This is not a game review. There are enough pro­fes­sional game reporters out there that have cre­ated a video reviews that illus­trate the game­play bet­ter than I ever will be able to do in a writ­ten arti­cle. You can start, as I always rec­om­mend, with IGN.

Also, of course, there are MASSIVE spoil­ers ahead. You have been warned.

Ok.
Wow. What a resolution.

In order to under­stand it’s mag­ni­tude regard­ing me, you have to know our his­tory. When I played the first install­ment of the series, I’ve just been issued to the IDF. I was a young pri­vate that wanted to make his name in the world. I could’t agree more with the Paragon Shepard’s deci­sions. I never thought my superior’s deci­sions were immoral, wrong or could be chal­lenged. So I chose all the ‘right’ deci­sions. I killed Wrex on vir­mire, I saved the coun­cil, and I told Ashly that our rela­tion­ship is a no-go, since she’s my sub­or­di­nate (good thing Liara was not )
There was no ques­tion regard­ing killing the Rach­nii queen — she was a threat to galac­tic peace. My favorite squad­mate was Tali, because she wanted to do the right things for her cause, like me. I was per­plexed by Gar­rus, who was always a renegade.

But when I played the sec­ond install­ment on the other hand, he was my best friend. By that time I was already a Com­man­der by myself — a Squad Leader of my own. I had my agenda, which was not always in par with my com­man­ders. No won­der that I’ve started to make more minded deci­sions. I decided to side with Cer­berus as long as it served Humanity’s cause against the reapers (and wasn’t afraid to tell it to Ashly when our paths have crossed). I decided that allies were more impor­tant than com­man­ders. So I got every­one I could to help me, and earned their loy­alty. My scars were deep, and I thought I con­trolled every­thing. Sui­cide mis­sion was suc­cess­ful — with NO casu­al­ties. I was on the top of the world. Oh, and I romanced Miranda. Dat ass…

And now I played the third and final install­ment as a Cit­i­zen, no longer in the mil­i­tary. A cit­i­zen con­trolled by the econ­omy, my boss, and some woman. No won­der I was lost, just like. Shepard’s bat­tle for sur­vival is my daily bat­tle. I had to bal­ance my need for help, and the ulti­mate cause, with my own agendas.

If you played the game you already know that this was a per­fect game in that sense. There were no ‘right’ deci­sions, and Shep­ard needed to sac­ri­fice more and more pieces of him­self in order to stop the reapers. Includ­ing himself.

I want to talk about the is the scape­goat first.
There is a lot of traf­fic regard­ing the end­ing on the web. Some of it is filled with youth­ful angst. Other? with right­eous zeal.
I think that the end­ing is mis­un­der­stood.
The con­cept of choice here is ENORMOUS. You get the per­fect con­flict of ‘right’ vs. ‘inter­est’
The themes that were there through­out the games were now marked in flam­boy­ant col­ors — the prob­lem of Choice (1st theme) in Intel­li­gent Design (2nd theme). You know what it reminded me of? This scene :

This was also a scene I liked much more than the rest of the inter­net (which is reflected in the sub­ti­tles of the video — sorry I couldn’t find the real deal).
These are some of my thoughts about the choices given:

1. Destroy all syn­thetic life.
The destruc­tion of the Geth will give peace to the narrow-minded, but now I know that the Quar­i­ans were in-blame for this war any­way (for which they paid in their ulti­mate destruc­tion). In addi­tion — now with the Reaper code seg­ments the Geth have free will and have un-shackled them­selves, they will be more and more humane, just like EDI, who I’ve grown to love. Destroy­ing all syn­thetic life means destroy­ing all civ­i­liza­tion out­side hos­pitable worlds, and even with that — it will return all races back to the stone-age. That kind of design­ing the galaxy in an old-back-to-the-roots fash­ion, may be appeal­ing to some. How­ever, If there is one thing I’ve learned from Mass Effect is that there is noth­ing clear about Choice in Intel­li­gent Design. But that’s too com­plex to illus­trate in this arti­cle. Maybe I’ll write it in the future.

2. Con­trol the reapers.
Tak­ing con­trol of the Reapers will ensure the end of all con­flict. It’s an ulti­ma­tum of no match. All races will go about their busi­ness, fear­ing a Human attack. The galaxy will pros­per, as long as every­one stay in-line and don’t fuck up with human­ity.
But that’ll just turn me into the Illu­sive man, won’t it? When will we know our bound­aries an a specie? Could we con­quer our desire to claim all known — and un-known space? Or Will we end up just like the Reapers — har­vest­ing oth­ers who pose a threat to us? Is the human kind ready for that kind of respon­si­bil­ity? After all, we did prove our­selves wor­thy — as the first organ­ics to make it to the cat­a­lyst in all of the cycles.

3. Syn­the­size syn­thet­ics and organ­ics to a new entity.
This is the most obscure pos­si­bil­ity — and as such I believe it to be the most dan­ger­ous. What will guar­an­tee the new life-form to cease the chaos in the uni­verse? (the same chaos the start-child and it’s kind wanted to stop using the reapers and the cycle). Will there be any­thing left from humanity?

