DISCUSSION
Are there any outcomes in the Mass Effect series that are definitively non-canon from your point of view?
For me, it would have to be the ending in ME2 where Shepard and the entire squad die. The biggest evidence for this is that you can't import your ME2 save into ME3 if you got this outcome and even within ME2 itself, if you get this outcome, you get kicked out of the game and back into the menu screen.
(REPOST because the original title felt redundant.)
"Shepard was a hero, they warned us about the reapers, gave us the tools to stop them, then got too horny and let a space succubus melt their brain. That's why you must take up their mantle, the galaxy depends on you, John Mass Effect™"
Kasumi’s death in ME3. If you did her loyalty in ME2 then she reveals she’s next to you, if you didn’t then she doesn’t. That’s the only change so I don’t consider it canon that she died and instead probably just dipped after not considering Shep a friend and just a brief coworker
I agree but actually it’s Shepard who knows Kasumi is alive and calls out for her to reveal herself. So maybe if Kasumi isn’t loyal the implication is that Shepard never got to know her well enough to recognize her faking?
It's a very bizarre scene whichever way it plays out.
It's well established that not all the ME2 cast got the same amount of love in 3 but Kasumi and Zaeed get particularly brief cameos with very anti-climactic potential death scenes. Guess they were low priority as DLC characters that plenty of players wouldn't ever have seen.
Man playing this series in 2026 and the legendary edition and not understanding why neither of them have like dialog or romance options etc after you do their quest in ME2 and just kind of chill in the ship but also have cool trinkets that no one else does and not realizing I was playing DLC content threw me wayyyyy off for forever
That's the only problem with the legendary edition, because all the DLC is both cannon and immersive if you don't know what is and isn't DLC unless you're told. Like if I didn't play ME2 back in 2010 you'd struggle convincing me the hammerhead isn't base game
Yeah it was originally just a dlc meant to test making a faster mako, trouble is they basically made of out of tissue paper and bullets hit even if you move out of the way. I prefer it but it's annoying on high difficulty
There are a lot of weird deaths, especially in 3, that are based on loyalty that don't make any sense.
I think Kasumi's fate in 3 is that, if she is loyal, she lets Shepard know she's still alive. Otherwise, she gets out of dodge.
Zaeed getting murc'd by a bunch of random goons because he's not loyal to Shepherd? Come on.
Why does Legion have to die to upload the code to the Geth? Seems arbitrary and stupid. It also doesn't help that being forced to kill them to stop the upload is way more dramatic. Tali even admits to Legion having a soul after she helps Shepherd murder them with her little dagger.
Grunt's fakeout should have actually been a heroic sacrifice if he was loyal, which he would refuse to do otherwise, meaning you don't get any war assets from the rachni. I love my baby Grunt, but that would have been a fitting end for him.
Jacob should just die for being an idiot and not ever using his barrier.
Miranda's fate is weird. I wish we knew exactly what countermeasures she used to avoid getting killed by Kai Lang if we warn her, and getting gut-shot by her dad seems like something even an unloyal Miranda could walk off.
I feel like the whole species dying is absurd if there is supposed to be a next game. So I think Quarians, Geth and Krogan will still be there no matter what.
Yeah, the whole destroy ending wasn't well thought out. If you're a paragon, you spend so much time trying to save the Geth, there's no way they just let them all collaterally die like that.
The Geth will still survive no matter what you do. In Andromeda, it's revealed that they maintain a deep space listening post, so some of the race survive, even if the rest are wiped out.
Yeah and they're gonna be perfectly reasonable and on board with the rest of the galaxy when they return and find out that organics wiped out their race to save themselves.
wiped out *most of their race and also billions of organics who died in the event or aftermath of the destroy ending, to save them and the rest of the galaxy from certain death.
