Mass Effect Finale

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I'm finally done with Mass Effect 3.  I've been reading all sorts of reactions about it since the day it came out, but I wanted to finish it myself before passing judgement.  First let me say the ending wasn't absolutely horrible.

The game itself was great.  I loved how 3 games worth of content slowly came together in interesting ways.  The combat, dialogue, and general flow of the game were all improved.  I had a great time through the first 60 hours of gameplay.  Only the last 10 minutes let me down.  If you've played Mass Effect 1 and 2 then you should definitely play Mass Effect 3.

I also dabbled in multiplayer but wasn't too impressed.  I play Mass Effect for the single player campaign.  The 3rd person shooting is satisfactory, but if I wanted to play a multiplayer shooter I have about 10 other games that are better suited to the task.  Single player is where the strength of this series lies.  I was also really sad to see the "galactic readiness" tied into how much multiplayer I played.  I completed 100% of the missions and side objectives in the single player game, but because I didn't play much multiplayer my galaxy still wasn't very "ready."  Sigh.  I wish they wouldn't have done that.

Anyway, onto the ending.  Minor Spoilers ahead.  I won't expound too much on what has already been written by others.  I just wanted to say that the last 10 minutes of the game were ok, but they had the potential to be so much more.  All of my choices across 150+ hours of play could have been used to create a custom set of end cutscenes just for me.  But that didn't happen.  Instead Bioware chose to go the route of giving me 3 choices totally disconnected from the rest of the series.  This is even more disheartening when you consider that Chrono Trigger, a game made in 1995, has 13 distinct endings with many sub-ending variations.

For some in depth analysis of the ME3 ending read this well written article by Doyce.  Overall the game was good but I was disappointed with the wasted potential at the end.  The final scene could have been so much more... sadly, it wasn't.

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