sufficient diversion for larger platforms to exit the galaxy and return when the Reapers leave for the next cycle, or to establish new networks outside of our galaxy. Current timeframe however shows these platforms remain within range of the Crucible, yet current tactical projections show total defeat of Victory Fleet before they escape. We can not allow you to continue.”
Something I thought about during this ME3 LP was that its absolutely ridiculous that the game spends so much time developing EDI and then doesn't even have her present in the final decision on the Citadel to weigh in on what's happening.
Time crunch really is just a double edged sword sometimes it kills the problem faster, but the other half of the time it gets pushed back into yourself and you're left fucked over.
Generally I love your idea Woolie, it's fantastic. It would definitely have been better than what we got. Personally I like the idea of keeping the general structure of the final mission we got, and just rearranging some shit. Obviously make the mission better because it kinda sucked. Delete the Star Child conversation and Synthesis as an option, they're the result of two people shitting their pants and make as much sense. Agreeing with TIM even though there's no way to roleplay Shepard that evil is how you pick Control and the game ends there. Defying TIM is how you proceed toward Destroy and you get an Atris/Kreia style dialogue boss battle to pay off Harbinger being super tilted at Shepard's success. However many war assets you collected determines whether Destroy actually does what the Crucible was built to do over countless cycles, Destroy The Reapers And Only The Reapers, or misfire and catch more and more synthetic life. This way is a lot less philosophically interesting, but also a lot less needs to be changed in the narrative to still give us sensible payoffs to how the games built up to the end.
It should have just been what was originally planned: The Reapers have to harvest all space-faring life, because the use of THE MASS EFFECT is creating dark energy to extinguishes the suns of the galaxy. So the choice Shepard would be confronted with, is a cynical one: Do you destroy the Reapers at the cost of ending the galaxy in a few years or do you let the Reapers win, to ensure the galaxy can be a birth of new life forever? I like that subversion, because the Renegade path would be the "good" ending, while the "for the greater good" paragon ending would be the bad one.
I have posted this other places but I how the "canon" ending for mass effect 4 is that the crucible signals got mixed. The relays got destroyed. Maybe a dozen reapers are controlled/allied with living beings but the rest were destroyed and the pieces strewn across battlegrounds are indoctrinating people to reaper cults around the galaxy. Geth are mostly destroyed but upgraded with synthesis and people's cybernetics are upgraded with reaper code in a similar manner which could allow for a new power system and less racism towards synthetics. Geth and Quarians are similar numbers on Rannoch with racial tensions but also cool melting pot stuff happening. Quarians having the most synthetic/cybernetic upgrades could even be maskless now if they choose. Earth is ruined but has a huge multi species culture from all the fleets leftover and the citadel. Then for YOUR ending you just weigh the world state toward your choice. If you choose destroy, synthetics would be rarer, have less political power change some quest lines, chose quarians during the war, maybe the few remaining geth are subservient once more to the quarians but all full people like Legion was. Conversely of you chose synthesis, the quarians and geth could be working together/cohabitating but extremists on both sides would reject such a notion. There's a way forward but I think this is the only viable way without completely invalidating peoples choices. You also have to make the extended ending basically non canon or update it to confirm with the new world state
Man, imagine if the Geth sacrificed themselves to kill the Reapers, and and then there was a faction of Quarians in Mass Effect 4 that was trying to bring them back.
They had something going on with the ending, but they went too far with the organic vs synthethic. Just "we harvest organics to preserve their legacy and letting other species have their time" would work. Harvest the protheans so that humans and the others get their time, etc. No need to introduce the synthetics part. Or just add that their synthethic creations are added to the reapers. Synthesis just cames out of nowhere and its sort of a "golden ending" so no hard choice. Its just magic. Destroy is weird, maybe it its destroyed or neutralized eezo, forcing civs to go another path? Because why does it destroy synthethics but not all computers? Maybe it targeted reaper code and both the Geth and EDI have it now. Boy, I'm back in 2012!
The crucible transforms people to psychics. Psychics become super psychics. The reapers stop fighting. They go to the crucible and release heralds representing each of the reaper races. They explain the coming cataclysm your cycle has evolved you are ready to solve it. Safeguard the universe.
the ultimate failure of the control ending in mass effect 3 is the fact that cerberus and the illusive man are not respented as rational actors that are willing to cooperate with shepard. they are presented as indoctrinated madmen from the start of me3, so to have them ultimately have a correct solution to the problem at hand feels in very poor taste. i, for one, feel as though cerberus should have been handled as an additional force to back, where throughout the game you can pick choices that benefit the standard "destroy the reapers" or the radical cerberus "subvert the reapers". the control ending would, then, only be possible if you flirt with the ideas that the illusive man suggests and help them along enough. you could still have skirmishes against cerberus throughout the game (or against other polities, even), and how much you aid cerberus determines how desperate they become, with zero aid eventually leading to TIM getting so desperate that he accidentally exposes himself to indoctrination as he turns to more desperate measures.
Better endings: 1 sheppard gets to have a harem with all the girls 2 sheppard kills the entire cast of mass efffect andromeda 3 sheppard gets isekaid to dragon age 4 the fan theory everyone and their mother thought 5 you get to snap the stupid child neck..
Personally, I'm fine with the options presented, but not the way they're presented or unlocked. It should have been more resonant with how every other conflict in ME resolves. Normally, when you get to the climax of a particular series of events, you're presented with a choice. The default white option is usually "There's nothing we can do here but kill each other." But if your Paragon or Renegade is high enough, you unlock new blue and red options to talk or alternately resolve the situation. The way it should have gone at the end is: The default white ending choice should have been the "destroy the synths" option. And if your Paragon or Renegade isn't high enough, that would be the ONLY option(other than "shoot child"). Your character can't think of any other solutions. If your Renegade is VERY high, you unlock the red "control the reapers" option. Become the master of the galaxy, ensuring peace through tyranny and absolute control. If your Paragon is VERY high, you unlock the blue "synthesis" option. The peaceful option where everyone learns to get along. So at the end, you're once again presented with a choice, but your options are limited based on the moral leanings of all your earlier choices.
So HeavyEyed presents a possibility to this that's fairly similar: ruclips.net/video/uIhFsCIlnxE/видео.html I really like the idea of the game not giving your a "final choice" and instead the thing we always like: The game challenging your choices up to now and making you defend your stance. The argument that organic and synthetic life can't get along at the end of the game falls apart so hard if you've managed to successfully rewrite the Geth code and peacefully resolve the Geth/Quarian conflict. So that last moment in the game needs less choices and more a comprehension of the core theme most of the game has been presenting: How to resolve conflicts, how to provide justice, etc.
I've always wanted to play Dragon Age, but I always put it off because I'd hate to play a game that was supposed to set up a trilogy and went downhill immediately.
@@Kango234 It's not a set up game tho? Definitely not as much as ME1 is for its franchise. DA1 is quite self contained and conclusive. Next games barely build on top of that. Mostly actively destroy and ignore whatever interesting things were in previous ones tbh
Yeah, despite the name "Dragon Age: Origins", it's a completely self contained title with a pretty definitive ending. I never played 2 but I believe it's more of a spin off title from what I've heard. And Inquisition is an entirely separate story that I honestly thought was pretty terrible & boring. So you're fine sticking to Origins, it's up there with Bioware's best!
