It was the ending the series deserved, but IMO, the endings just failed to cater for everyone. Some people would love a dark ending, some a fairy tale ending, while some others, everything in between. Different gamers have different motivations and expectations when playing this game, and the end result implied that all our choices, all our hardwork never really mattered. Bioware never gave us the power to decide how it all should go down. Instead of giving us many roads going in different directions, Bioware only gave us a road with many lanes, all going in one direction.

Reapers exist to reap advanced civilizations every 50000 years for one singular purpose. Reapers wipe out advanced civilizations to prevent organics from reaching tech singularity, creating synthetics which will in turn, wipe out organics.

Wait, what? You heard that right.

In a nutshell, synthetics wipe out organics to prevent organics from creating synthetics which will wipe out organics.

Confused? You should be.

The only difference. Reapers seek to eradicate and harvest, in doing so, they preserve a civilization in reaper form. They only eradicate advanced civilizations, leaving the lesser civilizations intact. Whereas, synthetics, once reaching tech singularity, will eventually surpass their creators and supercede them, wiping them out completely. And they will continue to expand, eventually wiping out everything completely.

Hence, the reapers created the cycle. The citadel and mass relays were all created by the reapers, in order to funnel civilization after civilization into a singular path, predictable and can be easily countered by the reapers.

In the ending, no matter which path you take, the mass relays will be destroyed, indicating an uncertain yet promising future, a future where the reapers do not have a hidden hand in it.

is there anyway to prevent Tali from jumping? i had to resort for the geths because they are more powerful

The rage about the endings is quite informative.

Is it too hard to ask for a Dragon Age: Origins style ending?

Catalyst: You have choice, more than you deserve.
Shepard: Okay, three choices right? What happens if I choose this?
Catalyst: All relays will be destroyed. And you will die.
Shepard: What about this one?
Catalyst: You die.
Shepard: And this one?
Catalyst: You die.
Shepard: I don't have a choice, do I?
Catalyst: Nope.

You can survive the Destroy ending if your War Efforts exceed 4000 (if you saved Anderson in the end) or 5000 (regardless of whether or not you save Anderson)

Other than that, no.

You die.

To be honest, I'd been compelled to get the game had the ending was anything but this, even if I had to install Origins and what-not. Hell, I wouldn't have minded Shepard dying. (I sacrificed my mage in DA:O to kill the Darkspawn dragon. It was worth every emotional rollercoaster along the way.)

But this ending...

I feel cheated of my hundreds of hours in ME1 and ME2.

Needless to say, I'll just get this once it is GOTY to see how's the ride to the end is like (this one I heard people unanimously praise) and try to ignore the last five minutes of Bioware saying **** you to the fans of the setting.

I thought that ending was just as bad. Unleash the soul of the Old God or die. Nice right?

I don't get the rage around the endings. Anyhow I was prepared for lots of people to die including Shepard back in 2007.

People dying and tragedy seem to make a story better for me, versus overly happy scenes. If I wanted happy I could go play Sims or something.

EA: So, will the game be ready by March 6?
Bioware: No, not yet. Just finished writing the bad ending. Still working on the good ending.
EA: Okay, what is the bad ending going to be like?
Bioware: Oh, you know... mass relays gets destroyed, shepard dies, you know the usual stuff. In fact, to make the ending more sinister, we intend to maroon all of Shepard's crew on an unknown planet and then fade to black to add more insult to injury.
EA: What will the good ending be like?
Bioware: We intend to write closing scripts for everything and everyone the player has come across in the game. It will please our fans immensely.
EA: f*** that. That will delay the game even further. Just put that bad ending in the game and change it around a bit. They won't notice a thing.
Bioware: But every game should have a happy ending...
EA: Whatever. Just put a post credits scene, saying it was just a story. We'll get Buzz Aldrin to VA for that scene. And if that wasn't enough, tell your fans to buy our DLCs.

next we have people raging how EA is 'shallow' and 'money minded'.

Actually why they did it like that makes a lot of sense. One, Shepard is dead. They always said ME3 will be the end of Shepard's trilogy than spanned 5 years since ME1. Now they can make more games without worrying about putting him/her in as a cameo to please 'fans'.

Next, if it's all just a retelling by some granddad who sounds like Martin Sheen to his grandkid, the possibilities for stories is endless. No restrictions. The grandkid can just say 'tell me about the Skyllian Blitz' and BOOM, game.

Grandchild: Granpa, can you tell me more about the Shepard?
Grandfather: Did you buy any DLC?
Grandchild: No...
Grandfather: Then, no. Go to f***ing bed

Guys/Gals,

What the heck does the war map readiness ratings have to do with the ending?

Unlike ME1 or 2 where if u didn't do many side quests, during last mission your squadmates will die ... ME3 seems like no difference at all?

Shoddy writing and plotholes. 

Normandy has a secret plothole device that allows them to escape.

No, seriously, that scene was just wrong. The Joker I know would never abandon Shepard.

At the ending now. Gonna destroy. Thats what we've been trying to do since ME1, why stop now? Yeah, understand now that the game was great until the kid arrived. Maybe making Shepard collapse and be unable to activate the Crucible would have been depressing, but better in a way.

EA confirm gonna charge for it lah. Knowing EA. Trying hard to be activision.

But. . knowing there's gonna be 'the truth' ending somehow got me relieved eventho it might be false and made up by some mofo. Damn, I really shaken with the game's ending.

I'm at thessia now,how long should it be until end game?

What I heard as well. I think he reveals quite a bit of background information on Thessia.

EDIT: I think you guys would like this.

Judging from the script, about the same. Notably, Anderson's talk with Shepard is cut short.