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In case you've clicked into this thread and you still haven't finished the game SHAME SHAME but I'm going to help you by making the spoiler text in this thread black meaning you'll have to manually highlight it to see it so you've had as much warning as I can give.

First I liked the ending, it was cool for me, and if you haven't reached the ending yet STOP READING DON'T HIGHTLIGHT the below text

If your wondering about the HISHE tag it stand for "how it should have ended" and if you haven't googled that before please do so, you'll enjoy

Ok think I'll just lay out my femshep ending and go from there.

Liara was of course my Love interest common how can you resist that blue gem , Had both the Quarians and Geth working together on their home planet and Joker and EDI were doing the vertical robot dance. naturally I chose synthesis totally my kind of ending.
Effectively everyone bar shepard lives and not only that in thoery no galaxy extinction war should ever occur again, the reapers are now part bio and all the bio is not part synthetic so technically Shepard also saved the reapers from their fate as well.

Joker and EDI end up on a planet and pop out little cyber hybrids I can work with that. I saw Liara get off the ship so clearly she wasen't dumb enough to charge a reaper on foot good for her , I reconciled between both the love scene before cerb base and the final mental gift she let herself get pregnant (I'm happy to gloss over the debilitation part) so that since she survived my femshep has at least one or more offspring ready to pop from Liara and continue the femshep line arguable the only way a femshep could have surviving offspring

What happens to them all , hell I don't need that spelled out for me to have closure I've still got enough of an imagination to handle and open ending.

Although there are many things to discuss the one I think alot of people are upset about is the introduction of a new character 5 minutes before the end. And honestly I don't see the problem, a greater plan has been hinted at for a while. Crystallised when sheps 3rd reaper kill mentions an order/chaos plan, so the child avatar was not some random BBEG pulled out of the bag but rather a well hidden one. maybe it was simply the form of the child from sheps dreams that erked people but formless being taking the form of innocent image from sheps memory to invoke a more reasonable response from her made sense to me.

As for what I would have changed honestly nothing too major actually, probably the only thing if anything would have been Shepard surviving in some form. A pure biotic entity that Liara could still commune with as she raises her daughters hehehe (very force ghost I know ) but even that I could assume happened without an ending rewrite.

Finally on Bioware ending rewrites I hope they do make alternate endings and make people pay for them and make even more money of people who honestly could never truly be satisfied with the ending. Smart business model actually making minorities pay for an ending they like, hope they do well out of it.

To me synthesis is the canon ending my ending and the one true ending that saves everyone reapers included and leaves the universe open to infinite possibility

Anyway enough of my ranting , I figure this thread can be about how your journey ended how you felt and what if anything you might have changed. and perhaps a little commentary on anything that erked you about the ending or that you've seen erk other people. I figure other threads can cover more in depth discussions about specific aspects of the ending.

btw I just used black colour text to hide spoilers if you wish to do the same unless there a spoiler code that can hide text another way ?

Just the end, eh? Sure, we can start there.

After Sovereign, Saren and the geth, after Harbinger and the collectors, after the Reaper devastation of Earth and Palavan and Thessia, there was only one viable option available.

Destruction.

Controlling the Reapers would be too much power. Also, anything the Illusive Man thought was a good idea probably isn't. Synthesis would be imposing Shepard's will on the entire galaxy, and that's not cool.

And why do either when the pros of Destroying all synthetic "life" far outweigh the cons? No more Reapers. The geth won't be able to retaliate against the quarians for taking back Rannoch. Sure, Joker might be upset about EDI, but you can't make an omelette without shooting your pilot's robot girlfriend in the face. That's how that saying goes, right? Shepard's a vegan, so he never really paid attention past "omelette".

That much of the ending I had no problem with. Except that as Shepard was walking forward, firing round after round into the destruction device -- which is apparently how you activate such a thing -- he experienced some flashbacks featuring the important people in his life. There was Anderson, who I guess was kind of a father figure, so why not? And Joker. Who's...a good pilot? Kinda funny? Maybe it's gonna show everyone.... And Liara, which makes sense, 'cause she and Shepard had a thing back when they were hunting down Saren, and then she helped retrieve his body so Cerberus could put him back together, and they've remained friends since. And then...that's it. What? Where's Garrus? Where's Mordin? 

Where's Jack? If there's one person Shepard is going to thinking of during his final moments, it's certainly not going to be ****ing Joker.

