The last half hour makes no sense and once you meet the Catalyst absolutely everything falls apart in terms of the themes of the Mass Effect series. 3 games of the same themes are changed IN THE LAST 5 MINUTES... The chief principle of Mass Effect was that you make your own choices following the themes of self-determination and overcoming racial boundaries. This is completely shat on in the ending because EVERY option is counter-intuitive to what you spent 3 games building up to. Destroy: You kill the geth after spending a sizeable portion of ME2 and ME3 learning about their past and even having the chance to make them sentient, ultimately proving the Reapers wrong - organics and synthetics CAN co-exist but we're forced to abandon this because some starchild we've never even seen before tells us to. We also kill EDI after 2 games of building up her character to the point where she pretty much becomes a true human, this whole ending is one giant middle-finger to the player who spent 5 years making all these choices only for them to amount to sweet -blam!- all in the end (except there's no middle finger big enough that I can point back at Bioware for this...). Control: This is why we spent ALL of ME3 fighting against the Illusive Man, he wants to control the Reapers but our goal from the start has been to destroy them. How can Shepard control the Reapers if he's dead? In this ending, does Shepard replace the original Catalyst, meaning only his physical body dies? This is the only option that leaves the Citadel intact (albeit with its arms fully closed), so if Shepard's consciousness does survive as the new Catalyst, perhaps he'll reopen the Citadel later and assist the various species now stranded in the Sol System in the construction of a new mass relays... Oh wait, we're not told... Synthesis: This is just -blam!- stupid. Not only did we spend ALL of ME1 fighting against Saren over this, it's a completely stupid option and anyone who thought it was a good choice or qualified as the 'best' ending is a fool. How does this turn organics into machines? It's space magic, we're not given any explanation into how this works. Here's 2 lines from ME2 that immediately invalidate this as an option: 1) "Evolution cannot be halted, progress cannot be stopped!" ~ Harbinger. Yes, Harbinger said this and it's directly contradicted by the Catalyst by saying that synthesis is the final stage of organic life. No. You combine organic DNA with this Reaper tech you get Husks, the Reapers win - this brings me to my next quote... 2) "No soul - replaced by tech!" ~ Mordin analysing the effects the Reapers had on the Collectors. Collectors were a hybrid of synthetic and organic framework and what were they? Mindless thrills under Harbinger's command - choose synthesis and the Reapers just leave. Once again, like control, the Reapers win. Another problem is that there's no conclusive epilogue, you're just left hanging as to what happens to everyone. Your crew (which we have no idea why they were going through a mass relay) crash lands on a random planet. With no Mass relays, and the ship broken they're stuck there. Because they need different foods Either Tali and Garrus would die, or only the two of them would survive. And then there's the matter of all the combined galactic fleets STUCK IN THE SOL SYSTEM. They just leave us hanging. The galaxy, while still alive, most individuals are pretty much screwed. They could have AT LEAST done what they did in Dragon Age: Origins and have text explain what happens to everyone. For further reading, I direct you to [url=http://docs.google.com/document/d/1QT4IUepvrU1pfv_B95oQj0H84DlCTUmzQ_uQh1voTUs/mobilebasic?pli=1]this google document[/url] explaining why nothing made sense and how you were screwed over. You know there's something that has to be wrong when that guy can type out the equivalent of about 15/20 pages of a Word document out about this 1 topic. [Edited on 05.22.2012 1:10 AM PDT]