Narzack

Bit of preface.  I haven’t thought about Mass Effect in a couple years.  Not terribly interested in Andromeda, since Bioware quality has severely declined, and AAAs in general don’t interest me anymore.  And I wait for sales on everything, anyway.  Plus, reviews haven’t been kind. 

Regardless!  I haven’t thought about ME in a while, and out of the blue, my best good friend Matt brings it up.  And commits the cardinal Kyle sin of not only being okay with something I vehemently hate, but also bringing up the fact that I hate it so much.

So, long story short, I am a shit person and I should not care about videogames.  Also, sorry, Matt.

***

No fair, Matt!  I hadn't been mad about video games in so long.  Now, you've got me all jacked up on account of the absolute worst, contradictory, railroading, trying-to-be-deep-but-just-being-wrong piece of shit writing in all of video game history.  Kingdom Hearts 2 is better. Bioshock Infinite has a better ending. Joss I-don't-know-what-a-feminist-is could write something better.  Alien 3 is better.  Heck, Alien Resurrection is better.  SLUGGY FUCKING FREELANCE IS BETTER.  I'D RATHER WATCH SEASON NINE OF THE OFFICE!  David Gemmel getting a handy from a diseased hooker and having Mike Tyson smash his face with a rock and singing Creed could write something better.  

I am not exaggerating when I say it is so bad, so anti-player, so disloyal to the fans, that it makes me wish that Mass Effect had never been made.  Even with the DLC endings, Mass Effect 3 has the all-time worst ending to any game ever. The one time when I got to the final boss in Castlevania only to have my brother accidentally unplug the NES was a more satisfying conclusion.

It's fucking bad.  It's fucking incompetent.  It's even worse than that, it's wrong.  It is a false ending.  It doesn't hold water. And like the most egregious sin of the Prequels, it recasts the theme of the entire story(changing Star Wars from Luke’s Journey to Anakin’s).

It changes it from the simplest idea, 'maybe this time, we win' to 'duuuuuuuurr synthetics vs organicz.'  Which we've already seen a thousand times, from Terminator to Exo-Squad to the Matrix and even damn Star Trek. 

And every single decision doesn't matter a fuckin' bit.

Mercy or Justice to the Rachni?  Who cares?

Genophage?  Who cares?

Geth and Quarian? Doesn't change anything.

The council?  Doesn't matter.

Jacob's relationship with his father?  WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK?

You get to choose three(DLC four) colors, hooray!

Dumb choice 1, eradicate all you've worked for.

Dumb choice 2, make all of your efforts moot.

Dumb choice 3, (hint hint! It's the one developers want you to pick!) Everything you've fought for and people have died for just gets swept under the rug.  Oh, it's also the only dumb decision big enough to be horrifyingly unethical and actually evil.

If I'm ever forced, on the threat of having someone eradicate my eternal soul, to choose, I'm going with option 4.  The choice the developers, pissy after the justified backlash against their awful ending, threw in.  'Oh, you don't like our ART? Here, you fuckers, suck on this!  You don't like what we did?  Here's one even worse!'

Except it's actually better and the only reasonable ending.  Spoiler alert: it's still dumb, although it accidentally accomplishes what should have happened in the first place.

Harbinger?  Set up to be an actual named threat?  Nah, let's ignore that and just wave him away in a cutscene.  All that business of 'TRUE PAIN' and impaling people on spikes and turning them into shambling screaming horrors?  Nahhh, that's just Reapers preserving speciecs!  Enslaving entire races and blowing up untold numbers of sentient beings? Um, CLEARLY, the actions of a good guy. 

Starchild, fahdslfhahfiaewuiosdklfhfadslkfj;dsaj

EVERYTHiNG iS HORRIBLE AN DI HATE EVERYTHING FOREVER

See what you did to me, Matt, you jerk?

Final thoughts:

ME3's ending is objectively terrible, but everything up until the final 10 minutes is great.  Bioware had only two good stories in them, Jade Empire and ME(1-most of 3).  Everything else they’ve done is subpar(DA:O is execrable)  and just getting worse.

Titanfall 2 is, on the other hand, magnificent.  Go play Titanfall.