Here's a funny thing about the ending:

The mass relays are gone, so that massive armada you bring to war would be stranded on Earth. Except the crew of the Normandy who somehow managed to get away from Earth and land on a green alien planet...

<Snip> Move along, nothing to see here...

The Normandy landing on a green alien planet seems to be very wrong though, wouldn't you say? It suggests the Normandy sodded off through a mass relay while gooseberry fool was going down.

If anyone cares to explain their ideas on the Illusive Man, I'm all ears. In my mind right now, nothing he did made any sense.

Did ME3 and ME1 have the same head writer? I'm almost convinced now that whoever came up with the idea of the reapers had absolutely no input on the end of ME3.

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IIRC the main writer left between ME2 an release of ME3 to work on The Old Republic

Whoever took over clearly had no strawberry floating idea what they were doing then.

That or they thought they knew better and decided to throw away any notes/ideas left behind and just go with what they wanted the end to be.



Also, what difference does your Military Strength actually make? I can't see any point during the assault on Earth or the Cerberus base where it seems like it would make any difference whatsoever.

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Your instincts are right. Although there's some debate at the Bioware forums over whether hé was the main writer behind the story, the man often credited as being behind the Mass Effect 1 story and earlier books is Drew Karpyshyn. Apparently he switched over to the Star Wars game early on during Mass Effect 2's development. On the subject of Drew, he recently announced that he was leaving Bioware to work on more books I think rather than game stories.

People at the Bioware forums really do hate Mac Walters who took over from Drew Karpyshyn.

Can you blame them?

Or did they hate him before this and perhaps this is his revenge?

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Casey Hudson's spoken out briefly about the ending and how fan feedback will help shape any future DLC.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/33 ... er-ending/

Well, if he was indoctrinated then why did the following things happen:

1. Why didn't the Reapers destroy the Crucible, after all they would have known it was a threat early on, because the Illusive Man knew!

- You could say being indoctrinated means you work for the Reapers, without you giving them information. In which case...

2. Why did the Reapers attack a Cereberus lab? How did they know it was there? Furthermore, if they could control the IM why didn't they just get him to shut it down?

3. The IM tries to find out what the catalyst is. Who got him to do that? How could the Reapers not know what the catalyst is? ... I mean the little boy who controls them is the frikkin catalyst.

4. Why is the catalyst for the weapon that can destroy the Reapers, the thing that controls the Reapers?

With the Mass Relays going boom at the end would that wipe out the systems they are in? When yoy destroyed a Relay in ME 2 it destroyed a planet etc due to tge blast being as powerful as a Supernova. So yeah, how many races would still be about?

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Stop trying to apply logic to this mess. Although, for a second I did think Bioware pulled a Streets of Rage on me when the game took me back to just before the assault on the Cerberus base after the credits had rolled. But then I realised, that would actually be better than the actual ending, so it couldn't possibly be right.

I have come to the conclusion/opinion that there is absolutely no Paragon ending to the trilogy. Every single option you're given is morally reprehensible.


You can take control of the Reapers, who are in effect victims themselves. They're true AI's and alive, yet have been forced into carrying out this pattern over and over by being denied the ability to feel mercy and compassion. Simply imposing your will onto them makes you no better than them, and the entire length of the game tries pounding this into your head. It also feels like betraying absolutely everyone that Cerberus killed and experimented on.

Destroying the reapers at first seems like a good option, until the Catalyst also tells you that you're going to wipe out all synthetic life, including the Geth, and it's hinted that Shepard himself would die due to his body being sustained by implants. Sonot only are you wiping out an innocent race, but you're also going to kill anyone in the galaxy with a Pacemaker? Also not sure how the method of destroying the reapers would also wipe out the Geth. Does this mean it would more or less wipe out all technology? How does it differentiate between Geth technology and something like say a Spacecraft?

And then the final option is perhaps the worst of all. Fusing all Organic and Synthetic life in the galaxy into one. Javik has already said that the weakness of the Protheans was that they were all simply one people with no diversity, no differences in tactics or ways of thinking. The only reason the current cycle stood a chance was their diversity and ability to work together. By making everyone the same you're taking all of that away. Not to mention you're making an incredible decision for trillions of people who get no say in it.


Every single option could be seen as a "Renegade" option in terms of the game's morality system.

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Should have just left and gone to a different galaxy... Andromeda maybe and then in however many billion years they can go up against the Reapers again, after the galaxies have collided.

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Sounds about right to me, and that's what has pissed off a lot of the loyal Mass Effect fans. The whole series has been telling you one thing, and it was all about the moral choices and dilemmas, and the consequences of your actions. But ultimately, none of that matters. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere, but it appears as though the lesson is, "Be a dick, because that's all you're supposed to be". Pretty shitty lesson if you ask me.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not annoyed that we didn't get a Disney ending, that's fine for me. No problem with Shep sacrificing himself/herself to save the Galaxy, that's what the whole series has been building upto. A Disney ending would have been just as big of a cop out as what we actually got. The Paragon option should have been talking down the 'catalyst' by showing them how you've united everyone including the Quarians & Geth, how you've given the Geth their individuality, and effectively showed Legion and EDI that they are really living beings. It irritates me that Bioware are known for their dialogue, and the options in their games, and when push comes to shove... You get absolutely nothing

It's also daft that at the very end with Illusive Man, if you haven't played the game 100% Paragon or Renegade, you can't choose those options in the last dialogue selection bit. I was about 90% Paragon, and both options were greyed out.

Ugh, seriously? They might as well have just kept the dark/light alignment system of KOTOR rather than tracking paragon and renegade seperately in that case.

The whole point of tracking them seperately in the first place was to let you choose your own path, rather than feeling shunted down one avenue or another.