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What pissed alot of people off is that there is no real 'Good End' Scenario. It isn't so much the fact that Shepard dies at the end (In a series like this it actually wouldn't have been a unexpected ending) but the fact that we don't see the real consequences of the various endings. What eventually happens to our crew? All the people we went to the effort to save? The fate of earth and the fleet we gathered to stop the reapers?

For one thing, at the end of 'The Arrival' we see a mass relay get destroyed and it whipped out most of its system. Imagine what happens in systems like Omega that have multiple relays. And even if they did survive, with the mass relays gone, how the hell is every one going to survive. Earth has that entire massive fleet above which you assembled and with earth pretty much fucked by the reapers, there sure as hell isn't going to be enough food to go around. So woohoo, you stopped the reapers, now everyone you went to all that effort to save or gather to help earth is gonna starve to death.

Even in the best scenario, which in order to be available requires you to either play the hell out of multiplayer, play a repeat, or carry over a Shepard from ME1 and ME2, your still essentially cutting every body off from one another and dooming large portions of the galaxy to death by mass relay explosion or starvation because you cut them off from access to their garden/farming worlds or resupply.

It would have been okay if we had these three different endings and to get a true good ending we had to have a rediculous amount of war assets and beat the game on insanity difficulty or even just some way of earning a true victory scenario where we don't kill off a particular form of sentience and a good portion of the galaxies population, but instead we have three just plain crappy and difficult options which when comes down to it, just plain kill the feel of the series. The games are supposed to be about how your choices effect things and yet these are your only options?

I'll start by stating the simple. While I certainly didn't hate the endings, they are a pretty damn weird way to end the series. While an ending that most people would enjoy was most probably impossible to make, the endings in the game don't give it closure. Most probable reason? DLC or sequels. They didn't want to end the series right now, and to be honest, I didn't want it to end either. ME is probably my favorite series of this console generation, and it was gonna be sad to see it part. But Bioware/EA took a really weird choice in the endings. Nobody likes too much Deus Ex Machina in their game, and that is basically what the ending is. A heavy dose of "This happened because I say so". Would the outcome have been different if the person to be beamed up that pillar was someone other than Shepard? Doubtfully. Would it really have mattered if you lost the support of the Asari or Turian? I don't think so. If your teammates died during the final mission, or hell, all through the game, would it have been relevant. No. For a series all bout the choices, it certainly didn't take anything into account for the ending. FFS, the endings are identical one from another (Well, there are different colored lights between them).
The final strech feels like a whole other experience. It feels like it was developed on a place different from the main studio. Leaving the game with an open ending would have pissed people, but I personally think that making the ending something that the choices through the game can't touch was the real mistake. Now, with that said, the game is fucking awesome and omg was it fun or what. GOTY. Unless Bioshock infinite.

See now a lot of people knock the Crucible and the endings as being a Deus Ex Machina but while I didn't like them and thought they could have had more options/at least one good ending, I personally thought that in context the three options you do get work with the back story and history of the in game universe. What Bioware fucked up was the build up and exicution of the Crucible and it's three outcomes.

Your given quiet a few hints through out the game but when you put it together it's not unreasonable to see why the common theme in the options is to turn the mass relays into giant bombs. The most telling hint is from the Prothean V.I. in that temple on Thessia (I think) that tells you that tells you the Protheans did not originally design the Crucible. It is actually ancient, built and added onto by hundreds if not thousands of raceses as their empires were harvested and destroyed around them. It is a weapon of desperation and last resort. A giant detonator meant to be a final 'fuck you' to the Reapers from the various dying races who built it with their final breathes in the hopes that it will rid the galaxy of the reapers presence. In all likely-hood the original designers probably weren't expecting to be around to see if they succeeded or not and the plan was to make the galaxy safe for any organic sentient life that came after them.

