And as is, it’s still nowhere near the ME3 ending debacle.
Yeah, I feel like people either have forgotton how absolutely broken ME3's ending was even after, but especially before the Extended Cut DLC (TBH the extendet cut didn't fix much, since the problems ran much deeper).
SPOILERS for ME1-3
The Mass Effect series set up the Reapers as the answer to te Fermi Paradox: Why isn't our galaxy teeming with life? Answer: Well, because every 50.000 yerars the Reapers come and harvest all developed life forms.
The big mystery after the first game was: "why do they do it"? There have been many theories and there are many possible answers that both ME1 and ME2 built towards. I'm not entirely sure anymore, but it had something to do with Dark Ennergy and the harvested civilizations basically beeing a means for the Reapers to prevent the destruction of the galaxy or even the universe. I don't remember exactly.
Anyway, Shepard and crew needed to find a way to stop the Reapers from invading the galaxy, because all they know is that the Reapers are an incomprehensible force that must be stopped. So throughout the trilogy, we tried to learn more about the Reapers and build an alliance to fight against them. We cured the Genophage, brokered peace between Geth and Quarians built up our defence. Despite the Reapers telling us that there is no way of stopping them, we defied the odds and time and time again proved them wrong.
The problem with Mass Effect 3's ending was then that at the very end, the game basically stopped and said: "So yeah, none of what you fought for and what you achieved really matters, because what actually happens is the Reapers kill all organic life, so that organic life won't be killed by synthetic life (WTF??? When was THAT ever a main plot point? Also, I just brokered peace between Geth and Quarians, they are building a society together NOW!!!). So here is a god child and you can tell him if you want to destroy the Reapers, killing all synthetic life (Why would I ever want that?!), controlling the Reapers by Shepard' essence somehow being absorbed (Is this suddenly High Fantasy???) or fusing all organic and synthetic life together by Shepard also being absorbed, and now I guess the Geth have a digestive system and Joker has some USB ports (WTF!!!!!). Oh yeah, and also all Mass Relays are destroyed and all the species in the Galaxy are isolated."
Brokering peace between Geth and Quarians didn't matter, curing the Genophage didn't matter, collecting war assets didn't matter, nothing mattered. In the end, the Galaxy is f***ed, Shepard is dead (that one breath scene does NOT count,they are DEAD!), the crew is stranded somewhere with no way to get home, All the "war assets" are still orbiting Earth with no way to get home.
THIS is why we can say that the ME3 ending rendered all choices meaningless.
SPOILERS for BG3:
BG3's ending is an ENTIRELY different case. The ending is a fitting conclusion to the story, at least in a playthrough where the Brain is destroyed. You know that all your choices mattered. The Tieflings are fine, the Shadow Curse is lifted, my team is alive and well, except for the ones that probably aren't (e.g. Karlach or Astarion), I even got a final romance scene with Lae'Zel. The Gondians are safe, Barcus WrootI is the new leader of the Ironhand Gnomes, I know that Raphael is still defeated and he didn't get the Crown of Karsus. I saved Duke Ravengard, I managed to break Wyll's contract, and so on and so forth.
ALL OF THESE achievements are still valid. They are not rendered meaningless, just because there was no final get together with my team.
That said, I WISH there were a much more fleshed out epilogue with my team and I hope one will be patched in by Larian in the future, bnecause it ended rather abruptly for a game with such length and depth.
But nowhere NEAR is it as badly broken as ME3's ending. In order to make ME3 work for me, I have to install a version of MEHEM mod which bypasses the god child and then also Citadel Epilogue Mod to have colsure with my crew afte r the main game.