The reason the Mass Effect 3 ending is so bad is because it's a completely different timeline from Mass Effect 1 and 2 and doesn't fit with the themes at all. So let's take things back a bit. There were some leadership changes in Mass Effect 3, and within those changes a new person was in charge of the story. And they looked at the original story, which was much more complex. And they said... No, that story is too intellectual. Because if there's anything sci-fi gamer nerds hate it's intellectual stories that make them think about their consequences and what things mean. So, the original plot was replaced with a very simplistic Biological Lifeform vs A Lifeform plot. And since the original choices from the first two games were not playing into that, it means that they no longer count. Walk down the hallway to your ending, do not get to talk to literally any of the hundreds of allies and NPCs you made along the way about your ending. So with that said... The original plot. In the first two games, there are occasionally mentions of starts going out and dark energy. And it turns out... The Reapers aren't actually evil in the traditional sense. They're evil from our point of view as they're operating on blue and orange morality. But genocide isn't their goal. Protecting the universe from destruction is the goal. It turns out, that using Element Zero speeds up the heat death of the universe. The ultimate goal of the Reapers is to stop the heat death of the universe and when they're not wiping out all life that now uses element zero they're supposed to be working on that. For this reason, when a species proves promising, they offer that species the chance to become a Reaper themselves. As it turns out, the very first Reaper was actually a biological race that converted themselves into a giant hive mind space ship to complete their mission and have been offering that choice to species that proved they could offer something to the table. And suddenly, the Human Reaper at the end of Mass Effect 2 makes a lot more sense. Humans were responsible for the death of a Reaper. Something thought impossible. So of course the Reapers wanted a human to Reaper transformation so they could get that human ingenuity to help solve the problem. Shepard meanwhile... Has become a personal threat for being responsible for the death of a Reaper, and is now the face of the heat death of the universe which explains why they'd just start 2 with putting a hit out on them and having the Normandy blown up. So... Get to what the original endings were going to be... Based on your choices... One of three things would happen. 1. The entirety of human civilization becomes a Reaper to help work on the problem over who knows how long. Hey, you like instrumentality? Cause time to all become one perfect being to save the universe. 2. You prove unworthy, and destructive and you and everyone else is wiped out by the reapers. 3. You prove there's another option, one that doesn't require the eradication of species that achieved element zero level usage. If I had to guess, I would say this would probably be related to making as many allies as possible to get as many scientific discoveries as possible in order to find whatever this third option was. But yeah, the new guy in charge threw all that out, because it was apparently too smart for gamers. I just can't get over that. So basically, the Reapers are actually well Intentioned Extremists. And it turns out, they're actually basically the anti-spirals. And that was thrown out because the new guys assumed no one would like that because it would make them think too much. Aren't you so happy we got this ending instead!? I need to go slam my face into a wall.
one small way you could make the choices amazing is if the best choice at the end wasn't the destroy, synthesis or control ending....it was the refuse ending. It would be amazing if the very end of this series defined by being given binary choices you choose to reject the very foundation that you operated on for the entire series. overcome the cycle of the reapers by literally defying the cycles of choice and consequence.
I don't think Saren is equal to Synthesis Ending. Saren was talking about becoming Cthulhu Cultists. Green Ending is humanity _becoming_ an Elder God-- unlocking our AT Field capabilities as 'one' collective Angel.
The ending doesn’t matter. How mass effect 4 starts matters. I think they should just rewind the clock and do something else. Come up with something new. Do purple
Rainbow ending, the crucible signals got mixed, all tapes are destroyed with rape cultists worshipping, some people had cyberspace synthesized into their bodies (allowing for new powers), geth are partially destroyed but upgraded and these upgrades mean they can't make new ones as fast so they are equal power and sharing rannoch with quarians. Set it relays are destroyed but rebuilt and the game is set in the reconstruction period of a galaxy that got used to being independent
destroy will be the canon ending, it's already canon that Shepard blows up a relay along with a whole star system just to slow the Reapers down. i'm betting they'll go with destroy and set it a thousand years into the future, with Liara being the only remaining member of the crew still alive, so they can remember the old trilogy while mostly leaving it behind to begin a new story.
Each ending has consent issues if you see advanced robots as being akin to life. Just a question of which faction you want to ignore. Shepherd can adapt the reapers to be solutions to any emerging problems in blue, and I wasn’t feeling very empathetic towards the reapers. I wasn’t convinced that green would truly end racism. Red ending destroys the tech, but doesn’t prevent the problem from re-occurring. I like Woolie’s suggested improvements. Tim folding like a wet paper bag in the debate section was disappointing.
Also there's a really good episode of Star Trek Voyager where Tuvok and Neelix have an accident in the teleporter and as a result give birth to the new lifeform Tuvix which is a completely separate entity from the prior two like how Gogeta/Vegeto works, and ultimately Captain Janeway determines they don't deserve their life and kills Tuvix against their wishes to restore the individual forms of Tuvok and Neelix Which is kinda how the synthesis ending goes
One other thing to keep in mind about the "asking a trillion dead souls" is that those trillion dead souls inhabited multiple time periods, empires, wars, etc and as a result they would not be capable of providing you with any valuable data or information regarding the choice you have to make for those who still yet live and all potential futures This is mirrored in the ideology and philosophy of Javik, The Last Prothean Do you root yourself in a dead past that does not exist, do you do what needs to be done to secure another sunrise, or do you simply sit and watch as nature takes it's course You're the Shepard, you get to choose where the flock goes.
The thing that gets me about the ending, is that it's 100% on the antagonists' terms. You just get to pick the 3 things IT does and if you refuse it just says "F you everyone died".
I mean the antagonist is kinda unstoppable.
YOLO
@tarfielarchelone2674 thats poor writing and it was clear you could win against them.
@bloodyidit4506 it's not really clear because no one beat them not even the objectively better races.
I'm not even understanding how the conventional war lasted as long as it did based what we see happening planet to planet.
that bit about "asking one trillion dead souls" made me realize that, technically, you ABSOLUTELY could do that. The Reapers have preserved every previous cycle within themselves; there's no reason why you couldn't talk to them and get their take. Especially so if, like a piece of concept art depicts, the Reapers had surrounded the Crucible, intently watching as you make your choice (a scene which was turned into a mod, btw).
The minds of the harvested are indoctrinated though. Can they be trusted to speak for their former lives?
Name of the mod?
@@XDestroyoxZx Zen Reaper Mod
The problem with the Red Ending is you never have a scene where we see EDI drop dead and Joker crying with her in his arms.
Joker doesn’t even look like he’s concerned about EDI when the ship lands. The only reference to her passing is on the Memorial, something you could easily miss. Nor are any of the Geth mourned by Tali.
It’s strange how the ending tries to detach you from the horror that ending would entail.
Before the extended cut DLC, we just saw the Relays blow up. In the Arrival DLC, we saw that the explosion of a relay destroying an entire star system which meant that Earth and the entire aramda was destroyed.
Hell, even if not, many races are stuck on Earth. Quarians and Turians can't eat our food, Volus can't breathe our air, and Krogan breed by the THOUSANDs. So most likely everyone dies anyway.
What if you made peace with the Geth, who now intregated into Quarians suits to help with immunity, do they die as well? will the suits malfunction.
its so stupid.
@@TheDancerMacabre Them toning down the destructiveness of the relays being borked was an admirable last ditch attempt to make the ending make SOME kind of sense, but man it was still so bad. With that said I somehow still manage to separate the rest of ME3 (which I thought was super good) and the last 10 minutes.
Usually awful endings ruin games for me, but ME3 didn't really do that. Maybe because I'd already braced myself knowing that there was no way in hell Bioware was actually going to pull off a satisfying conclusion and back up their promises. I guess I was expecting it to go out like a wet fart all along, but was happy to have fun along the way.
Oddly I can still enjoy memories of GoT all the way up to like 10% of the end for the same reason.
@@GuiltyKit same. Mass Effect 3 is still a good game up until the last part. Just head canon your ending or use a mod.
Red is the only ending that isn't too fundamentally stupid to stomach, but it's so tonally at odds with the rest of the series, that it could never feel satisfying. I agree, if the game overall was more gritty and brutal, and if you as Sheppard were less of an unstoppable god hero through the games, perhaps it could have worked.
I never even knew she died
The finale isn’t out yet! Woolie react spoilers.
Nope, its already out on Twitch via the vod. ❤
@@ianlappen9782 That's the manga it doesn't count. He's talking about the anime.
I love how Woolie just spitballs and writes a better ending than the one we got
Woolie rewrote the End of Evangelion
I've said it before, have the Catalyst not work at all and have the ending depend on your mission readiness and the forces you amassed (Or have it be some Life Reset device that kills everything because of Halo/Deus Ex, I'm conditioned to have a "Burn it all" option)
Bad Ending has your fleet lose to the reapers, Mid Ending is Pyrrhic Victory Reapers escape into dark space but you can rebuild, Good Ending is Decisive Victory, you beat back the Reapers and hunting them down, Perfect ending is Shepard, his LI, and most used Squadmate putting Adm Anderson's name on the wall (Like the MEHEM)
And the Burn It All option is pretty much what "refusal" became. We see that Holocron with Liara on a grassy field fading out as it loses power, but we hear birds chirping as a way to say that Life will continue,
@@Vanity0666 i love both the Eva endings
I mean, it's not that hard, considering the canon endings
Imagine if the original ending wasn't leaked and they didn't have to scramble to make a new one
The actual theme of mass effect is "Diversity overcoming Uniformity".
