Why are users so upset about the Mass Effect 3 ending? (Spoilers)

[Rakewell]

Not sure if this was posted in AT yet, but here it is anyway.

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/bioware-change-mass-effect-3-ending-194431568.html

 

[alent1234]

And these suckers will probably pay for A new cgi movie with no gameplay for a different ending

 

[AznAnarchy99]

It comes with the territory. Big stories, especially those set in sci fi and fantasy settings, are full of them. In general I think it's not so much an 'oversight' as it is the creators of the story asking readers and players to essentially maintain their suspension of disbelief understanding that explaining and answering everything is essentially beyond the scope of almost any given project and a waste of resources.





Or... now that the game is out and generally a success you have this group of people who will take whatever flaw they can find and try to turn it into catastrophe. Call me crazy but I think if you asked people what the most important things about ME3 were prior to release, "multiple endings influenced by moral decisions I made" would have come in pretty low, well after "looks good" "plays good" and a blunt "I just want to know what happens!". I don't think it was that 'hyped', but making it sound like it was works very well opportunistically.

Did you play the game?

Spoiler

Its not so much that your choice didnt mean shit (its part of it) but there are things such as..

1. Why the is the Normandy jumping into the relay and ditched the battle for the fate of Earth?
2. Why were my squadmates, who were running with me towards the beam and got hit by the reapers, magically walking off the Normandy unscathed. Didnt know my squad would ditch me like that..
3. In all of the endings, all of the mass relays are destroyed. Soo the entire galaxy is trapped by Earth. Thousands of species and races with the leaders of their races are going to die with no supplies. GJ on killing off the galaxy.
4. Your war assets dont mean shit. You dont get to see any of them in battle unlike ME2. The only thing that its good for, if you play enough multiplayer, you see a split second screen of Shepard taking a breath.

So the rewritten ending will make them millions in the end cause I doubt they are gonna give it for free.

 

[dighn]

Again, as Zenoth pointed out, there are MASSIVE plot holes. The ending of the game makes ZERO sense, unless you tell me a 4th grader wrote it.

plot holes yes. but it's not just the ending. there are massive plot holes and leaps of logic throughout the series. e.g. the capabilities and strategies of the reapers, the reluctance of governments to respond to a very credible threat, the make up of the universe itself. a high level of suspension of belief was needed for me to go through the game, and the ending was no worse. bioware wrote themselves into a corner and had to resort to deus ex machina, like so many other works of sci-fi, even much more rigorous ones.

I think most people are just upset because they don't like the direction of the ending, rather than its execution. i.e. it isn't a conventional "the hero saves the day and every rejoices" kind of ending. on the other hand, for a game that promotes choices and their consequences as one of its main selling points, maybe such an ending should have been included.

 

[RampantAndroid]

plot holes yes. but it's not just the ending. there are massive plot holes and leaps of logic throughout the series. e.g. the capabilities and strategies of the reapers, the reluctance of governments to respond to a very credible threat, the make up of the universe itself. a high level of suspension of belief was needed for me to go through the game, and the ending was no worse. bioware wrote themselves into a corner and had to resort to deus ex machina, like so many other works of sci-fi, even much more rigorous ones.

I think most people are just upset because they don't like the direction of the ending, rather than its execution. i.e. it isn't a conventional "the hero saves the day and every rejoices" kind of ending. on the other hand, for a game that promotes choices and their consequences as one of its main selling points, maybe such an ending should have been included.

A game full of choices, advertised as having tons of endings...has 3 endings, all roughly the same (mass relays go poof, you die, your crew is stranded) and the only change you can effect by playing the game is how badly Earth is ravaged.

Good thing to be pissed over. Falsely advertised, IMO.

 

[ramj70]

People are not unhappy because there is no super happy ending, most do not mind a bittersweet ending with Shepard dying. This is apparently from one of the writers for ME, you will see why people are upset.

http://geek.pikimal.com/2012/03/22/...ass-effect-3-writers-forum-post-name-release/

Evidence that one of the Mass Effect 3 writers posted a denunciation of the ending on the Penny Arcade forums has come forward to a huge amount of controversy. The writer noted that he was very disappointed in the ending of the game and that it wasn’t what he thought it would be. The final mission was written entirely by Casey Hudson and lead writer Mac Walters, without input or review from the other writers, which wasn’t true for every other mission in the game.
With this coming to light now, it only shows that fans are not only justified and supported by a member of the ME3 writing staff, but also that BioWare should have been aware of the backlash it would have caused, and shows poor decision-making and lack of communication among the team, at least with regard to the ending.

