ME:A Ending Thread (EXTREME SPOILERS)

Correct. Captain Dunn survives if you have the asari, salarian, and turian Pathfinders. 
You can expose Sarissa and have her no longer be Pathfinder. If you do that, Vederia becomes the new asari Pathfinder. 

Now I have this scene in my head where an alien mastermind somewhere in Andromeda retracts its virtual tentacles and declares: "RELEASING CONTROL".

The ending was imo, really well done. It was like a small throwback from Ilos and then Earth, but everything was done better. We even had allies to help us during combat. That's what I wanted to see during retaking Earth in ME3.
The only lacking thing for me was the music. There should've been some good score during race to Meridian.
I didn't mind Boss fight. Some people say it was boring or not challenging. Maybe so, but then I'm not the type of person that wants to have epic boss fights. I don't need it in a game to like it.

I thought the Salarian on the shuttle was the STC guy, but you might be right.

Hey, just finished the game! Ok, I loved it. The squad is brilliant, I got so attached to everyone, the new worlds are really cool and it's just such a great start for building something big if they continue with the Ryder plot (and they should, we really don't need a new hero just yet)
BUT
Holy shit... As amazing Bioware is, they really know how to make some boring, BORING ass villains. Like Jesus fucking Christ. I'm not surprised either, this happened in DA:I too right (but at least the twist made us forget about it)
But come on... They do an excellent job at forcing you into difficult decisions that you loose sleep over and gray morality and blah blah it's all amazing... But then they make the villain this super boring cartoonish bad guy who must ''conquer the world''. Ugh. Christ. Like I want some conflicting villains man. Why couldn't the Kett have good and bad people too like everyone else? No man, they're just all these evil minions.
And since I got a 100% viability I thought Habitat 7 would have a plot twist (like you enter the system and you see a shit ton of Reapers, lol) but eh.
Also, what happened to our mom? I thought she'd wake up since that was a big thing. And who's the mysterious benefactor, did I miss that? These things just make me feel like they ran out of money. The boss fight was lame even for my standards, and I play casual/narrative.
Well, at least we found the quarian. And the elcor, hannar and everyone else they just forgot hah. So there could be a good story there.
Wow, this is too much complaining for a game I absolutely adored, spent 100 hours on in 2 weeks and am probably going to make a new character right after posting this (cuz that adorable Turian lady isn't gonna romance herself). And the epilogue was nice and they put time into it. But dang Bioware, work on your villains. I'd prefer a smaller world to a kick-ass main story. Or if you're gonna make things that are just a 100% bad, stick to the Reapers and the Darkspawn, not the Architect or Corypheus.
Also I made Morda a representative (or whatever it was) just to piss Tann off lol what a bad choice. I mean, I REALLY wanted the Krogan to have a voice finally... But Morda? That's bad. But hey, gotta start somewhere.

Just finished the game last night (aka 3.00 AM...) and there definitely were both good and less good parts to it. I really enjoyed the race against time scene when you drive the nomad to reach the meridian central hub to stop the Archon, very reminiscing of Ilos and Saren in that regard, all the while the allies you've collected throughout the game show up to help you get there in time. The Areas (and cutscenes!) looked great, despite the fact that we somehow won our space battle without even firing a single shot at the bad guys. What was even up with that? can't the kett outmanuever the scourge, and how come the scourge didn't catch up and impale all our remant ships this time, like it's pretty much done every other time?

I've only finished the game once, so I don't know how different playthroughs affects the ending, but I assume I got more or less the "best" ending, since Dunn survived. I'll be perfectly honest and say that this was not how I'd imagined the game would end. I was expecting to see a cutscene where the narrator talks about how we've done the impossible and found a new home and allies, but how we need to see the bigger picture or something, while showing us a half-finished mass relay pointing back towards the milky way, or something... Compared to that, this ending leaves a lot of things unsaid, but as others have said, I guess it's plotpoints for future DLC/games, which I'm TOTALLY OKAY with. Please, BiowEAre, don't cancel this franchise. I love it and need it.

