I happen to like Control, for a few reasons. First, I think it's the best solution to the Reapers, as it stops them without either giving them what they want (Synthesis) or letting any more innocents die (Destroy). As I think it the Catalyst may be well intentioned, but it is operating on flawed logic. Said flawed logic can be rectified by adding a "human element" to the mix, aka Shepard. With Shepard as the new Catalyst, they can give it a _conscience_ and _empathy_ (in its own way), thus allowing the Reapers to preserve life in a much more conventional way. Also, it still allows Shepard to live in some way (like Destroy), as opposed to Synthesis. And the Catalyst still gets a certain comeuppance by being replaced. Plus, Shep's "Eternal, Infinite, Immortal" speech gives me chills every time.
AHEM (modded ending). By the way there an excellent (and often hilarious) TH-cam vid where US presidents and politicians discuss the different endings. th-cam.com/video/xoTn32KzkyA/w-d-xo.html
The destroy ending is the favorite and canon and who's to say the Catalyst didn't lie, I have a feeling the next ME4 will have story elements of repairing the Geth and EDI as well. There is lore out there stating that the Geth where building a space station to store all Geth outside of our galaxy.
@@zw6487 The Destroy ending may be the most popular, I admit. But it's still not confirmed to be Canon. And frankly, I think BIoware would make a VERY dumb decision by making _any_ ending Canon, as the "our choices don't matter" backlash was already so bad in the original cut of ME3.
I always choose Destroy. I don't trust anyone to control the power of the Reapers, and I can't force synthesis on individuals. As for EDI, she flat out says she would sacrifice herself to save Jeff. She and the geth knew what they signed up for. And I believe that the geth that were downloaded into quarian hardsuits would survive
Yeah. With synthesis Shepard disregard the opinion of the entire galaxy. Even the races that are not target of reapers in this cycle are affected by decision that Shepard made also what if some race came out from outside of Milky Way and was not affected by this change? Will Reapers destroy them? With Control there is this. During the confrontation with the Illusive Man Shepard ask him if he is willing to bet humanity existence on faith that he can control the reapers. So. Is Shepard willing to be humanity existence on faith that he/she can control them? And even Shepard during that talk with Illusive Man says that when we destroy them it ends today and we do not live in uncertainty.
The endings do have some variations. Paragon and Renegade control are different. Renegade control has creepier, darker vibe. Destroy can be affected by whether you have high or low assets.
And for that very reason alone I'll ONLY ever choose Control as a paragon Shep - renegade Shep should NOT have that much control over nearly invincible entities and be elevated to immortality and a form of "god-hood" That's a recipe for disaster and the whole "hero living long enough to become the villain" kind of situation. Corrupt Shep would easily become more corrupt over time.
In-game lore referenced directly or indirectly throughout the series regarding the endings: Control was mentioned by Vendetta on Thessia as the idea of Indoctrinated separatists, and the path forward favored by TIM. Shepard: "What happened to the Crucible in your time? Why didn't the Protheans deploy it?" Vendetta: "We were sabotaged from within. A splinter group argued we should *dominate* the Reapers rather than destroy them. It fractured our order of battle. Later we discovered the separatists were indoctrinated." Javik: "I always suspected as much." Synthesis essentially means Shepard playing God and rewriting all sentient life in the galaxy without their consent (which is perhaps more Renegade than Destroy). This was the route that Saren wanted to take. "The relationship is symbiotic. Organic and machine intertwined, a union of flesh and steel. The strengths of both, the weaknesses of neither. I am a vision of the future, Shepard. The evolution of all organic life. This is our destiny. Join Sovereign and experience a true rebirth." Yes, Saren did use a bit of vivid rhetoric with the 'flesh and steel' bit, but Synthesis would be his preferred choice. Mordin also made a pass at the disadvantages of Synthesis in Mass Effect 2 during his conversations regarding the Collectors on the Normandy. "No glands, replaced by tech. No digestive system, replaced by tech. No soul. Replaced by tech. Whatever they were, gone forever." Again, a bit more colorful rhetoric, as no one would lose all their organs, but he makes a good point: At what stage during this merging does sentient life lose their individuality, and what makes them what they are? He further explains using the Krogan uplifting as an example: "Disrupts socio-technological balance. All scientific advancement due to intelligence overcoming, compensating, for limitations. Can't carry a load, so invent wheel. Can't catch food, so invent spear. Limitations. No limitations, no advancement. No advancement, culture stagnates. Works other way too. *Advancement* before culture is ready. Disastrous." How would the Krogan have said culture in a Synthetic utopia with no limitations or conflict to overcome? Perfect Destroy is the only ending that makes sense, and not because of teasers in ME4. Throughout the series, Shepard has always iterated their goal to destroy the Reapers. Synthetics such as the Geth and EDI can be repaired, and both are willing to see the destruction of the 'Old Machines' no matter the cost. Remember, EDI has a conversation with Shepard in which her resolve to destroy is hardened: "Is it worth defending?" "To the death." Also, note that both Saren and TIM were indoctrinated, and can be seen as foils to Shepard.
You will never get over this Trilogy luv... 11 years later I still need a tissue when re-watching these endings. You are now forever part of the zeitgeist Kimmander! I found the Synthesis ending to be the most satisfying choice, as the one that helped the Galaxy recover more swiftly. Vengeance was not my goal in the end, when it meant the genocide of a newly emerged sentient and allied species... your choice is yours milady and I both honor your resolution, as well as sharing your sentiment! 🙏😚 After all this time I don't believe there is a canon ending... and we won't know how the story progresses until ME4 is released. And too many people forget the fact that Krogan & Asari have lifespans in excess of 1000 human years! Liara could be anywhere from 200 to 900 years old in the teaser. She was only about 109 at the end of the Trilogy (she mentioned she was 106 and young for an Asari in ME!)... anywhere from 5 to 400 generations of humanity could have come to pass by the time the story of ME4 comes into play? Knowing Liara's age at the beginning of the next game will tell us how much time has passed since the Trilogy's end...🧐
That one breath is the reason for all the talk about "Destroy" being THE canon ending going into the next game because it's the only ending that provides a reasonable, non-retconned pathway for Shepard to be alive. Short of Destroy being the sole official ending, it's hard to conceive of a conclusion in which Shepard lives that doesn't come across as contrived.
Because it is an easy retcon. EDI reboots in her body after her AI core is shredded and she has to reboot without the help of the rest of her. The Geth survived isolated in some Quarian suits. That, and the heretics also survived but not in very large numbers as well. Control means the reapers are the protectors of all life in the galaxy, and synthesis is just a longer method of harvest since the reaper logic of networking is now applicable to organics in an understandable fashion
@@samsmith4242 The trick is to make it not seem contrived as merely a shoddily constructed means to bring Shepard back. Bringing Shepard back is easy; bringing Shepard back in a way that seems to flow from and is organic to the story is much harder. I would rather they not bring Shepard back at all than to do so poorly.
@@chrisd7047 Keepers are programmed to maintain the citadel. The catalyst is part of the citadel. Shepard became the catalyst after making the choice. Keepers recover citadel component (Shepard) but considering other damage, restoring full functionality was low priority. A Keeper squad mate is then assigned to to maintain the Shepard
some players accidentally got the forth ending because they did not know what would happen by shooting the kid. you can bet some of them got pissed off.
That was me! I was so frustrated that my Shepard would die whichever of the three options i pick (didn't know about full war assets destroy ending where Shepard survives) that i just shot at the starchild. I was in utter shock that it was an actual ending and it took me about half an hour to compose myself and reload before the choice.
Catalyst speaks to you with a mix of male/female Shep voices, but in the denial ending answers you with a Harbinger voice, just in case you didn't notice.
@@naamari Control (both versions) is far better than Synthesis imo. It's a status quo, the Reapers are under control and help rebuild. Each race that survived so far can develop as it wants under AI-Shepard supervision. I've seen a lot of people speculating that can't control the Reapers indefinitely and I disagree. I reallythink that AI-Shepard wont have problems keeping control over them, as far as we know the Catalyst never had trouble in controlling them and Shepard just replaced it.
YES!!! I love renegade control ending. The implications are so dark. I love it! Remember, Shepard's mind is different. That's why the Reapers and the ones in the DLC wanted them. Shepard is immune to indoctrination so they can definitely control the Reapers.
@@ZrodyApo the issue with trusting Shepard to control the reapers is how will a human originated mind deal with thousands of years of life in solitude with absolute power at its hands and no connection to the humanity that once was. Even if Shepard is benevolent as a person, will they continue to be after ten thousand years of isolation, perspective shift and boredom?
@2starkiller the way I see it, that's up to you. Until any info contradicts, I imagine whatever takes place following these endings is purely up to the player
I picked 'Destroy' on my first playthrough WAY back when ME3 first came out. My reasoning for this was: All through the game, the Paragon/Renegade system of blue and red choices, have almost 'indoctrinated' the player themselves into assigning a paragon action to the color blue, and a renegade action to the color red. All through the game, our only focus has been 'defeat/destroy' the Reapers... and having that presented at the 'renegade' Option made it almost seem like the two choices were being mislabled on purpose... As I was standing, looking at these options (In the very early release of the game, Synthesis had not been added yet) I started to feel that I as being forced into a certain path because it was being color coded as the 'more paragon option'. It was almost being presented to me that destroying the Reapers would be the 'bad' choice.... almost as if the Reapers themselves were trying to trick me into seeing their destruction as bad... Was the character 'actually' indoctrinated? So I choose 'Destroy' and never looked back. I stand by my decision. The Reapers were too powerful to risk that they weren't trying to manipulate me into continuing their agenda....
There're SO MANY questions that are raised by Control and Synthesis even without knowing exactly what happens after seeing the endings. Then you get into the specifics that we are shown in the cutscenes for each ending and they usually raise even more questions or put me in disbelief. There's a million red flags for everything the Reapers are telling you in that scene. The biggest one is "We've been trying to defeat the Reapers for this entire franchise. Just before we do exactly that, the *Reapers themselves* try to convince us not only to NOT kill them, but to use one of 2 other options both of which are obviously exploitable for them". The only option the Reapers try to convince you not to pick is the option that destroys them, and they are completely fine with all of the options that result in their continued existence or the completion of their ideal universe. Weird how that works out. You also have the fact that with Control and Synthesis, there's literally no source of information on which to base a decision on these two endings other than the Reapers themselves. The Reapers are the ones that tell us about the other options and you're telling me that I'm just supposed to take THEIR word for literally anything? With everything we know about these guys and their mechanical superpower to mentally manipulate people, you're expecting me to trust that these other options aren't going to fuck me over? The Reapers themselves literally admit that someone who's indoctrinated cannot take control of the Reapers via the Crucible, "but you'll be able to do it, we promise. Just whatever you do, don't destroy us". And Synthesis is literally the Reapers' idea of a perfect world/society/utopia. They tell you that "it is not something that can be forced" and that "organics were not ready", when there's literally no way that it CAN'T be forced. There isn't a single organic in the galaxy that knows the Crucible can do Synthesis, and they DEFINITELY didn't agree to it. In terms of Shepard surviving, I'd prefer it if he stayed dead, because part of the heroism and pain of Mass Effect's ending was the understanding that you would sacrifice your own chance at a future or a family for your team and the rest of the galaxy. Throughout the franchise you went so far on behalf of other people and accomplished so many impossibilities and created so many potential futures for all these species. Destroying the Reapers was the only real way for the galaxy to finally have control over its own future. Shepard made sure that everyone had that chance, that at the end of it all, every member of their team got the life and future they deserved. Not only that, but they would SURVIVE to be able to live those lives. Tali would finally be able to return to Rannoch with the Quarians and experience life breathing real air and feeling real wind. Grunt, Wrex and the Krogans could finally see a tomorrow to build towards. They finally could have children without dreading stillbirth. The Rachni had earned their second chance at survival. There were things that Shepard would have wanted to do if he survived the Reaper War, but he would sacrifice that chance, that victory, that future for everyone else. His death was his final sacrifice to ensure that the Reapers were defeated, the cycle was broken and the possibilities for the future were now endless and uncertain. Now the galaxy's survival was in its own hands. On top of that, not only is it bullshit Shepard survived with how he was fully consumed by that explosion, but you would only know that he survived if you'd looked it up before making that choice, so I wouldn't factor that into the reasoning for the choice in hindsight
Also, the fact that Shepard doesn't die in the Destroy ending even though it's explicitly stated by the Catalyst that the Crucible will destroy all synthetic life is bullshit. The Catalyst even points out that Shepard himself is partly synthetic. He's only alive because of the cybernetics in his body holding him together. Even if you want to say that the Crucible destroyed his synthetic parts but left the rest of him intact, he was still be dead instantly because he NEEDS those cybernetics to live. That's WHY he has them in the first place.
@@TOONYBOY So your big paragraph works for Destroy and its Epilogue scenes, but not for other endings. What if in Destroy Starchild says takes over Shepard's mind and doesn''t destroy Reapers at all. Why conform against Control and Synthesis only?
@@kvm6 All of that would be reliant on the in-universe explanation of *how* indoctrinated Shepard is. It would take considerably more effort and force (think Sovereign possessing Saren's dead body) to control Shepard completely and stop him from doing *anything* than it would be to guide his mentality into choosing a bad option. Also, choosing to trick Shepard into achieving Synthesis is - according to the Starchild - the ideal solution, so if it could possess Shepard into doing anything, it'd be that. And Destroy being the trick option and picking it is supposed to be Shepard being indoctrinated, that doesn't make any sense because Destroying the Reapers was always what Shepard intended to do. The galaxy wasn't even aware that the Crucible did anything BUT destroy the Reapers. Destroying the Reapers was the only plan right from the beginning of the first game when we only SUSPECTED they were real. If the Starchild was indoctrinating Shepard for its own safety to avoid choosing the other options, it wouldn't even present itself at all in the first place. It wouldn't even try to convince Shepard of anything, because it would literally be able to leave him alone and he would do that anyway
@@TOONYBOY Destroying the Geth was also the only option, right from the moment of Morning War. Things change as new info comes to light. As shown in game. Shepard has no Indoctrination effect when talking to Starchild.
