You should seriously go through my journals and find my rants about these pieces of shit ending choices. Make sure you view the one on synthesis especially! Bottom line of this whole issue? Bioware fucked us bigtime. They broke established themes of the franchise, rushed out a poorly thought out ending full of errors plotholes and logic-defying concepts, didn't give us nearly satisfying enough closure and then expected us all to enjoy it with a "But you get to fill in the blanks with head canon!" attitude.

No.

Fuck you guys.

Nothing about the endings make sense. The starchild is so baffingly illogical and stupid in concept it makes me weep. I shouldn't find apocalypticly large plotholes in just the first 2 minutes of the goddamn ending even starting. I mean for fucks sakes, Soverign's entire purpose in ME1 was made REDUNDANT by having the starkid in control over the citadel the entire goddamn time! Why did he even need to TRY to open the relay? The kid was in control the whole time since it's obvious after he just teleports the goddamn thing to earth on a whim, so does Bioware just think all of this is just some big joke?

ME3 was so bad it caused me to go on anti-depressants. If Biowares whole angle was to create a game so bad and depressing it causes its fans to go on medication, mission accomplished.

I'll have to go look through them.

My fiance got me to play the series... Bad enough I played DA2 before playing DA:O... then I saw the bullshit that they threw together... was irritated at Bioware for that and then I play ME 1-3 and... yeah... I seriously didn't understand the whole starchild thing and even I was thinking "wtf is this shit? Aren't we supposed to be trying to STOP AIs from taking over and killing everything? WTF?!?"

I hated the ending choices they gave you... Shepard dies, Shepard dies, Shepard has a SMALL chance of surviving, OR EVERYONE DIES. How fucked up is that?!

This was my first time playing the ME series ever and there was just so many things that made no sense once I sat there and started thinking more deeply about them. I mean shit, the entire fanbase of the ME series could/would be able to create a BETTER ME:3 and fix ME:2 than the idiot creators! It also irritated me that the choices just... ugh... gods...

Control: Kills Shepard. Yet, how would we be controlling the Reapers when Soverign was supposed to be an "individual" and aren't we supposed to be stopping control?
Sythesis: Kills Shepard. wtf... so... Shepard gets to die and everyone becomes part cyborg or something? Fucked up. I seriously did not get nor understand this particular choice.
Destroy: Possibly kills Shepard. Um... I spent the majority of the game making sure my Paragon was high enough so that I could recruit BOTH the Geth and the Quarians because, well, Hell, I love Tali and I really liked Legion. I do not like the thought that I have to commit genocide not only on the Reapers, but also on the Geth and all other synthetic life, which would include EDI... and I really liked EDI's character.
Refuse: Everyone dies. Um, no... sorry, not happening. The whole point of the fucking game is to get rid of the threat of the Reapers... I've heard rumors that you can choose this ending and beat the Reapers if you're military strength is high enough... but I have no idea if this is true or not. I wasn't in the mood as it was to take the risk and find out.

I told him if he EVER tries to convince me to play a game where the hero dies NO MATTER what at the end of the series, not to mention the outlandish number of plotholes that's in it ever again... I'll kill him. Crying over a video game ending was NOT on my to do list.

Sorry for the rant.. again. >.>;

Sadly, military strength has nothing to do with refuse. Even if it's over 10,000 like mine is (and you only need 3,100 for the 'best' outcomes) it still gets you the same thing. Refuse, you die, oh boy.

Since you brought up dying I'll touch a bit on that. It's cheap that you die in all but Destroy, because Shepard ALREADY died in #2. It cheapens the whole idea of character death when you do it friggin twice like this. Same thing for the suicide mission! ME2? Suicide run. ME3? Again suicide run. The least they could have done was make the third games lame ass suicide run survivable the same way #2 was...

The whole thing just pisses me off.

I agree, and as for the EMS and galaxy readiness, I used to think it would mean how much reaper ass I'd be kicking back into dark space, turned out to be nothing but a fancy number to "make you feel good" and to give the synthesis (and control? ) option(s). It's totally useless and is only in there becasue of the multiplayer.

What Von said

Atleast there are even people out there who are new to ME ( I assume that you are ) that can see what's so obviously wrong with ME 3. Nothing can describe what I'd like to do to mac and casey should I ever encounter them, they stabbed me through the heart with a jagged sword and twisted it with joy.

Your not the only one who cried, ME 3 made me depressed for months and still does when thinking of it, it took the joy of gaming away from me, hell, I can't even play or look at ME 1 and 2 anymore.

Yeah, I'm new to the ME series, the fiance was all like "Here hun, I really think you'd like this! I know sci-fi games aren't your thing, but I think you'll like the storyline at least!"

...

I told him if he EVER tries to convince me to play a game where the hero dies NO MATTER what at the end of the series, not to mention the outlandish number of plotholes that's in it ever again... I'll kill him. Crying over a video game ending was NOT on my to do list.

He should have told you just to play #1. Or #1 then #2. It's perfectly fine when you just absorb yourself in those two. It's the third one where it completely falls apart....