The Normandy's crash landing was kind of annoying. I understand that it was included so that people who watched Earth die from the Citadel's energy burst because they didn't have enough war assets would have a bit of a happy ending. However it doesn't really make sense. Also, how did Garrus get from the front lines to on the ship? I guess there's no indication how long Shepard was passed out for, or what happened in the interim, but if there was any chance he could get to the beam, I expect he'd keep trying, not fly off with Joker. And Javik? Why was he the other one to climb out of the wreckage?

The worst part was after the credits with the grandfather and child. That was trite and cliché. "The Shepard" indeed.

What would I change? Get rid of the Normandy crash, and the grandfather and kid, to start with. Instead of the crash, I'd show people rebuilding on Earth. The level of devastation -- somewhere between post-apocalyptic wasteland and bad soccer riot aftermath -- and whether or not there's any of your squad mates there would depend on the war assets. And if your war assets were high enough, the camera would fly up into orbit to show a new mass relay being constructed.

Oh, I also should have had the option to shoot the Illusive Man sooner.

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Kyle Reads Alpha Flight - A distinctly Canadian look at comics' premiere team of Canadian superheroes. Also: swearing and dick jokes.

I'm not going to re-hash the elements that have been touched on. Also, before I go forward I want to make it clear I am not one of the "give me the ending I want, BioWare! Screw your artistic vision!" people.

I accepted the ending with Shepard dying. I never once believed he was going to amke it out alive. I wish he had but there was too much at stake. Him breathing once while being crushed in rubble is not surviving even if I get a perfect War Asset Rating.

I felt I was watching the end of the Matrix trilogy at the end. Not the same, but similar themes. Granted this theme has been resurfacing all through human history in mythology and legend. This is not a huge shock but one of inert laziness. It reeked of the classic sci-fi "what a twist" ending that seems to be far too common. Oh well, I'm really not too worked up about it. Just disappointed.

Here is my biggest gripe. Why the hell is the Normandy fleeing Earth at the end? Why would a crew that is so loyal to one man suddenly bail in the final moments? I don't care if Shepard had given people the impression that he had "failed" initially. It goes against the character's pathos that has been established. That could have been solve with a simple command to abandon the mission or something to that effect. Could have been a powerful paragon/renegade moment. Oh well, guess the people complaining for a better ending will help me see the answer to that question.

When did the Normandy pick up my crew? I'm as confused about this as Joker piloting the Normandy into the Mass Relay at the last moment.

Now, here are the elements that sadden me. Honestly sadden me. I will miss the Galactic community. I cared for it as much as someone can while staying separated from emotional enmeshment. I'm glad that FTL travel is still present and there is a chance the races will meet again but it still sad.

But this is the element that is tragic. The Quarians. They have been a nomadic species for over 300 years (I can't remember the exact number) and they committed their fleet. Likely their entire fleet. I highly doubt that there was much in the way of colonization that had yet to occur due to the Reaper threat. Damn near the entire Quarian species is now in the Earth System unless they magically fled too. They will NEVER see their homeworld. By helping Shepard they gained back their homeplanet only to ensure they will never see it again due to the loss of the Mass Relays.

I won't get into the small gripes in this post. To me, the ending was like baking a cake only to have it come out of the oven under cooked. its still sweet and edible but it could have been amazing if a little more time was put into it. This ending will not stop me from playing it through a few more times. Hell, I'm getting my money's worth from multi-player

But the cake is a lie.

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Co-host of Geekhead Radio
Follow me on Twitter @GeekheadAaron
Look me up on Google+ -Aaron Burton

The destruction of the mass relays doesn't prevent more from being made. In ME2, Matriarch Aethyta mentioned she'd proposed that the asari should build their own mass relay network. It was met by ridicule from the other Matriarchs, yet the fact that she suggested it would seem to indicate that the ability exists. Hell, the protheans created the Conduit, so we know that beings other than the Reapers -- or their forerunners -- are capable of creating mass relays.

Between the Reaper "bodies" and the ruins of the Citadel -- which was also a giant relay and was intact enough for Shepard to be able to take that gasp of air -- there should be enough scrap and tech floating around in orbit for the combined species to jury rig something up. Establishing a whole new relay system would likely be a ways off, but the galaxy can rebuild.

Another option would be to convert the Reaper shells into ships. They can travel at FTL speeds, and it took them less than a year to get from the Viper Nebula -- where Shepard destroyed the relay in the Arrival DLC -- to the next closest relay. It might take a while, but I imagine the quarians would still be able to see Rannoch again.

