Okay, first, sorry for opening any old wounds or something... But if your case of ME3 hatred is so bad, don't read, okay...
Also, wall of text.
Anyway I was playing the whole ME trilogy for the last 2 months or so.
Finished ME3 today. Mind you, including Leviathan and Extended Cut, and from what I read on the various wikis, these 2 things apparently change a lot of perspective.
Anyway. Of course I couldn't escape the ME3 ending... Thing... Which was going on a year ago. But I managed to stay mostly spoiler-free. I only knew that the ending is band and nihilistic, but nothing really specific.
Of course I didn't have very high hopes, especially since ME3 was already quite erratic in quality (in contrast with ME2, which was just consistently bad).
Well, I got the the ending... And...
I. FUCKING. LOVED. THE. ENDING(S).
Maybe I'm just a nihilistic emo deuchebag, but if I was trying to come up with a sci-fi story about gigantic living spaceships with overwhelming firepower invading the galaxy, then I'd probably want to wrap it all up in a similar way.
I love sci-fi and fantasy, but there's one thing the writers can never get right - introduce an incredibly powerful enemy without making them pathetic at the end or without resorting to deus ex machina. Borg are the prime example. Same for Cylons. Let's not even mention the Terminators. I don't even remember how DS9 ended.
One thing that really bugged me during the majority of ME3 is how everybody on the Citadel acted so nonchalant. I know, there was a lot of hinting about how people are trying to get on as normally as possible, but still. Planets are burning, Citadel is known to be the point of first strike in previous cycles, yet I can still buy fish for the aquarium in the shop and run some silly errands. Hello, why would I chose to fetch some stupid book when my planet is burning? Why should I care about some character subplots when all life is at stake?
I dunno, but despite some cartoonishly stupid elements (the whole Cerberus thing, human Reaper etc.) I kept thinking that this whole thing just CANNOT END WELL. Heck, my character alone managed to annihilate at least two and a half species during the games by doing little more than waving her hand. Reapers do that for a living and they were at this for quite some time. How could I ever expect that rallying a few extra ships would make any kind of dent in their grand plan?
Basically, a typical (say, Star Trek) writer would:
a) devise some underwhelming kill switch which would kill all the Reapers (sleep Data, sleep... ugh)
b) just let us win the war conventionally, because the whole galaxy is united by a human and humans are special! At the end we would see the bigger half of the fleet untouched, while everything Reaper-ish is dead.
c) convince the Reapers to leave. Or make them be our friends. Or show them they're no longer needed. Perhaps reprogram them. Or some other hippie bullshit like that.
Nope. Even the best case scenario would require some deus ex machina. Which we got, granted.
Still, out of the 4 endings, I got the 'worst' one first: everyone is dead and the cycle continues. Makes most sense to me. As the post-credit scene shows, someday the Reapers will get defeated somehow, but humanity merely helped it a little bit, just like the previous races.
While the green ending, albeit somewhat nonsenical in science terms, is probably the best and most scary ending I remember in any sci-fi. So, to prevent ever getting wiped out by Cylons (again), I just turned everyone into a Borg as a precaution? Oh crap.
Anyway, loved the whole thing.
Also: I can see where some of the criticism comes from, but honestly - choice-wise this is pretty much the same what Deus Ex gave us. And after seeing 'endings' such as Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, or Mafia II and such... This one was especially grandiose.
TLDR: Amazing how well this ending fit my taste. Sigh. Now I won't be able to get back to the typical games anymore.