How bad was the original ending of Mass Effect 3?

Personally I always seperated the actual business decisions from the creative ones. Yeah, it stunk having to pay 15 upfront at launch, making it a 75 usd title to have a "complete" version. Sure... it's shitty, but honestly, Javik was not integral to the main plot, I know he used to be and SHOULD have been, but hey, they made it work without it and succesfully turned him into an add-on, and frankly with how hard ME3 jumps shark about upending the entire Mass Effect setting, just because "this is the last chapter of the trilogy", I really felt the inclusion of a LIVING prothean was too much, so I'm really happy it became optional. I played Legendary Edition WITHOUT him, or Leviathan DLC because I think those pieces of content drag down the overall space mystery and intrigue of the story-line.

It's way more spectacular to find that Prothean VI on Thessia when you still haven't ever met a prothean before, and your henchmen going "I want answers!" just like you do. With Javik around, that scene has some unique dialogue to him, who is basically addressing the cut version of himself (the VI's role in that scene WAS originally Javik. He was the "Catalyst" red herring in early development.)

And like... yeah, I seperate all that kind of stuff from what the launch experience was, because I do think ME3 is a complete game by itself without any of the DLC, that stupid popup about DLC at the end be damned. I never feel personally offended by developers telling me they're trying to run a business, it really has nothing to do with what the actual problems of the story/writing was and I feel that people are always conflating those things with the actual narrative/content critique.

It's as a complete story that ME3 fell short for me. Others have already explained what Extended Cut added and changed; to me it was just enough that I no longer reject the ending outright but I still don't love it.

The key change for me is regarding the intent of the Catalyst, or seemingly the intent. Whereas in the original cut it just starts spewling at you with a complete blanket statement about organics and synthetics along with Shepard nodding along to this "truth" that it felt like the writers were assuming that "this must be the central conflict of the whole story, that we are finally resolving, that players have been waiting to see concluded", the Extended Cut version of the Catalyst dialogue adds enough scrutiny and leading-questions from Shepard that a different intent cropped up in my head at least.

Originally, it feels like a scene, like I said, that tries to hit the nail on the head on "What the truth has been all along!" and you just go... "what? Since when was our "created" such a big problem that it poses a full genocide?" You'd ask yourself if that was really the main message of 'Mass Effect', becuase it felt like this ending dialogue came out of a COMPLETELY different storyline. Mass Effect's version of Organics vs Synthetics was just a subservient subplot to the larger central conflict of Uniting diverse but conflicted species versus the genocide and bigotry of the Reapers. We want to unite everyone REGARDLESS of how different we are, learning to accept and co-exist through paragon choices or becoming closer to Cerberus or the Reapers by being Renegade and accepting death as long as "one" group survives, held up to the mirror of the Reapers who try to amalgate and destroy/harvest everything that has grown like crops, so it can all be the same, in Reaper form.

The initial dialogue with the Catalyst frustrated the shit out of me because Shepard already knew most of the initial statements it made like "No, we harvest only advanced life, leaving the younger species alone" and "We preserve life in Reaper form", all redundant but perhaps necessary repetition to people who still didn't grasp the distinction between full genocide versus selective genocide. And it was a really short conversation before you just had to choose between Destroy/Control/Synthesis so the lack of information and the lack of discussion about how and why the Catalyst's idea of "conflict" applied to the story I just came from, was lacking context. Our version of Synthetics versus Organics before this end scene, can be described like a character in a story, in and of itself. It goes from antagonistic and untrusting of Organic life, the odd AI rebellious software we encountered in ME1's side-content: The VI on Luna (EDI), the extortion self-destruct guy we traced on the Citadel, and Vigil who killed the remaining prothean scientists due to technical contingency lingo posing, and of course the Geth, to their conclusions in ME3 in which conflict is resolved both with EDI attaining a genuine relationship with a human pilot and the Geth and Quarians settling their 300-year-old conflict that flirted with genocide... without genocide. They form peace.

THEN we got to the ending with the Catalyst, claiming that organics/synthetics can't get along ever, and because they can't the Reapers serve their purpose by not allowing organics to exist once they're capable of developing AI, and if the Reapers shouldn't exist, then we should pick between Destroy/Control/Synthesis to decide how to alternatively resolve their problem... the problem which by any indication of ME3's STORYLINE is not actually legitimate anymore, because the Rannoch outcome and EDI is a kind of poetic confirmation that Organics/Synthetics CAN co-exist, as long as we give each other understanding and space for our differences.

That's why the endings are frustrating to pick between because we don't truly need to, we only do because Shepard never challenges the Catalysts's logic, and since we never do that, we only know that we have the choice between either dying by refusing to choose, or choosing in compliance with what the Reapers think defines organic and synthetic life. They're probably wrong and we don't get to have that discussion with them, to reiterate the REAL message of the story.

That's the problem the ending originally had. It's also the problem it still has, and a problem exacerbated by Javik's DLC and Leviathan DLC in which the writers seemingly attempted to fix the lack of context for "Organics vs Synthetics" being the main issue of the plot by presenting it more clearly earlier in the story. Javik having some conversation about the cyclical nature of synthetic rebellion and the Leviathan literally explaining the origin of the Catalyst and Reapers being based on THEIR issues with synthetic life. But all of this did nothing for me, because it's the same issue with the Catalyst where the narrative tells you that there is a cyclical problem from ages past that will happen again in the future... but we never experience anything close to it, it doesn't seem apparent and it isn't explored within the main critical path of ME3's own story, so it feels like a completely non-essential subject becomes the whole point of the entire Trilogy's story in the span of 10 minutes at the finale of the story, in a way that simply wasn't built up properly.

So why do I think Extended Cut fixed it to some degree?

I just think that by simply adding a bit more dialogue in which Shepard asks leading questions like "...But you were created." and pointing out the circular irony of the Catalyst, it comes across more as if to say that the Reapers themselves are indeed the result of a synthetic singularity, and since organics are proven to have made the Reapers, then regardless of whether we think our future "created" will result in "genocide", we can at least say "The creation of the Reapers prove that this can go very, very, very wrong if we take no precautions."

The Reapers are themselves the synthetic conflict they describe, and they may not commit full genocide, but the fact that they have controlled essentially all life in the entire galaxy for billions of years alone proves that perhaps there's reason to choose Synthesis, and further justifies that Destroy might as well kill all synthetic life, because the Reapers represent synthetic life too. It's an all-or-nothing ending choice, and at least I got a feeling of self-awareness of this convoluted context in the Extended Cut.

But you also see the problem here. To fully understand the ending you have to pile on pages and pages of commentary because the messaging here just isn't obvious. We can't take something everyone already felt from ME3's story like the Genophage situation in which clearly the krogan expansions could pose a problem and have 3 endings based on that where people would have legitimate arguments for and against why enforcing, let's say, control on all species' populations, or taking away all technology for all species to avoid uplifting or nuclear wars, would be more intellectual as a debate. That would be more grounded in a conflict already established and something that COULD become a problem in the future, asking you to form your own opinion on the outcome of events that already happened in Shepard's experience.

Instead, we get this out-of-context "Synthetics are so dangerous" ending that is seemingly contradicted by the same story we just came from. The ending feels like it belongs to a different movie, and so it's only really the circular awareness shown in Extended Cut that makes it halfway decent, but it's just not even close to being the kind of satisfying Lord of the Rings style "no further questions" ending that a dramatic trilogy like this deserved. This was a space-opera, not a Stanley Kubrick film.