It's good honest controversy that will absolve our culture of this belief that video games aren't an art form. Heavy Rain, for instance. You get quick time events, action scenes, and other standard video game bells and whistles, but you also get really heavy pills to swallow. Suicide, child abandonment, murder, sexual enslavement, self-mutilation, and torture are a far cry from the days of the NES. Even though Kojima doing an interview where he basically says "Oh, I'm worried people will suddenly not come out in hordes to buy my mega-successful title" is obviously an advertising stunt, I'm hopeful he's really being honest in that he's adding a little thinking substance to an already awesome game.

The game that got me into video games. And for an 8-bit game, one of the best soundtracks ever.

Say what you will about this series. This is awesome.

@Volgin True, the purpose of a Paragon/Renegade system should be to determine for yourself what you want him to be the symbol of. However, Paragon and Renegade don't exactly mean "Good" and "Evil," so much as "Model of excellence" and "Symbol of chaos." As the Reapers like to point out, humanity left unchecked leads to chaos, which is synonymous with being a Renegade. But you also spend all three games as a Commander in the Alliance Navy, which almost implores you to be an exemplary role model. Basically, Bioware isn't asking you to choose between the light/dark side, so much as two opposite types of people who both work towards the same end. I think when they said it'd have an impact on the ending, they meant ME3 being the end of the trilogy. And you can't argue that they didn't hold up to that. As for Shepard's death being our decision... We got to decide the fate of just about every character in the series, but being that we play AS Shepard, it really shouldn't be our choice. That's just opinion though.

*SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* Personally, I loved the ending. Shepard had to die. It's the way a true heroic story ends. What I really loved was that Bioware didn't make light of their own story. Cut and dry happy endings have their place in story-telling, but a story of Mass Effect's magnitude would have been watered down. For anyone who's upset at the amount of loss at the end of the game, you've missed the point entirely. The point isn't who's left at the end. It's bigger than who survives. They stress over and over how this is the first time multiple civilizations have banded together and worked as a whole, as well as the sacrifices everyone in the game makes. The kid who shows up throughout the game in different forms is just the embodiment of all that. He says how the Illusive Man couldn''t control the Reapers because he was already under THEIR control. He was greedy, and that greed actually controlled him, etc, etc. The point, as I said, wasn't about who's got the most pieces on the board at the end - this was a galactic war - yes, they all die. But Mass Effect's setting was the venue for the kinds of things that make a story thought-provoking. The reason the Reapers 'lost,' and the reason the story was so well-done, is because Shepard is the symbol of selflessness, and the Illusive man is the symbol of selfishness. Both are powerful, but ultimately one of them you can control, and one of them controls you.