There is also annother ending. You can let the timer in the Arrival DLC count down to Zero (yes, you need to let the game run for two days realtime) and then you get another ending. dusturbing pictures. Or you Kill Sammara and sleep with Morinth...game over xD
I replayed ME3 to get all the different endings with different partners for my male Shep, and I felt each of them was accidentally an amazing choice. Miranda works great with Control (her lover becomes the ideal version of what her old boss was trying to be), Ashley is fantastic for Destroy (the knowing smirk while holding the name tag as if to say "Nah, my man's alive." is such an Ashley thing), and Tali (a.k.a. best girl) is perfect for Synthesis (her hugging EDI as they cry together hit me harder than anything else). I actually chose the do-nothing-and-die ending first before any others, just to see what would happen. You can choose it without shooting the kid, and just telling him "No. I'm not sacrificing anyone, and I'm not forcing everyone to change. If we die, we do it on our own terms." Although it sucks for all the characters, I still really like what happens (i.e. we become the new protheans), and how that's the only ending where you get to see the results of all Liara's work. Plus, since you still get the Stargazer and child, and based on their dialogue, it's implied that they did, in fact, use what we left them to end the cycle. So in the "bad" ending, it's actually Liara, not Shepard, who saves the galaxy. 😄
Definitely picked destroy. Didn’t want to sacrifice myself and wanted the reapers gone. Was not going to leave anything to chance synthetic life was the bottom of my care pile.
I think now you can see why people consider destroy the "canon" ending, is the only one where we see Shepard breathe again, unlike Control, Synthesis or Refusal where they're just vaporized.
I still have mixed feelings about how ME3 ended and all the strangeness that happened with it. But the journey is top-tier! And that piano theme by Clint Mansell always gets me in the feels! I'm curious to see what happens with the next Mass Effect project
Imagine being asked to make the next Mass Effect game knowing you have to make a story taking into account an AI god Shepard in command of a Reaper army, a galaxy full of half organic half synthetic beings with the knowledge of all previous harvested civilizations or just the status quo of the galaxy being allowed to live without the other 2 life cheat codes.
I'm over the five stages of grief, Denial (Back when we thought there would be a continuation after the ending), Anger (the 2000 cupcakes sent to BioWare HQ with 3 different colors), Bargaining (collecting donations because people thought BioWare were out of money), Depression (knowing the ending was not going to chance) and finally Acceptance (Realizing that this is all we will ever get). Let me tell you briefly what the ending is: it's 4 forced options: either you're forced to destroy the Reapers destroying the Geth in the process (and EDI too) or you're forcing a change on the galaxy they did not agree with when you choose synthesis or you're forcing the galaxy to endure a new Galactic Dictator (Shepard) and last but not least, in the refusal ending you're forced to accept that you can never have free choice, or you'll wipe out the galaxy. Personally whenever I play Mass Effect I finish all missions until I get to the Citadel DLC and then I stop playing because I can no longer watch them endings.
The Catalyst lied - Shepard lived, proving that. In my head canon, the Catalyst is an agent for the Reapers and destroy is the true ending, at least for a paragon choice.
@@KimEllendale That used to be my flatmate for 7 years. But now he's big and famous and does concerts all over the world, including often the Netherlands. You never know. 😁
Personally destroy is the ending that I like the most and it makes more sense from a narrative and lore perspective than the other options. In synthesis you force the galaxy to be something without consent or choice. In control there's no guarantee that you won't be indoctrinated yourself, it can happen now or in another 50 thousand years, the reapers are still out there, same as synthesis. In Destroy you finally do what you set out to do from the first game, destroy the reapers, I personally don't care about the geth, I think they are genocidal manipulators, Legion lies a lot in ME3, both directly and by omission to benefit the geth, the only synthetic I cared about was EDI but she isn't enough to not destroy the reapers, sorry Joker. Basically any ending that lets the reapers live is not a viable option for me.
I can only see destroy being the canon ending going forward. I just don’t see the others making to much sense for a story in the next game. If Shepherd has control of the reapers, the next enemy we’d face would just get blasted to hell lol. If BioWare was to pick another ending as canon, I’d be very surprised.
If there's one thing Mass Effect hammered on us, over and over, is that you can't control all the consequences of our actions. We can only go with our guts, pray we did the right choice and fix the consequences of any mistakes we make.
I don't think there's anything wrong with picking the synthesis ending. However, I don't think synthesis should have been an option. It's too ideal. As much as I loved the mass effect series, it seems like after me1, the developers couldn't bring themselves to make players make a hard choice, and the synthesis ending is the ultimate example of this.
Yeah ending is easy to fix. Control is renegade. Destroy paragon. And you have a big boss fight with harbinger before going up to the citadel. Then you find out starchild lost control, of the reapers to harbinger. Star child felt his creators were a big threat to organic and synthetic life so preserved them as harbinger. To prevent them from rebuilding. Then Harbinger turned on it. Viewing itself as the natural end goal of all life. Shackling its creator in the citadel because it controls the indoctrination signal
All endings show hope but they each have a lot of flaws. They just weren’t presented. Like Synthesis, many people would ending up with anger in being forced into this new framework and rebel and/or commit death on themselves with such a major change. Control has ways it could go wrong with the AI and even people being angry that they are still around. Destroy caused many people relying on synthetics to die, the relays probably took a long time to repair so many resources couldn’t be shared which would collapse economies on top of the destruction from the war. It’s just that you’d have to think about them instead of being showed it.
There are 2 control endings and 2 destroy endings depending on how high your final EMS score was or how renegade you were (I think). The worst destroy ending is depressing and the worst control ending is very sinister.
It was really great to hear your thoughts on having a canon ending. I feel like there are some people out there who don't really care if a canon invalidates someone else's experience so long as theirs gets continued... It's a shame because before anything else - before any of the characters or the lore or the setting - the trilogy was conceived as a story where everyone could make their own character, their own choices, and that those choices and consequences would carry on through the trilogy. Airlocking all of that agency just to make one ending canon feels like a rush to get rid of what made this series special to half of its fans. It completely misses the point that if Shepard were to come back, fans would want to play their Shepard, not someone elses. And most of those Shepards died 😢
i got refusal ending (the final one) during my playthrough because... well, i didn't realize you have to choose the ending during the dialogue with the catalyst lmao but honestly it was worth it, the endscreen with the Stargazer and the child is one of the most beautiful scenes i've ever encountered in Mass Effect
Been watching your run over the course of the last year. As a Day 1 2007 Veteran of the series, welcome to The Spectre Club! Now you can follow the rest of us and buy 10 of everything that has an N7 logo on it!.......Ok, that might be just me. As far as your question over ending choice, I have 3 Shepard saves that chose 3 of the endings that makes sense for their personality and choices. Leon Shepard - Paragon Male Shepard - War Hero, Colonist Soldier: The Virtuous Leon Shepard while a deadly soldier always believed all life in the Galaxy was worth saving and would always try and find peaceful solutions before being forced into violence. Choosing Paragon Control, Leon Shepard would rather lay down his own life rather than see anyone else die or be altered without their consent. He was always destined to sacrifice himself to become the one to save the many. Evelyn Shepard - Renegade Female - Ruthless, Earthborn Infiltrator: The Butcher of Torfen, The Destroyer of the old Council, Evelyn Shepard always remained steadfast to the rule of "Victory by any means necessary". No sympathy or remorse over the lose of The Geth or EDI, she would nuke half the Victory Fleet if it meant ultimate triumph! John Shepard - Paragnade Male - Sole Survivor, Spacer Vanguard: He tried to follow the dream of a successful military life like his parents but it become more of a nightmare following his squad's extermination at the hands of Cerberus' engineering of a Thresher Maw attack. While he did his best to maintain composure and diplomacy with the higher ups, he wasn't always pleasant with the rest of the galaxy, in particular to any who would cause his PTSD to flare up by mentioning Akuze. Ultimately, John Shepard chose Synthesis looking to be finally freed from the stress of seeing all that war and death. His hope being that in finally getting his own peace, the galaxy would find its own peace as well.
Control would eventually fail. Especially when synthetics start destroying organics again. Then Shepard would have to send the reapers to destroy/harvest the synthetics. But synthetics will try to stop/fight the reapers. But I'm pretty sure Shepard and his reapers would win.
Haha the ending of my very first ME3 playthrough was the last one. The cycle continued and everybody died. I thought it would be clever trying to shot the catalyst. XD
I always pick the Destroy ending. Mainly because I didn't trust the Catalyst. It's whole "Synthetics and Organics can't exist together, there will always be violence" spiel. I'm sorry but we just helped the Quarians and Geth end their conflict and begin to help out each other as equals. We have achieved what the Catalyst said would never happen. Will there be conflict in the future maybe, but I guarantee you, if you give organics enough time after this event, then they will start fighting again too. Also the Catalyst was clearly trying to persuade using our emotions by presenting itself as the kid that we regretted for having failed to save and has been present in our nightmares this whole time. Also with synthesis you save EDI and the Geth but you force every single being in the entire galaxy to become part synthetic. So I can't justify that one (this is just my opinion) basically what Saren wanted. Control that's what the Illusive Man wanted so that is immediately a big no. lol
Pretty much what I've always thought about the endings, with Synthesis you're forcibly converting everything, how can Shepard make that choice for billions, trillions of beings, and it feels like the "too good" ending that was thought up so nobody would die. Control you're doing what TIM wanted and no guarantee Reaper God Shepard doesn't get corrupted and indoctrinated over time too. Destroy is the ending that you've been trying to do since ME1, it's the only ending that proves Space Child wrong in its assertion that organics and synthetics will always come to war when as proven in many gameplays, you can resolve the Geth Quarian conflict. And as you pointed out, it's not like organics don't have a monopoly on conflict either, chances are someone will cause a war with someone else over territory. Destroy - Anderson's Ending. Control - Tim's Ending. Synthesis - Magic mumbo jumbo ending.
Synthesis just jumps evolution forward a little. Beyond the mix of organic and synthetic the Reapers were - a new form of life. It's based on a predicted final evolution of organics. Other than sharing all the knowledge of all previous species, Synthesized beings would simply be bio-synthetic versions of themselves.
@@garyballard179 The keyword of that is "predicted" Many predictions that are based on good evidence don't happen. It may very well happen, but it is not our decision to force everyone to accept that. It would be a process, one step after another, to get organics to that level of synthesis. It is not our place to force it to happen.
@@stonewall01 On the contrary, the various species would not even realize what changed without genetic testing and experimentation. All they knew was that they now had the wisdom of thousands of extinct species. This is not like forcing communism or socialism onto a population - this is simply _accelerating the process of evolution._ It's not "forcing" _anything._
And you trust it for Destroy? What if StarChild just fakes the explosion, and Reapers come back in 5 years? Explain not trusting it for other endings but doing it for this. Starchild points out what you did was extraordinary and that is why Synthesis even comes in as option. It needs high war readiness to even become available.
What's great about the ME Trilogy is that everyone can choose their own ending for their Shepard. All of them have their pros/cons, although Refusal is universally accepted as the worst. I have many playthroughs as different Shepard (male/female, Renegade/Paragon, all 6 classes) and have chosen all 3 endings (except Refusal). However, everyone needs to accept that Destroy is the cannon ending, based on the ME Next trailer that shows Liara walking on dead, frozen Reaper corpses. This is fine - just because that is the cannon ending chosen by Bioware doesn't invalidate your choice for your Shepard. Both ME1 and ME2 have cannon-endings if you play ME2 without having played ME1 or if you play ME3 without having played the other 2.
The part where you see Shepherd breathing at the end of the destroy ending able to get that ending you need a lot of War points and if you're playing as female Shepherd like you were it wouldn't matter it would still show the body of a male Shepherd
I myself tend to believe that the Catalyst was partially lying to Shepard about the Destroy Ending. One: it told Shepard that they would die, but thats not true if you GA score is high enough. Two: in the teaser trailer for the next ME game we see dead reapers, implying that the gane takes place in the destroy ending. However we know the Geth are in the game so they were not killed. So its entirely possible not all Synthetic life was destroyed. Thats how i view it anyway.
@@willfanofmanyii3751 Not in the decrypted teaser audio that released last N7 day. We hear Liara talking with Geth in reference to the new relay being built.
@@toddhardoin3370 It's distorted audio, not confirmation of whether it's Geth. And the audio is logged under a Qurian/Human name. Liara's talking about humanity doing something the council won't be happy about.
Renegade Control ending may give you a bit of different view on the control ending - sounds more sinister. the one in the video was the paragon control.
I never gave TOO much credit to the scene of Shepard breathing. When this game came out it was intended to be the end of Shepard's story, the developers weren't really thinking about "What comes next". So showing Shepard breathing could just be them giving you a glimmer of hope and saying "Think what you will" even if it doesn't really make much sense... I mean, think about it, Shepard was already severely injured, that thing exploded point blank in her face, that section of the Citadel partially collapsed after the explosion, all the synthetic parts inside of Shepard's body (parts of her heart, spine, brain, etc...) stopped working when the device was activated and, on top of all of that, she was buried under rubble. I'm guessing it would take some time before anyone would be able to reach the remains of the Crucible to see if there were any survivors. Of course these are just my two cents, at the end of the day the game DOES show a scene of Shepard taking a breath, that implies he/she is still alive
This is pretty much the best version of every ending. Depending on how you played the games, the worst destroy ending literally destroys everyone. You see the soldiers fighting on earth get incinerated in the blast for example. Synthesis is the hardest ending to get. Depending on how well you play the game, you get either one, two or three choices (not counting shooting the catalyst). BioWare's own best version is probably the Synthesis ending, based on how they structured everything.
Destroy is my favourite ending, even though it hurts so much to lose EDI and the Geth. I couldn't get on board with turning all organic life forms in the galaxy into synthetic hybrids--that was never part of the plan and none of the other species had considered it or consented to it. Of course, destroy is a genocidal ending so that's terrible, too.