I hope we'll see more of the kett in the future, because I actually quite enjoyed them. The definitely felt more mass effect-y than the angara ever did (for me they just felt really out of place, can't quite put my finger on it.) I'm still pretty muffed about the Archon though. I mean, here's this alien that looks freaking badass (easily the best looking new alien/character in the game imo), which seems mysterious, foreboding and at least in the beginning, somewhat relatable. Don't tell me you didn't get goosebumps when he fucking hate-stared papaRyder's hologram to death, I know you're lying! Then as the story progresses we understand all these new things about their species, exaltation, the fact that there's a pretty huge kett empire and that the mooks in heleus are just a small part of their military trying to expand their borders. We get the substory of the schism between the Archon and Primus (which, to be honest, I didn't notice any effects of in the final mission. Can someone confirm if there are more kett at the end if you don't finish that quest?) And despite all this, the Archon is just another plain "I'm gonna destroy the world!" a dime-a-dozen bad guy at the end. We don't even get a real boss fight, but just a small horde-mode sequence that lasts for a couple of minutes. I was very disappointed by this. Primus and the kett empire better do him justice, Bioware.

Other than that, I kinda wished we had a few more people to choose from when selecting the new ambassador. Bradley, Mosahe, Raeeka and Morda doesn't give a lot of options imo, and I understand that they can't include everyone since this choice will (hopefully), show up in the next game. But none of the options really worked for me (others might like these options, this is just subjective), Bradley is just another npc with very little involvement or backrground, he just felt like an out of place choice. Mosahe is angaran (which is kind of a minus in my book) and not even an initiative species, so why should she represent us? Morda is clearly a power hungry crazy person, and should never even be close to any real position of influence. Raeeka was pretty cool, and the only thing that was not going for her was that she was Tann's choice aswell, so I chose her. Still, I would have like a few more choices, but I get that Bioware doesn't want there to be a "perfect choice" on this matter. Hopefully this will have lasting consequences.

In regards to the two other new species in the game, like I've already mentioned I never really connected with the angara. I think they look stupid, especially females that try too hard to be "pretty" by our standards, while still having that ridiculous, goofy body of theirs, and something about their characteristics and culture just seemed... off. I can't really put my finger on what it is, but part of it is that they simply feel too much happy go lucky. They talk about all the horrible things that's happened to them, and all the sacrifices they've had to make to survive, but we don't really get to see it. They just felt too happy and hopeful, and not hardened and gritty enough (with a few exceptions such as Evfra and Akksul), considering that they were fighting a losing never ending war with the kett. I do like that they're very open with their emotions though, and I did enjoy Jaal way more than I thought I would. He wasn't the best character, but he was far from the worst.

On the other hand, I'm looking forward to seeing more of the Jargaan. They're a very interesting new take on a species in the mass effect franchise because they're the first species we've seen that's technologically more advanced than the milky way races, that's not been limited by the reaper cycle. Who knows for how long they've been exploring the stars, or how much further their knowledge of the universe eclipses our own? When I first reached the exploration vault in the remnant city and saw the pods full of angaran I was terrified by the fact that the Jargaan might have been pre-scourge angara, which would have been a horrible plot twist. That the angaran were instead created by the Jargaan was so much better. Also, the fact that the angara might be programmed sleeper agents as the datapad in post-meridian Hyperion suggests, is such an exciting idea that I can't wait to learn what it really was the Jargaan were planning for the angara, sleeper agents or not, and if the Jargaan really were as benevolent as first impressions might suggest, or if they had a darker purpose in Heleus than we currently believe.

This is pretty much everything I can think of right now, if I come up with other stuff to mention I'll just write them in another post further down the line.

TL;DR: The ending was good but not amazing, second best after me2 in the franchise, and there are some pretty cool future plot points I look forward to.

It's been like 2-3 days since I've finished my 1st playthrough and all I can say is... wow. This game is amazing. There're things I disliked, as always, but the overal experience was superb.

I played as Sara - emotional/casual/logical dialogue options. She's a sweetheart, I really enjoyed her personality. Romanced PB who I love soooo much (I was really afraid I wouldn't like her since she's so different from Liara, Aethyta, Aria, not to mention Samara). I already wish for another game to come out in the next 2 years (probably wishful thinking, but can't help it ).