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Kyle Reads Alpha Flight - A distinctly Canadian look at comics' premiere team of Canadian superheroes. Also: swearing and dick jokes.

As for your crew getting back to the ship.
The whole point of the hammer task force was effectively a delivery system for sheperd and while there may have been some confusion about sheperd making it to the transport beam or not, a metric crapload of reapers were headed for that position at that point hammers job was well and truly over and the focus returned to the space battle so your crew still on the planet would naturally want to get back in on the main fight. There's an unknown time gap and I can live with whoever was left of hammer in particular your crew got the hell out of dodge to get back in the fight.

As for Joker fleeing the system.
First you don't actually see him using the mass relay, the Normandy can make interstellar jumps of it own without a mass relay to travel between stars in the local star group you've been doing this all game when you travel between system near a mass relay using fuel.
So from Jokers perspective green beam fires from citadel, hit mass relay which goes critical and explodes. Joker knows full well what happens when a mass relay explodes how is he to know this time the shock wave is not a purely destructive force ? So instead of sticking around to ask questions as the wave front approaches he short jumped to try and get away from it. Meaning they crashed on a planet relatively close to Sol in the star cluster.

I would also venture many other ships that could independently jump could/would have thus scattering the fleet over that region of space. Assuming some of those ships survived the wave I think Quarian ships with insane amounts of redundancy probably could have would still have been repairable and with enough fuel able to travel anywhere in the galaxy given enough time.

Mass Relays just made commerce and trade viable because is made travel much faster, standard jump engines can still get you around but your talking weeks months maybe years and a crapton of fuel to do what relays did in minutes for free.

Short Version: I really loved the game, including the ending. It's 4 a.m., I will provide further thoughts and my commentary on those already posted at a later time.

To get a bit Dark Knight, "It's not the ending people wanted, but it's the one the game needed."

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Jedi Master Tir-Jin Meteos, The Order of 66
PC GAMER - T.J. Hafer

Regarding Vlade's points:

If any of the fleets are going to be traveling by conventional FTL drive, than fuel is going to be an issue, assuming that the fuel consumption of the Normandy in the game is a good representation of how it actually works in the universe. I can't remember the subject really coming up much in the novels or comics.

Presumably, with all its bells and whistles and over sized engines, the Normandy's fuel consumption is higher than other vessels of its size, but it's a realitively small ship. Traveling between systems clustered close together consumed a lot of fuel; traveling between star clusters seems as though it would be prohibitively resource heavy for any ship without a huge amount of reserve fuel. Also, they can't rely on refuelling stations along the way, because the Reapers seemed to take exception to those. There may be some refuelling depots left -- provided the Cruciable wave didn't destroy those for some reason -- but how many?

Though, again, I do think there is a way to see all the various and sundry peoples back to their homes -- the ending is far to bleak otherwise -- I just don't think a long cold trek through the black of space is the answer.

As for Joker picking up the crew after Hammer failed, would he have been capable of getting close enough? Presumably, the Normandy would have been where the fighting was thickest, so getting away to go pickup Garrus so he can do some in battle calibrations seems a bit far fetched, as does being able to get to an LZ anywhere near the crew on the ground. I'm going to assume the Normandy is a high priority target, and if Harbinger and other Reapers are all grouping up to protect the beam, then it seems that's the last place Joker should be taking the ship.

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Kyle Reads Alpha Flight - A distinctly Canadian look at comics' premiere team of Canadian superheroes. Also: swearing and dick jokes.

I'm finding it interesting that as a group, we seem to have a lot fewer problems with the ending than most people.

I wonder how much of that is 'Mass Effect' fanboyisim -- which I'll certianly cop to -- how much is a higher level of familiarity with science fiction. Or, maybe, as 'Star Wars' fans, we're used to being disappointed.

Still, I'd like to take some ofthe loudest grousers I've seen, and make them read Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End to get their reactions.

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Kyle Reads Alpha Flight - A distinctly Canadian look at comics' premiere team of Canadian superheroes. Also: swearing and dick jokes.

I'd just assumed what was left of hammer and your ground crew retreated found whatever shuttles were still operational and flew them back into space for pickup, avoiding front line fire and heading for the bulk of the fleet where docking would be possible, so the Normandy ducking back into the fleet to pickup key crew is not that big of a detour nor that dangerous.
Now maybe there weren't that many spaceworthy shuttles left for all of hammer but as far as your crew of 6, one shuttle would have been enough.
Now that's an assumption but I don't think an unreasonable one.

