What Ending Would You Accept?

Using the ending they provided in the game. I call it Hackett's ending. After the coup, Hackett tells Shepard the ones working on the crucible believe it has enough energy to destroy the reapers. That's your ending. What could happen is right after Shepard passes out in front of the console, and the arms to the Citadel are fully opened, the crucible fires the red wave destroying the reapers. What it does is not wonder if it was coincidence the protheans called the Citadel catalyst instead of the catalyst being the one controlling the reapers. It avoids having the pull this, shoot that, and jump in here endings. It also gives a possible sequel to ME3 with either Shepard returning or having all new characters.

So I say the above would make the ending better. It's simple. There was no reason to have all that other stuff. To me it was poorly written and executed.

I will echo themikefest's idea. Have Shepard activate the console, flop down, talk to Anderson (if he is still alive by that point). Then have him look out into space, then show the Crucible firing. Use the low EMS destroy ending for stuff showing massive devastation. Cut to Hackett with his "barely won" speech. No extended cut ending/slideshow stuff.

(I would maybe cut out the part with the relays being destroyed/damaged, just so you do not have to justify the galaxy suddenly caring about creating and repairing the mass relay system, something Matriarch Aytheta mentions in ME2 that got laughed at for suggesting.)

It is a definitive ending that gives you more than enough wiggle room to continue adventures in the Mass Effect universe. Everyone suffered major losses, and you can use it to sidestep a lot of issues with potential choices players may have made during the trilogy.

I don't mind the endings in principle. I mainly mind the execution. There are several points in the execution, that would need to be addressed IMO


2. Shepard's behavior: Yes, I get it, Shepard is wounded and exhausted and at the end of his (or her, using the male form here for simplicity) line. But still, his interaction with starkid is waaayyyy too timid. It does depend on how you played the games before of course, but especially if you use persuasion options and interrupts a lot (no matter if paragon or renegade) - which I think most player will do - Shepard's personality will be that of either a very principled or uncompromising leader, who will argue their point. Here, now, at this most important conversation in the entire trilogy, the culmination of three games of effort, Shepard suddenly barely argues with the Starkid and very quickly accepts everything the kid says, even though some of that stuff is atrocious and baffling and doesn't even make much sense (remember the geth/quarian thing? Even if it may not be a water tight argument, Shepard can't even bring it up). The EC mitigated this slightly by introducing some more inquiring and combative dialogue options (and the refusal ending of course) but still, seeing Shepard in this sorry state at the climax of the story doesn't sit right with me as a player who knew him rather differently for countless hours before that.

3. One issue the Extended Cut brought about was that - rather than maintaining the "artistic integrity" of the original endings as advertised - it changed them quite a bit by making it unambiguous that starkid is telling the absolute truth and all three main endings work out for the best. This was not the case with the original endings, which had much darker implications for all three endings. Would the galaxy even recover after destroy? EC: Yea, no problem! Will the Shepard-Reaper actually work out? EC: Absolutely! (Although, at least if you were renegade, there might be a little concern about the new reaper overlords but even there, they seem to do ok.) Will all life forms in the galaxy even accept and learn to deal with being "synthesisized"? EC: Ah well, it will all work out, at least from the slides we see and from what EDI says. This is why the refusal ending wasn't received well, because when fans asked for a refusal ending in the original cut, depending how you interpreted the implication, there was a reasonable argument to make that letting the cycles continue and betting on Liara's time capsules might be the best, you could do for organics as a whole. After the EC made it clear that the Catalyst was completely truthful with everything, the refusal ending simply became the only way to really screw people up who would otherwise have been happy. I would rather have kept the ambiguity, it may have been darker but it also was more interesting.

4. The endings do not have enough range in tone. The trilogy has a massive range in it's tonality, depending on player choices. Some people may see it as an uplifting tale of a paragon Shepard, who goes on a classic hero journey to bring everyone together. A renegade Shepard may have been an anti-hero who compromises everything and everyone, including himself, for victory (or vengeance). Hell, if you choose not to use too many persuasion options and loose a lot of people, you can even see this as a pretty straight up tragedy. The endings did not provide enough variety in tone to cater to the variety we had before. Yes, there are three choices but the difference is more in the logic of how exactly the aftermath might play out, rather than in the emotional impact. Yes, there is EMS but the differences are very minor. The breath scene, while going in the right direction, was not enough there IMO and while the difference in damage, the red wave does is probably enormous the emotional impact of that is never conveyed to the player effectively IMO (again, the EC helped there a bit with some of the slides but I see that as too little, too late). Overall, for people who wanted and expected a dark ending, it kinda works, but IMO, providing the opportunity to actually get a happy ending as well would have improved that whole thing. I know happy ending proponents are often criticized for not being able to "deal with it" but IMO, there is a way to play the trilogy where a classic happy ending would simply be the best fit to the story.

5. Exposition and foreshadowing should be improved. This goes back to point 1. Whatever premise you want to use, even if you really want to stick with with the synthetics/organics thing, you need to provide the exposition on this before you ever send the player into the climax of the story. You cannot dump the exposition at the very end as it was done here with the starkid. Again, they tried a little retroactively with Leviathan but at that point (at least to me) it came across as clumsy and desperate.