The reapers are a mechanically perfected, perfectly intelligent and malevolent force that pose an existential threat to existence BECAUSE they hate the diversity of sentient life and want to control/contain/genocide it, and its only by everyone coming together to oppose them that they can be defeated. Which is why focusing only on the theme of "AI vs Organic" makes no fucking sense. EDI, Legion, and all the other Geth are a part of the greater diversity of peoples that leads to the Reaper's defeat. To undercut their contribution with "they will always ultimately betray organics, or vise versa" rings hollow and goes directly against the whole underlying theme of the series.
Honestly they didn't need a twist, they didn't need to explain anything about the reapers, they didn't even need a big finale 3 options for endings. All they needed was the narrator to tell us how things end, and where characters end up as a result. Choices throughout the series could impact what you hear from the narrator, and that would have been enough for everyone.
I'm not sure you can say it's a theme considering the Reapers were all built for a completely different plot, which was about the Reapers basically turning organics into supercomputers in order to figure out a solution to a problem that could hasten the heat death of the universe. The reason they genocided species the moment they achieved space flight is because this problem was related to the usage of element zero which all species ended up using the moment they achieve interstellar spaceflight, and the Mass Relays were built as a band-aid so species could travel throughout the galaxy without using Element Zero to feed their FTL drives.
Even in Mass Effect 2 is hinted at with Tali's mission, that's all about a star dying way too fast, this was supposed to be a hint to the real problem.
IMO, everything would've been better if there was one well-developed ending and no Star Child to spoonfeed you the consequences of each ending
Like a win state or a bittersweet lose state based on your war readiness. Make your choices in the trilogy affect that value, but it's more about the combo of choices making different values so that none of those individual choices retroactively become right or wrong.
I feel like the value of choice in narrative games is seeing how they branch into other circumstances.
So I'll be real, choosing an ending doesn't mean much when it was meant to be the story's very end. As in, this ending was never meant to be followed up on.
Edit: lol I commented without having started the video
or even no star chid but the same endings, just the only way to pick is by your actions over the course of the game + which friends lived or died.
Still would have been cynical and blegh but so much better even for the same endings.
I said it on the LP but the difference between Kotor 2 and ME3 is that Kotor 2's ending COULD be fixed.
One of my favorite Ending Mods removes the ending choice having Shepard's journey end laying there with Anderson while the Crucible fires on it's own or gets obliterated depending on the readiness you built up. Shepard dies(?) and it falls on everything else since Shepard's choice no longer matters. Then again that mod also adds extra context about targeting the dark matter in Reapers specifically.
Honestly I feel like a much better ending would've involved all remaining squadmates in the entire series reaching the "catalyst" together and all throwing in their 2 cents at the end. But it all comes down to EA~ I mean "The Reapers" not giving enough time to really make anything worth while. Doesn't excuse the Legendary Edition not having a better ending though..
Out of curiosity, what's the mod?
@@Sora95678 Audemus' Happy Ending, also Starchild-Be-Gone (If you want the original endings but don't want that shit)
Yeah I loved that mod. Shepard dying with Anderson but saving the galaxy is honestly a much more satisfying ending. It really put into perspective how much the Starchild killed the mood and pacing with his exposition dump. I was much happier just not knowing all that stuff.
One of the ending mods I used (MEHEM?) has some Alliance Bois pull Shepard's ass out even if it is illogical considering the timing of the Crucible firing.
Honestly props to Woolie. I conceptually hate the idea of the destroy ending but he's managed to describe an alt version that's much more interesting and palatable
It is interesting to me that on release, I came to the conclusion that Destroy was the most right ending, even for my pure-blue paragon Shepherd. But after they edited the ending, I concluded that Control was the most right ending, although shout-out to Rejection as a close second.
I forget the exact details of my logic, but it had to do with my paragon instincts of "AI united with Organics before, it can happen again. The Star Child is too invested into the system to see the good that can come from it all, he needs to be removed."
Honestly I always choose Destroy specifically because by that point in the trilogy, reapers are shown to not only be fallible but straight up wrong about synthetics and organics.
The fact that the star child essentially ignores any of your legit points made the ending to me feel like it was them arguing any point to survive, and I found that just getting rid of them entirely was safer and the most ethical option. Sure, they say geth and other synthetic life dies, but they've been wrong before, and I'd bet they were wrong this time too.
@@jimbob1862 I honestly still don't really understand what it is about the destroy ending that wipes out all synthetic life, especially in terms of EDI and the Geth, they might lose their physical frames and hardware bodies but there's no reason to assume they couldn't just backup themselves and reupload into freshly made physical forms. Even going beyond that though and assuming they couldn't all just be preserved, the lesson of sentient synthetic life being of equal significance to organics has been learned, all of organic life in the galaxy uniting to face the reapers wasn't the key factor that broke the star childs cycle, it was the fact that all organic life united with the synthetic life of that cycle to protect each-other, the fact the geth followed the quarians into battle against the reapers, the fact that EDI has formed a romantic attachment with Joker and a close friendship with her crew and Shepard, and it's astounding how all of this STILL isn't brought up even in the extended cut.
That thing you say at the start is exactly what I've always felt was wrong about ME3's ending almost verbatim. If the series is all about choices and those choices leading to different outcomes. Then the ending of the game should not be a choice, it should be the ultimate summation of all of your past choices up to that point. Having a choice at the end just goes against everything the game was building up to because it means you can be playing peace-loving paragon shep for 3 games and then suddenly get the "kill-em-all" ending, or be shoot-first-ask-questions-later renegade shep and suddenly have a change of heart at the last minute and go "maybe we can control the reapers instead" and so on.
It probably wouldn't be a massive improvement, but honestly if it were me I would have simply removed that final choice and made what the Crucible does be based on the kind of character you are instead. Ideally there would be a lot more variations on what can happen of course, but ultimately the point should be that this is the ultimate consequence, not the ultimate choice.
Yeah an ending just based on choices would be nice. like I hate that the star child just goes "yeah you proved us wrong and made peace between organics and machine, but your body and choices deciding to destroy still kills you and anyone else with a pacemaker and all the Geth." Like that's so dumb. We kill so many non reapers if destroy is taken at face value. It's dumb it went with that way.
I just hate how Uncle Ruckus the SC just says it's all the synthetic's fault and no matter how your Shepard deals with EDI and the Geth he just immediately agrees and follows along. Like no matter how you played your Shepherd was secretly a Synthe-Racist all along.
Even post EC you never get a chance to bring up how the Reapers tricked the Geth into warring OR the peaceful ending to Rannoch. Like that is a MASSIVE flaw they just ignored.
It really would be nice if choice heavy games (Bioware is especially egregious on this one) stop giving you a decision at the very end that defines your ending, and instead uses the choices you've made up to that point to determine what you get. Beyond just being more satisfying to my mind at least, it also avoids the problem of making it hard to get invested in the final choice when you're just a quickload away from getting every ending.
Silent Hill 2 seemed to put the perfect solution out there and then everyone just... didn't follow their lead
@@buckmoonmedia5113 I adore how Silent Hill 2 did it. More games should have how you play impact the story, not just what choices you make at the signposted choice moments.
Pillars of Eternity 2 did this beautifully. As you go through the game you are, knowingly or not, helping/hurting the various factions, and so while you get to pick the one you side with, that's a well-before-the-end choice. And then the final boss fight is with the non-them faction you have made strongest, and depending on how strong you have made them it is a MOTHERFUCKER
(Also it does a great job of giving all four major factions obvious benefits and problems. Welcome to the Fantasy Carribean! Nationalism, capitalism, and individualism are all having an extremely ugly puberty at the same time and everyone trying to find a balance between them is armed to the teeth!)
It's a shame that they didn't do the Dragon Age Origins type ending where you can alter your characters fate based on choices on the final night, but the actual choices during the final battle don't really matter.
DAO makes its final battle feel super unsettling no matter whether Morrigan gets her way or not, because if you slept with her, you genuinely don't know if it'll work and you'll live. If you don't you know you're kind of just walking into your own grave.
The better way would have been for ea to not rush the game out. Woolie's version was pretty cool too.
Ironically EA tried to learn from their mistake and be more hands off with Bioware after that. SWTOR was basically subsidizing the 5+ years dev cycles on all their subsequent games like a mini FF14. The problem is that Andromeda and Anthem both suffered from being kinda listless ships that never nailed down a firm vision for what they were even aiming for. So before ME3 they had too much publisher interference, and after they didn't have nearly enough to hold management accountable to milestones.
It makes me appreciate Dragon Age because those games do what he wanted. What you do will create domino outcomes later down the line. Some examples were where Liliana if retaught compassion will end her quest line murdering someone in cold blood rather than show forgiveness or arrest them. If you don’t save the mercenaries Iron Bull will quietly end his friendship with you and pretend to be cool right up until the quinari show up and he betrays you. Cole if taught to embrace humanity will become more empathetic and even fall in love. Even the twist villain in the DLC has a different outcome if you became his lover during the main story. The story is built around character development and the end is less about how you deal with the bad guy and more about where everyone ends up after it.