I think our community as a whole is more accepting because I think for the most part we all subscribe to the "rule of cool" and the Mass Effect 3 ending is very much a rule of cool ending.

Just on one thing which might have made things a bit better

The final flashback montage of random people Joker Liara etc was a bit random since your love interest may not have even been there.

So instead of the montage presented I would have liked to see a longer montage that gave snapshots of some/all of your critical decisions over all 3 games which led you to this choice, that would have had a really nice rounding out feel to it, everything that led you to this choice laid out in your final moments.

If that was too long maybe random key moments taken from your critical choices so each play through might throw up different choices yet still always the choices you made

If nothing else it would have reminded people of the epic series they just completed..

I'm going to strongly disagree with you. There wasn't much in the ME3 ending that really struck me as being cool.

Vega ramming into the Cerberus shuttle was cool. Grunt tearing through the ravagers was cool. Thane was a lame character, but his fight with Kai Leng was cool -- even if Shepard somehow suddenly lost his ability to shoot stright.

Shepard's sacrifice was very fitting for the character, but I wasn't looking for someone to high five at the end of the sequence.


Yes! No Jack = bull.


Heh. That would make me feel like such a dick. My Renegade bar usually ends up at about a third full, but flashing back to all those moments where I choose the more...pragmatic option played end to end would be kind of hilarious.

However, it wouldn't work quite so well for players who began the serries with ME2 or ME3.

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Kyle Reads Alpha Flight - A distinctly Canadian look at comics' premiere team of Canadian superheroes. Also: swearing and dick jokes.

Okay, here we go.

To start, I'll say that this came at the end of a marathon run of the entire trilogy (4th full playthrough of ME1, 3rd full playthrough of ME2), and I was super impressed with some of the continuity and callbacks that were super subtle. For example, Shepard quipping to Aria in Purgatory, "I guess there's only one rule on the Citadel," referencing her big line when you first meet her on Omega. I love stuff like that.

The gameplay took a little getting used to, I was randomly rolling all over the place when I didn't want to, but at the end of the day I think it's the best in the series. It took what worked about the first two games, expanded on it, and made a really kick-ass action RPG. I guess it would have been cool if armor pieces had different levels like weapons and mods do, but they brought back enough "RPG-ness" to make up for how little there was in 2.

The moments. Mass Effect has always really been about the moments, and this game was just chock full of them. The entire final push on Tuchaunka was awesome. The Cerberus attack on the Citadel and Thane's death. Grunt taking on the Ravagers (I think it was dramatically inappropriate that he survived that, but I was glad to have him on Hammer.)

And Tali. Oh Tali. BioWare really delivered in having the romance element end in a meaningful and fulfilling way. The last conversation my Shepard had with her before we began the final push for the conduit actually had me tearing up (and it wasn't the first time over the course of the game that I did so.) Her choking out, "I want more time!" is still ringing in my head.

I also loved all of the resolution stuff with Garrus toward the end. A true friend to my Shepard, and the alien that showed him it's not just about humans. Along with Tali, he was my permanent teammate to the end.

Where is this rambling going? Oh yeah, I guess I need to talk about
THE ENDING!

I mean sure, it could have been better. But I knew from the very beginning of the series that I wanted something truly bittersweet. A typical heroic, storybook ending would have been an awful way to close this saga, in my opinion.

What did I do? I finished the fight. I ran out toward the middle platform (synthesis), stood there for a good 30 seconds, then made a sharp right turn, thought of everyone who had been affected by this war, and decided to blow the Reapers to hell.

This was the perfect ending for my Shepard. He was a War Hero. He held off the Skyllian Blitz single-handedly. He broke Saren (and later the Illusive Man) out of Reaper indoctrination long enough to convince them to end themselves. He destroyed the Collector base with only one casualty.

Every time. Every time someone has told him things need to be a certain way, he has proven them wrong.

So when the "Catalyst" told him destroying the Reapers would lead to another war between synthetics and organics, he pointed his gun at the conduit and said, "Not. This time."

He had seen the organic races of the galaxy come together under one banner. He had seen Geth and Quarians cooperate to rebuild a broken world. He had faith in the galaxy's future. And he wasn't about to let the posturing of some unknown entity shake that faith. In the end, the decision he made was to put the fate of all the species of the Milky Way back into their own hands. It was a fitting ending, for certain.