Choices:
Told Scott the truth about Alec and their current situation.
Scientific outpost.
Exiled Nilken.
Let the sniper kill Sloan.
Killed the Angara AI.
Angara instead of destroying the facility.
Krogan scouts instead of Salarian Pathfinder.
Avitus as a Turian Pathfinder.
Kept what Sarissa did quiet (she was kinda right... numbers instead of 1 person).
Killed Kalinda.
Listened to Jaal and didn't shoot Akksul.
Let Angara keep the water supply on Elaaden.
Gave the drive core to Morda.
Supported Gil to be a father even though I'm not a fan of Jill - it's what he wanted...
Chose Hayjer for Nexus Ambassador. Although I really disliked how Moshae, Drack and Kesh reacted to it so I'll chose Moshae next time. Hayjer seems like the best option to me because he's the Pathfinder, he understands our character better than the others AND he was the one who backed our hero the most from all of the candidates. I like him, but I love Drack and want him on my side. I also don't want any conflict with Angara so... Gotta change it. Or I'll chose Salarian Pathfinder and then make her an Ambassador. It'll probably piss Drack and Kesh even more, but... I dunno. I'll see.

Capt. Dunn is alive, yaaay. And the sleepers are safe (which means Ryder's mom is as ok as she can be in her current state).

Looks like resetting SAM didn't change anything - he's still the most advanced among the others.

As for the future of Andromeda - I'm sure we're going to play as Ryder again. We know MEA won't be a trilogy, but I think we may get more than 2 games for sure. We've just seen a part of one cluster. One of many. There's an entire galaxy to explore, so many planets to visit, vaults to clear (Tomb Raider in Galaxy ), consequences of the decisions we've made to face and upcoming problems with the last Ark. Also, who knows how many other arks are coming up and we have no idea about them? And of course, it's not the end if Kett. Who is the big bad? Why were they really sent to Helius? Where are they from? And where are Jargaan, will they come back? They're the equivalent to Protheans (Sara will love to dig into their history, just like she loved Protheans) just way more advanced.

Yeah, but the epilogue music was so much better than ME1. 
For me, the best music was in ME3. Some of it can be considered epic.

I liked how they made sure almost every important character Scott encountered along the way was present in the final battle.

I didn't follow the lead up to ME:A at all. I felt like it would either rock me like a hurricane or leaving me wanting to go play the Clone Shepard DLC again.. I completed the vast majority of the quests before going into the ending (just ones that either were glitched or just not possible to complete ) so that I would get as full as possible of an experience that Bioware ended. Needless to say, much like the letdown of building up your armada in ME 3, it left me wanting more. Hearing people over the coms is cute but a cop out. When my team "joins me" at the final battle, it was a little to late to make an impact. Emotionally it was cool but moving the needle on if I died or won, it did not. The incessant talking of the Archon of saying the same thing over and over again was lame... The things I did like though are the scope of the entirety of it. Pushing forward into the unknown is nice (although like most things, why am I the one that always had to figure out how to get in and others just showed up.).. Overall, because of being able to talk to your crew and other parties about the end and decisions. It added a lot more than just "here, go finish your other missions". Although apparently someone in Bioware loves to drink and have lame parties. Stop having your damn characters say that I owe them a drink and don't even have a good drinking animation.

That's because Archon isn't the main villain He was sent to Heleus. He end up like Saren.
The end was ok. It wasn't mindblowing, but it also wasn't bad. You gotta remember it's not the end of Ryder's journey, there's more to come.

If you played the trilogy before, you know they made MEA ME1-like and Archon had to end up like Saren so I can't see why are you so upset with this ending. It was predictable. Just like him not being the main villain.

IMO playing as Sara is a better experience. She is a true explorer. Scott is a soldier so he has more soldier-like dialogues while she can trully explore a new race, which is most enjoyable part of the game. She's also a bigger goofball. 

Story is nice, it's kinda puzzle-like with all those datapads and important info on some of them. 

ME1 was weak, MEA is better than ME1. It's not ME3 (which was the best IMO, especially with Citadel DLC - screw the endings), but it's not bad. It's enjoyable, lighter, companions are funny and have much to say which sadly never happened in MET (with an exception of Citadel DLC - whoever wrote dialogues to this DLC should get an award!).