@@Broomer52 Shame Inquistion's boring as fuck. And discards all of 2's setup for a nothing antagonist.
@@BlueMarsalis I disagree just as a whole. The game was entertaining all the way through as far as I’m concerned
@@Broomer52 I can not stand it, nothing beside remains around the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare low and level sands stretch far away. (I am describing the quest design and content in the open world, the choices and consequences, and anything that resembles the setting from Origins.)
here's the thing about 'Destroy'...
if you play 'Arrival', and Bioware certainly expects you to, it's already a fact that Shepard would blow a mass relay up along with a populated star system just to slow the Reapers down, so they may as well have forced the 'Destroy' ending on players and made them feel bad about it if they felt EDI and the Geth deserved to live
Woolie’s idea about synthetics giving their voice is cool but doesn’t consider the fact that the Geth might be already extinct by the time you reach that point.
It's almost like they shouldn't have promised that your choices would matter if they couldn't write enough scenarios to account for all the various big choices and consequences that might have happened along the way. I agree with you! Just saying. This is still purely on Bioware talking up a big game they couldn't handle.
@@GuiltyKittheir writing biting them in the ass all over again just like with Sovereign saying "I am beyond your comprehension" only for the Reapers to have a perfectly explainable motivation and origin.
@@SoaringLettuceI mean nothing about him was beyond comprehention in ME1 either. Its just high and mighty villain talk before he gets punked by a cripple.
It's also a lose lose scenario for the geth be destroyed by the red wave or be destroyed by the reapers it's not really a choice
Would be interested in a Mass Effect Trilogy postmortem on Castle Super Beast with Reggie on as a guest xD
I went for the green ending.
And everyone is free to thank me for their new, cool mechanical updates.
Krogan #4,006,782 10 years after ME3: "Dude I gotta do a firmware update every month or my balls don't work right, i want my normal body back."
@@mep15067 Have you tried turning them off and on again?
Every time I try to turn them back on, I keep getting the Blue Balls of Death.
The problem with Synthesis is that it assumes and only works in extreme good faith, as in "this is de facto objectively speaking the best for all lifeforms", and it's certainly how it's written. It's just that even if you assume that's true, you have to assume so in explicit contradiction to a game about the strength in differences and how a united front is not an homogenous one.
Cuz like, the three endings are not arguments, they're conclusions to arguments you're supposed to have gone through for 3 games. It is pretty terrible then that the arguments aren't really that well thought-out: Red Ending implies Shepard's journey has been one about putting *organic life* on top of anything else and complete disregard for synthetics, when I think it's pretty clear that Renegade is way more about humanity first, and only by association disregards synthetics. Blue's version of control is literally all you've been fighting since the first time you walk out of the Mako, which makes it pretty funny to even consider simply going "what if *we* were the party indoctrinating others?".
Which makes it very distracting that there is never a real argument for Green. The points at which man and machine make something more are either stuck in DLC (David) or completely about synthetics achieving their own version of sentience that we can recognize (EDI and Legion), not about both working together in one body. There's cooperation between organics and synthetics, sure, but that's just not the same. Biotic Augmentation is a core part of worldbuilding but it affects nearly nothing of the active setting and has no impact on your character, biotic or not. It just... comes out of nowhere as the clean, neutral path forward that allows all characters to be happy, gaining something and losing very little.
Ostensibly, at least. Cuz you don't get to ask anyone. Shame, cuz I'm not ascending to godhood and I'm not killing EDI. I guess they're gonna have to sue me.
Shepard *is* the argument for Synthesis. They’re 30% machine, as confirmed by EDI. The catalyst looked and you and went “Hmm, this could work” if you did a good job uniting the galaxy and gives you the option for Synthesis.
Whole heartedly agree. I've always chosen destroy and one of the biggest pushes to doing it is that during one of EDI's code altering questions, she says she see's Joker as someone she would risk her self to protect. Shepard says she found her Humanity and asks what its worth (something close to that) and EDI's response is "To the death".
And the finale isn't out yet lol.
I think you could have easily made the Reapers a conventionally defeatable threat, no macguffin required. Make it so only the Sovereign size Reapers have the power to make it to the galaxy from dark space with FTL, and have the bulk of reaper forces still trapped in dark space. If the reapers reach the Citadel and activate it's relay, like Sovereign tried to do, then it is game over.
I was a huge fan of the fan-made indoctrination ending.
Basically the end sequence is Vancouver Kid pulling out all the stops, lying/deceiving you in one last ditch effort to prevent you from blowing them up. Realizing shepard has been able to resist traditional methods, it uses the one "weakness" of Shephard/The player... compassion, to try and save itself. "If you blow us up all these things will die/bad things will happen, but if you do what we say they can all be saved" The player picking anything but destroy is seen as Shephard succumbing to indoctrination.
"No matter what synthetics will fight organics".... except for the geth who are just chill?
I mean that b.s. alone is what makes the ending entirely stupid within the logic of the game itself. Like the entire past two games was Shepard and the crew of the SR2 learning to work with AI in the form of EDI and the Geth. Like we the player know the organics v.s. synthetics choice is a false dichotomy but I'm guessing/hoping the writers they brought in at the last minute didn't know that.
The fact that you are presented with any options at all other than destroying the Reapers is so insane. Regardless of your choices, whether you're paragon or renegade or whatever, destroying the Reapers has been the one goal since day 1 that we played an entire trilogy of games to achieve, so why would we ever even consider doing anything else?
And I imagine that if EDI or the Geth/Legion were there, they'd tell you to do it, even if it meant they died. If it meant the rest of the galaxy was free from the threat of the Reapers, I think that's a sacrifice they would 100% be willing to make.
The non destroy endings are also antithetical to EVERYTHING the games had said up to that point. Convincing Saren into suicide during the Citadel Battle requires you to straight up call out synthesis with the reapers is a lie and that he's already indoctrinated also they would have total control over you as you joined them. Then in ME3 Javik tells you time and again that The illusive Man is already fully indoctrinated, because leaders in his cycle also believed they should stop trying to destroy the reapers and should instead try to control. He says that control is lie they plant in the indoctrinated so they can continue the cycle.
Out of universe I choose green every time but in universe there isn't a Shepard who exists who would choose synthesis and control only exists for very specific kinds of Shepard.
control is the only good ending. destroy doesnt even make sny srnse if it blows up all the geth and Edi it should slso destroy every ship and computer in the galaxy.
@@ZangelinConsidering the reapers have been shown to be full of shit time and time again, and EDI herself states she would protect her new humanity to the death, I always get in Destroy.
You get rid of the reapers and properly broke the cycle before you even got to the crucible, and I think Shepard having faith that the synthetics he has helped and who have shown to be stupidly resilient won't actually die is the only one ending that remotely makes sense with the context of the entire trilogy.
Mass Effect 1's plot is inspired by Revelation Space: an archeologist studying a long-dead species and a spec ops dude discover that races who become sufficiently advanced are wiped out by a race of machine gods (itself taking inspiration from Saberhagen's Berserker series). The way they resolve this in the series is by appealing to another race of machine gods to save them; for humanity to win on its own would be ridiculous. Given the revelation of what the Geth are becoming in 2, I think we can see which dominoes are being set up.
The original ending planned for ME3 was so much more interesting. If I'm not mistaken, the gist of it was, the galaxy or the universe was dying out due to a strange and unexplained phenomenon with dying stars, the reapers were created as a way to try to find a solution to the problem by incorporating the different species in each cycle in order to see if one of them would result in a breakthrough. So the ending would be choosing to destroy the reapers and doom everything (eventually), or allow the reapers to harvest everybody so that they may continue to look for a solution.
It would be bittersweet either way and it's a legitimately hard choice to make, what we got in comparison is so lame that even the Indoctrination Theory makes it more interesting than what we got, which is basically just three face-value choices that kind of all suck
Wtf, Woolie posting anime spoilers when the manga just finished
Love that Woolie points out how fucked up the Synthesis ending is. I've seen so many people over the years since ME3 glossing over how horrific fundamentally changing everybody like that would be.
They put an LED strip on Joker's hat
The game doesnt show they lose their mental autonomy. Its not like people turn into zombies. We can't deny the shock of the change is, but unless they give me information of the effects. I want to save the most sapient life I can.