I'm guessing you noticed how bad it was from the start? From the hilariously quick and stupid reaper introduction? I swear that will go down in history as the worst videogame start ever.

There's no brain bleach strong enough to make me forget what I saw in #3, Bioware build it up it up with promises like: "Your choices matter", "There will be no A,B or C ending, "Presence of the Rachni will have huge consequences",...and many more, only for it to turn out to be the EXACT OPPOSITE of all that!!

"Ah yes, narrative coherence,...we have dismissed that claim"

"There will be no turn off reapers button"

About 20 - 30 min into the game:

Liara: "Hey Shep, guess what I found, plans to an ancient device that might defeat the reapers, though I have no idea what it does or if it'll work.
Shepard:....
Hackett:..."Build it, conventional victory is impossible"
Shep: "But sir, doing the impossible is what I do, remember Sovereign and the Collectors?
Hackett: "I said build it dammit, what part of "conventional warfare is impossible" don't understand, and to make myself clear, I'm going to mention it every damn time I see you! Hackett out."

They took everything ME 1 and 2 build up and threw it out the window, what's the point in building up Harbinger if you're going to completely ignore him in #3?

Conventional victory being impossible is absolutely ridiculous when you remember how Thanix cannons were on everything (which bioware forgot about). And not to mention this leviathan ally.. lol. Impossible, right. Sure. Bioware is full of morons.

I think the fans need to take over Bioware and rewrite everything... the correct way. Make the game make SENSE.

Eh. In retrospect, a lot of what was included in the EC wasn't really terribly necessary besides the slides and the catalyst's explanation of what the choices did.

Infodump on who/what it is? Didn't really need it, and it didn't really change how I picked my outcome.

Scene of Normandy picking up crew? Nice I suppose, but I already figured that's how they got back. It's not like the timescale was instantaneous. (lol "teleportation")

Hackett spending 5 seconds telling the fleet to skedaddle when the Crucible fires? Again, sort of silly. I figured that's why Joker left. Anyone seriously thinking he wigged out because he "was a coward" is being ridiculous.

As for conventional victory? Well, remember what it took to take out Sovereign? What a lot of people fail to take into account is scale. Sure, taking down one Reaper was quite difficult, but could be done. Now increase that number my exponentials, and suddenly it's not -quite- so easy.

EC only fixed a few of the little things, lots of plotholes and things that should have been removed are still around and it didn't give me my closure.

As for conventional victory, it's possible, but the ME 3 story doesn't allow it because it would render the crucible plot and bioware's "artistic integrity" completely useless, and they don't want that.
Thanix cannons, as mentioned by Von have been widely spread amongst the Turian fleets, Alliance fleets and others. We also have Thanix missiles which were used on the reaper on earth, Javelin missile launchers, M-920 Cain, the Miracle at Palaven....

It doesn't require putting all our resources into a device we know absolutely nothing of, it doesn't require space magic, it doesn't invalidate ME 1 and 2.
Sure, Sovereign didn't go down easily, his shields had to be removed first before they could destroy him, but the turians salvaged and studied his main gun and came up with their own scaled down version, the Thanix cannon!

"The Thanix's core is a liquid alloy of iron, uranium, and tungsten suspended in an electromagnetic field powered by element zero. The molten metal, accelerated to a significant fraction of the speed of light, solidifies into a projectile as it is fired, hitting targets with enough force to pierce any known shield or armor. The gun can fire reliably every five seconds. The weapon's relatively small size allows it to be mounted on most fighters or frigates."

One shot from this might not damage a reaper alone, but imagine what would happen if a reaper was hit by several of these babies, my guess, "Bye bye reaper". Now i don't have an exact estimate of how large each species fleet is, but i recon alot of them have Thanix cannons, so if groups of ships would each target a reaper, their numbers would drop drastically. As far as we know, the reapers only create 1 capital ship each cycle, the other harvested species are turned into destroyers, so there are far less capital ships than there are Destroyers. 1 dreadnaught or many fighters can take down a Destroyer if they get the jump on it, the shields of a Capital ship can hold off the firepower of 2-3 dreadnaughts but 4 usually results in destruction, reapers also have to reduce their mass when they land on a planet which causes their shields to only be at partial strength.

Ofcourse, there would be many losses, but I would rather have this than the lame ass crucible plot. All it takes is a good and competent writer who knows, understands and preferably loves the ME universe.

I don't agree really. I mean, the Codex outright stated that it takes 4 dreadnoughts to kill ONE Sovereign-class Reaper. And the Reaper only has to fire ONCE to destroy a dreadnaught.

Plus, even if it were possible to start equipping ships with Thanix weaponry, there's the problem that the Reapers start an invasion by targeting industrial infrastructure, likely to prevent the possibility of warship production.

I'm sure we'd inflict a lot of casualities, but in the end we'd be overwhelmed. Remember, the Reaper Fleet around Earth was only a small chunk of their total forces. What would likely happen is even if the Coalition Fleet won, they'd get mopped up by the reinforcements.

It's difficult to imagine conventional victory when your enemy not only outnumbers you by a huge margin, but is capable of taking out your best ships with a single shot.