How Mass Effect 3 should have ended IMO - spoilers again
I thought about it a while and figured you know, I bitched about how the ending left me wanting and didn't really wrap eeverything up, so I might as well put how I think it should have on paper.
I would follow in the footsteps of ME2, as that ending worked for everyone involved, you have a good (everyone lives), ok (most people live), bad (everyone dies including Shepard) ending. This satisfies everyone, but you can still make the "official" ending being Shepard sacrifices.
Here's how I would have done it, keep it similar with Shepard mortally wounded in the Harbinger attack. We know all of Shep's crew was with him/her on the planet so for the "official" ending they too were destroyed by the push to Harbinger, but for now keep that off screen with just the radio transmission that everyone was lost same as in game.
The change would start once Shepard opens the Citadel and connects it with the Crucible, going up to talk to the computer AI in charge of everything. Here instead of Shepards options being death, death and more death with a dab of destruction, have the computer AI make sense. In game the AI created the synthetic Reapers because synthetics can't coexist with organics (which is proved entirely wrong IN THE FUCKING GAME), so the AI fixed the problem by creating a synthetic to kill the organics so the synthetics wouldn't kill the organics.
Yes, it's that stupid in game.
Anyway, at this point allow Shepard to actually convince the AI with the example of the Geth and Quarian (the Geth actually making the Quarian lives better and living peacefully now side by side) that organics and synthetics CAN overcome their differences with the right people involved.
Good Ending (for those who can't stand depressing death endings) - The AI deactivates the Reapers (since it built the stupid things but for some reason in game can't control them...uh, say what?) keeping the mass relays intact and for this instance instead of Shepards crew dying in the Harbinger attack they were all just wounded. Normandy retrieves Shepard before he/she dies from massive blood loss, cut to a few months in the future on Earth. Everyone is rebuilding but gathered at a memorial of all that was lost, it's a UNIVERSAL memorial to be put on all planets in the system but unveiled on Earth since that was first strike by the Reapers. Everyone of the crew is there and we can talk to them to see how things are, we can have Tali tell us about her house and being able to walk around outside of her suit. Jack can be there with her biotics kids still moving forward with her life. Liara helping rebuild Thessia with her Shadow Broker contacts but is less cut off from everyone now. Ashley promoted with her own ship. Garrus keeping his command and stays being in charge for once and having real purpose and goal. Wrex visiting with his Krogan kids. EDI and Joker are there happy as ever and Shepard gives a nice speech about unification from a common enemy and learn from past mistakes.
Done, it's the walking off into the sunset ending.
"Official" Ok ending - Shepard is again unable to convince the AI from allowing the cycle to continue, so again sacrificing him/herself to save the universe, but still no affect to the mass relays just the destruction of Shepard and the crucible. Cut to Shepard sitting at a bar with her crew minus EDI and Joker (one of the last things Shepard says to Garrus is to meet in a bar in heaven for drinks, just for context). We can get flashes to Krogan kids (maybe being taught by Turians and Salarians to keep Shepards legacy intact), Thessia being rebuilt, Quarians walking around without their suits on while the Geth help them build a civilization on Rannoch, and again cut to the universal memorial dedicated to all lost (maybe instead of using Buzz Aldrin as a grandpa stargazer instead use him here as a General). I'd like EDI to survive simply because she could be the living embodiment of what Shepard accomplished, turning a rogue AI into a FEELING and thinking individual synthetic. End with Shepard and company toasting (CLOSURE).
Bad ending - keep the ending similar to what is in game now. Shepard sacrifices, mass relays are destroyed and fucks over the whole galaxy since now all major fleets are stuck in the Sol system (Trillions of people for one habitable planet? Not to mention Turians and Quarians can't eat human food and Quarians need specific types of antibiotics!). Normandy crew is killed and instead of Joker space jumping we can get a scene of him trying to save Hackett's ship and doing so but not without losing the Normandy a second time. Flash forward to the future and perhaps we can see a memorial with the Normandy on it as well as all the names of everyone who died along the way (similar to the wall in Normandy's crew deck).
There, everyone is happy more or less. No those endings aren't perfect, but they offer some type of closer. I've sunk weeks into these games (played ME2 8 times, going on a second round at ME3 and I have played numerous DLC's), a bit of closure at the end would have been perfect. I could have even stomached the WTF ending we got if it hadn't just...ended. Plus I think the writers forgot the damage mass relays are supposed to do considering Shepard destroyed a whole Batarian star system blowing up a relay in the DLC for ME2.