But here’s where the “huge amount of controversy” comes in: the writer, knowing the amount of trouble his statements would cause, deleted his posts and requested that nobody attribute his statements to his name, asking them to simply say “I heard” or “I bet”. These posts were also taken down by Penny Arcade at the behest of the author (well-known in the forums as Takyris), though Gameranx both published the writer’s name (Patrick Weekes) and received an anonymous screenshot of the posts in question, dated March 11.
Takyris is an account that has been on the forums since ME1, linked to Weekes’ LiveJournal where he discusses his work, and Penny Arcade users noted that he would sometimes bounce light ideas off of them. Some of the posts referencing what Takyris said are also still up, like this one (imgur), and this one (imgur), also from March 11, thereby making it clear that Takyris is the source of the denunciation and later redaction. One of the posts states:

Takyris explained some of this in SE++. ‘The ending was written without being reviewed by most of the writing staff, unlike all the other parts of the game.’ (are we not supposed to reference things Taky deleted? Because I’ll blank this if so).
​

The full text, which was copy and pasted from the original forum to places like Something Awful and others, reads as follows (warning, spoilers):

I have nothing to do with the ending beyond a) having argued successfully a long time ago that we needed a chance to say goodbye to our squad, b) having argued successfully that Cortez shouldn’t automatically die in that shuttle crash, and c) having written Tali’s goodbye bit, as well as a couple of the holo-goodbyes for people I wrote (Mordin, Kasumi, Jack, etc).
No other writer did, either, except for our lead. This was entirely the work of our lead and Casey himself, sitting in a room and going through draft after draft.
And honestly, it kind of shows.
Every other mission in the game had to be held up to the rest of the writing team, and the writing team then picked it apart and made suggestions and pointed out the parts that made no sense. This mission? Casey and our lead deciding that they didn’t need to be peer-reviewe.d
And again, it shows.
If you’d asked me the themes of Mass Effect 3, I’d break them down as:
Galactic Alliances
Friends
Organics versus Synthetics
In my personal opinion, the first two got a perfunctory nod. We did get a goodbye to our friends, but it was in a scene that was divorced from the gameplay — a deliberate “nothing happens here” area with one turret thrown in for no reason I really understand, except possibly to obfuscate the “nothing happens here”-ness. The best missions in our game are the ones in which the gameplay and the narrative reinforce each other. The end of the Genophage campaign exemplifies that for me — every line of dialog is showing you both sides of the krogan, be they horrible brutes or proud warriors; the art shows both their bombed-out wasteland and the beautiful world they once had and could have again; the combat shows the terror of the Reapers as well as a blatant reminder of the rachni, which threatened the galaxy and had to be stopped by the krogan last time. Every line of code in that mission is on target with the overall message.
The endgame doesn’t have that. I wanted to see banshees attacking you, and then have asari gunships zoom in and blow them away. I wanted to see a wave of rachni ravagers come around a corner only to be met by a wall of krogan roaring a battle cry. Here’s the horror the Reapers inflicted upon each race, and here’s the army that you, Commander Shepard, made out of every race in the galaxy to fight them.
I personally thought that the Illusive Man conversation was about twice as long as it needed to be — something that I’ve been told in my peer reviews of my missions and made edits on, but again, this is a conversation no writer but the lead ever saw until it was already recorded. I did love Anderson’s goodbye.
For me, Anderson’s goodbye is where it ended. The stuff with the Catalyst just… You have to understand. Casey is really smart and really analytical. And the problem is that when he’s not checked, he will assume that other people are like him, and will really appreciate an almost completely unemotional intellectual ending. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it.
And then, just to be a dick… what was SUPPOSED to happen was that, say you picked “Destroy the Reapers”. When you did that, the system was SUPPOSED to look at your score, and then you’d show a cutscene of Earth that was either:
a) Very high score: Earth obviously damaged, but woo victory
b) Medium score: Earth takes a bunch of damage from the Crucible activation. Like dropping a bomb on an already war-ravaged city. Uh, well, maybe not LIKE that as much as, uh, THAT.
c) Low score: Earth is a cinderblock, all life on it completely wiped out
I have NO IDEA why these different cutscenes aren’t in there. As far as I know, they were never cut. Maybe they were cut for budget reasons at the last minute. I don’t know. But holy crap, yeah, I can see how incredibly disappointing it’d be to hear of all the different ending possibilities and have it break down to “which color is stuff glowing?” Or maybe they ARE in, but they’re too subtle to really see obvious differences, and again, that’s… yeah.
Okay, that’s a lot to have written for something that’s gonna go away in an hour.
I still teared up at the ending myself, but really, I was tearing up for the quick flashbacks to old friends and the death of Anderson. I wasn’t tearing up over making a choice that, as it turned out, didn’t have enough cutscene differentiation on it.
And to be clear, I don’t even really wish Shepard had gotten a ride-off-into-sunset ending. I was honestly okay with Shepard sacrificing himself. I just expected it to be for something with more obvious differentiation, and a stronger tie to the core themes — all three of them.
​