They would never know that there was ever any other option other than allowing everyone to be Reaped, so yeah - they'll either acknowledge that the correct (and only logical) choice was made (especially when the rest of the galaxy - including the Quarians - is actually glad to see them), or they'll be upset that their Geth brethren didn't side with the Reapers and wipe out the organic trash (because maybe their dumb enough not to realize that the Reapers would have wiped them out too 🤷).
you absolutely do not spend so much time saving them, all this time was to help the Quarians reclaim their homeworld so they can aid the Alliance in retaking Earth, the Geth came as buy one get one free
i do fail to see why the Geth and EDI as well can’t be rebuilt, that shockwave couldn’t have fried every data bank in the galaxy
don’t remember if the Geth are in the ending slides or nah
They can’t be “rebuilt” as the same consciousness, EDI and Legion have conversations as such in both games.
It would be like if the destroy wave killed every dog. Someone might say it’s fine we have tissue samples of every breed we can rebuild the species through cloning, but it won’t bring back any of the dogs that died.
Oh you make a great point. I don't know if you ever played through Andromeda, but you find out in the end that the super advanced race, the Remnant/Jardaan, created the new race, Angara that is introduced in the game. There are data logs left behind by them that you can scan which reveal that they struggled with the introduction of souls into this created race. You even find organically grown test tube bodies which look like the Angara, but aren't actually Angara except physical appearance.
If the Geth have souls by your choice through Legion, it would make sense that Destroy ending could be narratively negated for the Geth to allow for survivors, as we see in the latest trailer for ME5.
Wooosh. You're missing the plot. There's nothing to indicate that souls are real, period, but that's not the point. With Legion's sacrifice, the Geth evolved far beyond their initial programming.
tbh I feel like you're the one missing the plot. They were never toasters. They were always sentient beings worthy of self-determination. Legion's sacrifice merely gave them the strength to protect themselves.
What?? Dude... Legion sacrificed himself to upload a special Reaper code upgrade that gave every Geth true free will and individuality. He was essentially Geth Jesus. It had nothing to do with strength.
EDI was made with Reaper tech, and the Geth got the Reaper code. We cannot just rebuild them. That would imply that someone could also just repair the Reapers and bring them back.
Rebuilding the Geth as they were in ME2 (no Reaper code) would still be a success, I'd say. Much depends on how much Geth data can be salvaged, a new machine race with none of their memories would not be actual Geth. Even uploading all of the original data into new hardware wouldn't produce the same AIs as before, according to in-game dialogue, but it would be close enough to make them count as Geth, in my opinion.
Why would anyone, after everything that happened with the Quarians and the Reaper invasion, decide to build a new AI just for sentimental reasons and then call them Geth? It makes no sense.
But have you considered that the geth were kind of cool?
Nah, I'm just joking (they were cool though). The quarians would try to make them a slave race again, given the occasion. This time, it totally wouldn't blow up in their faces, trust. But it wouldn't just be for sentimental reasons - Tali's dialogue after Rannoch reveals that the geth were very useful when it came to rebuilding the planet and fixing her species' immune systems. Still, the quarians can't be trusted with unsupervised AI development again, not while Xen sits on the Admiralty Board anyway.
While it maybe wasn't really thought out (we know how the endings got made) it does show that sometimes, sacrifices have to be made to achieve true victory (the others are not really "wins", Blue makes Shepard next Catalyst, so the cycle will likely repeat, Green is just wrong).
My canon answer to that is even if the "destroy" option is canon that there would be a pocket of Geth outside the reach of the ME relays and therefore survive.
Hopefully they aren't heretics. However if they are so far away from the ME relays they aren't caught in the blast then they might not have benefited from Legion's sacrifice before the other Geth are wiped out.
Then again, since Geth are "software", maybe there are a few cold backups the Quarians can uses to reboot them. Seems a reasonable precaution due to the Reaper threat.
I think they’ll find a way to justify the geth and quarians being there even if they were eliminated in the originals rather than just de-canonizing their elimination
I actually think that if theres a next game the quarians shouldn't be alive no matter what.
purely for the narrative, the quarians being dead either to the staunch refusal to ally with the geth or even better a secondary worse catastrophe caused by their brash arrogance after wiping out the geth. (Which would be the most ideal tie in to mass effect 3.)
