*SPOILER ALERT*
I saw the ending. It was the best ending evaarr! JOKES.
Now this ending wasn’t adequate for me but it certainly was no extreme horrible one. I’m very glad Bioware didn’t put a Hollywood ending. Brave move on Bioware’s part considering the massive audience they were delivering it to but that doesn’t mean this ending’s excused. Here are a few issues I had:
Lack of coda.
You’ve went through 3 games with people all around emphasizing the outcome of your actions until they’ve beaten it into your head. You deserve to see more of what happens as a result of your choice with the cataylst. Examples could be the different races recovering together in cooperation, your crew’s reaction to Shepard’s death and their resolve or even a goddamn Shepard funeral with Admiral Hackett delivering a speech on a recap at what you’ve done in the last 3 games. A stronger coda would provide so much closure into all the choices you’ve made in your commander’s journey. You will see what you’ve really done to the galaxy in detail. Just some sort of more profound vision of appreciation for what you’ve done to the galaxy.
Choice (the lack of it)
The preservation or destruction of the Collector base. That and other choices you made are jack shit for the ending. WTF. You get 3 bloody endings that are so similar it’s absolutely disturbing for Bioware and Mass Effect and all that it stood for. There’s only like a handful of different and brief cutscenes within the different endings and it’s mostly very barren differences except for seeing that dogtag on presumably shepard’s chest recovering breath.
Implausibility
The Shepard ship running away from the Mass Relay Explosion didn’t make sense at all. For some people, the team mates they had on the ground in the final push to the Reaper’s beam came out of the crashed Normandy on a distant planet.
I totally loved the Indoctrination theory about the ending and I hope that can be an explainer for the upcoming DLC.
Ultimately Mass Effect 3’s ending was too intellectual and lacked detail and emotional triumph.