While these statements have been attributed to Mass Effect writer Patrick Weekes, on the BioWare forums, Chris Priestly, Bioware’s community coordinator, has said he asked Weekes about it, and that the whole debacle is nothing more than an imitation. Forum users have accepted Priestly’s statement, saying, “…if you see this topic of a BioWare writer speaking out against the ending that is floating around on the internet, it has been debunked!”
Users on other forums have also actively spoken out and become extremely defensive against anybody who tries to “incriminate” Weekes, saying things like (taken from comments on the Gameranx article and from Penny Arcade’s forum):

The only reason people are saying it’s fake is so that [Takyris], a genuinely nice dude who just wanted to give some of his friends some insight on why the ending turned out how it did, won’t get ******* FIRED because you decided to ******* call him out by name you absolute pile of **** juice and human compost
​

And:

The Scarab already mentioned that people at Something Awful and other places read the forums and copy/pasted his posts at their shitholes weeks ago . and it was around that time that taky left. it makes me sad and I’m angry at the fuckers who took advantage of his trust in us.
​

In writing this article, though I am avoiding direct contact with Weekes’ name or his role in everything, I’m opening myself up to those criticisms as well, but here are the facts:

1. Whether or not Weekes was the one who posted the original message, it was posted on his account. Priestly calls it an imitator, but in this case it would make more sense for it to be an account hacker, which neither Weekes nor Priestly has claimed.
2. BioWare is already aware of the situation and the fact that Weekes’ name is involved. Through Priestly, they have already addressed it. Publishing his name doesn’t make much of a difference—they already know that people suspect and/or know that Takyris is Weekes. As much as Weekes/Takyris wishes to remain anonymous, and doesn’t want the information leaked attributed to him, it is no longer possible. Everything Takyris said and his identity were already posted to Something Awful and Reddit before Gameranx got a hold of it.
3. There is sufficient evidence to warrant this being called “news”. Some people say that forum posts aren’t “sufficient evidence” and citing them shows a lack of journalistic integrity. However, forums, while not legitimate sources for news in themselves, are where people conduct discussions, form ideas, organize, complain, and everything else people do when they talk to each other candidly. Sometimes, the people who write in forums are important people, and in publishing words publicly, they open themselves up to all kinds of readers, including the media. This is also true for normal users – what you write in a forum can be taken as a bystander statement when it comes to issues predominantly taking place online. In this particular case, Weekes got caught, and candid statements are still statements when you work for one of the most popular game franchises of the decade. Yes, journalism ethics dictate that you should withhold the names when the particular piece of news might damage someone’s reputation, but at this point the company in question has already issued a statement regarding the issue which stated the name of the writer in question as being Patrick Weekes.
4. If Weekes gets fired over this, you can’t blame the online community. If Weekes truly is the one that posted it, then he is responsible for his actions. If it was the work of a hacker, he and BioWare should come out and say so. If BioWare fires him, that is their decision. As great a guy or writer as he is, if BioWare decides that his indiscretion is worth getting rid of him, that showing a unified face over their products is more important than the ability to express personal opinions, then the blame shouldn’t lie on the shoulders of news outlets or “tabloids” or blogs or forums. The blame lies on them for considering his complaint egregious enough to warrant termination, for not considering his talent, and for not standing up for him as their employee and someone who has done a lot for the Mass Effect franchise.

