MTG Salvation

I chose to destroy the reapers and the mass relays. I got to do my Shepard had been claiming to do the entire game. In this final cutscene, the citadel exploded, and I was on it. My character died. I was not upset that I saw practically nothing more from then on. From the beginning, these games told the story of Shepard, and now that he had died, the end. I was happy knowing that I had saved the world from certain extinction, like I had hoped to all along.

I spent twenty minutes staring at the screen before I walked down one of the three paths. Mass Effect has been all about your choices from the beginning, and I thought the final choice was very well fleshed out, giving you three very clearly distinct ways to accomplish your mission. For all those people who experienced the ending by watching online and not making this choice for yourself, I understand why you hated the ending. All of the outcomes had clear and drastic effects on the galaxy as a whole, and needing to make this choice that would effect EVERYONE is what made this decision so difficult, and, at the end of the day, so rewarding for me.

Now to address some common complaints I've heard:

-By blowing up the mass relays, you doom everyone, especially the people who came to fight on Earth!

Mass Effect 3 is grim. If you didn't feel this, we were clearly playing different games. A lot of people die, and you are fighting thousands of extremely powerful machines. In the whole game, where your ENTIRE mission is to kill them, you only kill two. Kind of. If you count Kalros as "you". I personally would have been disappointed if the game ended with a 180 degree mood shift and everything being extremely happy. Also, isn't whatever you do better than the reapers just killing everyone like they did the Protheans? So then it is a happy ending. Also, the people who came to fight with you knew they would probably die on this fight. If the ending screwed them over, that doesn't make the ending bad. Shepard can't save everyone. Also, in the "synthesize" and "control" endings, they never state that the relays are destroyed (I may be wrong here). The blast from the citadel travels from galaxy to galaxy through the relays, but only in the "destroy" ending does it explicitly state that they are destroyed.

-All the endings were the same!

Did you listen to the blue ghost thing? Clearly different things happened depending on your ending. You may not have seen it, but your decision had a lasting impact on the galaxy, and that was enough for me. It's a lot like Legion's loyalty mission in ME2. You either destroy or convert the heretics. It's a hard decision, and you never really SEE the outcome, but having actually made it, you feel it and are satisfied. Also, hundreds of variables from ME1 and ME2 went into ME3. I'm sorry that they couldn't make THAT MANY endings for all of your choices, but let's be realistic here...they did what they could.

-You get no closure. You built up all these relationships throughout the games, and nothing reflects that in the end!

Um, every party member, even the ones from ME2 have a stirring goodbye speech before the final mission if you talk to them, which reflect the relationship you've built with them. How was that not closure?

-Why did Joker flee the fight?

I admit, this is a good point. But, there was a giant blue/red/green blast engulfing Earth. Also, Joker was probably told that all the Hammer team died, as everyone believed. That included you. He thought Shepard was dead. For those two reasons, I wasn't shocked to see him flying away.

-The last bit, with the stargazer, was dumb!

Stop making such a big deal out of this one. They did this simply so that people could continue playing after doing the final mission (to do unfinished sidequests and such) without there being a total loss of continuity. Was it perfectly done? No. But I don't think they intended people to read that much in to it

Finally, like any movie or book, the makers have artistic license. Just because this is interactive, doesn't mean they don't have a vision and that you get to decide how it ends. No, your ending is not better than their's because this is there story. Mass Effect is revolutionary for giving its players so much choice. It is impossible for them to give a satisfying ending for all the choices you could have made. By complaining to the company and making them change their ending, you are giving other companies a clear reason not to make games like this. STOP. Mass Effect was amazing, and I want other companies to be able to make other awesome games like it without worrying about their entitled fans throwing a hissy fit. If you have added your voice to the complaints against Bioware, I believe you have actively given other gaming companies a reason to fear being innovative, which will lead them to not make more good games like Mass Effect, which sucks.