@@Kick278 not necessarily. Sure, you can rebuild their programming, intelligence, and sentience back, however you can't give them the same soul they once achieved for themselves over the story arc. Each soul is unique and that's something you just can't duplicate and replace. Only the parts can be duplicated and replaced. The games allude to Edi and the Geth going beyond sentience to becoming truly alive with their own souls (apparently with the influence/help of the Reaper coding), and that's something organics just can't give another living thing. With the Reapers destroyed, their code is destroyed with them, which is what helped Edi and Geth to gain more than just sentience. Edi even said that in his last moments, Legion became an individual, so Legion as we came to know him IS truly dead. But who knows, maybe Bioware will use some kind of plot device to work around that and plot armour their way to them gaining their same souls again. It would just end up a bit contrived at the least. 🤷🏻♀️
There are variants of each ending. The Rejection ending is essentially the same, just a different way of getting there. The Destroy ending has a, uh, bit more variation to it's ending. The Control ending differs depending on whether you are Paragon or Renegade.
Good job basically coming up with the Indoctrination Theory on your own from the Destroy ending lol. BioWare sadly confirmed it to be false, but still a cool idea.
Hey Kim, now You might wanna react to the Indoctrination Theory. It has been debunked and addressed as a non-thing, so if You ever stumble upon it or feel like wanting to search for it, keep that in mind: it holds no value from a canonical perspective Still, I personally like it very much, and -in many ways- it remains a fun though experiment to keep in the back of your mind whenever you decide to go for a second playthrough, off camera in your free time. EDIT: anyone else finds it funny that Synthesis and Control are -respectively- what both major villains of the trilogy tried to do? TIM of course was all about Control, that one is pretty obvious. But remember Saren? "I'm forging an alliance, an union of organic and synthetics. The strenghts of both, the weaknesses of neither"
My personnal reason as to why I never choose the Destroy solution is that it basically replace a cycle by another. You pick Destroy and every synthetics in the galaxy are destroyed. Which leaves the organics, who have not only the knowledge, the means, but also the needs to create new synthetics to replace those that were lost. Leave it a few thousand years and a species could very much end up creating the Reapers 2.0 Which would force the organics to use the Crucible once more to destroy them. Again, and again, and again. From a cycle of machines destroying organics every 50 000 years to a cycle of organics destroying synthetics. Until the synthetics find a way to break this new cycle. It is for me the least practical solution, but in terms of story-telling, the most logical to go forward in the franchise. So I think it is to be considered the canonical one. The Reapers brings too much in the equation to keep them on the long run. They need to disappear for the story to have a chance to go elsewhere and continue. But I will never regret choosing synthesis.
IMO if I worked for Bioware, I'd add 2 more endings to the mix: - Reminiscent of the Dark Side endings in Bioware's Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, a variation of the Control Ending where after meeting the Illusive Man on the Citadel the player can choose to side with him and use the control ending where the Reapers now serve humanity and help them dominate the Galaxy. Dark and probably no one would like it/choose it but it would have been an interesting "What If..." - A variation of/mixture of the Destroy and Synthesis Endings called "Harvest" where instead of blindly destroying the Reapers (and EDI and the Geth) the Crucible extracts the data they Harvested from all the past cycles, essentially destroying the Reapers, and distributing the information across all sentient species (organic and synthetic) in the Galaxy. Essentially the various races would become the benevolent successors of the Reapers, using the collective knowledge of previous races to find a better solution to the organic v. synthetic conflict and ensure that all species/civilizations can endure.
The last mixed harvest one would definitely be the best option and my personal happy ending imo. The Reapers don't deserve to live but the Geth and Edi do. Dammit Bioware. 🙃
There is a 5th ending where Shepard is moving under the rubble. U need to choose destroy, having > 7800 pts. Think this is the outgoing point for the next Mass Effect 4 game, because in the teaser the relays are destroyed as indicator.
Technically, there's 7 different endings. You've seen 4 of them, but the control and destroy both have variations. What you saw was a paragon control ending but there's also a renegade control ending with a much darker tone. There's also two more destroy endings. One is exactly the same as the one you saw, just without Shepard surviving while the last one is the low war assets destroy ending where the galaxy is left in a much worse state. Too bad this video didn't show them too but i'm glad you have more knowledge about it now
From memory, the fourth ending wasn't part of the original game. A lot of gamers, however, were so frustrated by the three endings that many of them took to forums etc, angrily saying they hated the damn kid and would have just shot him. When they released the Extended Cut DLC, therefore, Bioware included the option to do just that!
Since my first playthrough was a paragon Shepard. I had far more faith in my Shepard making the right choices in the future than the rest of the galaxy not screwing things up again in a few centuries. So i go with control. You get the benefits of the reapers without the baggage of forcing all life to combine with synthetics like Synthesis and you dont sacrifice Kasumi's Grey box, EDI, or the Geth like in Destroy.
Two minutes in, just want to give my thoughts on the "canon ending" that people like to talk about. I think most people recognize that for Mass Effect to continue on past Mass Effect 3, a choice by the developers has to be made. There are rumors out there that the next Mass Effect (whatever it will be called) will honor and respect all the possible endings. I don't know how that will work to be completely honest, but we'll see. But for more simplistic approach to the next game (and to media on streaming platforms), there has to be some sort of anchor to it all. What I find interesting is that of the 4 endings (still haven't watched the video yet, so not sure on Kim's complete opinion yet), destroy seems to be the only logical choice, and one of the other endings proves this (to me at least). (For sake of simplicity in writing my opinion, I'm referring to Shepard as MaleShep. Don't get your britches in a wad when I say "he" instead of "she." Thanks.) 1. Shepard's singular goal from ME1 up until the time he meets the Catalyst is to destroy the Reapers. Case closed, end of discussion, waiter - check please! It's the only goal he's after. He never once considers another option. 2. Upon meeting Saren multiple times in ME1, the crescendo comes when we meet our villain on Vermire. It is in that speech that Saren completely reveals his plans - a merging of flesh and metal, a symbiotic relationship of organics with machine. This is the very core of synthesis. The catalyst appears to have been lying to Shepard, at least partially. By saying they didn't know Synthesis was possible until the Crucible revealed it completely ignores the fact that Sovereign was pushing Saren in this very direction. Ergo, the Reapers (or at least Sovereign and Harbinger) knew this was a preferred state of conclusion because of their mandate to preserve life (which they chose to do so by "preserving it" in Reaper form). But Shepard's potential decision here to choose Synthesis erases the free-will of trillions upon quadrillions of organics in the galaxy, even those races who have never found a mass relay and are completely unknown to the galaxy at large. Remember, only 1% of the stars have been mapped by the council races as of ME3. Imagine the Protheans actually succeeding in this regard and choosing this in their cycle, and primitive humans now have their DNA completely re-written. No....people only choose this option because they grew attached to EDI and Joker's relationship. So let me get this straight: you will choose the path that Saren and Sovereign and the entire Reapers wanted for the galaxy because you felt sorry for one human being. I never knew Joker had THAT much sway. And don't get me started on the Geth. While I do sympathize with them in that they shouldn't have been attacked by the Quarians, their response (and these were NOT the heretics) was to only spares tens of thousands of Quarians who fled, and brutally murder billions upon billions. Even after the flight from Rannoch, Geth (again, not heretics) who encountered organics trying to communicate with them were always killed. Always. They are not the victims we make them out to be. They do show tremendous growth in their 300 years since nearly wiping out the Quarians, but enough to warrant re-writing quadrillions of organics' DNA? Oh, and Saren was indoctrinated. 3. Control is easily dismissed. The Illusive man was being manipulated just like Saren and was indoctrinated. A human-AI-all-knowing-hybrid wasn't a great ending for the original Deus Ex and it still isn't a great ending for Mass Effect either. Imagine Renegade Shepard choosing this option. [Shudder] No one should have THAT much power. No one. 4. Refusal is a very interesting choice. You thumb your nose at the Reapers, saying "hell no!" and proceed to become wiped out, being preserved only in Reaper form going forward. Ugh, right? Then what happens next? The next cycle finds Liara's information, and as evidence by the final cut scene, they used that knowledge to...destroy the Reapers. I'm sure many people will want to argue my points. That's fine. I've been stating this since 2012, and I'm not backing down 11 years later. Saren wanted Synthesis. He was Indoctrinated. Illusive Man wanted Control. He was indoctrinated. Shepard wanted Destroy. He was NOT indoctrinated. Peace be with you all.
I think cannon refers to what has been shown in the teaser trailer for the next Mass Effect which is *Spoilers past this point*: . . . Two dead reapers. Liara is even walking on one when she picks up the piece of N7 armor. I feel like this cancels out Synthesis and Control as *the* cannon ending. I'm not mad about it. I chose Synthesis simply because I like EDI and wanted her to live. It does feels too unrealistic and too good to be true, though. I think it would be a massive undertaking to try to incorporate all the endings in the next game. It would probably take even more time to complete than it will to do what they're currently doing. I'd like to play the next game before I'm 80 lol
If you notice in the destroy ending liara doesn’t actually put sheps nameplate up on the board because she knows he’s not dead, I believe she goes out looking for shep shortly after the events of the 3rd game and maybe what she’s looking for in the trailer for the next game Shooting the “star child” catalyst was an ending they added with the legendary edition it wasn’t a thing in the original set of games but you need enough war assets in order to get this ending, if you don’t have the war assets then you only get 3 endings
@@nemangame I’m pretty sure I seen a video a while back saying it wasn’t added til legendary edition but idk I was too young back then I can’t remember if it was or not, it was like playing again for the first time when I picked up legendary edition for PlayStation, I was only basing that off the video I saw, maybe they was referring to the 2012 release of the game
@@2starkiller okay but it still wasn’t part of the original endings that’s all I’m saying, I might have got the timeline wrong but I was fairly certain it wasn’t in the game when it came out and was added later on
Bare in mind the Catalyst is flawed, they're an unreliable narrator (they tell you things as if they're fact, right after admitting their original idea of the reapers clearly didn't work as a solution, and they hadn't thought of a way to go forward with these new options before). I really don't think their future predictions resulting from *any* of the endings are accurate. Control would result in a future problem as Shepard loses their identity and is influenced by the Catalyst, Synthesis is too soon and unethical to force on the galaxy, and you proved Synthetics won't always destroy organics with the Geth, so their destroy predictions are BS too.
I agree. I see a lot of people in the comments (mostly those who don't like destroy) getting upset when anyone suggests that Shepard shouldn't believe the catalyst. But the player can see that the catalyst contradicts itself (and therefore you can't believe everything it says), and Shepard knows that the catalyst contradicts things Shepard knows to be true (and therefore Shepard can't believe everything it says, either). I wish Bioware luck in getting themselves out of this hole they dug.
@kvm6 in the trailer there is a dead reaper body in the snow, so yes, they picked destroy ending for sure. We just don't know what solution they will bring to us about the geths
@@kvm6 neither you believe it's a old corpse. Things like this have a reason, it's not a randomly thrown thing. Not to mention that it's pretty clear that Liara is looking for shepard when she finds a piece of his armor, and that would only be possible with the destroy ending
Even though it makes me sad about EDI and the Geth I went with Destroy not just because it's what I spent 3 games aiming towards, but also because the other 2 endings are what the major indoctrinated bad guys (Saren and the Illusive Man) were promoting and that just felt wrong. In the last talk you have with Saren on the Citadel at the end of ME1, he's advocating the uniting of organics and synthetics. And obviously the Illusive Man was all about control. I think the game pushes you towards synthesis like it's the extra special choice but forcing massive change on all living beings seems too weird to me.
It missed the bad destroy ending and the renegade control ending And there's the Happy Ending mod, that is the destroy ending but removes the child and the crucible destroys only the reapers, leaving EDI and the geth intact, and Shepard is shown alive and well in the memorial scene
Me: picks Synthesis for the ending on my first playthrough Me: watches other endings Me: scrub Synthesis ending from my brain and pick Control every time
I think the fan polls have consistently voted the Destroy ending as the favorite, with Synthetic placing 2nd, Control 3rd, and Next Cycle 4th. I think it's fair to say that Destroy is the favorite because it teases Shepard's survival. Also, in the Mass Effect will continue trailer you can see the Asari (Liara?) climbing through the snow storm over with a dead Reaper in the background. Some think that means the Destroy ending will be made the canon ending in the next creation of Mass Effect, which brings up a ton on new questions especially with the N7 piece she finds. Hopefully, we'll get another teaser or update sometime soon, maybe November 7th. As for Andromeda, a lot of people have panned it because they feel it was a spin-off that didn't properly connect to the trilogy but I personally think it was underrated. Nowhere near as compelling as the trilogy, but still an entertaining game to play and a decent story and situation, at least for me. I hope they will make some reference to it in the next Mass Effect iteration. I hate when they ignore in universe situations or characters from spin-offs just because people were disappointed by their sales or reviews.
@@Jcw5679 No, many think the teasers prove that destroy is canon because they are convinced that Shepard is returning. They could end up being right, but nothing has been confirmed yet.
Why feel bad about EDI? She was willing to die. Later in the game, she and Shepard have a conversation (if you visit her after every mission) where they discuss Joker. EDI says she is willing to die in order to defeat the Reapers as long as Joker is able to go on living. In that conversation, she pretty much gives Shepard the okay to pick Destroy. But EDI can always be brought back. It was said that in between ME2 and ME3 the Alliance wanted to remove EDI entirely from the Normandy once the Normandy became Alliance property. So maybe just in case he couldn’t convince the Alliance, Joker could’ve created a backup of EDI to restore later on or install in something else. It’s possible that EDI’s core on the Normandy made backups/restore points every so often as well (like scheduled backups). So they could always turn to those restore points/backups to bring her back if they were made.
@@projectpat8807 Why? Simple. Maybe there were data backups, maybe there weren't; who knows. But I like EDI and sacrificing something you like even for the greater good is always difficult.