It seems, however, that most people are primarily angry that Weekes’ name was published in association with the posts, an issue that can’t be helped now. There wasn’t a lot of denying that it was a BioWare writer — just that the name of the writer should not have been leaked. Despite evidence to the contrary, maybe BioWare will stand beside their original statement of, “It wasn’t him,” and let Weekes stay.
Ultimately, the statements made by Takyris on March 11th are critical of BioWare and the decision making that took place with regard to the ending, and their objection to receiving feedback from the other writers on what was to become the final chapter of what is possibly the greatest videogame trilogy. It’s also a criticism of the ending itself, which he agrees failed to live up to BioWare’s promises, a central point to the rationale behind the Reclaim ME3 movements. If Takyris truly is Weekes, then the anger of the masses is justified, and BioWare can no longer hide behind meek statements of “that’s just how it was always going to be.”

 

[dighn]

ok sure, I can buy that. the endings were rather rushed and sloppily done. a trilogy that we've spent so much time on (and waiting for) really deserved something better. this is a lot of drama though.

 

[Red Hawk]

plot holes yes. but it's not just the ending. there are massive plot holes and leaps of logic throughout the series. e.g. the capabilities and strategies of the reapers, the reluctance of governments to respond to a very credible threat, the make up of the universe itself. a high level of suspension of belief was needed for me to go through the game, and the ending was no worse. bioware wrote themselves into a corner and had to resort to deus ex machina, like so many other works of sci-fi, even much more rigorous ones.

I think most people are just upset because they don't like the direction of the ending, rather than its execution. i.e. it isn't a conventional "the hero saves the day and every rejoices" kind of ending. on the other hand, for a game that promotes choices and their consequences as one of its main selling points, maybe such an ending should have been included.

While there are some leaps of logic and plot holes in the game series, none are as blatant as

Spoiler

a crewmember who should have died on the ground walking out of the Normandy.

That's as bad as, for example, if Kaidan died in Mass Effect 1 but then randomly showed up in the middle of Mass Effect 3. These plot holes didn't need to happen either; it's almost as if the writers went out of their way to create them so close together. I don't think that BioWare had written themselves into a corner for the plot holes most people have issue with. Sure, they needed a sort of Deus Ex Machina to deal with the Reapers, but that was introduced at the beginning of ME3 and was relatively sensible. That's not what most fans have an issue with. But the very end?

Spoiler

WHY have this god-child show up with a nonsensical reason for the Reapers' cycles? (the original ending at least had a sensible reason)? WHY is Joker running? WHY is a dead squadmate suddenly revived? WHY do the mass relays need to be destroyed, thus stranding the entire Sword fleet in the Sol System?

NOTHING about the past story required ANY of this to happen.

I could have appreciated an ending that wasn't "the hero saves the day" if it was ONE of multiple different endings (as was promised), and if it wasn't executed in an entirely craptastic way.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I just read the post by Mazurka linked above. I makes no sense to me. Can someone with as much experience in gaming as he has actually not have known how unsatisfactory the ending was? I cant really think so. So I am left with the possibilities that either they just did not care or simply rushed the ending or were devoting too many resources to other projects (looking at you TOR). And all his attempts to satisfy and appease the fan-base strike me as incredibly empty. If they really cared about their fans, I cannot believe that they didnt have the talent and intelligence to make a better ending in the first place. And if the modified endings come out as paid DLC instead of free updates, well, that is even more hypocritical.

 

[Red Hawk]

A big PR thing for BioWare has always been that they "listen to fan feedback". Heck, I called the support line for TOR to resolve my account be locked out accidentally, and they first answer you with a recording of Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk thanking the caller for playing TOR and saying that they always listen to feedback. More and more, though, it feels like just empty words.

 

[RampantAndroid]

I just read the post by Mazurka linked above. I makes no sense to me. Can someone with as much experience in gaming as he has actually not have known how unsatisfactory the ending was? I cant really think so. So I am left with the possibilities that either they just did not care or simply rushed the ending or were devoting too many resources to other projects (looking at you TOR). And all his attempts to satisfy and appease the fan-base strike me as incredibly empty. If they really cared about their fans, I cannot believe that they didnt have the talent and intelligence to make a better ending in the first place. And if the modified endings come out as paid DLC instead of free updates, well, that is even more hypocritical.

Did you play DA2? And read how they were amazed people though it was so crappy?

 

[Arg Clin]

Did you play DA2? And read how they were amazed people though it was so crappy?