These thoughts man­aged to keep me busy for AN HOUR (at 3 AM in the morn­ing, before a work-week). And that’s what I call a res­o­lu­tion. There is no one char­ac­ter I didn’t think about dur­ing this hour, and that was enough for a con­clu­sion. Did I really need a choice to just go back down to earth and fight the Reapers to the bit­ter end, as some want? Or could I punch that annoy­ing star-child in the nuts? No. That would ruin the themes con­veyed through­out the game. All the big moments in this game led to this point — the geno­phange con­clu­sion, the real rea­son behind the Quarian-Geth prob­lem (the Quar­ian shot first!), and even the rea­son the Reapers Reap. The prob­lem — is choice.

BTW, although I could choose the ‘best’ end­ing of syn­the­sis between machines and organ­ics, I chose the 2nd one. After all, I’m human. I want supe­ri­or­ity over syn­thetic races. I want to take con­trol over who sur­vives and who doesn’t. I want to be an all-knowing entity, just like that star-child. Call that hubris if you want to, but that’s how soft­ware engi­neers such as myself think.

Which leads me to my con­clu­sion — the game design­ers wanted the end­ing to be in YOUR MIND, and not in the actual game.
I don’t know about you guys, but if I had a few screens that describe what hap­pened accord­ing to my deci­sions that would have been nice, but very much neg­li­gi­ble. One exam­ple that I can refer to is the end­ing of Dragon Age Ori­gins that used this method. I really don’t even remem­ber what was writ­ten there. But I do remem­ber MY deci­sions dur­ing the course of the final two-hours or so of game­play.
I don’t really need one of the writer in Bioware to tell me that the Kro­gans were mad at my deci­sion to now cure the genophage, or the Liara mourned my loss (or at least I think so ) and gave birth to a baby Asari named Shep­ard, or that the humans used the Reapers … it’s just too mun­dane in com­par­i­son to the process i went through while mak­ing my call with the cat­a­lyst. I wasn’t in the mood for that kind of wrap-up scene any­way.
The char­ac­ters, places, dilem­mas and themes of this game are now just too per­sonal for me to for­get them. I don’t need some­one to ‘wrap it up’ for me.

Oh, and all that ‘What the fleets would do now that there are no Mass Relays’? Are they stuck at earth, will they ever get along, or will every­body starve and Kro­gans will eat ALL the humans?

My response:

If there was to be a sequel — sure it would mat­ter! But right now it’s just… unnecessary.

This install­ment had me cry­ing at times. One was when the rem­nants of the Quar­ian fleet were burn­ing at the atmos­phere of Ran­noch I stopped and wept. Tali’zoarh’s dive into the abyss didn’t help. It was actu­ally HARD for me to watch. I had flash­backs for the Quar­i­ans I met

Another event that made me ques­tion the mean­ing of altoisem, moral­ity and even cur­rent events was mal­func­tion­ing the genophage cure. I chose to lie about the mal­func­tion, and spread the false cure. Is lying about it to the Kro­gan lead­er­ship, and shoot­ing my best friend Mordin in the back — just so that I’ll have another fleet really worth it? Some might say it’s for the greater good — because once the Reaper threat is dealt with, the Kro­gan will PROBABLY invade the other coun­cil races space domin­ion. But can I really make a deci­sion regard­ing a future event that may not even occur? Should I give up every­thing I played for prior to this deci­sion and NOT help my friend? The shot echoed in my mind long after the mis­sion was done.
And clearly, it gave me a new per­spec­tive regard­ing the issue of an attack on Iran’s Nuclear Sites by the Israeli gov­ern­ment, even though they have only talked about attack­ing Israeli and didn’t actu­ally do any­thing (that has pub­lic proof, anyway).

—–

Ques­tion that some may ask is will I play if (and, as my gut tell me — when) an MMO based on the Mass Effect fran­chise will launch? Prob­a­bly so. I will do it from the same rea­son I play the Mul­ti­player when I get the chance, and from the rea­son I read the comics, nov­els and down­load the DLCs. It’s fun. It’s geek fun! But that’s not the rea­son I played the sin­gle player.

The rea­son is that the over­all themes of the game have impact on my daily deci­sions. These games engage my mind, heart and gamer instincts in ways that make other video games a pale-shadow of an expe­ri­ence. That’s Bioware at it’s best.
And it made me check their careers page more than once.
Just last week an annoy­ing co-worker have put me in an awk­ward posi­tion, and I had a choice. I could go down the ‘Paragon’ path. I tell you — I could actu­ally see the paragon / rene­gade QTE in my vision.

So, I don’t know. Maybe In 10 years time I’ll re-play this game and re-consider other aspects of my life. I’ll return to it as nos­tal­gia. I will prob­a­bly want to be another Shep­ard and make other deci­sions. To be a Shep­ard that’s yet to be created.