If no one is against it, I would like to leave a big comment. ATTENTION, SPOILERS!⚠ By the way, why I initially liked the Mass Effect 1 very much. I wanted to tell you a little about the original script by Drew Karpyshyn. He conceived the ending of the story somewhat differently. The whole story is based on the concept of the mass effect. It's not just that the game is called that. The idea is that, apparently, a new element appears in the periodic table, consisting of the devil knows what. Maybe from nothing, because it is zero and does not contain classical protons and neutrons. It doesn't matter, but the bottom line is that when electricity is applied to it, a field of dark energy begins to form around it, which our physicists still haven't figured out. And this field changed the mass of any object. And here you have anti-gravity, and travel at superluminal speeds, and a kinetic barrier. In fact, it is possible to subordinate one of the fundamental laws of physics - mass. And so, the first intelligent race, having discovered this technology, began to actively use it. They created repeaters to move quickly between the arms of the galaxy, a Citadel, so that there was a certain center. But it turned out that this production of the zero element is not very, as it is now fashionable to say, environmentally friendly. There will be consequences. Just tens or hundreds of thousands of years, which is quite a bit by the standards of galaxies and stars, these very stars began to age incredibly quickly, turn into black holes and absorb planetary systems. The culprit was dark energy and the use of the zero element. The race decided to abandon this and switch to a reasonable use of technology. But there was always a possibility that a new young race would appear, and they appeared, and accordingly they would thoughtlessly use these technologies. Back in the second game, Drew Karpyshyn threw a mission, a kind of hint for the plot, which in the third part was supposed to reveal the motivation of the Reapers. During the mission to recruit Tali, we were in the Geth system, where Tali and her squad were studying a local star that had extremely intense radiation. As you remember, it was impossible to be there without shields and this was reflected in the gameplay. As it was said then that 300 years ago there was no such thing, but for a star it's just a second. The star was aging extremely fast and was ready to turn into a supernova. And the Quarians studied this phenomenon and even then put forward theories that it was because of dark energy, but they were not yet completely sure. Well, this anomaly should have unfolded into a plot, most likely. Then it was decided to create Reapers. Merge with them, creating a synthesis of organics and synthetics. In this form, they had to find a new alternative technology and prevent any use of mass effect technology. But it didn't work out. They couldn't find an alternative at all, they didn't have enough brains. Therefore, the Reapers calculated the rate of aging of the stars, left the blueprints for the necessary technologies for subsequent races and left. They waited until they grew up, returned, destroyed developed races, interbred with them into new Reapers and, having received fragments of new technologies, flew away. Well, like evil for good. Someday, someone will figure out how to save the stars and travel the galaxy normally. And the last time the Reapers came back, they found that humans were extremely well suited to synthesize with them. This, by the way, refers to the second game. The Reapers saw hope in people, and before that they delayed the death of the galaxy (and maybe the universe) as best they could, but time was already running out. And at the end of the third game we also had a choice. Only from two finals already. The first is to sacrifice the entire human race and create a proto-reaper and solve the problem of the mass effect, that is, creating an alternative for travel and preserving the galaxy. The second, the destruction of the Reapers, but the existing races would have to look for an alternative themselves, only how is unclear. Sounds interesting, doesn't it? They close a couple of major plot holes and logically fit into the universe by answering important questions that were scored in the original. But not without flaws. Well, like the election of humanity and the like. But we have what we have. But we also got a fan ending explaining the finale. As the developers said, they would not have thought of such a thing. The fans are great, although this theory has both supporters and opponents. I'm talking about the theory of indoctrination. From the very beginning of the series, we were told about the possibility of Reapers to subordinate literally everyone to their will. Those who were already under indoctrination remained so, probably forever, regardless of the distance to the Reaper. Submission can be overcome if you are strong enough in spirit, but even through the struggle they found only one way out - suicide. The idea of brainwashing permeates the entire first part. A strong person like Shepard is hard to subdue, the process will take longer. So it stretched into a whole trilogy. This explains why Anderson did not see the boy at the very beginning of the third game. And all these dreams to the sound of the Reapers roaring. The sound is a wave, and the Reapers were brainwashed by some kind of signal, waves. Okay, I'm kidding here. There was some kind of energy or some kind of radiation. Well, in the final of the game, during the storming of the Channel to the Citadel, the Harbinger himself is engaged in defense. His beam is so powerful that it destroys Mako, flyers and even ships, but Shepard is so hard that the Harbinger beam just makes him lie down a little. And then, when everyone retreated, although they shouldn't have, the Harbinger flew away and no one guards the Channel anymore. Strange, don't you think? Commander processing started from the first game automatically. As well as everyone who has been in contact with them. And we have known them almost the longest and we have no means of protection from indoctrination, except for our own coolness :) Well, in general, this theory explains the choice of three colors, the moment with the boy and dreams. Do you really believe in Shepard's severe trauma from the boy's death? A fighter who saved the galaxy twice, a warrior who fought more than once on the battlefield and saw hundreds of deaths, and then he saw one death of an innocent boy, got injured and even began to see strange dreams? He should have received this injury fifty-six times ago. It's weird. I'm not even talking about the presence of a Catalyst that appeared in the guise of this very boy. There are many interesting points within the framework of this theory. The theory is controversial, but it has the right to life. Because in the ME4 teaser, do we see a synthesis of organics and synthetics? I don't think so. Do we see how the Reapers work together with organics? It doesn't seem to be either. But when we are shown a piece of armor N7, we can assume that we are given a hint of a red ending when we are shown a sighing Shepard under the rubble. Please do not judge strictly, these are just fan assumptions. And in general, I hope that I translated everything correctly!😊 Всем хорошего дня!😉 Have a nice day to everyone!😉
I would have said to wait until your next playthroughs to see the different endings that fit the style you are playing at that moment... but I'm sure you will still enjoy them in any case. Even if it's not on stream, I hope you do get to do a Renegade Shep playthrough.... because not being a wishy washy doo-gooder can be so much fun! 🤣 ...and I can't ait for your Andromeda playthrough. I think you are really going to like it.
And the debate over a 'canon' ending really only reached its zenith when ME4 was announced. At this point, given how little anyone knows about the next game, one ending will likely need to be canonised since it is a continuation of the trilogy. Or Bioware would have to have come up with a plausible loophole to the original endings. It was always going to be the biggest risk of continuing the series and I suspect there may be a lot of angry/disappointed people if the trilogy ending they chose is not acknowledged. The reason most people think destroy will be canon is simply that it is the only ending where Shepard survives, at least in organic form. But nobody will know until the new game is released.
The thing you have to know about Destroy too. Although it would take a long while, Edi, the Geth, and the Relays could ALL be rebuilt honestly, without the Reapers there. Also to get that special ending scene your military assets etc. Have to be above a certain range. Not an issue any more without multi player as the DLCs add enough to get there. Also of course The Catalyst would spit any amount of lies to save itself. If you played and finished Leviathan mission you'd know how bad the Catalyst is along with the Reapers. You talk about the "cycle continuing".... You don't think people will pass down the mistakes they made with the Reapers?? Lol. That's why generations in the past failed, they had nothing to go off of. In the future, future generations will be told, and taught about these things.
Don't forget that Geth and Quarians worked it out, who says that it's not possible with the future synthetics? Catalyst is an emotionless machine too, which thought that it had it all figured out, but Shepard got to it anyway. All this shows that there is no reason to take what it says as an absolute fact. It's just an overcomplicated calculator and it's a flawed one.
The question is not whether there will be another case when they work it out, but whether you can guarantee that there will be none where it won't happen. Who cares if there are half a dozen synthetic species that are friendly, if there is one that wipes the whole galaxy. You are looking at the wrong side of the equation.
Loved this! Never seen the extended Control ending with the Shepard VO! See the other somewhat insidious thing about the control ending is that the Shepard Reapers will still be indoctrinating the people juts with a false sense of unity, I wonder if when you select Control it’s not just the Reapers but the whole universe. Same with Destroy you are destroying any chance for understanding between organic sand synthetics. Sure I like that it seems like Shepard survives it but that’s all I really like about destroy. Synthesis is based on Shepard’s will again so while it’s my favourite of the 3 and my original choice I think there are still issues. Honestly though Reject is probably my actual favourite ending and I’m not sure why 😅
There is no perfect ending but if I have to chose I'd go with Paragon Control. Geth and EDI don't deserve Destroy and it would lead to most instability. Synthesis seems to me like the most morally wrong because you force ther change on the whole galaxy because the main villains said it's for the better (on the bright side if you play male Shepard as I do, you accomplish your ultimate goal to insert your DNA into everything). Btw. If you are looking for more Mass Effect stuff to react to I suggest songs "Commander Shepard" by Miracle of Sound and "Reignite" by Malukah. The former always makes me happy, the latter always brings the feels.
Funny as it is I always ignored the Breath in the Destroy Ending. I think i'm messed up by playing PnP Rolyplaing Games for 30 Years. Its too unrealistic for me, with all the Injuries + the Explosion + very long time, until someone reaches her/him to give medical attention. Although i think every ending has its value/place. In the first run i took Synthesis, because i thought the Catalyst was right about the following generations will build AIs again and the chance of loosing control over them is very, very high in some time in the future.
I am ALL about the indoctrination theory. There was a very strange sense in the press releases after the ME3 endings backlashed, something like a contractual united front of all the writers gritting their teeth and agreeing with the ending, standing by it, but if you dig into the surrounding aspects of the game, the design, the environment, even the name of obscure textures like the leaves on the planet the Normandy landed on being named "dream_leaves" as well as the dream sequences with oily black shadows, everything points to Shepard being indoctrinated throughout the third mass effect. If you pick Control or Synthesize, you'll notice that Shepards eyes take on the appearance that the husks eyes take, but in the Destroy option, not only does Shepard keep their natural human eyes, they'll seem to become less labored, stronger, more convicted as they march towards the Destroy option and blow it out... and that is the only option in which Shepard wakes up afterwards-because in the other options, Shepard became no more than an indoctrinated agent like Saren in the first game. After ME3 finished, the original team of brilliant creators in Bioware left the company and, as they were replaced, Andromeda was released with a myriad of very well documented and hilarious bugs and a great deal less heart than these games had. I imagine EA's Bioware will continue to push the "What you see is what you get" nature of these endings, but I'm still much more enamored with the now obvious signs of the Indoctrination theory.
Some little consideration: you saw the 4 BASIC end. If your asset point are low or different there are some little (big) difference for every ending (destroy especially). Canon ending: if Bioware want continue ME from Me3, need to have a canon end and probably will be destroy for natural reasons.
@@giannimaggio474 The destroy ending undoes their sentience. Even if the Quarians build new Geth, they won't be any more sentient than before Legion's sacrifice. Moreover, I doubt the Quarians would build new Geth to be the same as the old version.
@@garyballard179 Probably will find a compromise solution with some geth that, for unkowed reasons, will survive. Other ending are impossibile to continue: synthesis for obvious reasons, control it's even very problematic (and teaser don't support this ending). They remain Destruction and cycle, so destruction probably will be the canon final if Me wil continue from Me3 end.
@@giannimaggio474 You didn't give _any_ reasons to prove that Synthesis and Control can't be canon endings, and all you did was try to hand-wave away evidence that Destroy _cannot_ be.
Recently baught the Mass Effect LE on PC for about a month ago. From 1st to 3rď and its been a blast. Definitely an amazing trilogy. Already re-playing it with mods now. But *Bioware* themself have mentioned that they didn't at all intended it to be like this with the endings (space magic) and I sort of dont blame them EA rushed it back than. Destroy - Is the only with a "possibility" of Survival of the character. Whats to say they can't rebuild the Geth or EDI with future civilzation? Does seem to hint as canon to, but.. also some hints of Geth (if they are destroyed) are coming back in next Mass effect or Time travel? Its up for interpretations and speculation until we get more info on ME4/ME5.
![What a Way to Start! | First Time Playing Mass Effect 2 [Ep. 1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HmerwcFerOI/mqdefault.jpg)
Your favorite ending? (Remain nice ) And why?
I happen to like Control, for a few reasons. First, I think it's the best solution to the Reapers, as it stops them without either giving them what they want (Synthesis) or letting any more innocents die (Destroy). As I think it the Catalyst may be well intentioned, but it is operating on flawed logic. Said flawed logic can be rectified by adding a "human element" to the mix, aka Shepard. With Shepard as the new Catalyst, they can give it a _conscience_ and _empathy_ (in its own way), thus allowing the Reapers to preserve life in a much more conventional way. Also, it still allows Shepard to live in some way (like Destroy), as opposed to Synthesis.
And the Catalyst still gets a certain comeuppance by being replaced.
Plus, Shep's "Eternal, Infinite, Immortal" speech gives me chills every time.
AHEM (modded ending). By the way there an excellent (and often hilarious) TH-cam vid where US presidents and politicians discuss the different endings. th-cam.com/video/xoTn32KzkyA/w-d-xo.html
The destroy ending is the favorite and canon and who's to say the Catalyst didn't lie, I have a feeling the next ME4 will have story elements of repairing the Geth and EDI as well. There is lore out there stating that the Geth where building a space station to store all Geth outside of our galaxy.
@@zw6487 The Destroy ending may be the most popular, I admit. But it's still not confirmed to be Canon. And frankly, I think BIoware would make a VERY dumb decision by making _any_ ending Canon, as the "our choices don't matter" backlash was already so bad in the original cut of ME3.
I go with synthesis. I couldn't destoy all the Geth and it seemed better than control
"I thought I was over this - will I ever get over this?"
It's been 11 years since I played this game for the first time, I'm still not over it...
Lol that is what makes this best game still has impact years later
In control, the reapers do whatever sheperd wants.
Shepard: "hey harbinger! Assuming direct control!"
I always choose Destroy. I don't trust anyone to control the power of the Reapers, and I can't force synthesis on individuals. As for EDI, she flat out says she would sacrifice herself to save Jeff. She and the geth knew what they signed up for. And I believe that the geth that were downloaded into quarian hardsuits would survive
Yeah. With synthesis Shepard disregard the opinion of the entire galaxy. Even the races that are not target of reapers in this cycle are affected by decision that Shepard made also what if some race came out from outside of Milky Way and was not affected by this change? Will Reapers destroy them? With Control there is this. During the confrontation with the Illusive Man Shepard ask him if he is willing to bet humanity existence on faith that he can control the reapers. So. Is Shepard willing to be humanity existence on faith that he/she can control them? And even Shepard during that talk with Illusive Man says that when we destroy them it ends today and we do not live in uncertainty.
The answer is NO you will never get over it.
"I miss playing it!" 😂
That's why I've finished 35 playthroughs now.
The endings do have some variations. Paragon and Renegade control are different. Renegade control has creepier, darker vibe. Destroy can be affected by whether you have high or low assets.
