Mass effect 3 endings how to#

With few exceptions, the Extended Cut shows the galaxy sorting itself out in the wake of Shepard’s choice. In Mass Effect 3, not only do none of your choices affect the content of the ending, but the outcomes are not radically different from each other. They were not all radically different from each other - rather, they made up a spectrum called “How many characters will die?” with the two extremes at each end of said spectrum being “You save everyone,” or “Everyone, including Shepard, dies.” Your choices in the story and gameplay loop would determine where your ending fell on that spectrum. That game offered numerous endings depending on how you played the game and how much time you invested in its characters. To give you some idea of what could have been, look at the preceding game, Mass Effect 2. RPGs are supposed to be sprawling tapestries of potential scenarios, and while Mass Effect reads a bit simplistic for the genre, it still felt like a cruel subversion of accepted genre conventions. The Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut ending additions made for a good salve, but it didn’t address the cause of the wound: After a trilogy’s worth of difficult choices and player control of the galactic situation, the fate of trillions came down to a simple ABC choice - the same choice for everyone, every time, the same handful of outcomes. The Extended Cut would add more scenes after this, showing what happened to each person Shepard encountered along the way and the aftereffects of each choice. Well, there is a fourth option, in which Shepard refuses to pick, but even that ending isn’t that different from the other choices.Īfter Shepard made that choice, there was originally just a generic cutscene that showed the Normany on a verdant planet, with a few of your crew members silently contemplating the scenery.

Mass effect 3 endings how to#

When they do, a mysterious voice called the Catalyst tells them they have the option of how to deal with the Reapers: destroy them outright, control them by becoming a literal deus ex machina, or synthesize mechanical and organic lifeforms so that everyone will be a single race.Įach of these endings has a different colored light associated with it: Respectively, they’re the Red ending, the Blue ending, and the Green ending.

I’m going to assume everyone who’s even passingly familiar with Mass Effect has some idea of how the infamous ending goes, but here’s a quick primer: Commander Shepard tries to activate the Crucible, the Prothean-designed superweapon that’ll wipe out the Reapers.

So what happened to make the ending of Mass Effect 3 such a disappointment? And what could have salvaged it? Spoiling the Ending of Mass Effect 3 But the problem with the ending ironically starts long before the end of the game, and by the time we got those three red-blue-green lights, it was all just a wrap-up. So there’s no “fixing” the ending of Mass Effect 3. But I suspect both groups will find themselves baffled by the same thing that caused an uproar among fans of the original trilogy: the ending of Mass Effect 3.īioWare had confirmed it would not change the ending of ME3 for Legendary Edition - no more than it did when it released the Extended Cut DLC. I’m not sure what there are more of: new players experiencing the trilogy for the first time or returning veterans eager to save the galaxy all over again.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is finally out, after months of teasing.