No, the problem with the Mass Effect 3 ending for me, was how little it reflected how I played the game. The idea of an RPG universe is that you can make choices, and that those choices matter. So, pulling up all those war assets with reapers riding my coat tails was all for naught. Would it have killed Bioware to throw the Volus Dreadnaught into the battle because I found it? How about some Hanar infantry tearing through the reapers – yes, I found them too.

The expectations for the ending were high, but it ended up being a cookie cutter ending – exactly what EA executives said the game would not be. How could you make it anymore of a cookie cutter scenario than choosing a final direction in which to walk? I didn’t even choose my ending – I just walked straight ahead and chose synthesis, thinking that I’d make the choice when I got to the node – imagine my surprise.

The games outcomes, ideally, should have reflected the players actions, his/her renegade and paragon scores – something! This is what frustrated me most about the ending. It just felt like all those war assets were some abstract entity with no attachment to the game universe, and that paragon and renegade levels were wholly irrelevant,. Sure, give Shepard the option to save the universe by sacrificing his own life, but give him other options as well.

If you’re not going to put the war assets in the movie – keep them. If you’re not going to make Shepard’s actions matter, get rid of the renegade/paragon system. And if you’re not going to make the DLC the least big impacting on how the story ends, don’t expect even fan boys like me to pick it up. I look at the DLC offerings and then at the color coded endings and I think to myself why should I be vested in those side stories? I’m dead and the universe is saved. Does the back story really matter when the ending is so absolute?