Mass Effect 3: The Ending Part 1
Note: Because I wrote four frakking pages of this, not including the post I want to use to include the pretty screens I took (which may need to come at another time), I'm separating this into multiple posts. I seem to have many feelings on the issue. Understatement of the year.
I'm trying, rather desperately, to piece together my thoughts on the ending of Mass Effect 3. I'm torn, yet resolute, in how I feel in regards to it, to the end of trilogy, to an avatar that struck ever single cord I have inside of me, that I need to process all the information given. Unfortunately, I think I only have a quad-core processor for a brain so it's taken a while. Since finishing yesterday around 1440, I've been obsessively thinking about the two endings I witnessed, listening to the music, and shedding lots and lots of tears. I cried more in this past week and a half than I have in the last two years. I'm no crier but...this game. Really.
Ok, let's do this.
First of all, I'm even more resolute in my desire to place my Shepard's story in context, making a sequence of posts, that tell the store that I played, the character I lived through for 180 hours spanning three years of playing and waiting. I plan on doing it for my own entertainment but, if any of you make it through those posts, you'll get a cookie...and maybe the reason why there has been so much bloody crying. Strange enough, as it turns out, I start at the end which, in a way, is where it all began.
So, my saga of the last battle of Commander Shepard's story, the battle to retake Earth from the Reapers -- a Synthetic/Robot race that exterminates every advanced life form in the galaxy in a recurring cycle that happens every 50,000 years -- was long. I started on Friday, thinking I'd finish it in a few hours on Hard difficulty, but when I took my meds and saw it was 0300 Saturday morning, I quit about ten minutes from the real ending. I would say this was a facepalm moment, or even multiple headdesks, but after the devastation I felt after the end, I knew I had made the right decision. I never would have slept if I had seen the ending that night/morning, so I slept for five hours, converted some videos I had made the previous day/early morning, and then went in around 1300.
The battle was in London, making jokes in my head about having those Brits getting their ass handed to them on a Reaper platter in-between physically shaking and feeling sick at the thought of this being the end, of everything, I had ever known in this universe. Commander Shepard, a space kid who was a decorated war hero, was about to end the Reapers for good, even if it killed her. Or me, apparently. She was good and kind to a fault (paragon) and everyone, apparently, loved her intensely for it. (It's worth noting here that, although you can pick between a male or female Commander Shepard, I've always gone with a female Shepard. Obvious reasons aside, the VA for her is pretty much universally considered to be exceptional and ten times better than the male Shepard's VA. I concur with that assessment.)
Goodbyes with all of my squadmates, four survivors from the first game and six from the second, were all spoken. The ones that stand out in my mind were the conversations Shepard had with her bff, the Turian Garrus, and her so-called "love interest" throughout the three games, the young Asari named Liara. Garrus wanted to settle down on a beach and live off of the profits from the vid sales for the rest of time and she had already made promises to Liara for lots of little blue babies. Oh my, lots of promises and goodbyes. Lots of tears. Lots of hugs my Shepard wanted to give (she got one) but no damn choice to give them.
It was around this point when things felt...off, which was the purpose of explaining a few characters. The last game evolved around a suicide mission into the heart of the Collector base, the servants of the Reapers, and no one was expected to survive. Well, everyone did, but no one seemed to be saying their goodbyes then. Granted everything happened so fast at the end there that goodbyes seemed like a moot point, except with this game, whether or not the player, or Commander Shepard, understood it, this was goodbye. And all of squad mates were sending best wishes and goodbyes, as if Shepard's death was already written down in the history books. Sure, the odds were completely fucked against her but impossible was her middle name. Why all the goodbyes? Why the present Liara? Why the beach talk Garrus? Why?
I paused the game for a bit and explored a few possibilities for the ending, mostly Shepard's name and the obvious conclusion. First of all, the Commander's name must have been deliberately chosen if the writers planned a trilogy from the get-go, as they had expressed many times before. A shepherd is a leader, a herder, a protector, even God in some legends. They tend to their flock as if they were children, keeping them safe their numbers, but also bringing them together. They protect at whatever the costs. Thus a simple misspelling of the word to create "Shepard" wouldn't be too far off. In fact, this game makes it down-right obvious that Shepard, always known to be the hero of the story (and told why by the Admiral of the massive Fleet you put together), is meant to bring together species of different histories, ideologies, and problems no matter the cost. Species at war with each other make peace for the sake of the war but also for Shepard. Everyone believes in her, in the shepherd, to bring peace to the galaxy and they would follow her to their deaths if that's where it ended.
