There’s been some “discussion” on the Internet about the ending to Mass Effect 3. There’s even a theory that the ending isn’t “real” and coming DLC will reveal the truth – called the “Indoctrination Theory” (GameFront has a good writeup about it here: http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-analyzing-the-indoctrination-theory/). I’d love to find out BioWare was just tricking us, because the ending as it stands is extremely unsatisfying. The ending is boiled down to a single choice between 3 options, just like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and none of them are really satisfactory. Unlike most of the game, there’s no clear “Paragon” or “Renegade” choice, and while I loved the hard decisions I was forced to make throughout most of the game, I couldn’t find a choice I liked here – no matter what I chose, I felt like I was making the wrong choice. It’s not like Inception where the ending is left up to interpretation – there’s simply no ending to be had.
Not only that, but your decisions and war assets from the rest of the game don’t make any return for the final scenes. Collecting war assets only contributes to a number that unlocks the third option. And although the third option gave me the “happiest” ending (in my mind, at least), it still didn’t feel right. I love endings that are up to interpretation, but there’s so little closure at the end of Mass Effect 3 that it feels like something’s wrong. The rest of the story was fantastic, and the universe is so fleshed out that it speaks very highly of the writing – dialog is perfect, the characters had so much personality you could become attached to them, and there were several jaw-dropping twists along the way. In spite of all this, the ending feels empty – almost as if they gave up or ran out of time. Or maybe they just couldn’t figure out how to end it and wanted to see how everyone reacted.