People only see the last 5 minutes as the ending. However, if you take the game as a whole, it can play out differently.

There’s a lot more than A,B C or 16 different variations if you view the entire game as the ending. By not having everyone live during the suicide mission, you have potentially 12 different ways the game as a whole can play out. You won’t get to do Grunt’s, Samara’s, or Jack’s mission (or any other squadmate for that matter), if they didn’t survive the SM.

However, people are too close minded to view the game from this angle. They only see the last 5 minutes as the ending, and probably expected a LOTR Return of the King type epilogue finale which shows you how every single choice and every single character lived happily ever after. I tell you, with a game this size, and the hundreds of different choices, you’re looking at a 10+ hour epilogue. Most people don’t want to sit through that.

So instead of getting a 10 hour epilogue at the end, they made it so the entire game was the ending.

They didn’t promise people war asset cinematics. Although, if people wanted spoon-fed action sequences, then this game isn’t clearly for them.

If these so-called fans really were fans of the game, they wouldn’t call these people a bunch of liars and such. You’d stick with them and keep buying their stuff. Honestly, one bad apple isn’t going to ruin the entire game for you is it?

PS–Starchild is Harbinger. I figured that out by actually playing the game and paying attention..

Personnaly I’l say a big No. I’ll see how EA wraps the remants of ME3, is there really a final twist or did they totally screw the game. Others EA games do not interest me anymore.

Lets see what EA does with Dead Space 3

“This commonly vocalized desire to just throw the baby out with
the bath water is nonsensical to me.”

The bigger picture is that the ending is viewed as a culmination of all things Bioware over the last half a decade, which has been considered to be on the decline. I think you should realize that there a lot of people that don’t consider what led up to those last 15 minutes to be quite as “excellent” as some want to state as a given.

“didn’t realize people were still complaining about the ending.”
It’s the start of a new year and people are reflecting on the previous. Gamingbolt brought it up with this opine, it’s not a news report on something current happening. Unless you think “feeling the same way about it” is the same as “still complaining”, I don’t think the interest in the game is anywhere near what it was when it was new.

“If you judge the whole trilogy based off the last 10minutes of the original ending”

The amount of time it takes to ruin a story is not something that involves a formula that calculates in how much of the story existed. Endings are a big deal, they carry with them weight and in almost all stories, regardless of the medium, the ending is going to be relatively short to the entirety of the story. Good writers use endings to make a statement, ask a question, reiterate a point or to just blow people out of their socks. Bad writers slap together something for the sake of “Okay, I can stop writing now. Phew” or “Let’s do something out of left field for the sake of getting people talking because any publicity is good publicity.”

That’s how I would feel if I really did think the last 10 minutes ruined it but not what I think, I think the whole third game was a misstep.

“A true fan of Mass Effect wouldn’t go from love to hate on the whole
series based off 10min out of 90+ hours. I know this cause I’m a true
fan of the series. ”

Your basis of knowing what something is, is that you’re one? How can you be sure of anything with that logic?

“Of course, my hope is that this last ME3 DLC will prove the
Indoctrination Theory correct, blow our collective minds, and allow
Bioware to wrest the storytelling crown back”

A.) I don’t think they ever really had it. There are other companies that have always been better story tellers, Bioware was just the only company that balanced competent writing and competent software. Bioware, especially pre-EA days, are very underrated in the game design department, while also overrated in the game writing department.

B.) I think the ship has sailed on Indoctrination Theory. A lot of what people argued, unsuccessfully in my opinion, about what would have made it so great (“They played with our minds duuuuuuuude! We were the indoctrinated, it’s like a big meta thing and like wow man, it’s like duuuuude!”) would have required getting something out about it a heck of a lot quicker than now and certainly not as a paid DLC after two other lack luster DLCs.