6. Starkid was ... not a great choice for the role that it was supposed to play (a.k.a. an relatively neutral exposition device). Being an avatar of the reapers AND coming from a traumatic image in Shepard's head, it had to be viewed by many players as untrustworthy and potentially there to deceive the player. Yet, it basically just provides straight up information. Again, it would have been better to provide that information earlier in the game and by other means but if you have to do that last minute exposition dump, at least give us someone we can assume to be trustworthy, especially if you want us to believe what you are putting in front of us (and not come up with indoctrination theories ). Give us Vigil 2.0 or something.

Those are the 6 main points I can think of from the top of my head now. There are another dozen minor points as well but it would be too much to put them all here. In the end, it's not any single one of these points that mess up the ending, it's the accumulation of all of them which makes me bristle whenever I get to that point in the game. If it were just 1 or 2 of them it would probably be fine.
So to answer the OPs question, if just half of them were addressed, I'd probably say "yea, that's ok, maybe not great but ok."

It would be wrong to change the ending only for MELE and not for the OT. I think they're right not to have changed it.

Here's my point about the ending itself.

Usually stories convey a message. Literal events happen, but they carry some meaning on top. For example, Luke destroys the Death Star. The message is good has prevailed over evil. But we need to establish that Luke is a good pilot and that his connection to the Force is strong. That's the literal level. A good piece of fiction must make sense at both levels: literal and symbolic.

In Mass Effect 1, we discover that our society has been railroaded by Reaper designs. We were never in control. We didn't know how the Citadel or the relays work, or where the Keepers come from. Our civilization is based on Reapers. We don't own it.

In my opinion, destroying the Reapers isn't enough because it's only the literal level. The symbolic level that our civilisation isn't really ours is still there, therefore the conflict isn't fully resolved. None of the endings or the Extended Cut cover this.

I suggest that the Crucible should be a basic Citadel rather than a weapon. Just like the Conduit is a basic relay. In the process of building it, we understand the science of the relays. This is how civilization is emancipated for the first time in history.

So how do we deal with the literal Reapers that are out there killing everybody? My idea is it becomes a war of attrition, but we now have a decisive tactical advantage (the relays) and it's clear we'll win eventually. We can isolate Reapers in systems and zap in and out, doing one at a time; or immediately bring in all fleets whenever a Reaper shows up anywhere. While the cleanup may take centuries, it's clear we're winning it. It's a bit of a reverse cycle if you will (that's another nice bit of symbolism). I think the story could end right there. You could have the fleets pop to Palaven real quick and liberate it, then warp away, just to convey the message that we have the upper hand now. There's no need to show us going system after system killing every last Reaper. People get the message.

There are many details to cover. For instance, I like the idea of tossing the Citadel to the sun and obliterating our whole solar system in a low EMS scenario. We could give our armies roles like in DAO. But the basic concept is that we win the war by taking the relays from them by building our own relay central hub, thereby breaking free of their control as a society. This covers both the literal events and their symbolic meaning.

You could even include the post-credits scene where Shepard and the Reapers have become legends. It's possible some Reapers may have survived in hiding. That's not entirely a bad thing, but that's for another post.

Red Ending but some reapers escape. Such crafty. They found out about Andromeda initiative and head over there to Heleus cluster in pursuit. They arrive shortly after the conclusion of MEA and proceed to turn the cluster into slag. Pipi is captured and the Reapers extract any info about precursor civs physically (unfortunately fatal for Pipi).

The Angara and Kett didn't see it coming - as well as the Initiative.

The Reapers return to dark space and a new era begins in the Milky Way where the main reaper threat was destroyed. Ah - and Shepard is dead. They gave everything to pull it off. But maybe Liara has preserved some of that tentacled love for a respawn - I wouldn't be a major fan of yet another resurrection though.

A crushing defeat. The galaxy did too little, too late and by the end all we can hope to do is make sure the next cycle does better. Put some people in stasis somewhere, leave some messages or whatever. You can't beat the space Cthulhu.

No. That's having victory firmly grasped in your hands only to throw it away.

I like the current ending - heck, I liked it even better without the extended cut. I usually choose Control. The only thing I would change about it would be to not have Anderson there. It should be Shepard's LI instead.

Only change I'd make to this would be cutting to Destroy immediately after the Shepard/Anderson convo. Don't even have them get Hackett's 'it's not working' message (though then you would miss Jennifer Hale's superb delivery of 'what do you need me to do?').
Also restore the full Anderson conversation. It was apparently cut for 'pacing', which is a laugh considering what comes after.

Not really. You'd actually be removing content (everything after the Anderson conversation until the Destroy ending ie: starbrat). Easy peasy. And hey presto! you have a solid foundation for a sequel.

My favorite is paragade control with the Reapers and their constructs vanishing from the main stage to be some form of galactic archive.

That being said, just off the top of my head, I think the Starchild cutscene would have gone better if it was clear that the primary action is going on in Shepard's head. Given my druthers, I'd do what they did in Leviathan, but instead have the construct echo characters from the series and make it obvious that Shepard's action (IE -- convenient tube to shoot) is somewhat metaphorical. 

I dunno. I'm just spit balling and it's late, but I like the idea. I feel like the presentation was more like having your grilled fish slammed down in front of you cold when it would have really benefited from a little lemon and parsley and a hot plate, though.

Or perhaps you'd rather get the steak you were promised.