Mass Effect 3: The Endings

I didn’t play Mass Effect 3 when it first came out. Instead, I continued to work through my overwhelming backlog of games, waiting to pick up ME3 on a decent sale. Even after I bought it for $40, I didn’t play it until several months later thanks to Gears of War 3 and Modern Warfare 3.

During this time, however, I read rumors around the net that the ending for the Mass Effect series was disappointing, outrageous, and insulting. Tempers flared, tears fell, and rage was rampant throughout forum posts and blogs alike. I intentionally ignored all this to avoid spoilers, but in the back of my mind doubt grew.

I didn’t want to hate the ending, but I was afraid I would. Mass Effect holds a very dear place in my memory (particularly the first game) that I didn’t want to tarnish.

Eventually, I had to experience the bookend of the trilogy for myself. So I dived in with my paragon character on normal difficulty. Near the end of the story, I realized that BioWare released an Extended Cut DLC for free.

This DLC adds some extra cutscenes and was purported to alleviate many players’ concerns about the abruptness of the original ending. I downloaded it immediately prior to entering the final mission. I had to delete a number of less important items from my 360 hard drive just to install this piece which weighs in at 1.9GB. I have the lame 20GB model which is nearly always full; this time around my Modern Warfare 3 recordings didn’t make the cut.

Without divulging any spoilers, I’ll say that I found the ending fairly satisfying. Depending on your military strength score and reputation at the end, you have a handful of options from which to choose. After making my choice and viewing my ending, I rushed to YouTube and watched the other endings. It turns out your final choice is somewhat irrelevant, as the ultimate outcomes are largely identical. Your decision and military strength score do determine which main characters survive the final encounter, however.

The Extended Cut DLC certainly adds enough information to resolve certain questions (the ending sans-DLC is rather abrupt and leaves several hanging threads), but it certainly doesn’t dramatically alter the outcome of the trilogy. Without the DLC, the ending is passable. Had I earned a lower military strength I probably would have been rather upset with the outcome. With the DLC installed, however, the ending is mildly pleasing. It beats Battlestar Galactica by a long shot - the bar for sci-fi endings has traditionally been set very, very low - which is all I was really hoping for.