I felt the same way. I didn't play the games myself, but watched my husband play. And MAN I got so into them. I totally cried at parts too. I really hope the DLC will help and be worth it.

Ugh, my wife unfortunately couldn't watch me play. I tend to play on the hardest setting, so there's always a lot of cursing at the screen and long-ass battles over and over again. I'm amazed she won't pick up the games herself though, considering she's into xenophilia, and Garrus is just plain awesome. And she's a music lover, and you can't deny the awesomeness of the soundtrack. -sigh- Ronery in my obsession.

Haha, I kinda have to. I'm not much a of a game player.. But man some of the worlds and characters, and indeed music are just so awesome I can't let myself miss out.. So watching it is! x3 I can't help myself because Grunt is so damn.. UGHHH I donno why I like him so much.. Lol Garrus is pretty awesome too, I must say! :3

Haha *patpat*

Ah, I do like Grunt and the Krogan. That head-butting thing kills me. x3 I did worry that my choice to cure the genophage would eventually result in serious issues with overpopulation.

...but I guess the relays took care of that for me.

Haha, that analogy made me crack up. I felt the same way when I finished the game, even playing the other two endings just to see if something else would happen. Nope, just that one particular ending was a tad different. Man, so many emotions!

I'm up for talking ME though! All the way!
My head-cannon is the "Shepard was indoctrinated" theory, and the last 10 minutes of the game was only a vision fought out in Shepards head. That explains the extra clip in the "Kill all the Reapers" ending. That's just me though.

As much as I want to believe the indoctrination theory because it might allow for more possibilities, I just can't. It doesn't make much sense for it to all have been in his head. If that were the case, it was all just a fight to indoctrinate Shepard, and he never actually destroyed the reapers, right?

And if you think about it, the three choices given to Shepard were pretty much in line with what you'd done through the game: You've got the "renegade" option, where you have to sacrifice a bunch of people (a theme in the game was that synthetic life is still life), and the "paragon" option, where you completely sacrifice yourself in order to save everyone, but you lose yourself in the process (if the idea of a soul exists in the game, Shepard loses that). The synthesis option seems like the only one that works out evenly. No one really dies (except Shepard, but his energy is simply transferred), and the cycle ends.

The only problem with both theories is that the relays explode. WTF. You go through all that, and the relays still kill everyone? That's why I'm so torn, because no matter the viewpoint you have of the ending, you STILL have to deal with the issues of "everyone dies in the end, really." And that completely takes away your choice, and sort of makes your sacrifice in vain.

But then, it doesn't really. Because humans still exist, so Shepard did save humanity. A recurring theme in the game is that "you can't save everyone," so maybe that's the point: that no matter what you do, in the end, you just can't save everyone.

I still don't understand the logic of "synthetics will kill all organic life, so we'll kill it off to avoid killing them off," though. Kind of makes you wonder: how did they come to THAT conclusion. It's implied that it's happened before, but if it had, wouldn't there not be any organic life left?

I dunno, it just makes sense to me. A bunch of other fans have explained their reasoning for believing Shepard was indoctrinated. A few of their examples were a bit of a stretch though. To me there was just too many plot holes and details that just didn't sit right with me through the ending. Too many questions left unanswered, and more questions piling up still. I can see the ending being a vision from when Shepard gets caught in the Reapers beam to where he wakes back up in rubble with the "renegade" option. I think it was an eternal battle in his mind with Anderson and TIM being parts of him that were fighting or trying to control the himself instead.

