The first time I had played it, I had only played halfway through Mass Effect 1. So I didn’t start with any of the choices made in the first game being actually my own. But even then, I thought the ending was pretty bad (this was before the extended version). I disliked how they just made choices not matter.
About a year layer, I grabbed the Mass Effect Trilogy from Amazon and sat through and played through the entire trilogy. I wanted to get the whole experience, so that meant not just playing through the trilogy, but completing every side quest, getting every weapon, listening to every database entry and snagging every achievement (except in Mass Effect 1, which had you go like ten times through the campaign bringing along a certain character for 90% of the game).
I was even more pissed off when I got to the ending this time.
Here’s the thing: Mass Effect has two big morals that the series seems to play in. The first is that united, you are much stronger than on your own. There’s a big theme of unison as you basically solve racism for so many people, an have a team assembled of all these different alien creatures.
The second moral is that humans are absolutely the best race, hands down.
I mean, look at it. Every other species in the galaxy takes decades, even centuries to get just representation on the Citadel. Humans? Just 10, and in under 40 years after discovering Mass Effect technology, we’re already running the show. It takes centuries of establishment for other races to be considered to become Spectres. Humans? Less than half of one of our lifetimes, and that’s only after they dropped Anderson as a candidate.
All throughout the game you get races bemoaning how it took them so long to do this and how it was impossible to do this. Our first contact with aliens were making the freaking turians run with their tails between their legs. We basically come in and storm the entire galaxy in less than half a century, rising up ranks like they’re not even there. Humans are the best race there are, and Commander Sheppard is the best human.
And that’s why I hated that ending, because it went against everything that had been set place so far. One of the reasons I loved this game is because I played as a real, honest to goodness commander, someone who made sure the galaxy was in his/her favor and made choices that effected entire species. I mean, you choose between genocide like half a dozen times. Sure, I know the Reapers had devastated tons of other cycles before, but none of those cycles ever had humans in it. None of the cycles ever had me. Because of me, these people were going to crumble.
My Sheppard would have and always did choose the “Reject” ending. Because screw you, Catalyst. I’m Commander Sheppard. I’m a human. This is my world. You don’t get to just give me “options”. You are the one that plays by my rules. And that is my favorite store on the Citadel.