Replaying Mass Effect 3 after five years.

True, but it's just not the same.  

Just like the real thing. 

There is no peace. And once you see behind the curtain, the magic is gone. Time to move on.

You want this type of story done right, check out Babylon 5.

I don't think telling the Reapers to go away will work like the equivalent did in Babylon 5.

I was on the old bsn defending ME 3 and getting into flame wars defending the game during the height of the ending controversy.   So much so that Chris Priestly threatened to permeban me if I didn't cool down.  My opinions regarding the games in the franchise have generally remained quite consistent.  I loved ME 1 but I thought  MEs 2 and 3 were better games.  I like MEA ok but at the same time I find it disappointing in many ways and I find the trilogy to be vastly superior.  I wasn't happy with the initial way the ME 3 ending was shown but once the extended cut came out I was fine with it.

You should've posted here before doing it. You can make ME3 a much better... MUCH better game and continuation of the other 2 games with a few extensive mods applied.

for one, you can get rid of the kid and replace the dreams with nightmares of earlier traumatic events from ME1, 2 and 3 across the game using the mod called "Better Dreams". Then, you can restore some content and fix lots of bugs with ME3Recalibrated and Anderson Restored Conversation mod and then, you can get an alternative ending mod. My personal favorite is Less Is More. It merely cuts down the ending and removes the lore-destroying starbrat and instead kinda streamlines it. Sure, it's not climactic and it's not a good ending but at least it isn't downright alienating and wrong anymore.


The reactions to the ending wouldn't have been as extreme or as loud if the game shipped with EC, but they would've still been heard and there would've been a general sense of people being left with sour tastes. However, BioWare would be in a better position to say "But look, we did what you asked, your choices matter" and etc. because that's what EC is good for. It makes the finale react to your various outcomes across the game and the final choice, but it just didn't fix how broken the narrative context was beyond improving the tone and emotional touch of the ending. The original was abrupt, cynical and disgraceful. Extended Cut is just a hell of a disappointment but not broken beyond all belief... and it still fails to make Shepard a hero in the final hour because while he can react mildly negative to the catalyst or go fatalistic for all the wrong reasons in rejection, he's still forced to just swallow everything it says in the end and go with it, taking the bullshit of a deus ex machina with no scrutiny and suiciding himself to stop the reapers, but he can't even try to reason for a better outcome where the Reaper solution is proven wrong in the first place, which it can be... and if it can't, well, then the narrative completely failed to address why and so does anyone I've spoken to about it including all the delusionals that apologize or headcanon the meaning of what the catalyst says beyond common sense.

The only downside to EC was that it reaffirmed that the ending was as bad as I thought. It does try to address the issue of the Reapers themselves being the problem they try to solve, by making slight nods, but I don't think for a second the purpose of the original ending, which was solely written by Mac under guidance of Casey btw, was anything else than "Synthetics are bad, therefore their creators are bad and thus Reapers preserve organics to solve the problem of widespread chaos but because they're Reapers they don't understand that organics need emotion and hope and what makes us human to be okay with a solution, therefore find a better solution" etc. However, 2 things. EC, while nodding to the fact of this being a self-imposed problem by Reapers, which the audience called out in a second upon the game's release, it doesn't follow through. Shepard just jabs at it and then drops it, it's not actively the theme nor catharsis of the scene so it fails. Second, the entire syntehtics vs organics premise remains contrived and is now clearer than ever.

The only upside to the vanilla ending was that it was so deliberately vague, which is something Casey decided after the earlier iterations of Mac's writing containing investigative conversations and etc, so much so that it allowed you to justify it in case you hated it with theories. That wasn't satisfying and that's not how a trilogy should end. We're looking for resolution not high faluting ambiguity at the end of an arc as tense and sensational and character-driven as this, and it completely failed here by being so abrupt and also not really providing any clear answers to neither the Reapers nor the fate of your beloved cast... but still, it wasn't clear so if you couldn't accept the backwards logic of everything in the narrative you could actually believe in your head that there was a deeper meaning to it. With Extended Cut and then Leviathan, that was the real insult honestly, by continuing to go with the contrivance Mac and Casey pulled out of their ass at the very last months of production in 2011 right before the BioWare register on ME3 would be closed for the main product and only opened further for DLC production.

I think it's incredible so many try to justify and claim the ending was genius or even just good when it so clearly was a result of two people and the leads rushing to push out a product while going in over their heads with an ending concept they refused to make "normal" in some faux attempt at making the story "More meaningful". As I see it, and as I saw it back when I first played it, the entire final scene with the Catalyst and anything beyond that is imposing things that are superficially meaningful from the scenery, music and writing-style, wrote an inauthentic denoument because they mistakenly saw "Synthetics and organics" as being the sole primary theme of the trilogy.

Patrick Weekes's "Takyris" post perfectly rationalized why the ending wasn't authentic. Organics vs Synthetics is certainly a theme, one explored greatly during Rannoch, but it wasn't reasonably foreshadowed as the primary, central conflict between the MW Species vs the Reapers, like when the Rannoch reaper and Shepard strawman-like argue "Organics and synthetics don't have to destroy each other", "your battle for rannoch proves the opposite!", it doesn't connect properly and they carry this through in the ending because Mac didn't realize it was wrong and neither did Casey.

The theme of Reapers being a post-singularity apocalyptic species was an idea they drafted way back in ME1 that both Casey Hudson and Chris L'Etoile were in favor of, and I bet so was Mac Walters considering how hard he's pushed this idea again in Andromeda, not to mention with EDI, but the problem is, the thematic throughline of ME3 shows almost the exact opposite of this "conflict" between organics and synthetics that the Catalyst poses and even his implied origins. The entire problem of the ending hinges on the blanket statement of the Catalyst that we'll always create synthetics that undo us, and even if he's the example of that happening in the past, that's not fate, it's pure chance and it isn't inevitable, and it doesn't prove that Synthetics and Organics will always eradicate things and cause chaos. On the contrary you JUST proved throughout all of ME3 how this is false with EDI becoming trusting and understanding of Organics and it being portrayed as beautiful and sweet, and the Geth are subverted with Quarians being the paranoid aggressors and in the end most players end up making peace between them. The entire Catalyst premise from what he says to what the secret meaning (post-EC) behind what he says is, is FALSE and that is the entire issue behind the distaste for the ending. The distaste is justified because none of it is addressed and the ending CONTINUES to go with this false premise. Shepard goes with it (unless he fatalistically ignore the actual argument and decides to refuse anything the boy said out of martyrdom and emotional bullshit), the tone of the narrative goes with it, the Synthesis ending being the biggest ludonarrative reward reaffirms this, EDI's speech in the EC epilogue confirms it;

BioWare went insane and in their created chaos of their rabid fanbase we rebelled and called them out on their bullshit but they went suicidal in their way of responding to it by making a series of fallacies about why we didn't love the endings, and then the internet exploded in rage and the Catalyst proved itself right with Casey's middle-finger shining faintly inside his holographic display.

Kidding aside, it would've been pretty good if the devs who have the budgets, the voice actors and, erm, otherwise the talent that previously made good stuff, could've, you know, made an ending that was as awesome as all other well-done parts of their games including ME2 and ME1's respective endings.

Lol yeah, but that said MEHEM sucks baaaaallllzzzz.

Go with JAM or LIME instead maybe with CEM or not.