Shepard, just don't look back. Alex, don't look back either. This is it.
The other thing I knew had to be obvious was Shepard's death. This was her story and the conclusion of story. Every battle she has fought, every game I had played through, was a battle she was never made to survive. In the second game you could die completely. The third game was the end. What other way was a hero to go than to die gloriously in battle? To fight for their convictions and do whatever it took to get it done. Death, to Shepard, was only one step of the journal she had decided to take all those years ago. Plus, like Buffy, she had already died once before so what was the big deal?
Yet the odds for this game were monumental. The Reapers could be up to 2 kilometers long, their capitol ships, and they were landing all across the galaxy with technology far superior to even the most advanced race's at the time (the Asari). Thousands of these machines, and ones smaller, were ravaging the Earth so easily that London, by the time I get there, looked like a nuclear wasteland. Big Ben, however, was still there...somehow...Erm....
How could anyone possibly think that Shepard, the leader everyone looked up to, possibly survive any of this? How could humanity? How could any of the advanced species? To me, it was a forgone conclusion that Shepard would die. It was written in the stars, in all of the systems, that she'd be the martyr.
Now, I wonder, why I was so surprised when it happened.
Side track now finished, I began the game again and climbed, shot, and killed my way to the Forward Operating Base. That's when goodbyes were said, lover's promises foolishly reassured, and I cried. Fuck, I cried a lot. Doesn't help the music was so poignant.
Speaking with Shepard's mentor and CO, Admiral Anderson, the final assault began. Long story short, it was a lot of shooting, a lot of "oh fuck, not the gorram Banshees again! SHIT!" and more than enough of a fucked up military situation getting more fucked up. The closer I got to the beam in the center of London (presumably), a beam that would take me to the Catalyst, or the Citadel (the main hub for all inter-galactic operations was actually the thing being sought after the enter game, during which many trips were taken), a key item needed to use the Crucible, a weapon of some immeasurable power that would destroy the Reapers, the more I felt like Shepard. My stomach was turning, my hands were shaking, and my shooting was poor enough that, after dying so many times I decreased the difficulty. I felt like I was in the middle of a war zone, physically in it, and every enemy I defeated was a small triumph. Every friendly down was a heart-wrenching moment. Every communication saying we had lost the main fighting force on the ground was a moment to close my eyes and reflect, just as Shepard did. BioWare, somehow, had done the impossible: my avatar, my Shepard, became something more than a character. It became a personification of myself and if you think I'm crazy, do a "mass effect 3 ending" search and you'll see I'm not alone.
Things got worse before they got better, and as we were making it to that stupid beam, my nemesis from the second game, Harbinger (another iconic name), decides to come and attack Shepard. Shepard is mortally wounded in the attack but, with only a pistol remaining (which, as a soldier, I never carry, wtf), she makes her way to the beam and the Citadel. Allusions to the first game may or may not be explored later but this was almost identical to how I stopped the first Reaper invasion in the first Mass Effect game: via a beam that went directly to the Citadel...more or less.
Inside the Citadel, shit went down. Anderson was in a battle of wills with my pseudo-ally in the second game, and ruthless enemy in this one, the Illusive Man (TIM). I convince TIM that he's been Indoctrinated by the Reapers, a form of mind control the Reapers use that allow them to assume total control over a person without their even knowing it, and that humanity will never be able to survive if he continues in alliance with the Reapers. Being pro-human to the extent of pretty much detesting all other forms of life, he somehow sees the logic of my reasoning -- my Shepard is very clever, and persuasive that way, due to having a lot of reputation gained throughout the game -- and shoots himself but not before showing the first ounce of remorse by saying that he tried. However, before this happens, he manages to get Shepard to shoot Anderson in the stomach: a mortal wound considering both Shepard and Anderson are crouched over in pain to begin with, mainly from wounds unseen.
So, and here begins the crying, Shepard gets the Citadel to open it's big arms, literally, and the Crucibal is placed into position. For a moment, for a precious minute, Shepard and Anderson sit together in the Citadel, watching the sky above Earth, lamenting on how little time they've had a chance to just sit down, to take a rest. Like father and daughter, they watch the stars with "the best seats in the house." But Anderson is dying. How, I'm not sure, but he is. Shepard is as well but tells Anderson to hold on, to stick with her because they made it, they did it. His last words to her were, "I'm proud of you." And quietly, softly, with a touch of music playing in the background, Anderson just stops.