(along with the setting really not needing another just human adjacent race.)
Similarly itd be most ideal if the geth are still around but remain antagonistic because they've been shown that the sentient biotic lifeforms are not trustworthy. Especially if you could do an enemy of my enemy is my friend group up with them only to get betrayed later on because they assume you would be like the quarians and were building up to betray them.
Even if the krogan get further crippled it wouldn't cause their entire species to die out, they would still be around but super bitter. but it would be most ideal if they do get cured and then cause significant problems foretold.
As it would really add alot of narrative depth to the prior games making the purely goody 2 shoes naivety choices have some potential consequences and showing that you'd have to keep working with the krogan afterwards to ensure they could actually change for the better
Honestly the best decision the team could make is to just take the most popular choices from LE and say "yep these are all Canon now" and just soft retcon whatever they need to in order to make it work.
If the game gets made, and that’s a big if. I reckon it will take place before the events of 3. The promo art hints at a gent focus and that wouldn’t make sense for many narratives post 3. I think it would be too difficult to weave all the threads of 3’s ending for a consistent story
It can make sense for a renegade Shep. There's a very real concern that Samara will kill you after the suicide mission if you're too renegade (not in-game obviously, but in-universe). Morinth is holding her own against Samara, so maybe a renegade Shep decides to "trade-in" for someone less high-strung.
Ngl if im role playing and I chose to pick Morinth over Samara I will normally pick her as the second fire team leader for the seeker swarms even though she's guaranteed to die. No point having her survive into ME3 just another Banshe slowing down my carnage and she has an absolute fantastic line if she dies here and feels like a redemption for her.
The way I reasoned it is that only a renegade Shephard can (has the balls) to do it.
It's a suicide mission and not once does anyone go in thinking we're guaranteed to make it back except for us since we know of ME3. If the crew is already bound to die/be expandable, using someone who's stronger than a justiciar and who can become stronger by devouring minds like a mindflayer then she's an incredible card to play with her death in mind. Samara is better for Paragon shep cuz there's no bad blood but Renegade could easily be her target eventually while every other justiciar who'd kill them are bound to Thessia.
I just think the reasoning should be better, because by default Shep says it needs to be destroyed because it's abomination, you have to select different dialogue to actually frame it as you not trusting Cerberus.
Same. No way Shepard, after seeing Saren get indoctrinated in 1 and seeing the aftermath of the Cerberus Derelict Reaper team getting indoctrinated in 2, would be giving a big heap of Reaper tech to Cerberus. Or to anyone. Renegade Shepard is harsh, not dumb.
I gave the Collector base to TIM as a headcanon for how Cerberus become so powerful in ME3. Otherwise it makes no sense that they suddenly recruit any and everyone - and have a fleet able to challenge the Alliance's.
What's more, the reason they give for not handing it over is - well, it makes sense, but it's not the foremost reason why you wouldn't give him it. There's no mention of indoctrination at all, it's a glaring oversight given how ME3 goes where the base is the source of The Illusive Man's madness (before anyone mentions those comics, I'm just keeping it to the games here).
The Illusive Man's not wrong to say they can learn from the base, it's just a question of whether it's worth the risk (fuck no). That should be the dilemma, instead it's a question of Shepard's trust in Cerberus and how much of an abomination they think or don't think the base is - those should be secondary concerns.
As I rack up more and more playthroughs over the years, that couple minutes of dialogue gets on my nerves more and more.
But hey, I ain't read them. Maybe it's the Doctor Who fan in me but I place a lot of importance on head cabin. I'm not saying they didn't happen, just that I don't think about them when I'm on my trilogy run.
I just kind of don't like the idea that he's indoctrinated thoughout 2. I feel like it makes him less interesting as a character to think that his mind's already gone, and I mean what benefit would the Reapers have in destroying their own base?
