Gotta be trolling. No one is so dense that they consider throwing darts in the dark to be a sport. At least I bloody hope not.
It's amusing that anyone who doesn't fall into line with the internet mob-think must be trolling and not just have a different opinion on the ending. Narratives with open/interpretative endings are typically unpopular with mainstream Western audiences; that Bioware got this reaction is really no surprise to me. I personally don't particularly like or dislike the ending and view it at least in part a way for Bioware to leave things open ended enough for them to have lots of creative room in creating future post-ME3 games/etc.
I'll give it to you though, Blass. I commend your imagination as every factual point Wazuka or I have made and supported by clean and defined in-game references has been countered by a "Maybe..." statement or a retort that simply states our lack of understanding of the grander scheme. Must be exhausting.
Nice ad hominem; I am - unsuccessfully - attempting to have a discussion of game's narrative based on analysis and interpretation of the text akin to literary and film criticism and discourse, but you are insisting everything is absolutely literal to the point of absurdity, selectively dismissive of details and lore, and act like having played 200~ hours between the two previous games (my total time played between ME and ME2 is probably around 600 hours which I didn't feel like was a worthwhile point to make but hey since you and Waz stick on it I may as well too) makes you some ultimate authority.
Good to know that you're a fan of these sorts of endings though. I'll get you Matrix 2 and 3, as well as Star Trek 5 for Christmas.
Those are all films whose problem is that they're terrible films, not because their endings are open or interpretive. Perhaps you meant Shane, Bladerunner, and Avalon (2001 JP). It's a style of narrative and clearly one you dislike and one I no particular predilection for or against.
And if you want my completely honest opinion of the game:
It's ok.
The gameplay is the best in the series with the enemy variety and power rebalancing making engagements less monotonous. However difficulty scaling still greatly narrows useful powers and tactics to a small and repetitive subset and the game can still generally be reduced to Sniper Rifle Effect or perhaps now Vanguard Effect. Squadmates are still practically useless unless you constantly babysit them and their power usage. I've had annoying issues with hit detection on some of the more oddly shaped enemies and apparently units with melee instant kills will sometimes decide to kill you outside of melee range because you happened to be near them 15-20 seconds ago.
Scenario design has an annoying "Shepherd go do everything" quality, especially when you happen to have squad members who you would think be just as capable of or perhaps even better at doing whatever holographic button pushing needs to be done (except in the occasions where you can specifically commit a squad member to sit on their ass and do nothing). It's clear that Shepherd's true arch-nemesis is architecture as it is probably has a better success rate at foiling Shepherd than Harbinger and TIM combined. Also I continue to be frustrated when scripted events and cutscenes have characters perform distinctly under the level they have been over the course of gameplay.
As for the narrative, while I'm generally very pleased with the closure given in the various Priority story points, I found the introduction of the Crucible and Catalyst to be incredibly dumb and more damning to the overall narrative and player agency than leaving the ending open for the players to interpret. But then that's the problem with the Reapers; they set them up to be so overwhelmingly powerful and unassailable (except when they aren't) such that they apparently resort to a superweapon to provide a means for the protagonists to 'fight back'. Disappointing, given the notion expressed in the first game by Shepherd that they're 'just machines', the idea that the Reapers didn't anticipate the Geth, the Geth have been divergent technologically, and their technology (such as Sovereign's main gun) has been able to be reverse-engineered. Leveling the playing field and fighting is much more interesting a possibility to me than you push the big red button of Reaper destruction.
But as I can tell, none of you have a problem with that concept. You would have been fine with fighting Harbinger, deciding whether to push the big red button or not, and then having long expository epilogue.
