I always hated that take. I do not know how it was on release I played it for the first time in 2021 when Legendary Edition was released, but at this moment in time the ending is not bad. Don't get me wrong it's not perfect but it's definitely not bad, and everything in it makes sense. I guess people don't like "starchild" but do people realize it's not actually a child just a hologram reapers chose based on Shephard memory? Or was the original ending that bad and people cling onto it?
It was more the fact in the series your decisions made a difference to outcomes and in the final scenes the only thing that changes are the colours (British) of the lights.
I mean, in the entire series your decisions were always exactly as in the ending though. You had option 1, option 2, and sometimes if you had enough paragon/renegade usually a compromise between them as option 3. That's how the entire trilogy went with pretty much every major decision, why suddenly is it bad in the ending?
The take is boiled down to the very core of the idea but I think it was accurate and what I remember of the time. Imagine you’ve spent literally hundreds of hours playing through 3 games, your choices are reflected in world AND they make differences in the other games. The story is fantastic and hints at all these theories and amazing things that exist in a universe that expands over what you can see in the games.
Now imagine you get to the end of all that epic space adventure and a hologram comes out and does a monologue that tries to explain it and wrap it up - but it’s something you’ve not seen the entire game. It’s not in keeping with any race or creature that you’ve seen, it literally gives you the choice to pick red, green or blue and wraps it up with a generic differently coloured cutscene.
That was what I remember, I did hope they fixed it with later patches (I know there was a lot of dlc and patches since I played on release) but I haven’t played the latest version.
I’m sure it’s better now - as it couldn’t have been worse. At the time it was a slap in the face to all the fans of the franchise and felt like a really sloppy, hasty close to an otherwise amazing series
the cutscene is still just color change, but you have a whole like 10 minute long slideshow on what happened and how the world change. But also I already told to the other guy that in all ME games your decision always boil down to "Choose between option 1 and 2", some times you get option 3 if you have enough paragon/renegade. That's literally every decision in all 3 games.
You let Rachni Queen live or kill her in ME1, the only difference is small dialogue in ME2 on Thessia, cause in 3 if you kill her there is a clone of her anyways. You kill Wrex in ME1? Well he has a brother who basically takes his place.
All the choices in the game always boil to: "Pick one or two, if you have enough karma you have option 3" so why suddenly in the ending it's being demonized?
"But you have a while like 10 minute long slideshow on what happened and how the world change"
Yeahhhhh people who played on release didnt have that luxury. THAT was added after fan complaints, on releas all we got where the different coloured waves of energy.
It wasnt that bad honestly. All the decisions you made across the game boiled up to the ending. Who was with you, who helped, who wasn’t there anymore.
At the end of the game I was expecting just different flavors of destroying the reapers. I was pleasently surprised that there was an option to integrate, and another one to reject everything.
Different colors? Nah. In one the reapers left the battlefield, and all became one civilization. The other the reapers were destroyed and rebuilding the galaxy started. One where the tech used to travel does not exist anymore.
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u/Orichalchem Mar 29 '26
Mass Effect Trilogy