I've decided to re-enter the dusty confines of this miniscule speck of the internet in order to scream some more blasphemies into the night on the quintessential AM radio known as the World Wide Web. While I may be an unfeeling hideous freak of nature (or ugly, if you aren't feeling melodramatic), I still must admit to having been swept up by one of the most shouted-about events in recent gaming.
Commander Shepard's journey has riched an inglorious and nerdrage-filled conclusion. I'm going to assume at this point that you understand the Mass Effect series, but if not, here's a quick version. Commander Shepard(ie the player) is a member of the Alliance that gets a vision from a beacon created by an extinct race of aliens known as the Protheans. You decode the vision and learn that the Protheans were wiped out by a race of Lovecraftian spaceships that wipe out advanced organic life every 50,000 years; the Protheans have been gone for about that much time. Desperation ensues while you rally the entire Alliance fleet to destroy a single Reaper(those spaceships we were talking about) before it can open the mass relays(the reason galactic travel exists) to dark space and let all his buddies in. Then you're killed by a Collector ship. Collectors, you find out, are a race of aliens under control of the Reapers that have been kidnapping human colonies and taking them to the candy store beyond the Omega-4 relay, and you were brought back to life by a terrorist organization to hunt them down... which you do, and along the way you learn that those Protheans that nobody can find were turned into Collectors by our Reaper chums. You destroy or save the Collectors' base and a Reaper made from human genetic goop, then the DLC hits and you have to either destroy a mass relay and the colony/star system it's in, or destroy the mass relay and the colony and regret it, because the Reapers are minutes away from making a surprise rear entrance and fucking everybody. You succeed with minutes left, then you're on Earth for 6 months while the Alliance decides what the hell to do with you. At which point the Reapers show up. You learn of a Prothean superweapon known as the Crucible, which they didn't use because they were missing the final componet, the Catalyst. At the end of the series, you find the Catalyst.
The Catalyst is a godchild-AI-deity-deus ex machina that resides in the Citadel (the hub of the relay network where Sovereign tried to open it to dark space) and controls it and the Reapers. So the entire point of the first game is lost instantly. But it gets better. Your cycle has finished the Crucible, and docks it at the Citadel, at which point the Catalyst gives you three choices: Destroy the Reapers, merge your consciousness with the Reapers and Control them, or fuse organic and synthetic life in the techno-singularity known as Synthesis. Nobody else knows how either. You make your RBG choice, then the Citadel explodes and the Reapers either blow up or leave, all the mass relays are harmlessly destroyed for no reason, your ship lands on a random planet with your squadmates on-board, and every fan is irked. We already know all the infinite plotholes contained within, so let's just say for the sake of reason they fixed the ending.... hello there, Extended Cut DLC(which is as-of-yet unreleased).
So you get to the Catalyst, but let's say he looks like, uhm.... somebody closer to Shepard than a random child killed on Earth. He picks you up and explains who he is, gives some explanation as to why he couldn't just let the Reapers in himself, and gives you your choices. Please note: The Arrival DLC established that mass relays go Joanie Rambo-in-biology-class-level supernova when destroyed, and you've got the galaxy's fleet at Earth to help save your ass.
So he goes, "Alright Shepard, let me level with you for a minute. The Reapers were created because of some bullshit synthetics-will-kill-organics circlejerk, and I control them. But organic life was never meant to get as far as it did, and you managed to build the Crucible and get here to find me. This proves that the Reapers are a failure. Problem is," he pauses for dramatic effect, "I was never given away to shut them off or otherwise destroy them." Shepard wears a 'god damn it' expression, and the Catalyst continues. "The only way to wipe out the Reapers right now is to destroy the entire Relay network, catching every last one in the supernovae. This will destroy most of the galaxy, but the next wave of life can evolve without the threat of the Reapers looming over their heads." Cue awesome decision music. There's already a scene in the ending right now where there's some old guy and some little good looking at the sky, talking about going to the stars and the infinite possibilities of life out there, so they could just cut out about 30 seconds of the post-decision ending and mesh it in perfectly. There are war assets and everything, but because I'll get to that later, but for now, just assume that everybody you know is killed, society in its current form is ruined, everything is screwed, but the Reapers are gone for good.
At this point, you can say to the Catalyst, "Hell no. I just spent all this time, I solved every last conflict in the galaxy, a lot of my friends and comrades are dead, I'm not going to waste everything on the chance we get all the Reapers with a galactic claymore." and rally your fleets with some big important speech ("Everybody, listen up. The Crucible is a no-go, and it won't destroy the Reapers. We've destroyed dozens already, and we've proven they can be killed. We're going to have to stick this out and fight to the death. Save your homeworlds and your families or we're all going to be thralls!") and there's an epic sequence of the fleets fighting the Reaper horde and there's a big great victory... or not.
So there's a few numbers, but for the sake of brevity, we're going to use the one that matters most, Effect Military Strength or EMS, as the name. EMS is the amount of resources you've gathered for the final conflict. All your fleets, armies, artifacts, and former squadmates factor into it and so forth. It doesn't really do anything currently, but since it is supposed to actually matter, let's do so. Say you choose the Destroy the Relays ending. If you have plenty of EMS, you're able to evacuate most of the galaxy's armada out of the blast radius of the Sol relay(or wherever they are) and most of them survive, but there are still incomprehensible losses. If you had just enough, you get some of the ships away, but most of everything is vaporised in astronomic fire. If you had almost none, nobody survives except for one or two lucky bastards. If you choose the Final Battle ending instead, your EMS matters even more. If you have a low EMS, you lose. No contest. The Reapers win, the Crucible is destroyed, and the oldster-and-child scene is much more sinister, and all you can do is hope that a later cycle finds a way to beat the Reapers. If you have enough resources, you win, but with extreme losses. No oldster scene. Almost everyone is killed in the fighting, the Crucible is destroyed, what's left of society is toppling on the edge of the abyss, but you've won. If you had exorbitant EMS, than you win and it's your standard happy ending, and everyone's all happy and everything(that survived). Since the relay network is still up and running, there's no isolation in the galaxy.
So if you get the 'good' ending, you destroy all the Reapers. "Reaper indoctrination is an insidious means of controlling organic minds." And even dead gods dream. Not to mention the plans for the Crucible are still laying around, and still very much capable of galactic devastation. If you destroy the relay network, there's no indoctrination and no Crucible, but is it worth the price?
This is the ABC ending I want in the Extended Cut if they actually decide to try to unfuck it. Self-indulgence over.
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