And for that very reason alone I'll ONLY ever choose Control as a paragon Shep - renegade Shep should NOT have that much control over nearly invincible entities and be elevated to immortality and a form of "god-hood"
That's a recipe for disaster and the whole "hero living long enough to become the villain" kind of situation. Corrupt Shep would easily become more corrupt over time.
In-game lore referenced directly or indirectly throughout the series regarding the endings:
Control was mentioned by Vendetta on Thessia as the idea of Indoctrinated separatists, and the path forward favored by TIM.
Shepard: "What happened to the Crucible in your time? Why didn't the Protheans deploy it?"
Vendetta: "We were sabotaged from within. A splinter group argued we should *dominate* the Reapers rather than destroy them. It fractured our order of battle. Later we discovered the separatists were indoctrinated."
Javik: "I always suspected as much."
Synthesis essentially means Shepard playing God and rewriting all sentient life in the galaxy without their consent (which is perhaps more Renegade than Destroy). This was the route that Saren wanted to take. "The relationship is symbiotic. Organic and machine intertwined, a union of flesh and steel. The strengths of both, the weaknesses of neither. I am a vision of the future, Shepard. The evolution of all organic life. This is our destiny. Join Sovereign and experience a true rebirth." Yes, Saren did use a bit of vivid rhetoric with the 'flesh and steel' bit, but Synthesis would be his preferred choice.
Mordin also made a pass at the disadvantages of Synthesis in Mass Effect 2 during his conversations regarding the Collectors on the Normandy. "No glands, replaced by tech. No digestive system, replaced by tech. No soul. Replaced by tech. Whatever they were, gone forever." Again, a bit more colorful rhetoric, as no one would lose all their organs, but he makes a good point: At what stage during this merging does sentient life lose their individuality, and what makes them what they are? He further explains using the Krogan uplifting as an example: "Disrupts socio-technological balance. All scientific advancement due to intelligence overcoming, compensating, for limitations. Can't carry a load, so invent wheel. Can't catch food, so invent spear. Limitations. No limitations, no advancement. No advancement, culture stagnates. Works other way too. *Advancement* before culture is ready. Disastrous." How would the Krogan have said culture in a Synthetic utopia with no limitations or conflict to overcome?
Perfect Destroy is the only ending that makes sense, and not because of teasers in ME4. Throughout the series, Shepard has always iterated their goal to destroy the Reapers. Synthetics such as the Geth and EDI can be repaired, and both are willing to see the destruction of the 'Old Machines' no matter the cost. Remember, EDI has a conversation with Shepard in which her resolve to destroy is hardened: "Is it worth defending?" "To the death." Also, note that both Saren and TIM were indoctrinated, and can be seen as foils to Shepard.
Excellent points.
You will never get over this Trilogy luv... 11 years later I still need a tissue when re-watching these endings. You are now forever part of the zeitgeist Kimmander! I found the Synthesis ending to be the most satisfying choice, as the one that helped the Galaxy recover more swiftly. Vengeance was not my goal in the end, when it meant the genocide of a newly emerged sentient and allied species... your choice is yours milady and I both honor your resolution, as well as sharing your sentiment! 🙏😚
After all this time I don't believe there is a canon ending... and we won't know how the story progresses until ME4 is released.
And too many people forget the fact that Krogan & Asari have lifespans in excess of 1000 human years! Liara could be anywhere from 200 to 900 years old in the teaser. She was only about 109 at the end of the Trilogy (she mentioned she was 106 and young for an Asari in ME!)... anywhere from 5 to 400 generations of humanity could have come to pass by the time the story of ME4 comes into play? Knowing Liara's age at the beginning of the next game will tell us how much time has passed since the Trilogy's end...🧐
That one breath is the reason for all the talk about "Destroy" being THE canon ending going into the next game because it's the only ending that provides a reasonable, non-retconned pathway for Shepard to be alive. Short of Destroy being the sole official ending, it's hard to conceive of a conclusion in which Shepard lives that doesn't come across as contrived.
Because it is an easy retcon. EDI reboots in her body after her AI core is shredded and she has to reboot without the help of the rest of her. The Geth survived isolated in some Quarian suits. That, and the heretics also survived but not in very large numbers as well. Control means the reapers are the protectors of all life in the galaxy, and synthesis is just a longer method of harvest since the reaper logic of networking is now applicable to organics in an understandable fashion
@@samsmith4242 The trick is to make it not seem contrived as merely a shoddily constructed means to bring Shepard back. Bringing Shepard back is easy; bringing Shepard back in a way that seems to flow from and is organic to the story is much harder. I would rather they not bring Shepard back at all than to do so poorly.
@@chrisd7047 Keepers are programmed to maintain the citadel. The catalyst is part of the citadel. Shepard became the catalyst after making the choice. Keepers recover citadel component (Shepard) but considering other damage, restoring full functionality was low priority. A Keeper squad mate is then assigned to to maintain the Shepard
some players accidentally got the forth ending because they did not know what would happen by shooting the kid. you can bet some of them got pissed off.
Yep I saw a streamer find that one by accident - her face was a picture OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE?
I thought that the people that got pissed over that were kinda funny lmao
I prefer it over Synthesis.
Present!
That was me!
I was so frustrated that my Shepard would die whichever of the three options i pick (didn't know about full war assets destroy ending where Shepard survives) that i just shot at the starchild.
I was in utter shock that it was an actual ending and it took me about half an hour to compose myself and reload before the choice.
Catalyst speaks to you with a mix of male/female Shep voices, but in the denial ending answers you with a Harbinger voice, just in case you didn't notice.
There is also a Renegade Control ending, which is not shown in this video and no you will never get over it. 😉
If you have doubts about Control ending... well, let's just say there is also a very different version of it for Renegade Shepard! 😮
That's probably my favourite ending to be honest. Not because it's "good", but because it's interesting.
@@naamari Control (both versions) is far better than Synthesis imo. It's a status quo, the Reapers are under control and help rebuild. Each race that survived so far can develop as it wants under AI-Shepard supervision.
I've seen a lot of people speculating that can't control the Reapers indefinitely and I disagree. I reallythink that AI-Shepard wont have problems keeping control over them, as far as we know the Catalyst never had trouble in controlling them and Shepard just replaced it.
YES!!! I love renegade control ending. The implications are so dark. I love it! Remember, Shepard's mind is different. That's why the Reapers and the ones in the DLC wanted them. Shepard is immune to indoctrination so they can definitely control the Reapers.
@@ZrodyApo the issue with trusting Shepard to control the reapers is how will a human originated mind deal with thousands of years of life in solitude with absolute power at its hands and no connection to the humanity that once was. Even if Shepard is benevolent as a person, will they continue to be after ten thousand years of isolation, perspective shift and boredom?
@2starkiller the way I see it, that's up to you. Until any info contradicts, I imagine whatever takes place following these endings is purely up to the player
I picked 'Destroy' on my first playthrough WAY back when ME3 first came out.
My reasoning for this was:
All through the game, the Paragon/Renegade system of blue and red choices, have almost 'indoctrinated' the player themselves into assigning a paragon action to the color blue, and a renegade action to the color red. All through the game, our only focus has been 'defeat/destroy' the Reapers... and having that presented at the 'renegade' Option made it almost seem like the two choices were being mislabled on purpose...
As I was standing, looking at these options (In the very early release of the game, Synthesis had not been added yet) I started to feel that I as being forced into a certain path because it was being color coded as the 'more paragon option'. It was almost being presented to me that destroying the Reapers would be the 'bad' choice.... almost as if the Reapers themselves were trying to trick me into seeing their destruction as bad...
Was the character 'actually' indoctrinated?
So I choose 'Destroy' and never looked back. I stand by my decision. The Reapers were too powerful to risk that they weren't trying to manipulate me into continuing their agenda....
There're SO MANY questions that are raised by Control and Synthesis even without knowing exactly what happens after seeing the endings. Then you get into the specifics that we are shown in the cutscenes for each ending and they usually raise even more questions or put me in disbelief. There's a million red flags for everything the Reapers are telling you in that scene. The biggest one is "We've been trying to defeat the Reapers for this entire franchise. Just before we do exactly that, the *Reapers themselves* try to convince us not only to NOT kill them, but to use one of 2 other options both of which are obviously exploitable for them". The only option the Reapers try to convince you not to pick is the option that destroys them, and they are completely fine with all of the options that result in their continued existence or the completion of their ideal universe. Weird how that works out. You also have the fact that with Control and Synthesis, there's literally no source of information on which to base a decision on these two endings other than the Reapers themselves. The Reapers are the ones that tell us about the other options and you're telling me that I'm just supposed to take THEIR word for literally anything? With everything we know about these guys and their mechanical superpower to mentally manipulate people, you're expecting me to trust that these other options aren't going to fuck me over? The Reapers themselves literally admit that someone who's indoctrinated cannot take control of the Reapers via the Crucible, "but you'll be able to do it, we promise. Just whatever you do, don't destroy us". And Synthesis is literally the Reapers' idea of a perfect world/society/utopia. They tell you that "it is not something that can be forced" and that "organics were not ready", when there's literally no way that it CAN'T be forced. There isn't a single organic in the galaxy that knows the Crucible can do Synthesis, and they DEFINITELY didn't agree to it.
In terms of Shepard surviving, I'd prefer it if he stayed dead, because part of the heroism and pain of Mass Effect's ending was the understanding that you would sacrifice your own chance at a future or a family for your team and the rest of the galaxy. Throughout the franchise you went so far on behalf of other people and accomplished so many impossibilities and created so many potential futures for all these species. Destroying the Reapers was the only real way for the galaxy to finally have control over its own future. Shepard made sure that everyone had that chance, that at the end of it all, every member of their team got the life and future they deserved. Not only that, but they would SURVIVE to be able to live those lives. Tali would finally be able to return to Rannoch with the Quarians and experience life breathing real air and feeling real wind. Grunt, Wrex and the Krogans could finally see a tomorrow to build towards. They finally could have children without dreading stillbirth. The Rachni had earned their second chance at survival. There were things that Shepard would have wanted to do if he survived the Reaper War, but he would sacrifice that chance, that victory, that future for everyone else. His death was his final sacrifice to ensure that the Reapers were defeated, the cycle was broken and the possibilities for the future were now endless and uncertain. Now the galaxy's survival was in its own hands.
On top of that, not only is it bullshit Shepard survived with how he was fully consumed by that explosion, but you would only know that he survived if you'd looked it up before making that choice, so I wouldn't factor that into the reasoning for the choice in hindsight
Also, the fact that Shepard doesn't die in the Destroy ending even though it's explicitly stated by the Catalyst that the Crucible will destroy all synthetic life is bullshit. The Catalyst even points out that Shepard himself is partly synthetic. He's only alive because of the cybernetics in his body holding him together. Even if you want to say that the Crucible destroyed his synthetic parts but left the rest of him intact, he was still be dead instantly because he NEEDS those cybernetics to live. That's WHY he has them in the first place.
@@TOONYBOY So your big paragraph works for Destroy and its Epilogue scenes, but not for other endings.
What if in Destroy Starchild says takes over Shepard's mind and doesn''t destroy Reapers at all.
Why conform against Control and Synthesis only?
@@kvm6 All of that would be reliant on the in-universe explanation of *how* indoctrinated Shepard is. It would take considerably more effort and force (think Sovereign possessing Saren's dead body) to control Shepard completely and stop him from doing *anything* than it would be to guide his mentality into choosing a bad option. Also, choosing to trick Shepard into achieving Synthesis is - according to the Starchild - the ideal solution, so if it could possess Shepard into doing anything, it'd be that. And Destroy being the trick option and picking it is supposed to be Shepard being indoctrinated, that doesn't make any sense because Destroying the Reapers was always what Shepard intended to do. The galaxy wasn't even aware that the Crucible did anything BUT destroy the Reapers. Destroying the Reapers was the only plan right from the beginning of the first game when we only SUSPECTED they were real. If the Starchild was indoctrinating Shepard for its own safety to avoid choosing the other options, it wouldn't even present itself at all in the first place. It wouldn't even try to convince Shepard of anything, because it would literally be able to leave him alone and he would do that anyway
@@TOONYBOY Destroying the Geth was also the only option, right from the moment of Morning War. Things change as new info comes to light.
As shown in game. Shepard has no Indoctrination effect when talking to Starchild.
There is also annother ending. You can let the timer in the Arrival DLC count down to Zero (yes, you need to let the game run for two days realtime) and then you get another ending. dusturbing pictures.
Or you Kill Sammara and sleep with Morinth...game over xD
You can pass Arrival DLC to point, when they capture you, then you will be 2 days out and just need wait few hours.
there's also a different version of destroy ending if you have a low military score
Notice how only in destroy ending Liara didn't put Shepards name on the wall, just another clue that he/she survived :D.
I replayed ME3 to get all the different endings with different partners for my male Shep, and I felt each of them was accidentally an amazing choice. Miranda works great with Control (her lover becomes the ideal version of what her old boss was trying to be), Ashley is fantastic for Destroy (the knowing smirk while holding the name tag as if to say "Nah, my man's alive." is such an Ashley thing), and Tali (a.k.a. best girl) is perfect for Synthesis (her hugging EDI as they cry together hit me harder than anything else).
I actually chose the do-nothing-and-die ending first before any others, just to see what would happen. You can choose it without shooting the kid, and just telling him "No. I'm not sacrificing anyone, and I'm not forcing everyone to change. If we die, we do it on our own terms." Although it sucks for all the characters, I still really like what happens (i.e. we become the new protheans), and how that's the only ending where you get to see the results of all Liara's work. Plus, since you still get the Stargazer and child, and based on their dialogue, it's implied that they did, in fact, use what we left them to end the cycle. So in the "bad" ending, it's actually Liara, not Shepard, who saves the galaxy. 😄
If you observe closely, only in the Destroy Ending Shepard's partner does not put up his/her nameplate on the Normandy wall.
Fun fact:
The total possible war assets for a pure ruthless renegade is 8387.
The destroy ending is the real shit! Shepard the legend lives!
Definitely picked destroy. Didn’t want to sacrifice myself and wanted the reapers gone. Was not going to leave anything to chance synthetic life was the bottom of my care pile.
The bottom of your care pile? … yikes
I think now you can see why people consider destroy the "canon" ending, is the only one where we see Shepard breathe again, unlike Control, Synthesis or Refusal where they're just vaporized.