As for the three choices... I was kinda let down that all the choices you've made through all three games came down to three endings with mainly just texture swaps, Green, Blue or Red. Being a game artist, that just seemed so lazy to me. I have a feeling they had more planned but something came up so that they had to take the easy route. But I mean, you could play how ever you want but in the end you and I both got the same choices, along with everyone else who has played the game. As for their themes, I dunno, the main overlying theme was that Synthetics and Organics can never get along. I mean, what? They way I played was getting the Geth and Quarians all to play nice and get along. Did they over-look that? I guess so. Synthetics are needed to come every few thousands of years to kill Organics to save them from Synthetics. Other than that messed up logic, the Synthetic vs Organic argument could have a been a GREAT theme if the Geth and Quarian quarrel had played a much greater part in the ME games. As I played ME, the Quarian and Geth feud just seemed like another side story in the huge ME universe. Now if they had focused on that just a bit more, and even put something major about it in the second game, it'd make a lot more sense. But they didn't do that and they side plot was just another game mission.
To me the entire ending came out of far left field. I ended up choosing the "Destroy all Synthetics" option and thinking of how my Bro Legion's sacrifice was all for nothing now. :<

I never saw it as the Relays exploding like they did in the Arrival DLC. I saw it as the relays releasing their energy, that'd explain the Renegade and Synthesis options better. The energies would either kill any synthetics life in the galaxy or alter everyone's DNA. Still weird that they had to blow up in all the endings through.

The Reapers only killed off all the sentient space-faring races in each cycle. Hackett mentioned sometime during ME3 that the yahg's home planet was ignored by the Reapers, so life would go on for the next cycles new races to rise.

derp derp it's 4am so I think my logic is working, or not. If something doesn't make sense that's probably why.

Yeah, I saw that awesome explanation video that points out all of these details that really build a very strong case for IT. After analyzing and debating with myself (believe me, I wanted IT to be true, because it would have been an awesome twist to the story), I just can't believe it, though. It doesn't seem right to me--it seems like the game is left unfinished, if it was all just in his mind. Also, the 'trapped in the beam' thing doesn't make sense to me. The reaper beam kills everything it hits. Shepard just sort of gets... grazed by it, and that's the reason he survives, in my mind.

The more I think about it, the more I personally believe that the synthesis option was the "best" option given to you in the game. What I've never seen mentioned by people who go with IT is that the synthesis option is only given to you if you have high GR and EMS scores. If you didn't prepare well enough, you can only choose control or destroy. Just like in the other games, the more prepared you are, the better the outcome of the story. Destroy means that you destroy ALL synthetic life (including EDI and the Geth, who you spent so much time befriending and defending), ad the cycle continues, and control means that you do exactly what you just said shouldn't be done because "we're not ready," and you still run into the problem of "what happens when our synthetics inevitably try to wipe us out?" And so the cycle still continues, only this time, in the distant future, Shepard himself will have to solve the problem of how to prevent it (probably by doing exactly what the Reapers did in the first place). The idea that synthetics will eventually overtake us isn't new to sci-fi by any means. It's come to be viewed as a tenet, and even an inevitability. The only option or choice you're given to stop that from ever happening is synthesis. I can't remember the exact words said, but something along the lines of it raising both species to a new level of existence, where chaos is no longer an issue.

It's only an option if you kicked the game's ass, and it's the only option that stops the cycle. In the end, you see the scene after the Normandy crash and Joker and EDI both step out of the ship and embrace (implying, you know, synthetics and humans merging and getting along). To me, all of that kind of says "happily ever after," in a way.

As far as the relays exploding and everything, I'm still really unsure about it. If in fact the relays exploding doesn't do any damage to the systems they're in, why does the Normandy try to outrun it, and get its ass end burned up in the process? It's obviously an explosion that damages what it encounters. I think the relays exploding was a horrible way to go with things, but it's done and over with, so I just have to make sense of it. Shepard knew the relays would explode, but he also knew he had no other option, because the Crucible HAD to be used. I think the Normandy crashing on the new planet was indicative that humans survived, and that goes along with the whole Hope thing that was all over the place in the game. Shepard saved the galaxy and the species that would come to evolve from ever having to encounter the Reaper threat again, and really, that was the whole point of the game. It wasn't about saving every person, every single species. It was about basic survival and ending the Reaper threat.

I kind of feel like the fact that the catalyst is called the catalyst is a bit indicative, too. Catalysts are all about change, and the only real change you get from an ending is in synthesis. It may not be the change you want, but it's a change nonetheless.