I would follow in the footsteps of ME2, as that ending worked for everyone involved, you have a good (everyone lives), ok (most people live), bad (everyone dies including Shepard) ending. This satisfies everyone, but you can still make the "official" ending being Shepard sacrifices.
Here's how I would have done it, keep it similar with Shepard mortally wounded in the Harbinger attack. We know all of Shep's crew was with him/her on the planet so for the "official" ending they too were destroyed by the push to Harbinger, but for now keep that off screen with just the radio transmission that everyone was lost same as in game.
The change would start once Shepard opens the Citadel and connects it with the Crucible, going up to talk to the computer AI in charge of everything. Here instead of Shepards options being death, death and more death with a dab of destruction, have the computer AI make sense. In game the AI created the synthetic Reapers because synthetics can't coexist with organics (which is proved entirely wrong IN THE FUCKING GAME), so the AI fixed the problem by creating a synthetic to kill the organics so the synthetics wouldn't kill the organics.
Yes, it's that stupid in game.
Anyway, at this point allow Shepard to actually convince the AI with the example of the Geth and Quarian (the Geth actually making the Quarian lives better and living peacefully now side by side) that organics and synthetics CAN overcome their differences with the right people involved.
Good Ending (for those who can't stand depressing death endings) - The AI deactivates the Reapers (since it built the stupid things but for some reason in game can't control them...uh, say what?) keeping the mass relays intact and for this instance instead of Shepards crew dying in the Harbinger attack they were all just wounded. Normandy retrieves Shepard before he/she dies from massive blood loss, cut to a few months in the future on Earth. Everyone is rebuilding but gathered at a memorial of all that was lost, it's a UNIVERSAL memorial to be put on all planets in the system but unveiled on Earth since that was first strike by the Reapers. Everyone of the crew is there and we can talk to them to see how things are, we can have Tali tell us about her house and being able to walk around outside of her suit. Jack can be there with her biotics kids still moving forward with her life. Liara helping rebuild Thessia with her Shadow Broker contacts but is less cut off from everyone now. Ashley promoted with her own ship. Garrus keeping his command and stays being in charge for once and having real purpose and goal. Wrex visiting with his Krogan kids. EDI and Joker are there happy as ever and Shepard gives a nice speech about unification from a common enemy and learn from past mistakes.
Done, it's the walking off into the sunset ending.
"Official" Ok ending - Shepard is again unable to convince the AI from allowing the cycle to continue, so again sacrificing him/herself to save the universe, but still no affect to the mass relays just the destruction of Shepard and the crucible. Cut to Shepard sitting at a bar with her crew minus EDI and Joker (one of the last things Shepard says to Garrus is to meet in a bar in heaven for drinks, just for context). We can get flashes to Krogan kids (maybe being taught by Turians and Salarians to keep Shepards legacy intact), Thessia being rebuilt, Quarians walking around without their suits on while the Geth help them build a civilization on Rannoch, and again cut to the universal memorial dedicated to all lost (maybe instead of using Buzz Aldrin as a grandpa stargazer instead use him here as a General). I'd like EDI to survive simply because she could be the living embodiment of what Shepard accomplished, turning a rogue AI into a FEELING and thinking individual synthetic. End with Shepard and company toasting (CLOSURE).
Bad ending - keep the ending similar to what is in game now. Shepard sacrifices, mass relays are destroyed and fucks over the whole galaxy since now all major fleets are stuck in the Sol system (Trillions of people for one habitable planet? Not to mention Turians and Quarians can't eat human food and Quarians need specific types of antibiotics!). Normandy crew is killed and instead of Joker space jumping we can get a scene of him trying to save Hackett's ship and doing so but not without losing the Normandy a second time. Flash forward to the future and perhaps we can see a memorial with the Normandy on it as well as all the names of everyone who died along the way (similar to the wall in Normandy's crew deck).
There, everyone is happy more or less. No those endings aren't perfect, but they offer some type of closer. I've sunk weeks into these games (played ME2 8 times, going on a second round at ME3 and I have played numerous DLC's), a bit of closure at the end would have been perfect. I could have even stomached the WTF ending we got if it hadn't just...ended. Plus I think the writers forgot the damage mass relays are supposed to do considering Shepard destroyed a whole Batarian star system blowing up a relay in the DLC for ME2.