I still have mixed feelings about how ME3 ended and all the strangeness that happened with it. But the journey is top-tier! And that piano theme by Clint Mansell always gets me in the feels! I'm curious to see what happens with the next Mass Effect project
Wait so Clint Mansell did that sad theme? No wonder it's so moving and memorable!
I like your mass effect reactions, this was a nice suprise :-) 🥰🥰🥰🌹🌹🌹
Imagine being asked to make the next Mass Effect game knowing you have to make a story taking into account an AI god Shepard in command of a Reaper army, a galaxy full of half organic half synthetic beings with the knowledge of all previous harvested civilizations or just the status quo of the galaxy being allowed to live without the other 2 life cheat codes.
I hate when people showcase Refuse by shooting the catalyst. Because if you just tell him no, Shepard gives a cool speech haha
I'm over the five stages of grief, Denial (Back when we thought there would be a continuation after the ending), Anger (the 2000 cupcakes sent to BioWare HQ with 3 different colors), Bargaining (collecting donations because people thought BioWare were out of money), Depression (knowing the ending was not going to chance) and finally Acceptance (Realizing that this is all we will ever get).
Let me tell you briefly what the ending is: it's 4 forced options: either you're forced to destroy the Reapers destroying the Geth in the process (and EDI too) or you're forcing a change on the galaxy they did not agree with when you choose synthesis or you're forcing the galaxy to endure a new Galactic Dictator (Shepard) and last but not least, in the refusal ending you're forced to accept that you can never have free choice, or you'll wipe out the galaxy.
Personally whenever I play Mass Effect I finish all missions until I get to the Citadel DLC and then I stop playing because I can no longer watch them endings.
Yeah - I'm like that too. I've only played the ending once (destroy, ya varmints) without the happy ending mod.
I love a fresh take on a familiar theme. Keep 'em rollin' out! :)
The Catalyst lied - Shepard lived, proving that. In my head canon, the Catalyst is an agent for the Reapers and destroy is the true ending, at least for a paragon choice.
Lol I vibe with your DJ monologue 😂
So mad 👹
@@KimEllendale
That used to be my flatmate for 7 years.
But now he's big and famous and does concerts all over the world, including often the Netherlands.
You never know. 😁
I don't particularly have a problem if someone else goes for a different ending than I do. I might not agree, but I mean it's their choice.
You're a rare breed
There's actually 6 endings: Control (Paragon), Control (Renegade), Destroy (Low War Assets), Destroy (High War Assets), Synthesis, and Walk Away.
Personally destroy is the ending that I like the most and it makes more sense from a narrative and lore perspective than the other options.
In synthesis you force the galaxy to be something without consent or choice.
In control there's no guarantee that you won't be indoctrinated yourself, it can happen now or in another 50 thousand years, the reapers are still out there, same as synthesis.
In Destroy you finally do what you set out to do from the first game, destroy the reapers, I personally don't care about the geth, I think they are genocidal manipulators, Legion lies a lot in ME3, both directly and by omission to benefit the geth, the only synthetic I cared about was EDI but she isn't enough to not destroy the reapers, sorry Joker.
Basically any ending that lets the reapers live is not a viable option for me.
Hell, the knowledge is still there, the Geth and EDI can just be made again
I can only see destroy being the canon ending going forward. I just don’t see the others making to much sense for a story in the next game. If Shepherd has control of the reapers, the next enemy we’d face would just get blasted to hell lol. If BioWare was to pick another ending as canon, I’d be very surprised.
If there's one thing Mass Effect hammered on us, over and over, is that you can't control all the consequences of our actions. We can only go with our guts, pray we did the right choice and fix the consequences of any mistakes we make.
That's it, you inspired me to finish my 4th playthrough 🤣
I don't think there's anything wrong with picking the synthesis ending. However, I don't think synthesis should have been an option. It's too ideal. As much as I loved the mass effect series, it seems like after me1, the developers couldn't bring themselves to make players make a hard choice, and the synthesis ending is the ultimate example of this.
Yeah ending is easy to fix. Control is renegade. Destroy paragon. And you have a big boss fight with harbinger before going up to the citadel. Then you find out starchild lost control, of the reapers to harbinger. Star child felt his creators were a big threat to organic and synthetic life so preserved them as harbinger. To prevent them from rebuilding. Then Harbinger turned on it. Viewing itself as the natural end goal of all life. Shackling its creator in the citadel because it controls the indoctrination signal
All endings show hope but they each have a lot of flaws. They just weren’t presented.
Like Synthesis, many people would ending up with anger in being forced into this new framework and rebel and/or commit death on themselves with such a major change.
Control has ways it could go wrong with the AI and even people being angry that they are still around.
Destroy caused many people relying on synthetics to die, the relays probably took a long time to repair so many resources couldn’t be shared which would collapse economies on top of the destruction from the war.
It’s just that you’d have to think about them instead of being showed it.
There are 2 control endings and 2 destroy endings depending on how high your final EMS score was or how renegade you were (I think). The worst destroy ending is depressing and the worst control ending is very sinister.
It was really great to hear your thoughts on having a canon ending.
I feel like there are some people out there who don't really care if a canon invalidates someone else's experience so long as theirs gets continued...
It's a shame because before anything else - before any of the characters or the lore or the setting - the trilogy was conceived as a story where everyone could make their own character, their own choices, and that those choices and consequences would carry on through the trilogy.
Airlocking all of that agency just to make one ending canon feels like a rush to get rid of what made this series special to half of its fans. It completely misses the point that if Shepard were to come back, fans would want to play their Shepard, not someone elses. And most of those Shepards died 😢
i got refusal ending (the final one) during my playthrough because... well, i didn't realize you have to choose the ending during the dialogue with the catalyst lmao
but honestly it was worth it, the endscreen with the Stargazer and the child is one of the most beautiful scenes i've ever encountered in Mass Effect
Been watching your run over the course of the last year.
As a Day 1 2007 Veteran of the series, welcome to The Spectre Club! Now you can follow the rest of us and buy 10 of everything that has an N7 logo on it!.......Ok, that might be just me.
As far as your question over ending choice, I have 3 Shepard saves that chose 3 of the endings that makes sense for their personality and choices.
Leon Shepard - Paragon Male Shepard - War Hero, Colonist Soldier: The Virtuous Leon Shepard while a deadly soldier always believed all life in the Galaxy was worth saving and would always try and find peaceful solutions before being forced into violence. Choosing Paragon Control, Leon Shepard would rather lay down his own life rather than see anyone else die or be altered without their consent. He was always destined to sacrifice himself to become the one to save the many.
Evelyn Shepard - Renegade Female - Ruthless, Earthborn Infiltrator: The Butcher of Torfen, The Destroyer of the old Council, Evelyn Shepard always remained steadfast to the rule of "Victory by any means necessary". No sympathy or remorse over the lose of The Geth or EDI, she would nuke half the Victory Fleet if it meant ultimate triumph!
John Shepard - Paragnade Male - Sole Survivor, Spacer Vanguard: He tried to follow the dream of a successful military life like his parents but it become more of a nightmare following his squad's extermination at the hands of Cerberus' engineering of a Thresher Maw attack. While he did his best to maintain composure and diplomacy with the higher ups, he wasn't always pleasant with the rest of the galaxy, in particular to any who would cause his PTSD to flare up by mentioning Akuze. Ultimately, John Shepard chose Synthesis looking to be finally freed from the stress of seeing all that war and death. His hope being that in finally getting his own peace, the galaxy would find its own peace as well.
Thank you for the super thanks ❤️❤️
Control would eventually fail. Especially when synthetics start destroying organics again.
Then Shepard would have to send the reapers to destroy/harvest the synthetics.
But synthetics will try to stop/fight the reapers.
But I'm pretty sure Shepard and his reapers would win.
Haha the ending of my very first ME3 playthrough was the last one. The cycle continued and everybody died. I thought it would be clever trying to shot the catalyst. XD
Start of vid: "there's no canon ending I don't see why people make such a big deal about what's canon"
After seeing Destroy ending: *shocked Pikachu*
You assume that the destroy ending is getting rid of EDI and the geth, but why would you trust the word of the catalyst? He is the enemy after all.
I always pick the Destroy ending. Mainly because I didn't trust the Catalyst. It's whole "Synthetics and Organics can't exist together, there will always be violence" spiel. I'm sorry but we just helped the Quarians and Geth end their conflict and begin to help out each other as equals. We have achieved what the Catalyst said would never happen. Will there be conflict in the future maybe, but I guarantee you, if you give organics enough time after this event, then they will start fighting again too. Also the Catalyst was clearly trying to persuade using our emotions by presenting itself as the kid that we regretted for having failed to save and has been present in our nightmares this whole time.
Also with synthesis you save EDI and the Geth but you force every single being in the entire galaxy to become part synthetic. So I can't justify that one (this is just my opinion) basically what Saren wanted.
Control that's what the Illusive Man wanted so that is immediately a big no. lol
Pretty much what I've always thought about the endings, with Synthesis you're forcibly converting everything, how can Shepard make that choice for billions, trillions of beings, and it feels like the "too good" ending that was thought up so nobody would die.
Control you're doing what TIM wanted and no guarantee Reaper God Shepard doesn't get corrupted and indoctrinated over time too.
Destroy is the ending that you've been trying to do since ME1, it's the only ending that proves Space Child wrong in its assertion that organics and synthetics will always come to war when as proven in many gameplays, you can resolve the Geth Quarian conflict. And as you pointed out, it's not like organics don't have a monopoly on conflict either, chances are someone will cause a war with someone else over territory.
Destroy - Anderson's Ending.
Control - Tim's Ending.
Synthesis - Magic mumbo jumbo ending.
Synthesis just jumps evolution forward a little. Beyond the mix of organic and synthetic the Reapers were - a new form of life. It's based on a predicted final evolution of organics. Other than sharing all the knowledge of all previous species, Synthesized beings would simply be bio-synthetic versions of themselves.
@@garyballard179 The keyword of that is "predicted" Many predictions that are based on good evidence don't happen. It may very well happen, but it is not our decision to force everyone to accept that. It would be a process, one step after another, to get organics to that level of synthesis. It is not our place to force it to happen.
@@stonewall01
On the contrary, the various species would not even realize what changed without genetic testing and experimentation.
All they knew was that they now had the wisdom of thousands of extinct species.
This is not like forcing communism or socialism onto a population - this is simply _accelerating the process of evolution._
It's not "forcing" _anything._
And you trust it for Destroy? What if StarChild just fakes the explosion, and Reapers come back in 5 years? Explain not trusting it for other endings but doing it for this.
Starchild points out what you did was extraordinary and that is why Synthesis even comes in as option. It needs high war readiness to even become available.
What's great about the ME Trilogy is that everyone can choose their own ending for their Shepard. All of them have their pros/cons, although Refusal is universally accepted as the worst. I have many playthroughs as different Shepard (male/female, Renegade/Paragon, all 6 classes) and have chosen all 3 endings (except Refusal). However, everyone needs to accept that Destroy is the cannon ending, based on the ME Next trailer that shows Liara walking on dead, frozen Reaper corpses. This is fine - just because that is the cannon ending chosen by Bioware doesn't invalidate your choice for your Shepard. Both ME1 and ME2 have cannon-endings if you play ME2 without having played ME1 or if you play ME3 without having played the other 2.
Definitely need to watch at least the Destroy ending with very low war assets. Its um.. depressing to say the least
The part where you see Shepherd breathing at the end of the destroy ending able to get that ending you need a lot of War points and if you're playing as female Shepherd like you were it wouldn't matter it would still show the body of a male Shepherd
I myself tend to believe that the Catalyst was partially lying to Shepard about the Destroy Ending. One: it told Shepard that they would die, but thats not true if you GA score is high enough. Two: in the teaser trailer for the next ME game we see dead reapers, implying that the gane takes place in the destroy ending. However we know the Geth are in the game so they were not killed. So its entirely possible not all Synthetic life was destroyed. Thats how i view it anyway.
The geth in ME4 were shown as dead.
@@willfanofmanyii3751 Not in the decrypted teaser audio that released last N7 day. We hear Liara talking with Geth in reference to the new relay being built.
@@toddhardoin3370 It's distorted audio, not confirmation of whether it's Geth. And the audio is logged under a Qurian/Human name.
Liara's talking about humanity doing something the council won't be happy about.
Renegade Control ending may give you a bit of different view on the control ending - sounds more sinister. the one in the video was the paragon control.
Long story short, don't trust the ghostly, machine spirit, star child...
Now we need someone to tell Kimmander Shepard about the red, blue and green cupcakes :p
I never gave TOO much credit to the scene of Shepard breathing. When this game came out it was intended to be the end of Shepard's story, the developers weren't really thinking about "What comes next". So showing Shepard breathing could just be them giving you a glimmer of hope and saying "Think what you will" even if it doesn't really make much sense...
I mean, think about it, Shepard was already severely injured, that thing exploded point blank in her face, that section of the Citadel partially collapsed after the explosion, all the synthetic parts inside of Shepard's body (parts of her heart, spine, brain, etc...) stopped working when the device was activated and, on top of all of that, she was buried under rubble. I'm guessing it would take some time before anyone would be able to reach the remains of the Crucible to see if there were any survivors.
Of course these are just my two cents, at the end of the day the game DOES show a scene of Shepard taking a breath, that implies he/she is still alive
Bioware already confirmed Shepard survives Destroy.
This is pretty much the best version of every ending. Depending on how you played the games, the worst destroy ending literally destroys everyone. You see the soldiers fighting on earth get incinerated in the blast for example.
Synthesis is the hardest ending to get. Depending on how well you play the game, you get either one, two or three choices (not counting shooting the catalyst). BioWare's own best version is probably the Synthesis ending, based on how they structured everything.
I chose to control, so my shep can watch over his buddies everywhere.
Destroy is my favourite ending, even though it hurts so much to lose EDI and the Geth. I couldn't get on board with turning all organic life forms in the galaxy into synthetic hybrids--that was never part of the plan and none of the other species had considered it or consented to it. Of course, destroy is a genocidal ending so that's terrible, too.