Shepard, and me, grieving over his death, notice a bullet wound in Shepard's side, right where Anderson was shot. Shepard is about ready to call it quits to, shutting her eyes, slowing her breath, and probably feeling the blood flowing from a deep wound. Death is assured and hopefully peace...
...Then Admiral Hackett comes on the line and wonders why the Crucibal isn't firing, asking Shepard, specifically, why it isn't firing now that the Catalyst is in place. Peace will have to wait. Shepard crawls to the control panel, trying her best to get there, but doesn't make it, falling apparently dead to the floor with arm outstretched. Until....
...Until we meet the ghost of a kid that's haunted her dreams from the start of the game, the "god kid," the deus ex machina that brings Shepard into the sky via a white light and a life. Hrm...
Now we get to the end game, the choice. Shepard, on her feet and still alive (no longer bleeding either), is told how the Catalyst is really the child, that he is a part of the Citadel, that Shepard is unique in that the cycle of purging the galaxy in this fashion can no longer exist due to her actions. She is the first organic to be in this part of the Citadel which was, for all intents and purposes, in actual space on top of it. To make it even better, the Catalyst controls the Reapers and created this cycle, thinking that to save organic life (which this ghostly child/Catalyst/Citadel obviously is not) it needed to purge it in order to save it. This is due to the part that the created will always rebel against the creators (um...huh?) and the purge is the only way to stop it. Well, it's not a complete purge as the more advanced forms of life are chosen to create even more Reapers, or synthetic life. Now, the purging must stop...or at least take a breather. This "cycle" will be preserved another day if only because Shepard made it up here.
And Shepard is given three options, all of which will result in death. Control the Reapers and tell them to go away. Shepard will lose everything she has but will be given the gift of control. This was a "blue," or paragon, option. Another choice was to destroy the Reapers, a "red," renegade, option. This option would kill all synthetics, including the species known as Geth which are now helping their creators, and Shepard herself due to her being basically half-synthetic from her resurrection in the second game (for fuck's sake, it was called the "Lazarus Project"!). The peace may not last, due to the eventuality of "chaos" or synthetics rising again, but the Reapers will be destroyed. The other option, a green one, is synthesis. This allows Shepard's unique DNA, half organic and half-synthetic I'm assuming, to be implanted into every organic and synthetic life form to create a new DNA. It is, according to the deus ex child, the final step in evolution and will end all cycles and all war. It will bring peace at the cost of, you guessed it, everything Shepard is, was, and will be. In a way, she would be the creator.
Personally, I sat there, listening to the thumb of the bass, and pondered. All of Shepard's legacy would never allow control of the Reapers -- she would not become the enemy -- nor would she allow herself to destroy the Geth, a race she had fought so hard to give them sentience (and loosing a good friend who, in the end, referred to himself as "I" for a single moment), leaving the only option to be synthesis. DNA, scattered...everywhere.
Honestly, I agonized over this. I wasn't playing Shepard, I was Shepard, and the choice I made would be the most important decision I could make...gaming wise. For a good five minutes I sat in my chair, thinking and thinking and thinking, never letting it settle.
...I went with Synthesis. After all, you needed a certain "readiness" to get this "special" offer. Shepard threw herself into the beam of light and became a part of the Citadel. It blew up, the Mass Effect relays as well (basically mass transport for travel across the galaxy), and the Reapers were destroyed...right next to Big Fucking Ben. My crew, from a ship called the Normandy, were somehow flying away from this explosion via the relays. They made it, due to the pilot, Joker's, made skills, and landed on a hospitable planet. Except...I could see their synthetics all over them, right into their eyes and over their skin were crawling pieces of synthetics, or Shepard's DNA. Even Shepard's lover, Liara, had the green eyes and that, more than anything else, made me want to vomit. That was not right. This wasn't what Shepard fought for, this couldn't be it, was it?
Saving a small bit of the end for later discussion, I went back (after hours of starring at my screen, no words coming from my slack-jawed mouth), and chose Destruction. This was the ending I knew Shepard needed to make. The Geth would be destroyed but so would the Reapers, something she spent four years doing (minus two being dead), and organic life would be saved with the hope, the faith, that the lessons learned about working with synthetic life would be passed down to generations after this one and everyone would work in harmony once more. This was my martyr, my Shepard, my ending.
And still two more cutscenes followed: one of some N7 tags (basically Shepard's dog tags) and a piece of armor among cement rubble followed by a gasp, then, after the credits, a tale of a Stargazer and a child, in a white landscape looking at a blue world, telling the tale of "The Shepard."
