More thoughts on the ending of Mass Effect 3! Spoilers throughout, so if you don't want to know yet, stop reading here!
Still here? Okay then. Last time I talked about the resolution of the organics vs. synthetics thing, and explained how as far as story logic is concerned, synthesis made the most sense to me. To finish off my thoughts on the whole thing, I'll focus more on Shepard and her (or his) ending, and the reasoning behind it. (I'll warn you, I'm not particularly coherent and rambling quite a bit. Sorry about that.)
Obviously, everything concerning Shepard's choices is completely down to the individual player. My Shepard chose synthesis, and based on how I played, that felt like the right choice. My Shepard was not particularly hell bent on just taking out the Reapers. The "kill it and everything is better" approach didn't fit her choices. She has spent the whole game trying to sort out people's problems, trying to stop the constant battles that get everyone killed. She doesn't naturally think that killing the bad guy makes everything better, and the way I played the game reflected that. With that considered, synthesis is the only option that, for my Shepard, would make for a satisfying end.
As for Shepard's own personal ending? Well. She died. And I know a lot - a lot - of people were unhappy about that. I lost track of the number of people who complained that after all their Shepard had been through, she (or he, but I'll be using "she" from now on) doesn't get her happily ever after. (Apparently there was some kind of tweak made, so that if you chose to destroy the Reapers and you had enough war assets, Shepard survives. I've seen the YouTube video, and to be honest, the whole six seconds you get of someone in N7 armour surrounded by wreckage suddenly gasping for air was not worth playing through four hours of gameplay all over again.)
My response to all the people who complained about Shepard's death is just this: Seriously?? After all the hell she had to deal with, all the deaths she witnessed and even caused, all the physical trauma she went through, and of course her first death when the first Normandy exploded, what did they think was going to happen? The fact that Shepard hadn't descended into a haze of PTSD by that time was remarkable enough. Can you really see Shepard living through the end of the war unscathed? Living a normal life? Actually having a happily ever after?
I can't. Giving Shepard a happily ever after would have, in my opinion, cheapened it. Her getting through it and being able to live on as if it's all behind her diminishes all the choices she had to make. Her death felt right to me. She had already convinced herself she wasn't going to see the other side of this last mission, and she gave up her life to save everybody else's. This, to me, is the perfect bittersweet ending I'm so very fond of. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, that post is here.)
As I said before, this was, in my opinion, the best ending I could have hoped for. Epic, heartbreaking, and satisfying. And the people who slammed it so badly clearly all have something in common: no appreciation for good storytelling in games.
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