And by the way, with all the technology available, wouldn't you think EDI and Legion's minds could be "rebuilt" much as they were?
@@Kick278 not necessarily. Sure, you can rebuild their programming, intelligence, and sentience back, however you can't give them the same soul they once achieved for themselves over the story arc. Each soul is unique and that's something you just can't duplicate and replace. Only the parts can be duplicated and replaced. The games allude to Edi and the Geth going beyond sentience to becoming truly alive with their own souls (apparently with the influence/help of the Reaper coding), and that's something organics just can't give another living thing. With the Reapers destroyed, their code is destroyed with them, which is what helped Edi and Geth to gain more than just sentience. Edi even said that in his last moments, Legion became an individual, so Legion as we came to know him IS truly dead.
But who knows, maybe Bioware will use some kind of plot device to work around that and plot armour their way to them gaining their same souls again. It would just end up a bit contrived at the least. 🤷🏻♀️
There are variants of each ending. The Rejection ending is essentially the same, just a different way of getting there. The Destroy ending has a, uh, bit more variation to it's ending. The Control ending differs depending on whether you are Paragon or Renegade.
Good job basically coming up with the Indoctrination Theory on your own from the Destroy ending lol. BioWare sadly confirmed it to be false, but still a cool idea.
Hey Kim, now You might wanna react to the Indoctrination Theory.
It has been debunked and addressed as a non-thing, so if You ever stumble upon it or feel like wanting to search for it, keep that in mind: it holds no value from a canonical perspective
Still, I personally like it very much, and -in many ways- it remains a fun though experiment to keep in the back of your mind whenever you decide to go for a second playthrough, off camera in your free time.
EDIT: anyone else finds it funny that Synthesis and Control are -respectively- what both major villains of the trilogy tried to do? TIM of course was all about Control, that one is pretty obvious. But remember Saren? "I'm forging an alliance, an union of organic and synthetics. The strenghts of both, the weaknesses of neither"
My personnal reason as to why I never choose the Destroy solution is that it basically replace a cycle by another.
You pick Destroy and every synthetics in the galaxy are destroyed. Which leaves the organics, who have not only the knowledge, the means, but also the needs to create new synthetics to replace those that were lost.
Leave it a few thousand years and a species could very much end up creating the Reapers 2.0
Which would force the organics to use the Crucible once more to destroy them. Again, and again, and again.
From a cycle of machines destroying organics every 50 000 years to a cycle of organics destroying synthetics. Until the synthetics find a way to break this new cycle.
It is for me the least practical solution, but in terms of story-telling, the most logical to go forward in the franchise. So I think it is to be considered the canonical one.
The Reapers brings too much in the equation to keep them on the long run. They need to disappear for the story to have a chance to go elsewhere and continue.
But I will never regret choosing synthesis.
IMO if I worked for Bioware, I'd add 2 more endings to the mix:
- Reminiscent of the Dark Side endings in Bioware's Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, a variation of the Control Ending where after meeting the Illusive Man on the Citadel the player can choose to side with him and use the control ending where the Reapers now serve humanity and help them dominate the Galaxy. Dark and probably no one would like it/choose it but it would have been an interesting "What If..."
- A variation of/mixture of the Destroy and Synthesis Endings called "Harvest" where instead of blindly destroying the Reapers (and EDI and the Geth) the Crucible extracts the data they Harvested from all the past cycles, essentially destroying the Reapers, and distributing the information across all sentient species (organic and synthetic) in the Galaxy. Essentially the various races would become the benevolent successors of the Reapers, using the collective knowledge of previous races to find a better solution to the organic v. synthetic conflict and ensure that all species/civilizations can endure.
The last mixed harvest one would definitely be the best option and my personal happy ending imo. The Reapers don't deserve to live but the Geth and Edi do. Dammit Bioware. 🙃
There is a 5th ending where Shepard is moving under the rubble. U need to choose destroy, having > 7800 pts. Think this is the outgoing point for the next Mass Effect 4 game, because in the teaser the relays are destroyed as indicator.
Technically, there's 7 different endings.
You've seen 4 of them, but the control and destroy both have variations. What you saw was a paragon control ending but there's also a renegade control ending with a much darker tone.
There's also two more destroy endings. One is exactly the same as the one you saw, just without Shepard surviving while the last one is the low war assets destroy ending where the galaxy is left in a much worse state.
Too bad this video didn't show them too but i'm glad you have more knowledge about it now
From memory, the fourth ending wasn't part of the original game. A lot of gamers, however, were so frustrated by the three endings that many of them took to forums etc, angrily saying they hated the damn kid and would have just shot him. When they released the Extended Cut DLC, therefore, Bioware included the option to do just that!
Since my first playthrough was a paragon Shepard. I had far more faith in my Shepard making the right choices in the future than the rest of the galaxy not screwing things up again in a few centuries. So i go with control. You get the benefits of the reapers without the baggage of forcing all life to combine with synthetics like Synthesis and you dont sacrifice Kasumi's Grey box, EDI, or the Geth like in Destroy.
Two minutes in, just want to give my thoughts on the "canon ending" that people like to talk about.
I think most people recognize that for Mass Effect to continue on past Mass Effect 3, a choice by the developers has to be made. There are rumors out there that the next Mass Effect (whatever it will be called) will honor and respect all the possible endings. I don't know how that will work to be completely honest, but we'll see. But for more simplistic approach to the next game (and to media on streaming platforms), there has to be some sort of anchor to it all.
What I find interesting is that of the 4 endings (still haven't watched the video yet, so not sure on Kim's complete opinion yet), destroy seems to be the only logical choice, and one of the other endings proves this (to me at least).
(For sake of simplicity in writing my opinion, I'm referring to Shepard as MaleShep. Don't get your britches in a wad when I say "he" instead of "she." Thanks.)
1. Shepard's singular goal from ME1 up until the time he meets the Catalyst is to destroy the Reapers. Case closed, end of discussion, waiter - check please! It's the only goal he's after. He never once considers another option.
2. Upon meeting Saren multiple times in ME1, the crescendo comes when we meet our villain on Vermire. It is in that speech that Saren completely reveals his plans - a merging of flesh and metal, a symbiotic relationship of organics with machine. This is the very core of synthesis. The catalyst appears to have been lying to Shepard, at least partially. By saying they didn't know Synthesis was possible until the Crucible revealed it completely ignores the fact that Sovereign was pushing Saren in this very direction. Ergo, the Reapers (or at least Sovereign and Harbinger) knew this was a preferred state of conclusion because of their mandate to preserve life (which they chose to do so by "preserving it" in Reaper form). But Shepard's potential decision here to choose Synthesis erases the free-will of trillions upon quadrillions of organics in the galaxy, even those races who have never found a mass relay and are completely unknown to the galaxy at large. Remember, only 1% of the stars have been mapped by the council races as of ME3. Imagine the Protheans actually succeeding in this regard and choosing this in their cycle, and primitive humans now have their DNA completely re-written. No....people only choose this option because they grew attached to EDI and Joker's relationship. So let me get this straight: you will choose the path that Saren and Sovereign and the entire Reapers wanted for the galaxy because you felt sorry for one human being. I never knew Joker had THAT much sway. And don't get me started on the Geth. While I do sympathize with them in that they shouldn't have been attacked by the Quarians, their response (and these were NOT the heretics) was to only spares tens of thousands of Quarians who fled, and brutally murder billions upon billions. Even after the flight from Rannoch, Geth (again, not heretics) who encountered organics trying to communicate with them were always killed. Always. They are not the victims we make them out to be. They do show tremendous growth in their 300 years since nearly wiping out the Quarians, but enough to warrant re-writing quadrillions of organics' DNA?
Oh, and Saren was indoctrinated.
3. Control is easily dismissed. The Illusive man was being manipulated just like Saren and was indoctrinated. A human-AI-all-knowing-hybrid wasn't a great ending for the original Deus Ex and it still isn't a great ending for Mass Effect either. Imagine Renegade Shepard choosing this option. [Shudder] No one should have THAT much power. No one.
4. Refusal is a very interesting choice. You thumb your nose at the Reapers, saying "hell no!" and proceed to become wiped out, being preserved only in Reaper form going forward. Ugh, right? Then what happens next? The next cycle finds Liara's information, and as evidence by the final cut scene, they used that knowledge to...destroy the Reapers.
I'm sure many people will want to argue my points. That's fine. I've been stating this since 2012, and I'm not backing down 11 years later.
Saren wanted Synthesis. He was Indoctrinated.
Illusive Man wanted Control. He was indoctrinated.
Shepard wanted Destroy. He was NOT indoctrinated.
Peace be with you all.
Couldn't have said it better myself. 👏
I think cannon refers to what has been shown in the teaser trailer for the next Mass Effect which is *Spoilers past this point*:
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Two dead reapers. Liara is even walking on one when she picks up the piece of N7 armor. I feel like this cancels out Synthesis and Control as *the* cannon ending. I'm not mad about it. I chose Synthesis simply because I like EDI and wanted her to live. It does feels too unrealistic and too good to be true, though. I think it would be a massive undertaking to try to incorporate all the endings in the next game. It would probably take even more time to complete than it will to do what they're currently doing. I'd like to play the next game before I'm 80 lol
Destroy or bust.
First time I played I picked Synthesis. I even did Control ending once...but Destroy is my go to now
If you notice in the destroy ending liara doesn’t actually put sheps nameplate up on the board because she knows he’s not dead, I believe she goes out looking for shep shortly after the events of the 3rd game and maybe what she’s looking for in the trailer for the next game
Shooting the “star child” catalyst was an ending they added with the legendary edition it wasn’t a thing in the original set of games but you need enough war assets in order to get this ending, if you don’t have the war assets then you only get 3 endings
The refusal ending was in the original ME3. I know because i got it accidentally when i first played the game back in 2016
@@nemangame I’m pretty sure I seen a video a while back saying it wasn’t added til legendary edition but idk I was too young back then I can’t remember if it was or not, it was like playing again for the first time when I picked up legendary edition for PlayStation, I was only basing that off the video I saw, maybe they was referring to the 2012 release of the game
@@Anubieeit was added in the free extended ending dlc to the original not long after the release.
@@2starkiller okay but it still wasn’t part of the original endings that’s all I’m saying, I might have got the timeline wrong but I was fairly certain it wasn’t in the game when it came out and was added later on
@@Anubiee Yeah the game released early 2012 and the DLC came out that same year in the summer.
I tend to choose destroy because Edi was part of the Normandy , I see as along as the Normandy exist so is Edi.
“Maybe the Catalyst is lying?” Introducing The Indoctrination Theory. Just one big rabbit hole.
Bare in mind the Catalyst is flawed, they're an unreliable narrator (they tell you things as if they're fact, right after admitting their original idea of the reapers clearly didn't work as a solution, and they hadn't thought of a way to go forward with these new options before). I really don't think their future predictions resulting from *any* of the endings are accurate. Control would result in a future problem as Shepard loses their identity and is influenced by the Catalyst, Synthesis is too soon and unethical to force on the galaxy, and you proved Synthetics won't always destroy organics with the Geth, so their destroy predictions are BS too.
I agree. I see a lot of people in the comments (mostly those who don't like destroy) getting upset when anyone suggests that Shepard shouldn't believe the catalyst. But the player can see that the catalyst contradicts itself (and therefore you can't believe everything it says), and Shepard knows that the catalyst contradicts things Shepard knows to be true (and therefore Shepard can't believe everything it says, either). I wish Bioware luck in getting themselves out of this hole they dug.
Destroy is most likely canon because it's simpler to continue the story from it.
So.. Bioware isn't doing that because Destroy destroys Geth and there's Geth in the stuff that has come out for the new game.
@kvm6 in the trailer there is a dead reaper body in the snow, so yes, they picked destroy ending for sure. We just don't know what solution they will bring to us about the geths
@@lejobim It can be an old Reaper corpse (like the one in ME2) doesn't have to be from ME3 end. So, no Destroy doesn't have to be canon.
@@kvm6 neither you believe it's a old corpse. Things like this have a reason, it's not a randomly thrown thing. Not to mention that it's pretty clear that Liara is looking for shepard when she finds a piece of his armor, and that would only be possible with the destroy ending
@@lejobim Because Shepard is the only N7 in the galaxy who can die?
Destroy isn't going to be canon. Bioware aren't gonna kill of Geth.
Even though it makes me sad about EDI and the Geth I went with Destroy not just because it's what I spent 3 games aiming towards, but also because the other 2 endings are what the major indoctrinated bad guys (Saren and the Illusive Man) were promoting and that just felt wrong. In the last talk you have with Saren on the Citadel at the end of ME1, he's advocating the uniting of organics and synthetics. And obviously the Illusive Man was all about control. I think the game pushes you towards synthesis like it's the extra special choice but forcing massive change on all living beings seems too weird to me.
It missed the bad destroy ending and the renegade control ending
And there's the Happy Ending mod, that is the destroy ending but removes the child and the crucible destroys only the reapers, leaving EDI and the geth intact, and Shepard is shown alive and well in the memorial scene
Me: picks Synthesis for the ending on my first playthrough
Me: watches other endings
Me: scrub Synthesis ending from my brain and pick Control every time
the catalyst lied , duh. It's a doomsday machine. What do u expect ?
I think the fan polls have consistently voted the Destroy ending as the favorite, with Synthetic placing 2nd, Control 3rd, and Next Cycle 4th. I think it's fair to say that Destroy is the favorite because it teases Shepard's survival. Also, in the Mass Effect will continue trailer you can see the Asari (Liara?) climbing through the snow storm over with a dead Reaper in the background. Some think that means the Destroy ending will be made the canon ending in the next creation of Mass Effect, which brings up a ton on new questions especially with the N7 piece she finds. Hopefully, we'll get another teaser or update sometime soon, maybe November 7th. As for Andromeda, a lot of people have panned it because they feel it was a spin-off that didn't properly connect to the trilogy but I personally think it was underrated. Nowhere near as compelling as the trilogy, but still an entertaining game to play and a decent story and situation, at least for me. I hope they will make some reference to it in the next Mass Effect iteration. I hate when they ignore in universe situations or characters from spin-offs just because people were disappointed by their sales or reviews.
When you look at the ground Liara walks you can actually see that she walks on a dead Reaper covered in snow.