I'm trying, rather desperately, to piece together my thoughts on the ending of Mass Effect 3. I'm torn, yet resolute, in how I feel in regards to it, to the end of trilogy, to an avatar that struck ever single cord I have inside of me, that I need to process all the information given. Unfortunately, I think I only have a quad-core processor for a brain so it's taken a while. Since finishing yesterday around 1440, I've been obsessively thinking about the two endings I witnessed, listening to the music, and shedding lots and lots of tears. I cried more in this past week and a half than I have in the last two years. I'm no crier but...this game. Really.
Ok, let's do this.
First of all, I'm even more resolute in my desire to place my Shepard's story in context, making a sequence of posts, that tell the store that I played, the character I lived through for 180 hours spanning three years of playing and waiting. I plan on doing it for my own entertainment but, if any of you make it through those posts, you'll get a cookie...and maybe the reason why there has been so much bloody crying. Strange enough, as it turns out, I start at the end which, in a way, is where it all began.
So, my saga of the last battle of Commander Shepard's story, the battle to retake Earth from the Reapers -- a Synthetic/Robot race that exterminates every advanced life form in the galaxy in a recurring cycle that happens every 50,000 years -- was long. I started on Friday, thinking I'd finish it in a few hours on Hard difficulty, but when I took my meds and saw it was 0300 Saturday morning, I quit about ten minutes from the real ending. I would say this was a facepalm moment, or even multiple headdesks, but after the devastation I felt after the end, I knew I had made the right decision. I never would have slept if I had seen the ending that night/morning, so I slept for five hours, converted some videos I had made the previous day/early morning, and then went in around 1300.
The battle was in London, making jokes in my head about having those Brits getting their ass handed to them on a Reaper platter in-between physically shaking and feeling sick at the thought of this being the end, of everything, I had ever known in this universe. Commander Shepard, a space kid who was a decorated war hero, was about to end the Reapers for good, even if it killed her. Or me, apparently. She was good and kind to a fault (paragon) and everyone, apparently, loved her intensely for it. (It's worth noting here that, although you can pick between a male or female Commander Shepard, I've always gone with a female Shepard. Obvious reasons aside, the VA for her is pretty much universally considered to be exceptional and ten times better than the male Shepard's VA. I concur with that assessment.)
Goodbyes with all of my squadmates, four survivors from the first game and six from the second, were all spoken. The ones that stand out in my mind were the conversations Shepard had with her bff, the Turian Garrus, and her so-called "love interest" throughout the three games, the young Asari named Liara. Garrus wanted to settle down on a beach and live off of the profits from the vid sales for the rest of time and she had already made promises to Liara for lots of little blue babies. Oh my, lots of promises and goodbyes. Lots of tears. Lots of hugs my Shepard wanted to give (she got one) but no damn choice to give them.
It was around this point when things felt...off, which was the purpose of explaining a few characters. The last game evolved around a suicide mission into the heart of the Collector base, the servants of the Reapers, and no one was expected to survive. Well, everyone did, but no one seemed to be saying their goodbyes then. Granted everything happened so fast at the end there that goodbyes seemed like a moot point, except with this game, whether or not the player, or Commander Shepard, understood it, this was goodbye. And all of squad mates were sending best wishes and goodbyes, as if Shepard's death was already written down in the history books. Sure, the odds were completely fucked against her but impossible was her middle name. Why all the goodbyes? Why the present Liara? Why the beach talk Garrus? Why?
I paused the game for a bit and explored a few possibilities for the ending, mostly Shepard's name and the obvious conclusion. First of all, the Commander's name must have been deliberately chosen if the writers planned a trilogy from the get-go, as they had expressed many times before. A shepherd is a leader, a herder, a protector, even God in some legends. They tend to their flock as if they were children, keeping them safe their numbers, but also bringing them together. They protect at whatever the costs. Thus a simple misspelling of the word to create "Shepard" wouldn't be too far off. In fact, this game makes it down-right obvious that Shepard, always known to be the hero of the story (and told why by the Admiral of the massive Fleet you put together), is meant to bring together species of different histories, ideologies, and problems no matter the cost. Species at war with each other make peace for the sake of the war but also for Shepard. Everyone believes in her, in the shepherd, to bring peace to the galaxy and they would follow her to their deaths if that's where it ended.
Shepard, just don't look back. Alex, don't look back either. This is it.
