Mass Effect 3 - The End

So last week I finally finished playing Mass Effect 3. I know there are a lot of people who are dissatisfied with the ending, with the story, with the game, and with the series as a whole now. I figured I’d toss in my thoughts after taking a little while to digest them.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!



SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

When I first finished the game, I was struck with a sense of “… that’s it?” There was no big boss fight. The last time I had actually been in any appreciable combat felt like it was the beginning of a long-winded fight to get to the end. But it basically turned out to be a string of cut scenes through to the end, and then it didn’t really matter what you chose to do. Whether you chose to control, synthesize, or destroy, the only change was that in one of those three choices, you had an outside shot of surviving. Other than that, nothing you did mattered.

Add to that the fact that the final confrontation with the Illusive Man was terrible. I said nothing to him that I had not said to him in the past, yet for some reason this time he listened to me? There was nothing different this time around than any other, so why did it end differently?

So after the game ended, I felt dissatisfied. But the feeling only stuck with me for a few hours. It was like any other session I sat down to play the game. When I killed the Quarians, I felt dissatisfied because I felt like I was giving a choice to the Geth and they chose a path I didn’t want them to take. But when I prevented the cure for the Genophage from being sent up, I felt satisfied because I felt like I was stopping the next great war from occurring. Both those lows and highs stood with me for a little while and then disappeared into the backdrop of the entire Mass Effect series.

And that’s pretty much how I feel about the ending now. It just faded into the entire story. When it comes down to it, if I played 70 hours of ME2 and 3, there were probably 5 hours I disliked the game. Most of those were the driving the hovertank in the second game, the planet scanning in the second game, and the last 5-10 minutes of the third game. Other than that, I had a fantastic ride.

So that’s pretty much where I’ve come down now. The game was a blast and fell apart at the end. But the story was good enough that to me, I can deal with focusing on the journey rather than the destination.

I don't regret my time playing the game, and in fact, I just picked up the first Mass Effect so I can create a character and go through the entire story with one character. Looking forward to the play-through.

Oh, and I have seen the Indoctrination Theory of the ending. Very well-done, I think, and I like using that as my interpretation of the end to Mass Effect. I approve.