They did make the destroy ending the cannon ending
@@Jcw5679 There has been no confirmation of that.
@AndreaP_N7 I thought they said it in an interview when they announced mass effect 4? If not, then my bad. I probably misread it somewhere haha.
@@Jcw5679 No, many think the teasers prove that destroy is canon because they are convinced that Shepard is returning. They could end up being right, but nothing has been confirmed yet.
Paragon Control, Every Race Wins and Every Race Survives., only Shepard Ascends to become "The Shepard"
It's Canon due to the developers, not the fans
I went with Destroy. I felt bad for EDI but I couldn't justify throwing every species in the galaxy under the bus just so Joker could get laid.
Except the Geth, apparently
@@denisa_the_jedi Meh, the Geth were constructed. If somebody wants the Geth back they can be constructed again.
Why feel bad about EDI? She was willing to die. Later in the game, she and Shepard have a conversation (if you visit her after every mission) where they discuss Joker. EDI says she is willing to die in order to defeat the Reapers as long as Joker is able to go on living. In that conversation, she pretty much gives Shepard the okay to pick Destroy. But EDI can always be brought back. It was said that in between ME2 and ME3 the Alliance wanted to remove EDI entirely from the Normandy once the Normandy became Alliance property. So maybe just in case he couldn’t convince the Alliance, Joker could’ve created a backup of EDI to restore later on or install in something else. It’s possible that EDI’s core on the Normandy made backups/restore points every so often as well (like scheduled backups). So they could always turn to those restore points/backups to bring her back if they were made.
@@projectpat8807 Why? Simple. Maybe there were data backups, maybe there weren't; who knows. But I like EDI and sacrificing something you like even for the greater good is always difficult.
@@loyalopposition-us They were built, but they gained sentience thanks to Legion.
If no one is against it, I would like to leave a big comment.
ATTENTION, SPOILERS!⚠
By the way, why I initially liked the Mass Effect 1 very much.
I wanted to tell you a little about the original script by Drew Karpyshyn. He conceived the ending of the story somewhat differently.
The whole story is based on the concept of the mass effect. It's not just that the game is called that. The idea is that, apparently, a new element appears in the periodic table, consisting of the devil knows what. Maybe from nothing, because it is zero and does not contain classical protons and neutrons. It doesn't matter, but the bottom line is that when electricity is applied to it, a field of dark energy begins to form around it, which our physicists still haven't figured out. And this field changed the mass of any object. And here you have anti-gravity, and travel at superluminal speeds, and a kinetic barrier. In fact, it is possible to subordinate one of the fundamental laws of physics - mass. And so, the first intelligent race, having discovered this technology, began to actively use it. They created repeaters to move quickly between the arms of the galaxy, a Citadel, so that there was a certain center. But it turned out that this production of the zero element is not very, as it is now fashionable to say, environmentally friendly. There will be consequences. Just tens or hundreds of thousands of years, which is quite a bit by the standards of galaxies and stars, these very stars began to age incredibly quickly, turn into black holes and absorb planetary systems. The culprit was dark energy and the use of the zero element. The race decided to abandon this and switch to a reasonable use of technology. But there was always a possibility that a new young race would appear, and they appeared, and accordingly they would thoughtlessly use these technologies. Back in the second game, Drew Karpyshyn threw a mission, a kind of hint for the plot, which in the third part was supposed to reveal the motivation of the Reapers. During the mission to recruit Tali, we were in the Geth system, where Tali and her squad were studying a local star that had extremely intense radiation. As you remember, it was impossible to be there without shields and this was reflected in the gameplay. As it was said then that 300 years ago there was no such thing, but for a star it's just a second. The star was aging extremely fast and was ready to turn into a supernova. And the Quarians studied this phenomenon and even then put forward theories that it was because of dark energy, but they were not yet completely sure. Well, this anomaly should have unfolded into a plot, most likely. Then it was decided to create Reapers. Merge with them, creating a synthesis of organics and synthetics. In this form, they had to find a new alternative technology and prevent any use of mass effect technology. But it didn't work out. They couldn't find an alternative at all, they didn't have enough brains. Therefore, the Reapers calculated the rate of aging of the stars, left the blueprints for the necessary technologies for subsequent races and left. They waited until they grew up, returned, destroyed developed races, interbred with them into new Reapers and, having received fragments of new technologies, flew away. Well, like evil for good. Someday, someone will figure out how to save the stars and travel the galaxy normally. And the last time the Reapers came back, they found that humans were extremely well suited to synthesize with them. This, by the way, refers to the second game. The Reapers saw hope in people, and before that they delayed the death of the galaxy (and maybe the universe) as best they could, but time was already running out. And at the end of the third game we also had a choice. Only from two finals already. The first is to sacrifice the entire human race and create a proto-reaper and solve the problem of the mass effect, that is, creating an alternative for travel and preserving the galaxy. The second, the destruction of the Reapers, but the existing races would have to look for an alternative themselves, only how is unclear. Sounds interesting, doesn't it? They close a couple of major plot holes and logically fit into the universe by answering important questions that were scored in the original. But not without flaws. Well, like the election of humanity and the like. But we have what we have.
But we also got a fan ending explaining the finale. As the developers said, they would not have thought of such a thing. The fans are great, although this theory has both supporters and opponents. I'm talking about the theory of indoctrination. From the very beginning of the series, we were told about the possibility of Reapers to subordinate literally everyone to their will. Those who were already under indoctrination remained so, probably forever, regardless of the distance to the Reaper. Submission can be overcome if you are strong enough in spirit, but even through the struggle they found only one way out - suicide. The idea of brainwashing permeates the entire first part. A strong person like Shepard is hard to subdue, the process will take longer. So it stretched into a whole trilogy. This explains why Anderson did not see the boy at the very beginning of the third game. And all these dreams to the sound of the Reapers roaring. The sound is a wave, and the Reapers were brainwashed by some kind of signal, waves. Okay, I'm kidding here. There was some kind of energy or some kind of radiation. Well, in the final of the game, during the storming of the Channel to the Citadel, the Harbinger himself is engaged in defense. His beam is so powerful that it destroys Mako, flyers and even ships, but Shepard is so hard that the Harbinger beam just makes him lie down a little. And then, when everyone retreated, although they shouldn't have, the Harbinger flew away and no one guards the Channel anymore. Strange, don't you think? Commander processing started from the first game automatically. As well as everyone who has been in contact with them. And we have known them almost the longest and we have no means of protection from indoctrination, except for our own coolness :) Well, in general, this theory explains the choice of three colors, the moment with the boy and dreams. Do you really believe in Shepard's severe trauma from the boy's death? A fighter who saved the galaxy twice, a warrior who fought more than once on the battlefield and saw hundreds of deaths, and then he saw one death of an innocent boy, got injured and
even began to see strange dreams? He should have received this injury fifty-six times ago. It's weird. I'm not even talking about the presence of a Catalyst that appeared in the guise of this very boy. There are many interesting points within the framework of this theory. The theory is controversial, but it has the right to life. Because in the ME4 teaser, do we see a synthesis of organics and synthetics? I don't think so. Do we see how the Reapers work together with organics? It doesn't seem to be either. But when we are shown a piece of armor N7, we can assume that we are given a hint of a red ending when we are shown a sighing Shepard under the rubble.
Please do not judge strictly, these are just fan assumptions. And in general, I hope that I translated everything correctly!😊
Всем хорошего дня!😉
Have a nice day to everyone!😉
There were some excellent vids explaining the Indoctoration Theory.
I would have said to wait until your next playthroughs to see the different endings that fit the style you are playing at that moment... but I'm sure you will still enjoy them in any case.
Even if it's not on stream, I hope you do get to do a Renegade Shep playthrough.... because not being a wishy washy doo-gooder can be so much fun! 🤣
...and I can't ait for your Andromeda playthrough. I think you are really going to like it.
THE CYCLE CONTINUES.
I'm suprise I never see streamer pick control, it's my favourite one. (aside from what happen to Kasumi)
Destroy is the Best ending.
Don’t worry, Kim, most of us still aren’t over it.
And the debate over a 'canon' ending really only reached its zenith when ME4 was announced. At this point, given how little anyone knows about the next game, one ending will likely need to be canonised since it is a continuation of the trilogy. Or Bioware would have to have come up with a plausible loophole to the original endings. It was always going to be the biggest risk of continuing the series and I suspect there may be a lot of angry/disappointed people if the trilogy ending they chose is not acknowledged. The reason most people think destroy will be canon is simply that it is the only ending where Shepard survives, at least in organic form. But nobody will know until the new game is released.
The thing you have to know about Destroy too. Although it would take a long while, Edi, the Geth, and the Relays could ALL be rebuilt honestly, without the Reapers there.
Also to get that special ending scene your military assets etc. Have to be above a certain range. Not an issue any more without multi player as the DLCs add enough to get there. Also of course The Catalyst would spit any amount of lies to save itself. If you played and finished Leviathan mission you'd know how bad the Catalyst is along with the Reapers. You talk about the "cycle continuing".... You don't think people will pass down the mistakes they made with the Reapers?? Lol. That's why generations in the past failed, they had nothing to go off of. In the future, future generations will be told, and taught about these things.
Don't forget that Geth and Quarians worked it out, who says that it's not possible with the future synthetics? Catalyst is an emotionless machine too, which thought that it had it all figured out, but Shepard got to it anyway. All this shows that there is no reason to take what it says as an absolute fact. It's just an overcomplicated calculator and it's a flawed one.
The question is not whether there will be another case when they work it out, but whether you can guarantee that there will be none where it won't happen. Who cares if there are half a dozen synthetic species that are friendly, if there is one that wipes the whole galaxy. You are looking at the wrong side of the equation.
Loved this! Never seen the extended Control ending with the Shepard VO!
See the other somewhat insidious thing about the control ending is that the Shepard Reapers will still be indoctrinating the people juts with a false sense of unity, I wonder if when you select Control it’s not just the Reapers but the whole universe.
Same with Destroy you are destroying any chance for understanding between organic sand synthetics. Sure I like that it seems like Shepard survives it but that’s all I really like about destroy.
Synthesis is based on Shepard’s will again so while it’s my favourite of the 3 and my original choice I think there are still issues.
Honestly though Reject is probably my actual favourite ending and I’m not sure why 😅
There is no perfect ending but if I have to chose I'd go with Paragon Control. Geth and EDI don't deserve Destroy and it would lead to most instability. Synthesis seems to me like the most morally wrong because you force ther change on the whole galaxy because the main villains said it's for the better (on the bright side if you play male Shepard as I do, you accomplish your ultimate goal to insert your DNA into everything).
Btw. If you are looking for more Mass Effect stuff to react to I suggest songs "Commander Shepard" by Miracle of Sound and "Reignite" by Malukah. The former always makes me happy, the latter always brings the feels.
Funny as it is I always ignored the Breath in the Destroy Ending. I think i'm messed up by playing PnP Rolyplaing Games for 30 Years. Its too unrealistic for me, with all the Injuries + the Explosion + very long time, until someone reaches her/him to give medical attention. Although i think every ending has its value/place. In the first run i took Synthesis, because i thought the Catalyst was right about the following generations will build AIs again and the chance of loosing control over them is very, very high in some time in the future.
Great video really enjoyed it keep it up 😁
I am ALL about the indoctrination theory. There was a very strange sense in the press releases after the ME3 endings backlashed, something like a contractual united front of all the writers gritting their teeth and agreeing with the ending, standing by it, but if you dig into the surrounding aspects of the game, the design, the environment, even the name of obscure textures like the leaves on the planet the Normandy landed on being named "dream_leaves" as well as the dream sequences with oily black shadows, everything points to Shepard being indoctrinated throughout the third mass effect.
If you pick Control or Synthesize, you'll notice that Shepards eyes take on the appearance that the husks eyes take, but in the Destroy option, not only does Shepard keep their natural human eyes, they'll seem to become less labored, stronger, more convicted as they march towards the Destroy option and blow it out... and that is the only option in which Shepard wakes up afterwards-because in the other options, Shepard became no more than an indoctrinated agent like Saren in the first game.
After ME3 finished, the original team of brilliant creators in Bioware left the company and, as they were replaced, Andromeda was released with a myriad of very well documented and hilarious bugs and a great deal less heart than these games had. I imagine EA's Bioware will continue to push the "What you see is what you get" nature of these endings, but I'm still much more enamored with the now obvious signs of the Indoctrination theory.
Man, the refusal ending is comically bad. Wow. Talk about dropping the ball lol
Some little consideration: you saw the 4 BASIC end. If your asset point are low or different there are some little (big) difference for every ending (destroy especially).
Canon ending: if Bioware want continue ME from Me3, need to have a canon end and probably will be destroy for natural reasons.
Destroy can't be canon, as Liara speaks with a Geth in an ME4 teaser.
@@garyballard179 i'm quite sure that will be an unlogical solution for the geth. Will see (soon i hope)
@@giannimaggio474
The destroy ending undoes their sentience. Even if the Quarians build new Geth, they won't be any more sentient than before Legion's sacrifice.
Moreover, I doubt the Quarians would build new Geth to be the same as the old version.
@@garyballard179 Probably will find a compromise solution with some geth that, for unkowed reasons, will survive. Other ending are impossibile to continue: synthesis for obvious reasons, control it's even very problematic (and teaser don't support this ending). They remain Destruction and cycle, so destruction probably will be the canon final if Me wil continue from Me3 end.
@@giannimaggio474
You didn't give _any_ reasons to prove that Synthesis and Control can't be canon endings, and all you did was try to hand-wave away evidence that Destroy _cannot_ be.
Recently baught the Mass Effect LE on PC for about a month ago. From 1st to 3rď and its been a blast. Definitely an amazing trilogy.
Already re-playing it with mods now.
But *Bioware* themself have mentioned that they didn't at all intended it to be like this with the endings (space magic) and I sort of dont blame them EA rushed it back than.
Destroy - Is the only with a "possibility" of Survival of the character. Whats to say they can't rebuild the Geth or EDI with future civilzation?
Does seem to hint as canon to, but.. also some hints of Geth (if they are destroyed) are coming back in next Mass effect or Time travel? Its up for interpretations and speculation until we get more info on ME4/ME5.