The other thing I knew had to be obvious was Shepard's death. This was her story and the conclusion of story. Every battle she has fought, every game I had played through, was a battle she was never made to survive. In the second game you could die completely. The third game was the end. What other way was a hero to go than to die gloriously in battle? To fight for their convictions and do whatever it took to get it done. Death, to Shepard, was only one step of the journal she had decided to take all those years ago. Plus, like Buffy, she had already died once before so what was the big deal?
Yet the odds for this game were monumental. The Reapers could be up to 2 kilometers long, their capitol ships, and they were landing all across the galaxy with technology far superior to even the most advanced race's at the time (the Asari). Thousands of these machines, and ones smaller, were ravaging the Earth so easily that London, by the time I get there, looked like a nuclear wasteland. Big Ben, however, was still there...somehow...Erm....
How could anyone possibly think that Shepard, the leader everyone looked up to, possibly survive any of this? How could humanity? How could any of the advanced species? To me, it was a forgone conclusion that Shepard would die. It was written in the stars, in all of the systems, that she'd be the martyr.
Now, I wonder, why I was so surprised when it happened.
Side track now finished, I began the game again and climbed, shot, and killed my way to the Forward Operating Base. That's when goodbyes were said, lover's promises foolishly reassured, and I cried. Fuck, I cried a lot. Doesn't help the music was so poignant.
Speaking with Shepard's mentor and CO, Admiral Anderson, the final assault began. Long story short, it was a lot of shooting, a lot of "oh fuck, not the gorram Banshees again! SHIT!" and more than enough of a fucked up military situation getting more fucked up. The closer I got to the beam in the center of London (presumably), a beam that would take me to the Catalyst, or the Citadel (the main hub for all inter-galactic operations was actually the thing being sought after the enter game, during which many trips were taken), a key item needed to use the Crucible, a weapon of some immeasurable power that would destroy the Reapers, the more I felt like Shepard. My stomach was turning, my hands were shaking, and my shooting was poor enough that, after dying so many times I decreased the difficulty. I felt like I was in the middle of a war zone, physically in it, and every enemy I defeated was a small triumph. Every friendly down was a heart-wrenching moment. Every communication saying we had lost the main fighting force on the ground was a moment to close my eyes and reflect, just as Shepard did. BioWare, somehow, had done the impossible: my avatar, my Shepard, became something more than a character. It became a personification of myself and if you think I'm crazy, do a "mass effect 3 ending" search and you'll see I'm not alone.
Things got worse before they got better, and as we were making it to that stupid beam, my nemesis from the second game, Harbinger (another iconic name), decides to come and attack Shepard. Shepard is mortally wounded in the attack but, with only a pistol remaining (which, as a soldier, I never carry, wtf), she makes her way to the beam and the Citadel. Allusions to the first game may or may not be explored later but this was almost identical to how I stopped the first Reaper invasion in the first Mass Effect game: via a beam that went directly to the Citadel...more or less.
Inside the Citadel, shit went down. Anderson was in a battle of wills with my pseudo-ally in the second game, and ruthless enemy in this one, the Illusive Man (TIM). I convince TIM that he's been Indoctrinated by the Reapers, a form of mind control the Reapers use that allow them to assume total control over a person without their even knowing it, and that humanity will never be able to survive if he continues in alliance with the Reapers. Being pro-human to the extent of pretty much detesting all other forms of life, he somehow sees the logic of my reasoning -- my Shepard is very clever, and persuasive that way, due to having a lot of reputation gained throughout the game -- and shoots himself but not before showing the first ounce of remorse by saying that he tried. However, before this happens, he manages to get Shepard to shoot Anderson in the stomach: a mortal wound considering both Shepard and Anderson are crouched over in pain to begin with, mainly from wounds unseen.
So, and here begins the crying, Shepard gets the Citadel to open it's big arms, literally, and the Crucibal is placed into position. For a moment, for a precious minute, Shepard and Anderson sit together in the Citadel, watching the sky above Earth, lamenting on how little time they've had a chance to just sit down, to take a rest. Like father and daughter, they watch the stars with "the best seats in the house." But Anderson is dying. How, I'm not sure, but he is. Shepard is as well but tells Anderson to hold on, to stick with her because they made it, they did it. His last words to her were, "I'm proud of you." And quietly, softly, with a touch of music playing in the background, Anderson just stops.