What Bio-ware failed to do was setup a sense of desperation that would justify cutting everybody off from one another and removing one type of sentient life from the galaxy. Sure through out the games they add this underlying feel of desperation to the games about how deadly the Reapers are, but there is no build up or focus on making you feel so insignificant and weak against the reapers that you feel justified taking the options the Crucible gives you.

The focus for the first game is stopping Saren and Soverign, In the second game your more focused on stopping the collectors than doing anything about the Reapers and by the time it's revealed that the collector general was actually controlled by Harbinger, the base is going up in nuclear fire so it just feels like problem solved until his minute long conversation in 'The Arrival', after which your probably more woried about the consequences of sending 300,000 batarians to death-by-mass-relay-explosion. In the third game you spend all your time assembling a fleet to take back earth and fight the reapers.

Not hold off or defend against. Defeat. Rather than make it look like an extreamly desperate desicion, right up until the battle for earth and the Crucible, the game and characters keep on making it out like you can actually win this thing. And so it just feels rail-roaded and out of left field when if you haven't paid attention to all the subtle hints when the Crucible gives you only three very hard choices

The destruction of half the galaxy was a foregone conclusion even before the game came out. What people wanted was to atleast know what happened to the people they saved after the Crucible choice, but the way the game and story execute it, you know your going to lose a lot of people, you will lose people but you at least expect to see what happens at the end everybody at the end, whether it be the remaining characters standing on top of a pile of dead reapers, half of your friends and crew being put into graves or if you really fucked, up the majority of the galaxies population being turned into reaper pastes. Instead we really don't get any sort answer at all about what happened to everybody aside from Shepard (who is probably dead) and the Normandy (which is now probably stranded on some random planet in the middle of nowhere).

What got to me was the fact that we have absolutley no idea what eventually happened to everybody. I would have been atleast some what fine with the endings if we at least saw the consequences of the different endings, even if everybody was stranded in different parts of the galaxy. They gave a definite ending to the series by killing Shepard, which honestly wasn't out of place for a series as epic in scope as this, but then Bioware left what happened to everybody else in the galaxy too open-ended and up to interpretation, to the point where you don't get to see or properly understand the differences and effects of the different choices on the Crucible, and they all just feel the same with slight variations when there would have eventually been massively different consequence and outcomes for the galaxy with each ending.

Not necessarily. Both special endings speak against this.

Whether or not there's going to be more ME is arguable, though.

In one of the endings Shepard is still alive. There will most probably be lots of DLC, maybe they'll pull a sort of Arrival DLC where there is a timeskip or something. Also Bioware has been very clear that this is the end for Shepard's story, but the probability of more games in the Mass Effect universe is very high, since it's a money factory.

I beg to differ, based on the "One more story" ending.

Because it would be a really douchey thing to basically go "Hey look we're dropping a massive hint that this is not the last you've heard of Shepard but then it turns out it's not a hint after all."

Well, "One more story" doesn't really mean anything. If the implications are what they seem, they just threw that line in to make a tie in for whichever DLC they want to put in the game. DLC that will most likely take place before the grand finale. Colored explosions is the end of the game, when you get control back you restart before the final battle. Except for maybe one piece of DLC if Bioware is to "Fix" the ending. Something that they'll most likely do.

So... it's the end of Shepard's story on the ME timeline, but it may not be the last we see of him because Prequels.

Look, I'm sorry. Shepard took a direct hit from a Reaper laser - when it was previously shown that a glancing blow from a DESTYROYER (see: tiny fucking reaper) could kill you in a single hit even on the easiest difficulty where you're basically invincible. There is no way he/she could survive that with just damaged armor and a limp.

Furthermore, it's obvious Shepard's got some level of indoctrination. He/she's not Jesus, and he/she's been around Reaper tech since Mass Effect 1. There has never been a recorded case of someone resisting indoctrination. EDI has Reaper code, Legion does, Cerberus was making use of it and I have no doubt the SR2 was constructed with some. No one can be immune to indoctrination. What better way to make use of it then at the most critical moment in the galaxy?