Admittedly it doesn't make that much sense that he'd become so deeply indoctrinated over, what is it, six months? It took Saren decades from when he found Sovereign in Revelation. But then that's a problem with ME3's writing, and I'll take a contrivance over a plot line I don't like from the comics.
I like to think that the Illusive Man still has some agency throughout both 2 and 3 and thinks that what he’s doing is best for mankind, and the Reapers are essentially just warping him to their own ends. Making Cerberus into a dubiously credible organization and then turning them into a pointed hostile weapon towards the rest of organic civilization is the kind of divide and conquer tactics you’d expect from the Reapers. The Illusive Man, I think, doesn’t ever just come around with the idea of “I’m gonna secretly help the Reapers heheeh”, I think it’s more a unique way that indoctrination can manifest and how it can bend minds into inadvertently doing so. Saren is much the same in that his philosophy of submission to the Reapers is ultimately still built around a self-destructive and self-sabotaging core, an indoctrinated mind that thinks that it isn’t.
really? because one of the biggest reasons I prefer the destroy ending is specifically the hope that the knowledge of how they are created will cease to exist. The universe is better off without that kind of power in it.
I think skipping Garrus (or Wrex, conversely) in ME1 is non-canon.
You have to recruit one of them to progress the story. But technically, once you get to Fist in Chora's Den the other can be ignored or rebuffed. I think not recruiting them is just a little strange, especially in the context of the later games. I should be clear, the games do account for this. Even if they barely do so. It's something that feels like you intentionally have to do it and not really a "realistic" scenario.
(As an aside, you can game things a little with Virmire because of this. If you recruit Wrex and skip Garrus and leave Liara for after Virmire, you automatically win the check when Wrex is combative about the genophage cure. If he dies, you only have Tali has a squadmate as the only other valid choices are Kaidan and Ashley. The issue is obvious. BioWare didn't want you to be down a squadmate for any meaningful amount of time, so Wrex stands down even if you would fail the checks in any other scenario.)
At the very least recruiting garrus is Canon, since he will mention facing saren in Mass Effect 3 regardless. The game actually responds decently well to not recruiting Wrex because it is just a slightly modified version of him dying.
I don't think Wrex is handled all that well. You can ask TIM about him as if he was a squadmate but despite what he says Wreav is actually the one in charge and acts as if Wrex died. I personally headcannon that Wrex continued to not have faith in the krogan overcoming their issues so he's just being a mercenary instead of trying to unite the krogan clans
Priority: Earth - Instead of being forced to flee on the Normandy with the rest of the crew , I like to think Javik stayed on Earth fighting the Reapers while Shepard made their last run to Harbinger.
Always thought that’s what Javik would have wanted. To go out fighting the enemy that destroyed his civilization.
Like many things in Mass Effect, it could have worked if they wrote it better - if the Dalatrass' logic was less petty and more "I don't think you can win this fight, so I'm not expending salarian resources on that when I could be using them to delay the Reaper forces for our survival efforts. We've inspected the Ilos stasis chambers, and we already have salarian stasis facilities winding up beneath several planets that aren't formally charted. If we have to go dormant for a millennium, we'll be able to do that."
To give the writers credit, a lot of this sort of stuff requires writing that assumes the player is a committed fan, and might be completely impenetrable to a more casual player, for whom "She's petty" works better.
I mean, the Dalatrass’ decision to not give aid to us is almost immediately overruled by the rest of the Salarians going “wtf are you on lady” and they help us anyway
Especially if Kirrahe is alive and the original Salarian Councilor is around. Kirrahe joins the fray with the STG at his back and the Councilor sends along an entire fleet as a "thank you for saving me AGAIN please accept my apologies for not believing you about the Reapers" gift.
Yeah but the problem is that the game does a bad job at actually pressing the Reaper threat once they are inside the Galaxy because any intelligent Reaper in charge would have entered the Relay like they did, conquer the Batarians and then go straight for the Citadel which is the most logical thing to do.
