Finished the game this evening. My thoughts are as follows.
I don't have an issue with the ending from a storytelling standpoint. I'm not even gonna argue that aspect with people. It's an opinion thing. And I don't think any opinion on it is right or wrong so arguing about it is sort of pointless outside of expressing how you feel about it which we all certainly have that itch to scratch. Personally I thought my ending was
spoiler (click to show/hide)
kinda artsy and ambiguous and I kinda like that sorta thing but I see how others wouldn't. Or just simply for their own valid reasons didn't like it or didn't think it was the right ending or didn't make sense, or wasn't expansive enough etc.
So that's kinda that on that front. Everybody is gonna have their opinions on those things so its a waste of time to overly spend time on it for me. Reminds me of the kerfuffle that went on about the ending to BSG.
Now the part that I do find very disagreeable and makes me angry is the readiness rating. Now that to me is horse crap. And poorly designed at worse and disingenuous at best. When fistful was talking about this earlier I regret posting what I did and that bioware quote because its utterly misleading and just shows I was the one who didn't understand the system. I'm gonna leave all this unspoilered but not give anyway any details except mechanical ones because I feel you need to know this stuff if you are legit going for the full experience.
I didn't really get that my effective military strength number is reduced due to my readiness rating. I did a lot of side missions I felt and scanned as much as interested me for artifacts and ended up with a military strength of 6291. But an effective military strength of 3522. I had a readiness rating of 56% because I did two multiplayer sessions because I legit like the multiplayer stuff. But I said to myself you know I feel like this is spoiling the single player a bit because I'm seeing monsters I haven't seen in the campaign yet. So i stopped. Not because I didn't like it. But because I said I'll do this after I complete the single player for fun.
So I got to the end of the game and I was a little confused because let's say I couldn't choose certain actions that would have impacted things. So I look up why and its because to do those things you need an effective military strength of >4k and >5k. So fucking tell me that Bioware. Put it in the game. Why hide that? In ME 2 you needed all that stuff outfitted on your ship but they gave you a bit long list of it. So you just did it all. Hiding that you need those explicit number values to get the "best" ending or all the choices is just awful. Because its not even hiding them like in quests or prior decisions you've made. Its simply hiding them to be hiding them. And scanning in this game is awful because its boring. Yeah its boring in ME 2 because its grinding but at least you know what you are grinding for and the specific value amount you need to grind to. If I would have understood that I needed >5k effective military strength I would have just played the multiplayer which I don't have a problem doing. I like it. But I feel lied to with all this stuff about you don't need to do the multiplayer, it can all be done in the singleplayer. I guess. But its boring as fuck not to mention certain quests are broken which is directly their fault which could have increased my military rating more. Plus you still don't know exactly how many you need.
So yeah that's awful design on their aspect. They communicated this aspect very poorly through PR and in game because they designed a very boring way to collect war assets for the most part and then were scared people would get mad about putting in multiplayer so they kept saying you don't have to touch multiplayer.
Well this could have fixed in two ways.
Design better missions and ways to collect war assets or be fucking honest about multiplayer and say hey, you probably want to do this because the other way in sp is really boring. And we are not going to tell you exactly how many you need. We'll just give you a number and a graph that has no frame of reference. Fucking awful. You put in the multiplayer component. It's fun. Stand behind it and tell the truth. Don't add something like you're fucking embarrassed about it. Stand behind your product. If you're going to put that dumb ass green bar at the bottom of the screen then have that represent the amount you need to get the "best" ending/all the choices at the end. Not what it is right now.
I really enjoyed the game. Don't have a problem with the ending. Some great moments all through out. But that aspect really angers me. Now I feel like I also need to replay the last bit just to have the "choices" and hear the dialogue and see the things
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(Even if the changes are so minor as to not be materially important)
So what I'll say to anybody playing the game right now.
Make sure your Effective military strength value is >5k so you have the flexibility to get all your options at the end of the game. Whether you get it by scanning every system in the game or playing the multiplayer is up to you.
I'll probably make a longer post when I get more free time about what I liked. And what I didn't like. Because I legit like a ton. Was really engaging and picked up story-wise in the second half and the combat was really fun for me. But that ending mechanic really angered me. Not the ending itself. But the mechanic of it. Really poor design there.
