I'll admit that I'm not as enraged as a great many other players are about the Mass Effect series' ending. (Admittedly though, I've only recently become immersed in the Mass Effect world; I haven't been around for the past five years reading the novels and comics, or collecting the art and action figures.) However, I didn't feel much of anything at all as I watched the end credits roll.

I felt profound sadness when Shepard had the last conversation with Anderson. I even felt a poignant sadness when I watched Shepard leap into a big beam of light, knowing that this was the end of the road.

However, for the rest of the time, I felt…quizzical. When the kid walked up to me and said "I am the Catalyst", I thought, "huh." And as he spoke more, I thought: "So you're God, basically." Logically, I figured that this made sense and spoke of a possibly interesting philosophical side (what if humanity's idea of God was actually this AI, all along? Interesting.)

Then he started talking about the three choices, and I was reminded uncomfortably of that scene in Matrix Revolutions when Neo stands before an essentially all-powerful bearded guy in a suit, who says "pick the door on your left or the door on your right". Literally, when the Catalyst finished rattling off my options, my first thought was: "wait, what was that last part again?" I looked at the three beams of light. Now, as an unspoken artistic rule, the option that's in the middle is always the best option. And from what I could recall, the Catalyst had basically said that this one was the "best" option: no synthetics or organics die, everyone's happy. Although I die, presumably.

At this point I felt a twinge of annoyance. I never, ever saw the whole "organics/synthetics" debate as THE definitive theme of the Mass Effect series. Sure, it was an intriguing theme, and some of my favourite moments were watching EDI and Legion become truly autonomous beings. Their arguments about the ethics of synthetics were some of the most interesting conversations, in my opinion. But NEVER did I think that this was the whole point of my journey. Why? Because the Reapers are the enemy of EVERYONE. The whole point of my epic three-episode battle was to stop the immutable, unstoppable force that would end all free will and life as we know it by uniting everyone in the galaxy. Unity in spite of vast cultural, political, and racial differences was the definitive theme of these stories (not the same as homogeneity, as the Synthesis ending seems to suggest).

As soon as the options were presented, I felt detached from the story. I honestly at that moment did not really care about which "door" to pick, simply because they all spoke in the language of large, impersonal magnitudes. Remember how Mordin once said that saving the galaxy was not something he could really fight for, since it was too big a place to really grasp? And then he says he'll fight for his favourite nephew instead? This was a brilliant moment in the game for me (I believe it was Mass Effect 2). So at this moment, when this literal deus ex machina pops up and asks if I feel like saving the whole galaxy or only some parts of it, the implications went over my head. Never mind the other questions I had, such as "seems like organics and synthetics can get along just fine…" or "why does this Catalyst even care? Why not just let the Reapers finish all of us off and stop wasting resources on this pointless 50K year cycle? Or why not just let organics live on and then destroy themselves with their own eventual synthetic super-creations, which would happen without your intervention anyway, and which would ultimately have the same outcome? Ultimately, whether by their own hand or the Reapers, these civilizations are (apparently) doomed. So why not just let things take their natural course?

Questions like these had a few seconds to flash before my mind as I stood, puzzling, before my limited options. I understood several things implicitly: to create a meaningful ending, the storytellers wanted me to have to sacrifice myself. I sort of knew since the beginning that Shepard would have to die. And I was ok with that, and to some extent agreed that no happy ending could justify the devastation that the game wanted to convey. But the purposes for which I was sacrificing myself just felt so superficial. I recall Garrus saying something about how, if we find ourselves reduced to brutal calculus during the war, we've already lost - and yet here I am in that very situation. If you choose Option A, you will gain X but lose Y. If you choose Option B, you will lose X but gain Y. If you choose Option C, you will gain X and Y. The transparency of this kind of algebra - not to mention that it's ridiculously clear which is the "best" option - irked me. Plus my death was guaranteed in all of them.

So I went with C. There was, after all, the chance that this wasn't really all over, right? The truly epic part that I was expecting hadn't begun yet, after all - the part in Lord of the Rings where the nations of Men united against Sauron in that final battle, or the part in Star Wars where Luke faces off with the evil Emperor, or the part in Avatar where the united Navi clans face the evil human army. No, I figured, sh*t had yet to get real, so I'd go along with it.

I watched as my Shepard's face began withering and melting away and thought "well, looks like I'm really dead". I was sad at that part, of course; it sucks that Shepard has to die. I liked Shepard. And it sucks that I'd no longer be playing as him/her. But I respected it as a creative decision from the storytellers and I kept watching, eager to see the Reapers at least getting ass-kicked out of my galaxy, and to see my beloved friends on Earth pump their fists in the air, perhaps in tears, and call my name. Or something. I trusted the storytellers to provide me with some kind of emotional catharsis at that point. Show me that through my sacrifice, I attained victory for the rest of civilization.