It's still better than genocide and murder of some of your best friends
Technorganic synthesis already exists in the universe prior to the ending and has no damaging effects to anyone, in the most technical terms possible there is a suggestion that the synthesis ending has already been chosen before, by the Shepard that came before Shepard
Essentially take Seele's Human Instrumentality Project from Eva, but remove all of the parts where people lose their individual forms
For everything being fucked, and your ending is just you picking your favourite flavour of fucked, I absolutely love that for Mass Effect's ending, it perfectly matches the kind of sci-fi that it is. My biggest problem with the endings, besides them just being short and uninvolving, is that they don't take your previous choices into account at all. It's just dial-an-ending. I honestly think, in this rare case, it would be better with LESS player agency. In this moment, the Shepard you've made is out of your control. The choices you've made up until that point lead to your Shepard making the choice that makes the most sense to them based on their past, and you get the ending you get. That alone would've made it more satisfying, made it feel like what you've done up until that point mattered.
My Ending Ranking goes in terms of achieving the goal of destroying the influence of the Reapers and returning the galaxy to complete autonomy:
1. High EMS Destroy
2. Low EMS Destroy
3. Refusal
4. Paragon Control
5. Renegade Control
6. Synthesis
Biggest issue for me is that there is no way to destroy the Reapers while sparing the geth/EDI. An article I read back in the day said the best outcome would be Shep and Garrus clinking drinks on a beach while the camera zooms out to show a Reaper husk in the ocean. I agree with this.
Personally, i always thought the ending coice should've been this situation:
The Crucible will destroy the Reapers, but the energy output to channel it across the Relay System is so massive that it will cause the local Mass Relay to explode, destroying Sol and Earth.
Alternatively, you can adjust it to the energy output is more forcefully pushed through saving Earth, but causing SEVERAL MRs throughout the Galaxy to errupt.
Do you sacrifice Sol to save the Galaxy, or sacrifice half the Galaxy to save Sol?
I’ve thought a better ending would be a choice between destroying the Reapers, or Liberating them. The first would also sabotage all reaper tech, disrupting the relays, and anything else with reaper tech installed. Everyone in the Sol system would get stuck there. Liberation would restore individuality to Reapers and Husks. Some might keep fighting, but they wouldn’t be cohesive. Some would go mad. Some would run.
I think the only thing about the dialogue about the ending is it opens up more options. For control, if a single overlord is too much, what about a council with a representative of each planet or something. If synthesis violates bodily autonomy, what about editing the crucible to only assist those who accept the change? If red is locked in from their perspective and the synethics fight to survive, what if you dont want to pull that trigger?
I'd rather just have gotten the dark matter plotline instead of this fundamentally flawed organic vs synthetic framing.
I think a good fix to the synthesis ending would be making it only work for people with cybernetics already, basically the reaper code update that the geth got, but for the cyberware that everyone in the setting has for their omnitools
the destroy ending never specified that destroying the reaper would obliterate synthetics as that universe knew it as much as it was just a mass emp,like what’s stopping anyone in that universe from rebuilding/reprogramming the geth or EDI?
True, but it would still be a massive loss of life, assuming you believe synthetics are a valid form of life. And you would be the one pressing the genocide button.
I'm not a smart person, but I knew the story was screwed the instant they did the whole "we are incomprehensible" thing with the Reapers clear back in ME1. If you do that as an author, you now have two paths open to you and they're both equally bad dead ends story-wise.
A) Never explain them. Pretty unsatisfying unless it's actual Lovecraft territory, which ME is very much not.
B) Explain them and walk back the "incomprehensible" thing, but also be aware that anything a human author writes is going to seem pretty petty and pathetic and unworthy as a rationale that they boasted was "beyond your understanding". Because whatever a human comes up with... is going to be perfectly understandable by a human reader. And that's the best outcome where the author's rationale makes sense. And it's still awful.
Mass Effect took option B but either way they went would have been equally bad. Writers, if you have a mysterious antagonist, unless you intend to have a moment of humility and self-reflection in your antagonist later on, NEVER have them boast that their plans or motivations or existence is "beyond human understanding". That's so bad unless you're literally writing about eldritch abominations, which the Reapers aren't. They're wholly understandable and easily contextualized. Which isn't bad for a villain. Unless you promised that they can't be understood.
I would even accept "Sovereign was lying to try and intimidate you" but that's not how the games play it off.
I can think of a couple stories where the weird shit remained unexplained without being necessarily 'eldritch'.
Movie adaptation of Christine, you never find out why the car is alive, it just is, and it's honestly better than the book where it's haunted by the previous owner.
Parasyte manga and anime, the body snatchers themselves don't know where they came from. Are they aliens? Are they the Earth fighting back against humankind and our pollution? Who knows.
Steven Spielberg's first movie, Duel, you never find out why the truck driver wants to kill the main character.
It obviously helps that they never boast about their "unknowableness" but it's clearly doable, those stories are still engaging, even if we don't know everything.
@SoaringLettuce hi! You have very good points, but I think I need to clarify. I might not have written that out coherently. I'm specifically talking about when an antagonist within the context of the story directly tells the protagonist, I am incomprehensible. I am beyond your understanding.
I didn't quite so much mean a story where the antagonist isn't fully explained in every detail. My bad.
@@GuiltyKit no, i got what you meant, that's why i said "it helps that they don't boast about ther unknowableness"
fucking hell, Sovereign sounds like a hipster talking about how we could never understand his favorite music, just with an evil voice filter
EDI's voice is involved in the Destroy decision. She says to you beforehand that destroying the Reapers is "worth non-functionality". As for the Geth, permitting the Reapers to do anything but die just to spare themselves is something even they would deem illogical.
Man, Mass Effect 3 is one of my favorite SMT games in the franchise!
I like the part where Shin Asuka kills the reapers and then wakes up in a hospital bed
Yeah, I have to agree that steering a player towards a single ending is probably the best idea, maybe even have a purely linear Mass Effect 3 that is massively varied to take into account all the choices over the previous entries, although I imagine people would hate that as Mass Effect was built around it's open world, RPG elements. Plus, while the overall plot was grand in scale, I feel like the personal development of Sheperd and his entourage is absolutely what people savoured the most with this franchise, and it should have been centre stage for this ending. How people react and how they intend to rebuild.
I imagine that would still require a lot of attention to take into account a lot of minor and major relationship choices, and I'm no developer so I would have no idea where you would even begin to write and programme that all in. Although, judging from the Mass Effect 4 teaser, I feel like they're hinting that the ending was always supposed to be red.
Spoilers for the LP!~
Fallout 1,2, and NV do the choices and consequences ending thing way better.
100% agree that there shouldn’t have been an ending choice. Choosing your ending basically invalidates the majority of the choices you made in the prior games
So using this thought and expanding on it :
During the final push before you get to Maurader Shields , EDI is given the Cypher for the key code to activate the Crucible , she has to be do a direct upload , heading into the Crucible and so you go with her platform/body to the area you fight illusive man , instead of it being illusive man , it's nothing but the upload Staton. As you begin the upload , a squad of Cerberus lead by TIM in a special Atlus suit arrives and so a final boss battle begins. after you beat them while EDI is uploading it becomes a cut scene battle where illusive man is still trying to convince shepard of "U-manity"/control ending. Shepard is seemingly overrun by Cerberus forces when suddenly the representatives of some of the big choices up to this point in the game arrive to help with the Geth being the brunt of the main force if you helped them and alll led by Anderson. Anderson is able to break through and help shepard just to get fatally wounded by TIM. Shepard can fatally wound TIM in return if they renegade choice or just disable the mech using paragon. From there EDI gives something of the speech the conduit did where she says they have two options , either use the Crucible to destroy all artifical life forms, including EDI and the Geth or give control, Shepard should be torn with Anderson saying it's shepard's choice but he's proud of them either way before dying. EDI and the Geth would chime in with their dialogue with it reflecting the choices of shepard but in the paragon version EDI should be giving a tearful goodbye to Joker if her relationship side quest was completed and the Geth giving their good byes to the quarians(if alive )/the quarians remains (if destoryed). The Synthesis solution would probably come from joker asking if there thees another way when shepard is thinking and EDI getting "creative" using all the war assets (namely all the tech put into the Crucible ) to find out she can 'theoretically' with only a .000001% chance of failure or horrible mutations.
All ending with shepard being left alone to press the final button either because the upload fries EDI (destory ending), EDI shuts down to get her form ready for the upload of shepard's virtual self (control ending ) or the process requires a cyborg to use as template (synthesis).
