Mass Effect 3 part 2:

Now time for part 2 of my Mass Effect 3 series where I detail what I felt was wrong with Bioware's endings.
Same thing as last time still applies: I haven't played the game, nor watched any playthroughs, and I don't know all spoilers. That said, I'm going off what I've heard prevalently amoung the community, and presenting my views on it.

First and foremost, as I hopefully mentioned last time, I am not upset that there is no true happy ending. That would have been fine by me. What I do not like is the aspulls Bioware have done, seemingly just to set up the world for a potential sequel somewhere down the line.
What am I talking about?
Well, first up, the Crucible. People were joking about there being a magic gun to one shot all the Reapers as a failed plot device months ago. Apparently, Bioware actually thought this was a good idea. BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! The gun also has the power to give you control of the Reapers or to merge all organic life with synthetic life. Well, no directly, and its also not a gun, but seriously? A Deus Ex Machina this big Bioware? I had hoped this was beyond you. I bought Sovereigns shields dropping when you killed Saren, I bought being able to take down a baby human reaper with my F***ing pistol. Know what I don't buy? A one hit kill weapon for all Reapers in existance designed by the Protheans who didn't use it. Seriously. No.
Second problem; The guardian is, for all intents and purposes, the Citadel. What is the Guardian? The AI that controls all the Reapers. Now, remind me why Sovereign had to dock with the Citadel again? Why did Sovereign even need to send the signal to the station? Hell, why has it not deactivated all the relays? There are way too many problems with this... thing.
Third Problem; The Reaper's reasons suck. 'We harvest you all to stop the Singularity of machines becoming as intelligent as man and killing them'. Well excuse me, but how the fuck does this make sense? Would it not be FAR more intelligent and FAR more becoming of those beings who really just want to protect you to simply wipe out synthetic lifeforms instead? This makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Fourth Problem; The Normandy. Why is it in Mass Relay Transit at the end there? And why does it get sent off to some random planet and such? You want to write a good ending for the crew, they fly down to Earth and pick Shepard up after the final fight. You want to write a semi-happy ending; They crash on Earth during the fight and we don't entirely find out if they survive and meet up with Shepard, or if they die in the crash. You want to write an unhappy ending, they get shot to shreds during the fight. No BS about them going through a magic wormhole and crashing on an unknown planet. That's just crap.
Fifth Problem; The options are crap. You can destroy the Reapers, but also EDI, anyone relying on synthetic stuff to live *COUGH*SHEPARD*COUGH* and the Geth. The Guardian comes up with the sudden bright and 100% unexpected idea of controlling the Reapers, or merging Organic life with Synthetic life. The problem with these is that there really is no good option. The Destroy results in you killing intelligence that may be your friends, or possibly even yourself. The other two are just dropped on you there and then with no leadup to it or anything. Seeing as these are so similar to the Deus Ex endings, I'll compare. Hell, I'll compare with DX:HR - still similar endings, but it recieved more flack for them, and they were handled better than this. In DX:HR, you constantly see the conflict between augmented people and non augmented. You see each take advantage of the other, and you see their reasons for doing so. You see both sides of the argument, and it is one of the central themes for every quest in the game. When it comes to the end, you are given the option of telling nobody anything and killing everyone on that station (Including yourself) to let the world make its own choice, of siding with the anti-augment people, siding with the pro-augment people, or siding with the Illuminati who are pro restricted augmentation. Each of these is an option that actually makes sense having gone through the story, and having experienced this conflict first hand all throughout it. In contrast, the merge or control options are just dropped there at the end as a 'We had to include a choice, so here's one!' sort of feeling thing. Hell, the theme they are based off - the technological singularity - is only tangentally touched upon in the Quarian lore within all the games. Dropping those options on people there and then just screamed 'Last minute unprepared rush endings'.
Sixth problem; Lack of information given. We know very little about the universe after the endings. The ending was meant to wrap things up and give us a conclusion, finality, explain everything to us. What it did was tell us nothing, leave us with more questions than even before, and make a whole lot of people asking 'WTF'. More info not only about the galaxy as a whole, but on the events surrounding the Normandy going through a Mass Relay, Teleporting squadmates, that planet - everything in the ending needs more info given.
Seventh and final problem; It wasn't what we were promised. We were promised that, as this was the end of the ME trilogy, we would get a lot of distinctly different ends dependent on how we played all three games. Unfortunately, we didn't get this. What we got was 4 minor variations of the main endings based of how you played, and 3 similar main endings based off a simple choice given at the end of the game. What happened to those vastly different outcomes we could be expecting? What happened to what we were promised? There was more variance in the conclusion of side missions than there was in the conclusion of the story as a whole, and even they were still mostly dependent on 3's decisions rather than 1 and 2s. For an example of the sort of ending scheme I would have expected from this statement, see my previous post.

Now, these are only the main problems I have with the endings. There are a number of other nitpicks and such, but I'll leave them out. One thing I've discovered whilst writing this, however, is that its not just the endings that need changing - but a fair portion of the game. The main problem that drives most of the others with the ending is the Deus Ex Machina that is pulled. It in itself is one of m main problems, but it also grants the sudden magic choice of control or merge, it almost forces things away from a wide array of endings, it brings up the Reaper's crap reasons, it provides the crap options, it provides the only logical reason for the Normandy to have left the system at all - as you can see, I could probably trace 90% of the ending's problems to the Deus Ex Machina that was pulled. I think I may add a 4th section: A mod designed by me. The changes I would make to everything in the game, sumarised in one post. To fix the endings, IMO, you have to remove the Crucible and its Deus Ex Machina, and have a full on true Space Opera battle with 'Protectors of the Earth' playing in the background, just like that trailer showed us. No Crucible, just one big battle. For EARTH!