There was a common theme throughout the game, people die, friends die, war blows, oh and PEOPLE DIE. Did we not notice squad mates died throughout the series? So obviously BW is not afraid to kill people off, which isn't bad; also if they wanted to keep somewhat realistic which they kind of did just being in the future and such, most of the time people die in war especially when they are soldiers on the front line.
Also BW said mass effect is the story of Shepard, so when the series ends so does Shepard's story. I would assume that in a situation Shepard and everyone fighting was in that most of them would die, he is human he isn't immortal. Though it was strange that at the end when you are level 60 and have good weapons he powers through enemies like a super soldier literally, so they threw the fans a bone and had breathing at the end of a cutscene; but do a side mission and turn up the sound at the end and there is breathing in the background of most black screens. Kind of that "we are still alive and still fighting." theme carried throughout the game
Yea it sounds like a Gurren Laggan rip happened, but Gurren Laggan wasn't afraid to be over the top about it. Though it's plausible if you think about it.
1. Say this race creates machines and machines are destroying all organic life, so they build the reapers in a last ditch effort and are still destroyed but the reapers still finish off the synthetics and carry out the plans to make sure this doesn't happen again.
2. Or the race becomes the reapers and destroys the synthetics and wants to protect the galaxy. Hence why we are given the option to become one with the reapers like the first ones did. This seems like the most likely scenario since reapers don't seem like true AI/synthetic.
3. Or synthetics win, but like what happens when you save the geth they grow and receive individuality and become like EDI or the "new geth" and realize they will destroy everything if they continue. So they alter their programming and create the reapers to keep the rest of the universe in check while they continue living out their lives and being less destructive.
4. Or some new crazy idea some alien race had this war with synthetics they barely won, so to prevent this from happening they built the reapers because they knew they couldn't enforce a universe wide thing that said don't build synthetics. The reapers were made to destroy all species when something like Geth are made but to not worry about the creators because they learned their lesson. Because if the synthetics won in the milky way they could build up forces and take on the rest of the universe. So use reapers to prevent that, like a dick though.
BW you really missed the mark on the whole explanation on who made the reapers, yea we get their plan. It was vague and not well communicated, you had a lot of potential if you would have talked about it. But then again we only know what Shepard knows and he doesn't learn this so more could come out of it. I see prequel books maybe or something about the rebuild, we kind of defeated all enemy forces so a ME sequel game would have a hard time explaining itself if the gameplay was to remain unchanged.
Also people have been saying the whole the "Mass Effect relays are gone so everyone is trapped on Earth." Not really, they are just limited to FTL travel only, so stuck in the Sol Cluster. According to science that has come out in the last year we are pretty sure almost every star in the sky has a set of planets. We never really were told how many clusters there are in the Sol Cluster either, but in reality all the stars you traveled by when moving between clusters would have planets around them. Plus they understand how Mass Effect fields work in order to use FTL travel and Prothean's built the conduit. I am sure they would work on reconstructing them in a few hundred years. But reguardless all the races would have all of the solar systems around our local system to live on for a few hundred years. But with our population drop I am sure earth could handle them all.
Also BW will not rewrite the game with a new ending, that's just a silly thought. Almost as silly as saying the 3DS was going to get a re-release immediately after they made the extra joystick attachment. Cost would be too high, though we could see DLC that shows what happens to the rest of the crew after the war ends. BW doesn't make money if you like the ending or not, they make it on if you bought the game and saw the ending, its their story, would you expect someone who wrote a book to rewrite the book with a new ending because the fans didn't like the authors story? No because if that was the case the first Twlight book would have been re-released years ago and all the gay sparkly vampires murdered in chapter 2.
.