I think that's the only ending, and the only explanation I've thought up so far, that gives me ANY sort of closure. It's still lacking in a lot of ways, and still leaves me feeling empty, but at least it's something.

That was a pretty neat video. But I dunno, the game still doesn't seem finished. It's like they're missing an entire chuck of the ending needed to explain some major plot-holes.
I don't think Shepard got a full blast of Reaper beam to the face either, just the edge of it and getting hit with all the debris as well.

Synthesis was a pretty good option just for getting to see Joker and EDI exit the Normandy together, very touching. I just couldn't look past them being stranded on some unknown planet. Tali was there too and I thought of how they'd need a certain type of food for either her or Joker to survive. (Same with all the Quarians and Turians still on Earth with no Relay to get them home. It was all just really sad to me.) I'm sure the ship has some food, but for how long?

I think the Normandy was trying to out-run the energy cause they were in mid-travel, to where? Why? Who knows. Just another plot-hole since two of my squad-mate that were with me at the last battle some how made it onto the ship. But I'm guessing that when the energy hit it it'd kill the ship and they'd be stranded somewhere, which what ending up happening.


I saw a comic recently picking fun at ME, but it did give me the idea of if Shepard had decided to control the Reapers. He could have made them rebuild the Relays, ferry his squad home and then order the Reapers to kill themselves or leave and never return. Haha. Probably wouldn't be that simple though.

See, that's even more of why synthesis makes more sense to me. After converting our standard DNA and the... Whatever it is that makes up the genetic code of the other races into something that is augmented by synthetic code, who's to say they even still need to eat, or that what is needed to eat is anything special at that point? I mean, it's an interesting thought at least.

If the Normandy was mid-relay-jump and running from the explosive energy, how is that any different from the energy being released by each relay explosion? It was the same stuff, from what I could gather. I really do think the relays were meant to explode and wipe out much of what was left. Sad and crappy, but the point of the game was that you can't save everyone. Also, if they were in mid-relay-jump, they had to have been in an area that had been explored/plotted since relays only exist in certain locations, so a garden planet like that would probably have already been colonized. I think they were just in a standard FTL travel and a regular explosion from the relays was what they were avoiding.

Though even still, how did your squad mates get back on the ship that fast and come out of it without a single scratch?? :| laziness on the makers' parts, maybe.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: jumps from one relay to another are supposed to be instantaneous. So the Normandy couldn't have been in the middle of a relay jump. They were just fleeing through standard FTL transport.

My friend, Gen over at :icon:genesisw: has played all three of those games back to front and sideways! Her and a few others can easily engage you for a few hours. Sadly, I only know enough to understand about the story of the game but I watch her play it when I can.

Did you hear about the fan that sent BioWare a bunch of cupcakes with a note saying something like "they may be different colors, but they all taste the same!". MTE :/

I've never played any of the MEs but my boyfriend has and I've watched over his shoulder. It's so disappointing that the entire time we were told that all the choices a player made would be relevant just to have... that... as an ending. I've read the break-downs of the ending(s?) and yeah I totally get it but it just feels like it was a cheap ending because they were in over their heads. Which I guess is understandable, it was a monumental task they took on, but maybe they shouldn't have played it up so much-- whether the ending made sense or not becomes kind of irrelevant when so many of the fans were so upset about it.

Ha! Those cupcakes are a perfect analogy for why the ending sucked. Though with the way the story went, it actually makes sense to me that they were all the same. I mean, in the grand scheme of it, did it matter if you let the rachni live, or the geth upload the reaper code fragmenta? The ground forces had no real impact on how the war was actually won. If they wanted to have an ending that had anything to do with the way the games had been played up until that point, they needed to come up with a better way to wrap it up than the trite and overdone Deus Ex Machina. So I guess my issue is not the homogenized ending, but the idea of how the ending itself played out. They could have done so much better, and I can't even begin to understand how they could do what they did to such an amazing series and incredible story/universe. The only thing they had to do was make it possible to fight and destroy the reapers with all of the forces you'd spent the whole three games gathering up. Why the hell did they not do that?? :(