Instead, the quiet piano chimed in, and I watched as the ending quietly played out before me. Quietly, the mass relays exploded (wait - I didn't know that would happen! I thought if I picked…?). And….did I just screw over everyone I brought to Earth? Now they can't leave? And then quietly the Reapers left Earth. Then I watched Joker racing away from a big rolling blast of energy (did I just effectively n-bomb my whole solar system? If not then why is Joker booking it the hell out of there?)

Finally I see that the Normandy has crash-landed….somewhere. EDI and Joker embrace, how cute. Whoa, Joker has eerie green eyes…is he some sort of weird robo-Joker now? Looks like Kaidan made it out too. He doesn't seem too upset that I'm DEAD. Did anyone else survive? And how the hell did Kaidan get back on the ship anyway? And why are they on this random planet? Are they now all doomed to survive in the wilderness like bushmen, stranded in this alien solar system? I mean, the ship is all but destroyed. Not to mention the mass relays.

The biggest question mark floating in my head, as the end credits rolled, was "soooo what happened to everyone???" What happened to the billions of people in the Sol system? But not only that: where was everyone, even while I was back on Earth, holding off waves of husks with my three-man squad? At least, I thought the Rachni queen would come storming in at some point and save my ass. Do you mean to tell me that all those difficult moral decisions amounted to nothing but a numerical value on that console in the war room? I won't even get a cutscene to reward me for bringing lasting peace between the geth and the quarians?

All these questions took the form of the underwhelming feeling of "this is it, isn't it". (Oh Liara, how right you were.) And then I watched the old man and the child talking about me and referring to me as "the Shepard". Well that's nice….except that I don't care about these people. I care about my squad mates. I care about the fleets that I worked so hard to gather. I resisted kicking Diana Allers off my ship just in case it would make any difference to my endgame.

The thing about this whole debacle is that the story neglected to do one very simple thing: provide emotional catharsis. I was ready to accept almost any level of plot inconsistency or suspension of disbelief, if it meant that by the end I was in tears and was thinking "damn, I really did just save the galaxy." Instead, I got a long-winded, coldly rational explanation for what was arguably the least important part of the plot: the reason behind the Reaper attacks. I had actually spent the first two games believing we would never know why the Reapers wanted us all dead; it would be "beyond my comprehension" (you know what, it still IS beyond my comprehension.) Just like how Star Wars never needed to tell us why Darth Vader became evil, we don't need to know why the Reapers are the way they are. What we DO need to know is, what was the point of it all? How did I, as the most badass human around, make a dent in the universe? Don't just tell it to me ("Shepard became a legend and made the Reapers go away"). SHOW me. Show me the future I paved for all civilization with my sacrifice. At the very least, show me what happened to my friends - ALL of them. Because they're the ones I care about in this story, more so even than the fate of all of humanity and all the other aliens.

Still grasping at straws, I thought, "well maybe this is just ONE of the endings. This is Mass Effect, after all!" So I reloaded a save and tried Option A. And the only difference was that the color of light changed, and that EDI didn't disembark from the Normandy. That was when I officially stopped caring about the choice I had made. And gave up all hope of expecting what I had expected the ending would be.

Do I think the developers have to make a new ending? No - or rather, ONLY if they want to. I do not believe they are obligated to make something else, despite the fact that many, many people were unsatisfied with the ending. I do believe that this was a lesson to be learned to painful way, and that as a result their next game will be all the better for it. I don't fault them or think that they were lazy, but I do believe this was an unfortunate misstep in an otherwise stunning series of games. The fact is, stories with sh*tty endings are everywhere; it's just that in this day and age, in this industry, it's a lot more possible for the consumer to lambast the creators. At this point, the story has been released and cannot be undone; anything further from this point, whether by DLC or not, would be nothing more than a PR move, UNLESS the creators themselves feel like they do, in fact, have more to say about the story itself. We can't change the fact that the ending happened - as crappy as it seems. I feel for Bioware, in fact; as a creative professional, I know how much it sucks to have to sacrifice creative integrity to please the masses. But I don't share the belief that videogames are an art form, and thus I won't lose respect for them if they cave and give fans their damn DLC. And on the other hand, I think that the fans have good points in pointing out the weaknesses of the ending; what if, with their feedback in mind, you created a better ending (and thus better overall story) than you ever could have on your own? It's your call, Bioware. But I still respect and support you either way.