Shepard, and me, grieving over his death, notice a bullet wound in Shepard's side, right where Anderson was shot. Shepard is about ready to call it quits to, shutting her eyes, slowing her breath, and probably feeling the blood flowing from a deep wound. Death is assured and hopefully peace...
...Then Admiral Hackett comes on the line and wonders why the Crucibal isn't firing, asking Shepard, specifically, why it isn't firing now that the Catalyst is in place. Peace will have to wait. Shepard crawls to the control panel, trying her best to get there, but doesn't make it, falling apparently dead to the floor with arm outstretched. Until....
...Until we meet the ghost of a kid that's haunted her dreams from the start of the game, the "god kid," the deus ex machina that brings Shepard into the sky via a white light and a life. Hrm...
Now we get to the end game, the choice. Shepard, on her feet and still alive (no longer bleeding either), is told how the Catalyst is really the child, that he is a part of the Citadel, that Shepard is unique in that the cycle of purging the galaxy in this fashion can no longer exist due to her actions. She is the first organic to be in this part of the Citadel which was, for all intents and purposes, in actual space on top of it. To make it even better, the Catalyst controls the Reapers and created this cycle, thinking that to save organic life (which this ghostly child/Catalyst/Citadel obviously is not) it needed to purge it in order to save it. This is due to the part that the created will always rebel against the creators (um...huh?) and the purge is the only way to stop it. Well, it's not a complete purge as the more advanced forms of life are chosen to create even more Reapers, or synthetic life. Now, the purging must stop...or at least take a breather. This "cycle" will be preserved another day if only because Shepard made it up here.
And Shepard is given three options, all of which will result in death. Control the Reapers and tell them to go away. Shepard will lose everything she has but will be given the gift of control. This was a "blue," or paragon, option. Another choice was to destroy the Reapers, a "red," renegade, option. This option would kill all synthetics, including the species known as Geth which are now helping their creators, and Shepard herself due to her being basically half-synthetic from her resurrection in the second game (for fuck's sake, it was called the "Lazarus Project"!). The peace may not last, due to the eventuality of "chaos" or synthetics rising again, but the Reapers will be destroyed. The other option, a green one, is synthesis. This allows Shepard's unique DNA, half organic and half-synthetic I'm assuming, to be implanted into every organic and synthetic life form to create a new DNA. It is, according to the deus ex child, the final step in evolution and will end all cycles and all war. It will bring peace at the cost of, you guessed it, everything Shepard is, was, and will be. In a way, she would be the creator.
Personally, I sat there, listening to the thumb of the bass, and pondered. All of Shepard's legacy would never allow control of the Reapers -- she would not become the enemy -- nor would she allow herself to destroy the Geth, a race she had fought so hard to give them sentience (and loosing a good friend who, in the end, referred to himself as "I" for a single moment), leaving the only option to be synthesis. DNA, scattered...everywhere.
Honestly, I agonized over this. I wasn't playing Shepard, I was Shepard, and the choice I made would be the most important decision I could make...gaming wise. For a good five minutes I sat in my chair, thinking and thinking and thinking, never letting it settle.
...I went with Synthesis. After all, you needed a certain "readiness" to get this "special" offer. Shepard threw herself into the beam of light and became a part of the Citadel. It blew up, the Mass Effect relays as well (basically mass transport for travel across the galaxy), and the Reapers were destroyed...right next to Big Fucking Ben. My crew, from a ship called the Normandy, were somehow flying away from this explosion via the relays. They made it, due to the pilot, Joker's, made skills, and landed on a hospitable planet. Except...I could see their synthetics all over them, right into their eyes and over their skin were crawling pieces of synthetics, or Shepard's DNA. Even Shepard's lover, Liara, had the green eyes and that, more than anything else, made me want to vomit. That was not right. This wasn't what Shepard fought for, this couldn't be it, was it?
Saving a small bit of the end for later discussion, I went back (after hours of starring at my screen, no words coming from my slack-jawed mouth), and chose Destruction. This was the ending I knew Shepard needed to make. The Geth would be destroyed but so would the Reapers, something she spent four years doing (minus two being dead), and organic life would be saved with the hope, the faith, that the lessons learned about working with synthetic life would be passed down to generations after this one and everyone would work in harmony once more. This was my martyr, my Shepard, my ending.
And still two more cutscenes followed: one of some N7 tags (basically Shepard's dog tags) and a piece of armor among cement rubble followed by a gasp, then, after the credits, a tale of a Stargazer and a child, in a white landscape looking at a blue world, telling the tale of "The Shepard."