Either way from there you get the ending. Instead of Joker running away and crashing he enters the upload room and:
- Holds edi's charred remains while looking at shepard's body (destroy with low war assets ) / shepard looking hurt but still alive (destory with high assets ending ),
- Attempts to hold EDI just to have EDI not return the hold and then her body leave to go elsewhere (control with low assets)/EDI speaks in a robotic version of shepard's voice that she's gone and that they're sorry before leaving him.(control with high assets )
or
embraces EDI And is embraced back as they feel each other's faces with their new body (synthesis ).
Thanks for reading , what do you think?
Well, the destroy ending is the real (or I suppose 'canon') ending of the trilogy. Not only do we know that from the teasers of the next mass effect, but there's a secret scene in the destroy ending that shows that Shepard actually survives the ending.
Red ending is Shepard breaking indoctrination.
People have already said as much, but yeah, making the endings hinge on a final choice is probably the lynchpin mistake because it meant they all had to be delivered in shallow ways. The best way to end such a long-running story would probably have been to hit the dramatic climax, defeat the Reapers, and then provide some kind of more meaningful epilogue. A few hours to cool down with the characters in a post-problem environment. Let us see what people are doing, how they're living, what rebuilding looks like, in a way that's deeper than a few still image pans (or even worse, not at all, pre-citadel dlc).
The entire Citadel DLC would probably have been better as an epilogue. That level of content for a post crisis canon. Remove the idea of multiple endings and dial it down to 'destroy the reapers' have the aftershocks be more dependent on war assets and choices on the major planets, (the Quarian/Geth war, the Genophage, plus things like the Rachni and Batarian survivors). It would be fine to spend some time wandering the world they built to see what kind of trajectory it was heading for after the Reapers were gone, no arbitrary combat sections, just character interaction and exploration. I think the steepness of the climax and the sudden shock to credits is what makes any ending so unfulfilling, like, when you get invested in these characters and their stories and you just cut them off at a point like so many dangling threads with no closure or expression, it's awful.
Does Garrus rejoin C-Sec or the Turian military? Did Wrex succeed in laying the groundwork for a new Krogan republic? Do Joker and EDI adopt an orphaned Elcor kid as they start to put together their nuclear family? Does Tali find herself deliberating with the other admirals about Quarian-Geth marriage laws? Does Kolyat Krios open an orphanage on the citadel in honour of his father? Does Falere campaign for better treatment or medical research for the Ardat Yakshi in hopes of curing their genetic condition, rather than being relegated to secret monasteries as 'the shame of the Asari people'? Does Maelon take over Mordin's clinic on Omega as a means of making amends with the spirit of his mentor?
These questions are all plenty stupid, but exploring any of them and more for a while, just as a means to show us how the galaxy would start to be after the meat of the Mass Effect storyline would have done a lot to make it more 'satisfying'. As it is, ME doesn't fade out gracefully, it just cracks off at the end and rolls credits. And part of me feels like I can blame the multiplayer and marketing exec bullshit like that. I really liked the multiplayer in 3, I thought they did a pretty good job of making a solid gameplay loop with fun additions, but that doesn't change that it never should have been there in the first place. Whatever time was wasted developing that (and part of me wonders if this is also why Cerberus was such a big deal in the 3 story, with their infinite money and resources out the ass, because there needed to be another enemy faction to stack the multiplayer deck) could have been devoted to the real game and provided that much more. But these are all what-ifs and did-thats and ultimately we got what we got. Roll on ME4, I hope you're not as lame as Andromeda.
why i always run "Audemus' Happy Ending Mod" mod. It also makes the game end right where Anderson passes. completely gutting the star child and the choice section. also Its the destroy ending, but where it doesn't nuke the geth or Edi. and like the hidden cutscene where if you're war assets were high enough, shepherd survives. Then you can have it roll straight into the Citadel DLC, as postgame content. removes all mention of the war, reapers, and all that jazz.
also the ending is orange
didn't Pat already go on for like an hour about this on their podcast? ...I swear that was a thing that happened
Woolie has the magic ability to just eject stuff and not internalize spoilers when pat goes on too long about stuff
Woolie and Reggie only just beat 3 last week.
@@ayanleman To be honest when Pat goes on...i just switch off all together.
I don't think they did, pretty sure it would've been on the title card front and center
@@MAJR172 Pat talked in vague terms about the ending when he finished the trilogy over a year ago. That’s what OP is thinking of.
It's veeeery different but I like what Front Mission 3 does. The first time you play that game, you are not making an educated choice, you simply respond to a piece of dialogue and the story is simply the consequences to that one response.
Woolie is that guy with the Pizza's coming into the burning room
Damn, Woolie really is on to something here. Keeping the ME3 ending as-is, but throwing out the Star Child completely and replacing it with a 3-way argument between Blue, Red and Green argued by The Illusive Man, Andersson and Saren respectively. Well, Saren's dead so someone else would have to represent Synthesis. Maybe EDI? Or Javik, being partly-controlled by Harbringer? Or if the argument took place inside Shepard's head as Harbringer is trying to indoctrinate him, in that case we could bring Saren back for that scene.
It might not have made the ending GOOD per se, but it would've made it a lot more palatable than the litteral Deus Ex Machine that is the Star Child.
I view the endings like this: red puts all negative consequences of Shepard’s choice on others, green distributes the consequences amongst everyone, and blue puts the negative consequences on Shepard (at least for how I played my Shepard). The Red ending is the one I never choose since even as massively fucked the other choices are, they still pale in comparison to genocide. I usually go blue, since I feel like my Paragon Shepard would not use the power given to him and just have all the Reapers disappear into deep space forever.
2:30 - 2:47 that was eloquently put. Consequences >>> Choices
They should have given you 4-5 more hours after the choice to deal with groups that were created/affected by your choice. A group that was affected negatively, positively, and perceived themselves to have been affected negatively. Running missions to fight some and stabilize the situations and head on dealing with the consequences of your actions.
The Deus Ex remakes ran into this too, the choice dynamic just fumbles.
The problem with the ending is its lack of commitment. If they stuck with any 1 of the endings to see it and their consequences through they would have been great. Red making the Geth use their new found independence to make the ultimate choice to save everyone else or fight to the bitter end to stop you if youve been against them. Blue focusing more on Sheppard themselves and the choices youve made and if youre capable of being a leader with that kind of power without becoming the Reapers 2.0. Green ending focusing on the galaxy as a whole and how they come to terms with losing their full autonomy and rights to have chosen whether they wanted to be synthetic. Even the fight option showing the sacrifices needed to be made and give real consequences to your war efforts on bringing the galaxy together while the Vancouver child just offers a more strategic way to beat the reapers or a weapon that helps win battles but not on multiple fronts at once. The fact the endings now are so binary with no real consequence or setup besides "everyone who ever threw out a guess for how to beat the reapers was actually partially right, they just couldnt do it themselves" just makes it silly and like it was never about Sheppard's strength of character that got them to the end, but because they were just a good shoot gunner. Really any spitballed idea for how to write a ME3 is better than the ending we got, I would have been happier with a series that guts the Reapers entirely, all powerful enemies you have to stop in a silly way sucks, focus more on the power imbalance of the galaxy and if its better to get everyone to choose to come together and build a better society or get a leg up over them because you think you can rule better than them and they would probably do the same to you anyway
I've been thinking about this for a while since LE came out, and this is one of the best ideas I've heard. Love the suggestion of a Renegade vs Paragon difference when consulting the Geth about their own potential extinction.
For me, getting a perfect ending out of what we got would need only a few adjustments.
1) Change Vancouver Child. It can start out as the kid when it first appears, but over the course of the conversation, change it into a more Reaper/Leviathan form.
2) Give the Crucible a purpose/ Make the Catalyst's plan not stupid. Have it reveal that the Crucible was a Reaper invention set up as a test for organic races. It's just a big ol' emitter and the Catalyst/Citadel chooses the output. The current cycle is the first to ever pass this test, so the AI stops the Reapers dead in their tracks, sending a cease fire signal and possibly live footage to every non-Reaper present.
3) Variable endings. Instead of unlocking more endings as you gain war assets, have them all from the get-go. Simply scale the effectiveness of the choices the same way the Destroy ending has 3 variations (everyone dies/ only AI dies/ Shepard lives). Do that with every flavor of ending. (Control: Shep is overwhelmed and turns evil/ Shep does not turn evil, fights Reapers by possessing them individually/ Shep is good and controls all Reapers at once) (Synthesis: It's crude and everyone is husk-like/ seamless transition, mechs become AI/ seamless and also everyone has free internet in their brains).