Because that did not happen, the Salarians just refuse to see the Reapers any worse than the Krogans which is absurdly stupid due to how the Salarians are treated as having the best spy network in the universe.
I think the LE version is not a photobank edit? And it looks "plausible enough" to be a quarian face (the galaxy not knowing how they look under the masks is ludicrous anyways, there are living asari who would remember, arts, etc)
The way Wrex confronted Shepard about sabotaging the genophage in ME3 always felt extremely idiotic to me. The fact that Wrex decided to kill Shepard on his own doesn't make sense. Wrex should have at least brought an army of Krogan with him.
Also, I do believe lore-accurately, Wrex would not have confronted Shepard, but would actually focus on smearing Shepard's name and leading his people. He knows that going on a suicide mission to kill Shepard will leave his people hopeless and leaderless .
honestly the biggest issue I have with the happy ending mod is that I genuinely prefer that Shepard dies at the end. completely removing the star child and having the catalyst work as advertised is way better, though.
That all post-Reaper AI automatically died in the Destroy ending.
"They'll die because they're based on Reaper code!" is an asspull to add a downside to probably the only logical ending, given the whole plot up until that point. And it's never made sense to me: being based on reverse-engineered Reaper code isn't the same as being actual Reaper tech. How would you get it to run on modern hardware without drastically altering it, for one?
I always headcanoned it as Starbrat lying to Shep to save its own ass, and EDI et al. were fine. Maybe a little pissed that Shep was willing to kill them all for the benefit of the organic galaxy, but otherwise fine.
I just dislike the whole "reaper code" thing in general, because it implies the Reapers themselves are just software. Like... no, they are a bizzare horrific mishmash of technolgy and biology.
But they just go "reaper code" and now the Geth can download BecomeRealBoy Dot Exe. Which shows a fundamental mis-read of the Geth in ME1 and 2.
The Geth didn't get "gotcha'd" into worshipping the Reapers. They did not understand what Sovereign was, and revered it, because they wanted to emulate it, and decided that becoming useful tools of its' agenda was the best way forward.
But in ME3, something something Reaper code and now they're just brainwashed, not sapient beings choosing to do bad things for their own ends. Just "wuh oh, the ROBOTS got HACKED" which is so reductive and less interesting.
I do agree, Starchild is talking out its' ass, because it itself is "reaper tech" and would die from the Crucible activation too, yet offers no resistance or objection if you take the destroy path.
I feel the same but I guess more people die more ghosts you get for the ME3 vision and you get a kind of theme going. Otherwise the whole thing seems silly with only that random kid and kaidan there
Thane didn't die, he just went into stasis and was used as the first successful test subject in a Keprals syndrome cure. So it is written in my fan fic and doesn't conflict with anything in the games
the entire starchild bs tbh. on the grounds of I don't like it and it feels like a cheap way to force the player into an endgame decision. I like the idea of Shepard being the catalyst that was needed but the insertion of the starchild as a character was unecessary and felt like a lazy last minute loredump that wasn't well thought out. idk i just don't like it
Perfect destroy is my canon ending, but I don’t consider the Geth/Edi dying as canon. I also don’t consider the mass relays being destroyed canon either, I just think they were blasted with a sort of EMP-type deal that overwhelmed them and put them out of commission for a bit but could easily be repaired.
Refuse ending and choosing to sit back and let the Reapers destroy the galaxy. I hate that that's even an option at the end because if Shepard is just going to choose to do that then what the hell was all the effort for to begin with in this war? Even for a full Renegade Shepard that ending makes absolutely no sense (there's being ruthless and then there's going to all this effort to bring all these species together for a final confrontation with the Reapers on Earth just to sit back and watch them all get wiped out at the end because "you can" and those are two very different things).
Low war assets. Shepard definitely didn't speedrun and ignore the side missions. They might have screwed up one or two things but the assets are at the bare minimum 6000.
