[Henry Fool]

Originally Posted by AR_Six

Spoiler!

FYI, Henry Fool, no matter who you take on the end mission your love interest usually steps out of the shuttle at the end. I took Liara with me at the end and she stepped off the shuttle with Joker. It really is nonsensical. I could forgive a little nonsense, it's more the total cacaphony of bull#### that makes the ending a disaster. If it was just 2 or 3 things that don't make sense or are poor storytelling, I'd be like "well, it's not perfect, but yknow, I can live with that".

The theory that you're supposedly indoctrinated and fail the end mission unless you choose the destroy option is probably wrong. People who convince themselves that it's more likely than not that the devs just got shut down on their "real" ending are kidding themselves because they can't accept the badness of the way it played out. Still, it does offer an opportunity to add DLC that would extend from that point and create a real ending.

Spoiler!

If that's correct, then it might present a problem, but I'd have to see all the possibilities first. But I'd remind you that it's unclear how much time Shepard actually spends up in the Citadel. For one, she's unconscious on two different occasions. I'm reluctant to say that someone who takes part in the assault can't possibly be on the Normandy but I have to admit that it's not a choice I'd make if I were writing it. One can speculate. The Citadel opens its arms well before the Crucible fires, which might be the cue when the Normandy picks up someone.

Is it clear what Normandy's role was in the battle? It has good weapons but its firepower is not what distinguishes it from other ships, it's its agility and ability to go undetected. If someone is bothered by these kinds of issues, that's the first thing I'd clarify.

Be that as it may, the point is that since there's enough time, you can always come up with a reason. Like I said, this is a matter of good faith. Since there is none for Bioware at the moment, people treat such things as insurmountable plot holes which they are not, at least necessarily. Bioware can explain afterwards what happened but very few of those who are angry will accept it at this point. Bioware counted on the good will between the storyteller and their audience.

It's not plausible to me that they are just too dumb to think about the logistics of getting a person from A to B. They must have concluded that it was possible. And they assumed they wouldn't have to explain such things. Maybe they were wrong in that assumption, but that doesn't necessarily make it incompetent writing.

I have more sympathy with the big issues and I can certainly understand if the ending just leaves someone unmoved. That's valid. Nothing you can do about that. If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't.

People say that there were all these things wrong, so much that you can overlook one or two things, but when you discuss things issue by issue, it seems that those details that you're not attending to right now always kind of slip away and remain problematic, and since in the end you're always just discussing the one little thing, nothing in the general view changes. It's always crap. No matter how much you've discussed other things, the overall view remains that even if this one thing isn't so bad, there are so many problems. I've encountered this before and I suspect I can't really convince anyone that the ending isn't as riddled with errors that has been argued.

I agree that the indoctrination theory is wrong. That's not a debate I want to have now but there's no direct evidence for it and more importantly Bioware would not have ended the game the way they did if that's really what was going on. There would have been more afterwards. Not a chance in hell that's what they intended. But if someone prefers that ending, I think they have every right to.