4) Epilogue. Possibly the most important, I want a playable epilogue level and not a slideshow. Let us play as a crewmate or Shepard (if they lived) several years later in a big reunion with all of the surviving Normandy crew members. They can all have dialogue about what's happened since the end of the war. This can also include fan-service such as an unmasked Tali (if the Geth survived and helped the Quarians adapt) or Shepard having a kid (if romancing a human or Liara). Maybe even see a bit of Javik's book if he reached that conclusion.
im surprised this went up before the upload of the final episode. i thought the recent upload WAS the final, but its just before the ending.
i just came up with something, please criticize:
Reaper forces are highly concentrated on Earth, not every single one of them, but certainly enough that if all of those suddenly died, they would lose the war in the long run.
Force the 'Destroy' ending on the player and make it so it only affects the proximity of Earth, the Geth aren't at risk. The final choice is wether to call the Normandy to extract you, getting caught by the pulse, losing EDI while nearly dying due to your own dependence on cybernetics, precariously holding onto life at the expense of a synthetic, or tell them to book it, leaving you behind to die as the Crucible collapses, but saving EDI because you believe she is alive and worth saving.
All I wanted from the ending was to destroy all the reapers and for my Sheppard to survive so he could spend his time after with the one I romanced with. THAT'S IT!! In my view it would have been the perfect ending for such a long journey.
Woolie's ending would have been so vastly better than the current ones too.
Having just beaten the trilogy myself, here's a little theory that makes the ending better imo:
The star child is lying AND freaking out that shepard's about to destroy the reapers. It's some sort of virtual thingy, so hiding it's emotions would be easy. It only just learned what the crucible can do when the citadel was hooked up to it, and is trying to process it. So when Shepard gets there and wants answer, it's stuck going "uuhhhh you COULD do the thing you came here to go or you can uhh uhh take...control of the reapers YEwait that means replacing me. ahhh....Oh! just synthesize everything, obviously this is the best idea." It obviously wants Shepard to pick that, so why even _tell_ Shepard about the other two? Because it's stalling for time and trying to think up a way out of this, which is why it throws in "also the geth and edi will be destroyed so there's some downside to this ending! Also you will also die!"
But? BUT? unless i missed it, you do not see a single non-reaperized being get got in the best ending. Not a single geth. The only evidence is Edi's name on the memorial wall(also doesn't make sense. her mind is still in the normandy, not the sexbot body. unless you're telling me the red laser is somehow precise enough to only target that one part of the normandy while still having to hit "every single synth in the galaxy"?) AND in the best ending Shepard is still alive, despite being point fucking blank there. That in it self is evidence the star child isn't 100% right about everything.
Of course, there's some flaws to this theory, such as that Edi's name IS on the wall, but i think there's enough evidence to make this believable.
in short imagine the starchild is the crying wojak wearing a smug wojak mask.
Geth takes on the destroy ending based on Shepard morals.
Paragon
“Our options are binary, Annihilation or enslavement to the old machines. Human history contains a precedent for this scenario: ‘give me liberty or give me death’”.
Middle
“The Crucible will destroy all current synthetic life, but does not exclude creation of new programs and platforms in the future. Projections for views on synthetic life are improving, new Geth will be made.”
Renegade
“The combined alliance assault on Earth provided a sufficient diversion for larger platforms to exit the galaxy and return when the Reapers leave for the next cycle, or to establish new networks outside of our galaxy. Current timeframe however shows these platforms remain within range of the Crucible, yet current tactical projections show total defeat of Victory Fleet before they escape. We can not allow you to continue.”
Something I thought about during this ME3 LP was that its absolutely ridiculous that the game spends so much time developing EDI and then doesn't even have her present in the final decision on the Citadel to weigh in on what's happening.
does this mean we're ready to HIT THE STREETS?
GET IN THERE!!!!
Time crunch really is just a double edged sword sometimes it kills the problem faster, but the other half of the time it gets pushed back into yourself and you're left fucked over.
Generally I love your idea Woolie, it's fantastic. It would definitely have been better than what we got.
Personally I like the idea of keeping the general structure of the final mission we got, and just rearranging some shit. Obviously make the mission better because it kinda sucked. Delete the Star Child conversation and Synthesis as an option, they're the result of two people shitting their pants and make as much sense. Agreeing with TIM even though there's no way to roleplay Shepard that evil is how you pick Control and the game ends there. Defying TIM is how you proceed toward Destroy and you get an Atris/Kreia style dialogue boss battle to pay off Harbinger being super tilted at Shepard's success. However many war assets you collected determines whether Destroy actually does what the Crucible was built to do over countless cycles, Destroy The Reapers And Only The Reapers, or misfire and catch more and more synthetic life. This way is a lot less philosophically interesting, but also a lot less needs to be changed in the narrative to still give us sensible payoffs to how the games built up to the end.
Man, the video isn't even out yet and we're seeing the disappointed rants.
It should have just been what was originally planned: The Reapers have to harvest all space-faring life, because the use of THE MASS EFFECT is creating dark energy to extinguishes the suns of the galaxy.
So the choice Shepard would be confronted with, is a cynical one: Do you destroy the Reapers at the cost of ending the galaxy in a few years or do you let the Reapers win, to ensure the galaxy can be a birth of new life forever?
I like that subversion, because the Renegade path would be the "good" ending, while the "for the greater good" paragon ending would be the bad one.
I have posted this other places but I how the "canon" ending for mass effect 4 is that the crucible signals got mixed.
The relays got destroyed. Maybe a dozen reapers are controlled/allied with living beings but the rest were destroyed and the pieces strewn across battlegrounds are indoctrinating people to reaper cults around the galaxy. Geth are mostly destroyed but upgraded with synthesis and people's cybernetics are upgraded with reaper code in a similar manner which could allow for a new power system and less racism towards synthetics. Geth and Quarians are similar numbers on Rannoch with racial tensions but also cool melting pot stuff happening. Quarians having the most synthetic/cybernetic upgrades could even be maskless now if they choose.
Earth is ruined but has a huge multi species culture from all the fleets leftover and the citadel.
Then for YOUR ending you just weigh the world state toward your choice. If you choose destroy, synthetics would be rarer, have less political power change some quest lines, chose quarians during the war, maybe the few remaining geth are subservient once more to the quarians but all full people like Legion was. Conversely of you chose synthesis, the quarians and geth could be working together/cohabitating but extremists on both sides would reject such a notion.
There's a way forward but I think this is the only viable way without completely invalidating peoples choices. You also have to make the extended ending basically non canon or update it to confirm with the new world state
Bruh you got the video order all fucked up
I prefer the control ending. Shepard can just make a new body for yourself anyways.
Having never played the restored content mod, I would still call kotor my favourite Star Wars anything
Man, imagine if the Geth sacrificed themselves to kill the Reapers, and and then there was a faction of Quarians in Mass Effect 4 that was trying to bring them back.
They had something going on with the ending, but they went too far with the organic vs synthethic. Just "we harvest organics to preserve their legacy and letting other species have their time" would work. Harvest the protheans so that humans and the others get their time, etc. No need to introduce the synthetics part. Or just add that their synthethic creations are added to the reapers.
Synthesis just cames out of nowhere and its sort of a "golden ending" so no hard choice. Its just magic. Destroy is weird, maybe it its destroyed or neutralized eezo, forcing civs to go another path? Because why does it destroy synthethics but not all computers? Maybe it targeted reaper code and both the Geth and EDI have it now.
Boy, I'm back in 2012!
The crucible transforms people to psychics. Psychics become super psychics. The reapers stop fighting. They go to the crucible and release heralds representing each of the reaper races. They explain the coming cataclysm your cycle has evolved you are ready to solve it. Safeguard the universe.
the ultimate failure of the control ending in mass effect 3 is the fact that cerberus and the illusive man are not respented as rational actors that are willing to cooperate with shepard. they are presented as indoctrinated madmen from the start of me3, so to have them ultimately have a correct solution to the problem at hand feels in very poor taste. i, for one, feel as though cerberus should have been handled as an additional force to back, where throughout the game you can pick choices that benefit the standard "destroy the reapers" or the radical cerberus "subvert the reapers". the control ending would, then, only be possible if you flirt with the ideas that the illusive man suggests and help them along enough. you could still have skirmishes against cerberus throughout the game (or against other polities, even), and how much you aid cerberus determines how desperate they become, with zero aid eventually leading to TIM getting so desperate that he accidentally exposes himself to indoctrination as he turns to more desperate measures.
11:35 No agency. Just like all of FFXIV, but with fewer meetings.
