I just caught up on the last few pages of discussion and it boggles my mind that there are people still defending the ending and claiming that the total fuckification of galactic civilization is some kind of crazy fanwanking like the Endor thing.
You know what the end of ME3 is like? It's like this. You're watching movies about World War II. The first one is about Pearl Harbor, the next one is the Dirty Dozen, and the third movie is a series of battle set pieces that ends with the hero being forced to choose between merging with the Nazis and maybe controlling them, blowing up all internal combustion engines, or use magic to make everyone part Aryan Superman.
That's not the point I'm trying to make, though. You want an epilogue? Here's your epilogue.
The local cluster is fucked. There isn't enough shit there for everyone to eat. Oh, yeah, everyone is cheering once the Reapers start dropping, but when they realize they can't leave, shit is going to get tense. The Krogan are going to be mighty pissed there's fertile females waiting back home that they aren't banging. The Turians and Asari are going to want to get back to Palaven and Thessia to try to rebuild their civlizations. If the quantum entanglement communicators are down, they don't even know if all Reapers everywhere are dead; their homeworlds might be being Reaped at this very moment. We, as the player, are informed of this but nobody told the huge fleet of warships around Earth.
You've also got a big contingent of Krogan on Palaven now. If I was the Turians I'd want to boogie back home straight away.
While we're at it, this fragile alliance has been completely decapitated. The Council is gone, the Citadel is gone, the alliance and bureaucracy that kept the peace have been wiped out. Commander Shepard is either dead or buried under some rocks somewhere, and the fleet isn't loyal to Earth, they're loyal to Shepard. If Admiral Hackett or whoever is in charge of Earth now starts barking orders, the aliens aren't going to listen.
Oh, and the Quarians. The Quarians are going to be pissed off. Really pissed off. They just got their homeworld back, and now they're stranded as far away from it as they can get. They've also got the gear to travel long distances and survive in space- something that everyone will be desperate for, especially the Turians, for whom the Quarians have the only long term supply of food. That is, assuming the Quarians didn't chuck all of their space farming shit off their ships as soon as they got Rannoch back. I'm sure they didn't, but the Quarians are the sort of morons who would do that kind of thing.
So, one of two things is going to happen. The alien races are going to be "fuck this noise, and fuck you humans, this is your fault" and boogie from the Local Cluster hoping they can make it back to their homeworlds on the fuel that they've got or that they'll luck out in hitting part of the infrastructure the Reapers didn't destroy during the events of the game or before. Or, they're going to realize they don't have enough supplies and start shooting at each other. It's hard to be sure who would start it, but I'd bet it would come down to either the Quarians and Turians allying to try to get as much fuel and spaceship parts as they can before they scuttle any unnecessary ships and run away, or the Turians attacking the Quarians for food.
Yeah, so the Sol System is either going to be abandoned, leaving the humans that can't get out with the Alliance fleet to starve, or they're going to start shooting at each other in rage and desperation over being deprived of their government and only means of long distance transportation.
If the Geth came and are somehow active, it wouldn't surprise me if some asshole accuses them of being in on it and we get a war with them, too. Admiral Dickhead vas ShootashipwhileI'mstillonit will probably get on the horn and start screaming that the Geth have betrayed us and sided with the Reapers yadda yadda yadda, because apparently to be a Quarian admiral you have to have your head up your own ass.
Okay, so the solar system is fucked. Pockets of humanity will probably survive, since we went all willy nilly with the colonies and at least a few of them are on pretty nice garden worlds.
Now, for the rest of the galaxy. The Krogan DMZ is fucked. If you didn't cure the genophage (good job, you bro-betraying, bro-murdering monster, even though you probably did the right thing in context of this ending) they'll die a slow death in their radioactive hellhole and the surrounding planets. If you did, Wrex ain't there, and they're going to start killing each other. That's okay, because once word got out the 'phage was cured, you could probably hear Krogan fucking fifteen light years away. So the Krogan will break up into clans until the toughest one takes charge and sees the situation. See, the Krogan were uplifted by the Salarians. They don't have a fleet, they don't have shipyards, they've got what they've got. So, any FTL capable ships in the DMZ are going to be attacked by Krogan and their crews butchered. Thanks to Commander Shepard, the Krogan are either going to starve, kill each other off, or come boiling out of the DMZ very slowly and clumsily and go on a conquering spree. Good job, Shep!
Now, let's talk about the Asari. Their culture is dead. Thessia is destroyed, and we're told in-game it couldn't survive without colonial support. Since the Asari are so long-lived, there's comparatively few of them and without the Turians backing them up, the structure of the Citadel government, and the fear of Asari commandos showing up to ruin your shit, they're just hot blue chicks in a cruel world they don't understand. They're either going to end up going extinct, or every Krogan warlord worth his salt will have a few Asari slavegirls chained to his big metal throne thingy.
Speaking of the Turians, it's a good thing that, comparatively, they're pretty close to the Krogan DMZ, it'll make it easier for whoever rallies the Krogan to strike off in their direction seeking revenge. Assuming they can get their ruined homeworld and infrastructure going again, and somehow maintain their military without galactic trade, they'll have to hope the fleet makes it home before the Krogan get there from other direction. They'll also have to hope, for that matter, that the weakened, leaderless forces left on Palaven will be able to hold off the berserk Krogan they've got there once it becomes obvious that their relay just blew the fuck up for no readily apparent reason and everybody is stranded.
I don't feel bad about the Terminus systems, because fuck Batarians, really. All the cool hives of scum and villainy like Omega are pretty much dead. You can't run a place like that without trade, the whole point is a gathering spot for lawless travelers to gather, and while there will be plenty of lawlessness there won't be much travel and people won't be swinging around the ass end of nowhere to see some Asari strippers, they'll be trying to carve out a grim existence in a world that's totally collapsed around them.
Oh, and the Yahg are apparently on their way to spaceflight. That's going to be cool, can't wait!
So even if the galaxy manages to survive being trapped in small areas with each other all of a sudden, there necessarily must be infighting over now supremely limited resources. I bet its' going to be cool living on one of the rare worlds that's either self sufficient or actually produces a surplus of something valuable, waiting for the day the skies will darken with ships full of ravenous aliens ready to ruin some shit.
Yeah, they're in no place to rebuild. Place ho hope in the power of technology, forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.
Unless you chose the synthesis ending, in which case in the distant future the galaxy will be ruled by a species of sentient hats who worship Joker as a god.
Now, none of that is going to be acknowledged. The real reason they went with this ending is to set the stage for an MMO. Doing the full scale Mass Effect galaxy as an MMO setting would be insanely resource intensive and difficult. Fucking the relay network gives an excellent excuse to gradually allow access to various systems through expansions. The relay to Tuchanka has been restored! Download the Wrath of the Krogan expansion today! Putting everyone in the same system provides an excuse to have all of the races present in a game where you can't leave the local cluster or have very limited travel options. In this context, the ending makes perfect sense.
