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Needless to say, this post will include spoilers about Mass Effect 3.
I just finished the game and confirmed that I had obtained the optimal ending, considering my decision to unite synthetic and organic life. For those of you not in the know, the player is offered three choices: to control the Reapers and die, to destroy all synthetic lifeforms (including the Geth) and live or to sacrifice the main character in order to merge synthetic and organic life.
I wanted to control the Reapers, as I did not know what the synthesis of both kinds of life might entail for people still alive, but I decided that it might turn out very bad indeed. Destroying the Reapers outright would have been fine, but the Geth had just gained individuality and were helping the Quarians in my game, so I could not sacrifice them. They were alive. I was thus forced into letting my Shepard jump into the Catalyst's beam to achieve the synthesis of organic and synthetic life. It turns out well enough, which is to say that people do not die; they simply gain synthetic properties.
I am not bothered by Shepard's death; his sacrifice for the whole galaxy seems like a good deal to me and a great end to his adventure. It cements him as a hero, and besides Tali died in London (or so he thinks, even though she exits the Normandy's wreckage at the end...), so he cannot look forward to his retirement by her side. The problem is that, with these three options, BioWare says that organic lifeforms and synthetic lifeforms cannot coexist unless they are magically united. The developer holds that, should the player just wipe out synthetic life, more synthetic life will be created before long and it will also rebel against its creators.
What about the Quarians and the Geth, then? Sure, they fought each other for three centuries, but in the end they made peace and worked together, without artificially becoming one people. In order to be consistent, BioWare should have either made sure that Geth and Quarians could never get along or it should have given us an ending that would have let synthetic lifeforms live alongside the organic lifeforms. You could argue that this is exactly what the control ending does, but then we have to accept that the Illusive Man was right, and that the only way to win is to mind-control the enemy. That does not seem like my Shepard.
One reasonable explanation for these three choices is that BioWare wanted the player to have a hard choice to make with no easy answer. After all, BioWare has an history of giving the player hard choices, especially in the Mass Effect franchise. The problem is that the developer did not fully consider what its three games were putting forward in terms of organic and synthetic lifeforms and how they mesh together. Instead, BioWare gave us a dissonant ending to a spectacular trilogy, the only real disappointment in an otherwise great outing. Hopefully, that is what the developer will fix in its reworked ending.
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Everyone in the galaxy is dead except for the Normandy crew, in all endings.
Finally, BioWare's Casey Hudson had the following words on the subject of the ending: "Still, we wanted to give players the chance to experience an inspiring and uplifting ending; in a story where you face a hopeless struggle for basic survival, we see the final moments and imagery as offering victory and hope in the context of sacrifice and reflection."
So Shepard sacrificed herself, but what about victory and hope? I think we should assume that the situation was saved, despite the relays' destruction. Shepard could not have become a legend (as we are told after the ending) if everyone had died except the Normandy crew. Sure, they could have procreated, but that seems too long a shot.
1. In "The Arrival" it was established that an exploding ME relay goes supernova, destroying the entire solar-system. This is corroborated with the imagery we see at the end of ME3, the explosions, on the galactic scale, look exactly like supernovas (even with the artistic freedom and sci-fi leeway i give the designers).
So every system with a ME relay would get completely destroyed.
2. I'm not sure if I missed that, but isn't -every- system that is -colonized- (i.e. has spacefaring, sapient life) come with a ME relay? That was the point of the relays in the first place, to make the job of the reapers easier, to have the relays where organic life -is- clustered around.
As far as I know, systems outside the ME relay network are few and isolated, the codex says that civilizations consciously cluster around ME relays because they rely on the supply-routes. Most colonies are not self-sufficient and would have problems to keep their population up, realistically speaking.
Given this information, at least, with certainty, the systems with ME relays are now destroyed. And the colonies isolated from their regular supply routes will follow sooner or later. Because even if they have FTL ships, the FTL in ME is limited to around 12 Ly/24h, so nobody is reaching any other cluster of systems anytime soon.
I find this ending to be far from "turns out well enough".
So there must be inhabited worlds in systems without mass effect relays. If I were less lazy, I would go fly around right now to find some, but I find it safe to assume that it is correct. If you want to argue, I will go check. The point is, there would still be people alive there, and probably some ships too.
It would be a lot less confusing if they had not used the very same sequences for all endings, though.
Maybe everyone -is- dead (looking at those massive explosions that seem to encompass around 1000ly on the galactic scale in the cinematic)
Or maybe some people survived.
Who knows.
And thats exactly the point. Nobody knows.
How hard would it have been to add a quick cinematic of other races post-relay rebuilding a city, or the citadel repopulating with fleets of ships returning (if the citadel being a relay didnt blow up itself)
Some facts are left unclear and this is unsatisfactory.
Even if the explosions did nothing at all and were "magic", the fact is still that a complete alien fleet is stranded in the sol system and conventional FTL travel is -not- feasible (i quote from the codex):
"...a mass relay can transport starships instantaneously to another relay within the network, allowing for journeys that would otherwise take years or even decades with only FTL drives."
Comparing it to Reaper FTL isn't really an option here because Reaper Tech is infinitely more advanced than the conventional FTL of all races.
So while the reapers might have only needed 6 months to get to the next relay, the Normandy might need "years or decades".
In the end, I don't really care if the relays exploded all life in the galaxy, i care about that the ending is vague, lazy and generally inconsistent with what we experienced before it.
There is something to be said for subtle endings that do not spell everything out, but there is nothing to be said for confusing ones.