Bioware does seem to be in some death spiral. ME3 would have been their redemption, but they dropped the ball two inches from the goal.

A step up from DA2 where the whole game was crap - not just the ending - but still a long hard fall from past glory of BG, KOTOR and DAO.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Bioware does seem to be in some death spiral. ME3 would have been their redemption, but they dropped the ball two inches from the goal.

A step up from DA2 where the whole game was crap - not just the ending - but still a long hard fall from past glory of BG, KOTOR and DAO.

I agree. I have made a promise to myself never to pay full price for a Bioware game again. I did so despite my reservations with ME3, and wish I had waited, especially if they come out with a revised ending. I really don't see how they could change the basic ending though. Are people that already finished the game just supposed to forget about that and do some revised ending? The best they could do IMO would be to come out with some epilogue that explained how the squadmates you see after the end actually got there and more detail about what happened after the final events. And if that were paid dlc it would be incredibly greedy.

 

[dighn]

I've been rather disappointed with Bioware as well. Even though DA was a pretty good game, with the flashy ads, simplified game play and comparative lack of depth of the game universe, the writing was on the wall. I've been looking forward to ME3 mostly because I liked ME1 (and ME2 to a lesser degree) and wanted to see the series to its conclusion. Now that I'm done with ME3, I think I'm also done with Bioware. Oh well, companies change over time just like people do. They've given me a lot of entertainment and will always have a place in my mind.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I've been rather disappointed with Bioware as well. Even though DA was a pretty good game, with the flashy ads, simplified game play and comparative lack of depth of the game universe, the writing was on the wall. I've been looking forward to ME3 mostly because I liked ME1 (and ME2 to a lesser degree) and wanted to see the series to its conclusion. Now that I'm done with ME3, I think I'm also done with Bioware. Oh well, companies change over time just like people do. They've given me a lot of entertainment and will always have a place in my mind.

ME3 was worth the money. The game getting to the ending was amazing.

Spoiler

I hated Mordin in ME2 but the way the paragon story played out on Tuchanka and Mordin sacrificing himself actually hit me emotional (more than I can say about any game/movie). The Geth helping the Quarians rebuild with the Geth Prime walking up and offering assistance was awesome too. If you didnt save Rannoch, Tali commits suicide off the cliff as well which I saw on youtube and even that hit hard (even though I didnt play that outcome)

Too bad they fucked up everything in the last 5 minutes.

 

[dighn]

ME3 was worth the money. The game getting to the ending was amazing.

Spoiler

I hated Mordin in ME2 but the way the paragon story played out on Tuchanka and Mordin sacrificing himself actually hit me emotional (more than I can say about any game/movie). The Geth helping the Quarians rebuild with the Geth Prime walking up and offering assistance was awesome too. If you didnt save Rannoch, Tali commits suicide off the cliff as well which I saw on youtube and even that hit hard (even though I didnt play that outcome)

Too bad they fucked up everything in the last 5 minutes.

no doubt ME3 was a great game. I'm just not sure about the direction the company is going. to me they are turning more and more into yet another game developer. will their next franchise appeal to me? guess I'll see.

speaking of moving moments. I personally thought

Spoiler

the story of the quarians and the geth were just so tragic (esp after the server sequence), and being able to reconcile their differences almost brought a tear to my eyes. for that and other reasons I couldn't choose the red option at the end.

 

[Zenoth]

There, nice read concerning the ending (spoilers in there obviously).

Also, great article there about Mass Effect in general. Note however that it was written before ME3 was released, not sure what the author thinks of it by now, but the article is great nonetheless.

Also, this made me laugh.

 

[dighn]

Also, this made me laugh.

wow. just wow. that's more sad than funny I think. but, wow, that's brilliant.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Just went back and finished all the ME2 DLCs and it makes the ME3 ending even more stupid.

Spoiler

In the Arrival, destroying a relay pretty much destroyed the galaxy around it. Sooo we just destroyed every galaxy that has a mass relay. Awesomee

 

[thejunglegod]

Well the thing that bothered me the most was that there was absolutely NO closure in the end. I expected to see the following:

Spoiler

1. A massive infantry line of bloodthirsty Krogans ripping appart those irritating banshees and brutes weakened by the Crucible fire.
2. A massive space battle involving the Geth/Turian/Salarian fleet after the crucible weakens the reaper forces.
3. Nothing happens to the mass relays, so that once the battle is over and the universe "rescued", everyone can go back to their own galaxies and live happily ever after.
4. No grandpa and grandkid in the end but Shephard doing one of those "American Beauty" type narration.
5. A final scene where all is back to normal and a huge statue of Shepard in a newly created Citadel.
6. Oh and also that "Reaper Breeder" whom i chose to not kill in the caves, destroying Harbinger (Thresher maw type cut scene)

 

[novasatori]

Just went back and finished all the ME2 DLCs and it makes the ME3 ending even more stupid.