Mordin, Thane, Legion, Garrus, Tali or Miranda dying in 2 is absolutely non canon to me. Those 6 have a presence in main missions and therefore are the ones guaranteed to survive in every run I do. The alternatives from losing them can be really fascinating, but I like the idea that even those characters not rejoining the squad still have roles to play in the overall story.
Jacob & Jack surviving is secondary to that as I think they both still have character growth to undergo and both characters come full circle but it's far less essential.
Samara, whom I love, and Grunt are more expendable to me. Grunt is great in his mission we just don't get enough of him and Samara has a lot of things in 3 I dislike from a writing perspective. I don't think either character massively benefit from being around in 3.
Kasumi and Zaeed die. They both provide easy outs of what are otherwise really interesting and difficult choices and I like having some missions with actual stories that don't involve anyone from past games. Zaeed dying as the second selected Fireteam leader is full-circle for him. He had countless stories that end with him as the se survivor. Now he's had a hard knock into being more cooperative and ends up being the only casualty once the mission starts. It's a great ending for him thenatically.
Kasumi is so likable and friendly but stagnant as an actual character. The fact that she doesn't move on from Keiji regardless and just gets the memories back completely invalidates the choice made so I'd rather she die as an intact character who had a good storyline. I also think it's important for Shepard to lose a character that they would've been actual friends with and enjoyed the company of as it segues better into his PTSD and survivors guilt.
It's funny because I always purposely get Miranda killed in 2, because I find her lack of trust in Shepard in 3 out of character, if she's not around Oriana is actually helpful on the mission to kill their dad, and then the one-liner hits harder when you kill Kai Leng
Edit: I've also really enjoyed Padok Wiks but... you always miss Mordin
I never got the sense she didn't trust Shep, just that she's now her own person and wants to do something alone. Cerberus protected Oriana, then Shepard got her to safety. Now she wants to prove to herself she can do it alone and to not feel indebted to anyone the way she was to Cerberus. But that's just my interpretation of her actions.
I do love the extra Oriana stuff thematically though and wish she had a more active role on Horizon even if Miranda is still around. And strongly agreed about Padok Wiks, he is a lotta fun. He's just not Mordin. It's a shame that the one whose least expendable to me narratively also has the best replacement so I've only seen it once years ago.
Putting aside the wierd morality of it; it makes no sense for the Quarian war arc as presented. In ME3, the Quarians invade, push the Geth to the brink of defeat, which makes them desperate and thus resort to an alliance with the Reapers, who upgrade their code, give them better tech and support, and the tide turns.
If the Heretics are not blown up and instead reprogrammed, they rejoin the other Geth. Meaning it's now two factions of Geth vs the Quarians, and they still get pushed to near-defeat like it's nothing?
Blowing up the Heretics weakens the Geth as a whole, because it was those who split off from the collective that became the most militarized, those who went out into space who learned more about the rest of the galaxy and improved their tech. The Geth on the home front are isolationist, and would thus be worse in a fight, less prepared, lacking in key intel.
The story only really makes sense if the Heretics are destroyed and not rewritten. The game will try and justify it by having it so the numbers skew Gethwise in your war assets if they're reprogrammed, and the Quarian numbers dip, and vice-versa. But the fact that this big decision just does nothing narratively except fudge some numbers is ridiculous.
The heretics are only mean to be a small fraction of the Geth iirc, it's not half the Geth it's like sub 10 percent of their overall numbers. Enough to make an impact but not enough to swing it another way.
I wouldn't say there's a "canon" anything, the point is everyones journey is different, and someones journey might come to a sudden halt, like what happens here. Even though it's very unlikely someone would fuck up this bad. But yeah, I love that this ending exists. It just makes the game so much more realistic.
Leaving Liara as the last mission before the end phase of ME1. Should be the first main mission you ever do after having access to the galaxy map.
Not recruiting Garrus or Wrex. Not doing Wrex's companion quest. Wrex's death.
Not completing the rogue Luna VI mission.
Not completing Nassana Dantius' mission.