Better endings:
1 sheppard gets to have a harem with all the girls
2 sheppard kills the entire cast of mass efffect andromeda
3 sheppard gets isekaid to dragon age
4 the fan theory everyone and their mother thought
5 you get to snap the stupid child neck..
Personally, I'm fine with the options presented, but not the way they're presented or unlocked.
It should have been more resonant with how every other conflict in ME resolves.
Normally, when you get to the climax of a particular series of events, you're presented with a choice. The default white option is usually "There's nothing we can do here but kill each other." But if your Paragon or Renegade is high enough, you unlock new blue and red options to talk or alternately resolve the situation.
The way it should have gone at the end is:
The default white ending choice should have been the "destroy the synths" option. And if your Paragon or Renegade isn't high enough, that would be the ONLY option(other than "shoot child"). Your character can't think of any other solutions.
If your Renegade is VERY high, you unlock the red "control the reapers" option. Become the master of the galaxy, ensuring peace through tyranny and absolute control.
If your Paragon is VERY high, you unlock the blue "synthesis" option. The peaceful option where everyone learns to get along.
So at the end, you're once again presented with a choice, but your options are limited based on the moral leanings of all your earlier choices.
is that a tamagotchi hanging from the mic
So HeavyEyed presents a possibility to this that's fairly similar: ruclips.net/video/uIhFsCIlnxE/видео.html
I really like the idea of the game not giving your a "final choice" and instead the thing we always like: The game challenging your choices up to now and making you defend your stance.
The argument that organic and synthetic life can't get along at the end of the game falls apart so hard if you've managed to successfully rewrite the Geth code and peacefully resolve the Geth/Quarian conflict. So that last moment in the game needs less choices and more a comprehension of the core theme most of the game has been presenting: How to resolve conflicts, how to provide justice, etc.
Woolie is slowly becoming nagoryuki each and every day.
All this is making me think is woolie needs to play dragon age
I've always wanted to play Dragon Age, but I always put it off because I'd hate to play a game that was supposed to set up a trilogy and went downhill immediately.
@@Kango234 It's not a set up game tho? Definitely not as much as ME1 is for its franchise.
DA1 is quite self contained and conclusive. Next games barely build on top of that. Mostly actively destroy and ignore whatever interesting things were in previous ones tbh
Yeah, despite the name "Dragon Age: Origins", it's a completely self contained title with a pretty definitive ending. I never played 2 but I believe it's more of a spin off title from what I've heard. And Inquisition is an entirely separate story that I honestly thought was pretty terrible & boring. So you're fine sticking to Origins, it's up there with Bioware's best!
Just Origins & the story DLC.
This was excellent
Just wait till mass effect andromeda.
The reason the Mass Effect 3 ending is so bad is because it's a completely different timeline from Mass Effect 1 and 2 and doesn't fit with the themes at all.
So let's take things back a bit. There were some leadership changes in Mass Effect 3, and within those changes a new person was in charge of the story. And they looked at the original story, which was much more complex. And they said... No, that story is too intellectual. Because if there's anything sci-fi gamer nerds hate it's intellectual stories that make them think about their consequences and what things mean. So, the original plot was replaced with a very simplistic Biological Lifeform vs A Lifeform plot. And since the original choices from the first two games were not playing into that, it means that they no longer count. Walk down the hallway to your ending, do not get to talk to literally any of the hundreds of allies and NPCs you made along the way about your ending.
So with that said... The original plot. In the first two games, there are occasionally mentions of starts going out and dark energy. And it turns out... The Reapers aren't actually evil in the traditional sense. They're evil from our point of view as they're operating on blue and orange morality. But genocide isn't their goal. Protecting the universe from destruction is the goal. It turns out, that using Element Zero speeds up the heat death of the universe. The ultimate goal of the Reapers is to stop the heat death of the universe and when they're not wiping out all life that now uses element zero they're supposed to be working on that. For this reason, when a species proves promising, they offer that species the chance to become a Reaper themselves. As it turns out, the very first Reaper was actually a biological race that converted themselves into a giant hive mind space ship to complete their mission and have been offering that choice to species that proved they could offer something to the table.
And suddenly, the Human Reaper at the end of Mass Effect 2 makes a lot more sense. Humans were responsible for the death of a Reaper. Something thought impossible. So of course the Reapers wanted a human to Reaper transformation so they could get that human ingenuity to help solve the problem. Shepard meanwhile... Has become a personal threat for being responsible for the death of a Reaper, and is now the face of the heat death of the universe which explains why they'd just start 2 with putting a hit out on them and having the Normandy blown up.
So... Get to what the original endings were going to be... Based on your choices... One of three things would happen.
1. The entirety of human civilization becomes a Reaper to help work on the problem over who knows how long. Hey, you like instrumentality? Cause time to all become one perfect being to save the universe.
2. You prove unworthy, and destructive and you and everyone else is wiped out by the reapers.
3. You prove there's another option, one that doesn't require the eradication of species that achieved element zero level usage. If I had to guess, I would say this would probably be related to making as many allies as possible to get as many scientific discoveries as possible in order to find whatever this third option was.
But yeah, the new guy in charge threw all that out, because it was apparently too smart for gamers. I just can't get over that.
So basically, the Reapers are actually well Intentioned Extremists. And it turns out, they're actually basically the anti-spirals. And that was thrown out because the new guys assumed no one would like that because it would make them think too much. Aren't you so happy we got this ending instead!?
I need to go slam my face into a wall.
one small way you could make the choices amazing is if the best choice at the end wasn't the destroy, synthesis or control ending....it was the refuse ending. It would be amazing if the very end of this series defined by being given binary choices you choose to reject the very foundation that you operated on for the entire series. overcome the cycle of the reapers by literally defying the cycles of choice and consequence.
Welcome to 2012 Woolie...
I don't think Saren is equal to Synthesis Ending.
Saren was talking about becoming Cthulhu Cultists.
Green Ending is humanity _becoming_ an Elder God-- unlocking our AT Field capabilities as 'one' collective Angel.
Listening to Woolie's points, I can't help but think he'd appreciate Dragon Age origins
The ending doesn’t matter. How mass effect 4 starts matters. I think they should just rewind the clock and do something else. Come up with something new. Do purple
Rainbow ending, the crucible signals got mixed, all tapes are destroyed with rape cultists worshipping, some people had cyberspace synthesized into their bodies (allowing for new powers), geth are partially destroyed but upgraded and these upgrades mean they can't make new ones as fast so they are equal power and sharing rannoch with quarians. Set it relays are destroyed but rebuilt and the game is set in the reconstruction period of a galaxy that got used to being independent
destroy will be the canon ending, it's already canon that Shepard blows up a relay along with a whole star system just to slow the Reapers down.
i'm betting they'll go with destroy and set it a thousand years into the future, with Liara being the only remaining member of the crew still alive, so they can remember the old trilogy while mostly leaving it behind to begin a new story.
@@SoaringLettuce It’s not confirmed yet
Woolies still salty about Maelons data
Incredible video title for 2023
Spoilers for the anime! Gawd!
Each ending has consent issues if you see advanced robots as being akin to life. Just a question of which faction you want to ignore.
Shepherd can adapt the reapers to be solutions to any emerging problems in blue, and I wasn’t feeling very empathetic towards the reapers.
I wasn’t convinced that green would truly end racism.
Red ending destroys the tech, but doesn’t prevent the problem from re-occurring.
I like Woolie’s suggested improvements. Tim folding like a wet paper bag in the debate section was disappointing.
The problem with Mass Effect 3's ending is that they straight up just ripped John Halo 3's ending because there was no one left working on the team
Also there's a really good episode of Star Trek Voyager where Tuvok and Neelix have an accident in the teleporter and as a result give birth to the new lifeform Tuvix which is a completely separate entity from the prior two like how Gogeta/Vegeto works, and ultimately Captain Janeway determines they don't deserve their life and kills Tuvix against their wishes to restore the individual forms of Tuvok and Neelix
Which is kinda how the synthesis ending goes
One other thing to keep in mind about the "asking a trillion dead souls" is that those trillion dead souls inhabited multiple time periods, empires, wars, etc and as a result they would not be capable of providing you with any valuable data or information regarding the choice you have to make for those who still yet live and all potential futures
This is mirrored in the ideology and philosophy of Javik, The Last Prothean
Do you root yourself in a dead past that does not exist, do you do what needs to be done to secure another sunrise, or do you simply sit and watch as nature takes it's course
You're the Shepard, you get to choose where the flock goes.
"Mass Effect 3 is the best place to start the series"
Vancouver Child lmao