The right choice is presented as wrong. The whole series has been about destroying the Reapers - and that choice is presented as renegade. In fact, to reinforce this, Harbinger (or whomever is attempting to control Shepard) goes so far as to say it will destroy the geth - but this it should not do. If it was designed to stop the Reapers, it could easily target their IFFs or just any sentient organic-machine hybrids. The geth are NOT hybrids, so if it simply attacks technology then everyone would be fucked. Furthermore, at this point, the geth are no longer a collective and can independently think on their own. If it simply targets synthetics (which the Reapers are not) then it'd also attack shit like synthetic limbs, and the Reapers would be unaffected.

Even if you dispute this, it was shown the Illusive Man could easily control Shepard while he was under Reaper indoctrination. This could be metaphorical of the Reapers trying to control Shepard and him/her resisting. The reality around him/her is undoubtedly fake - from the blatantly Collector-base inspired 'Citadel' to the mirrored textures and child in the ending area, I have no doubt this is all a struggle in Shepard's mine while he/she scrambles along, half-dead, torn to pieces, running on simple adrenaline and resolve, moving to open the Citadel's arms.

The kid is the best part: no one else even acknowledges his existence. Anderson doesn't, Kaidan/Ashley doesn't, only Shepard - and when they first meet, the moment Anderson calls to Shepard, the kid vanishes without even a sound of moving in the vents. They are attempting to control Shepard through this. He/she's seen so much death and destruction, it has had a major psychological impact. What better way to garner sympathy than to use a child? The Prothean Javik even said that they used their children against them in the war between them, because they expected them to hesitate in shooting them. The final and most incriminating piece of evidence is that the catalyst takes the form of this child - the child that is a figment of Shepard's somewhat indoctrinated mind, projected outward. That gives validity to claiming the final area and the after effects are in Shepard's head.

Um, ok, calm. I agree. It's the most likely theory and was posted a couple days after the game's release on the Mass Effect official forums. So far no other theory makes as much sense and it fits with other stuff pointed in the game, like the dream sequences, where Shepard has to pursue him and then watch him fade, while voices and shades talk about what has happened, and in the last sequence the kid disappears with Shepard himself (or as some say, his mind). It's a very solid theory and it only has couple of weak points. Why would Bioware do it. Casey promised an ending nobody would forget and that would have into consideration choices made all through the series, and this ending doesn't do one or the other. Also the shot of Shepard alive and waking up in a pile of rubble if you got maximum preparation. So I still think a DLC ending was planned since the beggining.

I will admit, when people first stated pulling out the "the last part of the game is in Shepard's head, it's a Reaper indoctrination attempt" theory, I thought it was utter crap, but after looking at the evidence, it is kinda plausible and would provide a launch point for any future DLC set after the ending, via waking up in a pile of rubble back on earth. Although at this point there is really no definitive proof that it was indoctrination or Shepard really did die on the Crucible.

At this point though, until Bioware releases anything or gives us any new information, the various endings are entirely up to interpirtation and it's up to each person to come to their own conclusions on Shepard's fate.

Look, you complete moron - they are synthesizing a new DNA structure that has both synthetic and organic in one. That doesn't mean that every race will have the EXACT SAME DNA STRUCTURE - they already have DIFFERENT STRUCTURES TO BEGIN WITH and combining that with synthetic structures would result in THE SAME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SPECIES. Furthermore, every human being has the same basic fucking DNA because we are a single species. ARE WE ALL THE SAME IN EVERY WAY THEN??? WE AREN'T DIVERSE???

This is exactly the problem i have with the ending. Bioware said specifically they would not do a "lost" ending and leave you with more questions then answers, But oh shit look! its exactly what they fucking did. You have an interesting theory but that's it, its still just a theory not the actual canon ending. I don't want to have to go onto the internet to get the ending fucking explained to me.

shit cool ending bioware.