Dragon Age 3 to me is a different ball of wax, and my reluctance to buy it is not based on Mass Effect in any way, but rather on the
disastrous ending of DA2, an ending that was, by any standards,
much worse than ME3's original ending, attached to a game that was nowhere near as good, and which was never rectified in any way (though in fairness, that's because the problem there is the entire last third or so of the game).
That said, I found that this ending made the Star Child significantly less annoying to me.
Basically, he goes from being a complete non-sequiter, which makes no sense, to an embodiment of the collective consciousness of the Reapers, which makes a lot more sense. We already know that the Reapers have a semi-collective thing going on, and that they are effectively AIs. We also already know that the Reapers are doing this for reasons other than simply "LOLEVUL". That you should get up to the Catalyst and talk to what is, effectively, the master Reaper-AI makes a degree of sense.
As to the "You wouldn't know them and there isn't enough time" bit, I actually felt that was properly in keeping with the story as a whole. There's a legitimately interesting moment where the Star Child mentions that his "creators" were made into the first Reaper, after he (the AI) came up with the Reaper "solution", and moreover that they "did not approve". This hints strongly at the notion that the Reapers were basically a Geth-like AI that got out of control and decided to enact some horrible cyclical apocalypse to rectify a "problem" that only they were able to see (and perhaps that only they would define as an absolute). I feel this fits much better with what we already know of the Reapers and with the overall themes of Mass Effect. Reapers are basically Geth who never managed to grow beyond their original mechanically-induced obsessions, and did not "ascend" as the Geth did (at least if you reconciled the Geth and Quarians). It also explains why the Star Child is obsessed with this notion of Organic/Synthetic duality.
And Stofsk, I'm not gonna wax thunderous here, but I do want to point out that there's a significant difference in impact and tone/feel between watching the endings on Youtube and playing through the endgame to get to them. When viewed in the context of the decisions you've made and the battles you've fought, I feel that these endings make a lot more sense than when viewed on their own. Ironically, the one ending I
wasn't happy with was precisely the one you cited,
what I call the "Fuck You" ending,
as I felt more could have been done with that concept if they felt like including it (and besides, I would assuredly not have known about it if someone hadn't told me before I got there). I have noticed that the reactions from people whom I know to have
played the endings are almost universally more positive than the reactions from people I know to have simply looked them up. That's the ultimate in selection biases, of course, but still.
Basically, I agree almost point for point with Angry Joe's
analysis of the new ending. It's not perfect, nor is this the way that, ideally, the Mass Effect series should have ended. Had we all received this ending back in January, it would have been a much better situation. Moreover there are things with this ending I find unsatisfying. But am I happy? Overall, yes, I am.
Like Charon, I will not be buying DA3 sight unseen. But should another Mass Effect game come down the pipe, the production of this ending has dramatically increased my chances of buying it, as I know, if nothing else, that Bioware cared enough to try and satisfy me with this game, at great cost to themselves. Whether they were 100% successful or not, that's a step no other company I know of would dare to take, and I tip my hat to them for taking it.
Gaze upon my works, ye mighty, and despair...
Havoc: "So basically if you side against him, he summons Cthulu."
Hotfoot: "Yes, which is reasonable."
