I know I haven't posted on here in a long time, and am late to this particular party by a couple months. But I just beat the game, and although I had seen the "headlines" about the ending controversy, I never read any of the articles or even any of the major reviews for the game. So I didn't go into the game wanting to hate the ending by any means. But...
What a pile of steaming crap, on every single level, that ending was. IMO there is no option for a happy ending, or bittersweet ending, or even tragic but necessary ending, just three terrible endings that totally go contrary to everything your character has believed for five years over the span of three games, four novels of backstory for the universe has presented, 100 hours of gameplay, and is completely unaffected by anything that you choose to do throughout all that hard work to get to the end. You either die an, IMO, unnecessary death (or somehow survive back on Earth because you had the correct arbitrary number of war assets only attainable by playing multiplayer in a single player series). Or you do exactly, IMO, what the reapers want you to do, and force every living thing in the galaxy to instantly give up their individuality (which everything in the lore of the games has told you is one of the most important things of your galactic civilization, and the major personal plot of all three games bringing races together in the face of adversity, and is exactly what indoctrinated people want you to believe the Reapers will accomplish "pinnacle of evolution") and become "hybrids" and they have the gaul to claim that is the most superior/desirable ending of the three. Or lastly you blindly accept that even though neither the Protheans, nor Saren, nor the Illusive Man was able to control the Reapers, for some reason because some star child ghost thing tells you you can control them, without even questioning it, you will risk indoctrinating yourself and being turned into a tool, when you are just feet from the goal that hundreds of thousands of troops from across the galaxy are dieing right in front of your eyes for you to accomplish; destroying the Reapers. The goal I may remind you that you have been trying to accomplish for the entirety of all three games.
So to me destruction is the only option, and where is your loyal crew to pick your butt off the station before it goes by by? You have bailed them out more times than you can count, in my game managed to get everyone through the suicide mission, saved everyone possible in this game including your master ace shuttle pilot, and in the face of that, they all have Joker swing by and pick them up and bail on you? REALLY? I am supposed to accept that. Ohh and then they land on some utopia planet and Joker gets out, with a smile on his face, seemingly un-phased that my actions just destroyed EDI, his love interest in the game, Liara gets out, who I had romanced, seemingly excited to be on a new world to explore, un-bothered by the fact that I AM DEAD again, and then Javik gets out last. Hope you all have fun repopulating the planet, backstabbing B@#(%I%s.
I know that not everyone plays the game as "themselves" or whatever, but I did, I only made ONE Shepard the entire time, and played as that character and that character played as me, so forgive me for not being happy that I got railroaded into some lame as ending where I am forced to accept to die for no reason (unless one of you plays some multiplayer with me! BK, want to help a fellow ending hater out?), didn't really accomplish what I set out to do, and wasn't even allowed to argue with this glowing little punk kid trying to get me to become a tool for the Reapers. Screw that. My Shepard believed the bonds and friendships he had formed were important, that to let everything he knew be destroyed to beat the Reapers would be a cost too high, and worked hard to keep those in his command alive, and then he is wholesale FORCED to abandon that ideology without even a whimper. They were all terrible choices, they all destroy the relays (even without touching on the "did the explosion work like arrival or not" thing), leaving the fleets of every major civilization in the galaxy marooned maybe centuries from their homeworld at standard FTL speeds, the Geth I worked so hard to save are now dead, the Krogan will die out because Wrex isn't there to keep them together and their world is too depleted to sustain them without support, the Quarians are now completely on the opposite side of the galaxy from home, with the liveships left at Rannoch they will die, many species who came to my aid on my watch will die in orbit around Earth or on a desperate and futile journey back home from a lack of resources and the impossibility for Earth to sustain them. And that is what will happen in the BEST possible ending for my character? And none of the decisions I made in the whole 99.9 hours before the end can change any of it?
I am not saying the game should have had some cute scene at the end where you and Garrus are having a beer at the beach on some alien planet and your love interest is running around with your children and everyone is happy, but if my character had to die I better feel emotionally engaged by it. When Master Chief (appears to be) dead at the end of Halo 3, I felt emotionally impacted, when your character in Halo Reach is screwed and left to die, I was emotionally impacted, when Mordin died to save the Krogan (or delay their extinction slightly as it turns out) I felt emotionally impacted, when Legion sacrificed himself to create a self-aware and independent Geth, I felt emotionally impacted, when Shepard died at the end of the game, I felt furious that he went out like a weak little punk that wouldn't put up a fight, and that his loyal crew just left him to rot. And hey, what is wrong with the possibility of a happy ending? Anyone seen the Avengers... (don't click if you haven't)
Well it is on track to be the best selling movie EVER made, and it has an extremely positive and happy, "the hero gets the girl and lives happily ever after" kind of ending
. Point being, sometimes people WANT a happy ending, sometimes people don't need an overplayed diatribe of "your character must die so others can survive," and certainly not have that shoved down our throats as the only option available, they NEED to see that there is a possibility that everyone won't just end up even more F'd up than when they started. I was told my choices would matter, that the kind of character MY Shepard became under my watch would fundamentally affect the outcome of my game, and while I didn't expect 1000 totally unique endings, I certainly expected more than ONE (with three color choices, and a handful of sub endings depending on how many arbitrary troop numbers you got).
Maybe I am wrong, but I always thought that the title "Mass Effect" not only was of course a reference to the energy that allows all the great things like biotics, and relays, ect, but is also a literal play on words that your characters actions will have a "Mass"ive "Effect" on the outcome of the game. Turns out that was a lie.