Spoiler

In the Arrival, destroying a relay pretty much destroyed the galaxy around it. Sooo we just destroyed every galaxy that has a mass relay. Awesomee

Spoiler

I am pretty sure the destruction methods are supposed to be different. One in the ending one they are just passing their energy along then falling apart. I did have the same thought though and it isn't really clear at all. Just another problem with the ending.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Well the thing that bothered me the most was that there was absolutely NO closure in the end. I expected to see the following:

Spoiler

1. A massive infantry line of bloodthirsty Krogans ripping appart those irritating banshees and brutes weakened by the Crucible fire.
2. A massive space battle involving the Geth/Turian/Salarian fleet after the crucible weakens the reaper forces.
3. Nothing happens to the mass relays, so that once the battle is over and the universe "rescued", everyone can go back to their own galaxies and live happily ever after.
4. No grandpa and grandkid in the end but Shephard doing one of those "American Beauty" type narration.
5. A final scene where all is back to normal and a huge statue of Shepard in a newly created Citadel.
6. Oh and also that "Reaper Breeder" whom i chose to not kill in the caves, destroying Harbinger (Thresher maw type cut scene)

Totally forgot about number 6

Spoiler

The Rachni queen was from Mass Effect 1 and it was supposed to be a huge thing that I saved her given the fact that they almost took over the galaxy. Then I save her again in part 3 so she could go back and regain her strength after the Reapers used her and get some ass kicking revenge but nope, we never hear from her again.

 

[thejunglegod]

Totally forgot about number 6

Spoiler

The Rachni queen was from Mass Effect 1 and it was supposed to be a huge thing that I saved her given the fact that they almost took over the galaxy. Then I save her again in part 3 so she could go back and regain her strength after the Reapers used her and get some ass kicking revenge but nope, we never hear from her again.

Spoiler

yeah was such a bummer. I did not get 'Grunt" in this part and had someone called "Dagg" whom i saw getting killed by those abominations and to not see her in the end makes the sacrifice even more of a kick in the groin.

The problem with Mass Effect 3 is not that its bad, its probably the most beatuiful RPG till date. Well atleast till the last 6 minutes or so. What a sad way for a beautiful beautiful game to end.

 

[thejunglegod]

Te worst part was "Commander Shepard is a legend and you can build up the legend further by buying DLCs" ROFL....i nearly smashed my screen after that.

 

[Zenoth]

Te worst part was "Commander Shepard is a legend and you can build up the legend further by buying DLCs" ROFL....i nearly smashed my screen after that.

Agreed, I felt insulted when I say that.

But, in my opinion, it wasn't as bad as having a NPC in your camp basically being a salesman, in Dragon Age: Origins. Having his dialog related to part of the quest entirely cut and replaced by "Download extra content" (something like that) to actually activate the quest. Had in been similarly done in ME3, we'd have had a NPC inside the Normandy doing the same, having part of his/her dialog cut out and replaced by something like that until you'd buy the content to resume the dialog and get the quest.

It would have been horrible, and I thought it already was horrible to have that in DAO, cheap move. Then BioWare talks about "artistic integrity", the same people taking random pictures on the web to "inspire" themselves for their "original" creations (Tali's appearance, end-scene on the planet with the Stargazers, and God knows what else). But, anyway, despite the... "shortcomings" of ME3, I for one enjoyed the game nonetheless.

I am very disappointed by the ending (more so about the lack of on-screen time for 80%+ of the War Assets), the messed up Journal, impractical quest tracking/progression and too much of auto dialog for Shepard. But generally speaking it is my favorite of the series, although ME1 still has a better story presentation and pace in my opinion. I'd give a solid 8/10 for ME3, overall. It still feels rushed though. I don't think they had enough time to work on it, even with their single delay of a few months, they had to be "on schedule" obviously, and it shows. A shame.