Sure, there are things I don't like about it. Things that could have been done better. But the series gave me a sense of melancholy fulfillment, and I'm happy with that.

Plus, in the ending I got, Tali and Shepard are both still shown to be alive. And for a man that spent his whole life doing the impossible, I know that as soon as he pulled himself out of that rubble, he did it one more time. He would have gone looking for her. And considering his failure rate when he sets his mind to something is effectively zero, he would have found her. Whatever it took.

Yeah, I really loved this series.

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Jedi Master Tir-Jin Meteos, The Order of 66
PC GAMER - T.J. Hafer

That stuff was great. Like the war profiteering volous and disgusted human woman that were both on Illium and the Citadel. Or having to deliver the final poem from the krogan to his asari bride if you convinced her to give him a chance in ME2. I got to tell Refund Guy to stop whining about his not getting a refund.

A big one for me was the resolution of Conrad Verner's arc, and how it got you war assets for all the resource gathering in ME1. A bit silly how it worked out, but for the first time I was glad that I wasn't meaner to him.


Apparently he doesn't survive if he wasn't loyal at the end of ME2.

And I'll agree that his walking away from the fight was a bit far fetched, but Grunt is one of the characters I really like, so I was pretty happy to see him afterwards. Besides, I poured acid on the damn queen in ME1, so I should not have had to deal with rachni at all in ME3. Grunt living was just the natural equilibrium restoring itself.


I feel the same about Jack's final words to Shepard; "After this is over, I'm getting laid." Heh.

I've seen a few people comment that those of us who romanced Jack should be upset because she was in the game so little and there wasn't a proper...fade to black scene. I thought it was really appropriate though considering the role she plays in the game. Dancing in Purgatory when the pair we're able to both steal a moment away from their respective responsibilities was enough for me.

Alright, here's a question for you and anyone else who romanced Tali; how do you feel about the revelation of her face via you desk photograph? Does she suit what you had in mind? Too human? Not human enough? Should they have left her a mystery, or was it past time we found out what quarians look like? How do you feel about the image being a stock photo that was doctored a bit?


The moment with Garrus in the rafters of the Presidium was great. Also, in my game, he hooked up with Tali, so good for them.

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Kyle Reads Alpha Flight - A distinctly Canadian look at comics' premiere team of Canadian superheroes. Also: swearing and dick jokes.

The photo was a nice touch, narratively. I didn't find it as meaningful as some, considering that within the context of the fiction, I had already seen... *ahem*... a lot more than that. And the physiology fit with previous statements in the series that Quarians and humans were the most similar major species, visually. (Also, BioWare alien designers, why do you hate hair so much? It really is a fantastic evolutionary adaptation, and you only put it on two species?)

I guess if anything, I'm slightly annoyed that, with all the models they made for the game, they couldn't take the time to do Tali sans mask. Just slightly, though.

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Jedi Master Tir-Jin Meteos, The Order of 66
PC GAMER - T.J. Hafer

You put that poor woman's life at risk. Tsk tsk. And, I'm going to guess -- based on half remembered prior statements) -- that Mordin was the character who didn't survive you ME2 playthrough.

You're a monster!


I don't remember any statements to that effect.

In ME2, Grunt claims that quarians, unlike humans, asari and salarians, are not "soft," and if you got the 'From the Ashes' DLC, Javik says that in his time, quarians were considered to be one of the most attractive species -- which raises a lot of questions -- so I was kind of surprised at how human quarians appear.


Liara has eyebrows! Which annoys me to no end. I prefer to think of them as make-up as opposed to natural markings. Which is a bit silly, but less so than her having natural markings that mimic eyebrows.

Hair is an evolutionary advantage for us in thermal regulation, though we're still not certain what the purpose of pubic hair is. However, on Earth it's unique to mammals. Each of the 'Mass Effect' species would have had their own unique evolutionary development; presumably, those species that needed it found their own means of managing heat.

I do think of the volus as being furry though.

It actually annoys me how similar asari and quarians appear to humans. Especially the very human-like breasts. It's such cheap fan service, and visible breasts aren't even a common trait amoungst mammals.

Regarding Tali's hair specifically, I find it odd she'd keep it that long. Although, I also think she should probably have terrible skin, and some sort of...film on her. Maybe that's why she sent Shepard a photoshop....

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Kyle Reads Alpha Flight - A distinctly Canadian look at comics' premiere team of Canadian superheroes. Also: swearing and dick jokes.