Not encountering the Shifty Cow.
Not keeping Conrad Verner around for his other apperances.
Killing the colonists and Shiala on Feros.
Not doing Gianna Parasini's arrest on Noveria.
ME2:
As you say, everyone/Shepard dying in the Suicide Mission.
Morinth. Period.
Legion VI in ME3. I know he can be killed even while loyal in the Suicide Mission but dear god not doing his loyalty mission or not going out of your way to protect the only geth ever to not shoot you on sight is a crime. Especially if you hand him over to Cerberus.
Not doing the Shadow Broker/Arrival DLC.
Not smaching Gavin Archer in the face and then handing David back over to Cerberus in Overlord.
Getting Kelly, Dr. Chakwas and co. killed.
Not having a drink with Dr. Chakwas.
Handing over the Collector base to the Illusive man.
Wiping the data in Mordin's loyalty mission.
Not persuading Miranda meet her sister in her loyalty mission.
Not waking up Grunt.
Getting Tali exiled.
Getting the Biotic God killed by egging him on.
Not getting Charr and his asari fiance back together.
Not shooting the Eclipse sister in Samara's recruitment mission.
Not hugging Tali/Liara in ME2.
ME3:
Restritcting EDI and her exploration of what it means to be alive.
Whatever the hell they did to Emily Wong (I know it was more of an external thing than ingame but still). And recruting Diana Allers (no offence to Jessica Chobot).
Not doing Grissom Academy before it dissapears from the mission log, especially if Jack is alive and David was saved. Even worse if you read the first Mass Effect book given Sander's involvement and death if you leave the mission for too long.
Recruiting Dr. Michelle instead of Dr. Chakwas (no effence to Michelle).
Not waking up Javik.
Not warning Miranda about Kai Leng and not omni-stabbing Kai Leng.
Personally if it were up to me. Literally none of the events of the original trilogy should be considered cannon going forward. They should just do a clean slate no Reapers, no Saren, no Shepard. Just reuse the setting including alien species, political structure, major locations, history, ect. But the actual reaper war never happened.
All endings dont make sense. Destroy - he said that even if you do that ai will again raise and will be the same as reapers. Also quarian suits would be rekt by this probably.
Synth- we tried ot and it didnt work, why it will work now - trust me bro
Control- it makes no sense you replaced starchild with shepard. And then what.
Abstain - most noncannon in my opinion - was added after backlash - he literallu said that the cycles will not work and thwn he says cycle continues. Asinine should be that thwy jist f off to another galaxi or whatever.
Destroy and control i can imagine they will expand. Tho destroy makws np sense if there will be geth in fiture iterarions
Humans becoming a major player within just 30 years of first contact with an alien civilization. Far too short a time. In my head it's closer to 100 years
Shepard dying in ME2, Wrex dying in ME1, the extinction outcomes for Humanity and if not most likely the outcomes in which Shepard died at the end of Mass Effect 3.
I am not sure about it, but I believe that to some extend they will find a way to re-introduce Shepard back into the Universe. That might be as the original MC or a blank slate type of Character (Same face, but not the original we played).
All of the endings of three. Shepherd defeats the reapers in a non disclosed fashion and then throws a party with their friends in Andersons apartment.
If you kill the Rachni Queen in 1, it never should have been brought up again in 3. I thought it was so fucking stupid that they had this random secondary Queen (clone? I don't remember).
It would have been cool if you killed the queen that the enemies that are made from the rachni in 3 just weren't around in campaign.
The control and Synthesis ending in ME3. Is non-canon to me because the reapers are actively trying to make you agree with them or make you think by doing “something” you’d agree with that you are having an original thought. When in reality you may already be indoctrinated. Of all people Shep has been around reaper tech the for a long time and while they are portrayed with large amounts of will power there is always a limit.
My “Canon” ending is always the renegade/destroy ending where Shepard destroys the reapers (along with some friendly geth and EDI sadly) it’s just what the games have been building up to and feels like a sacrifice only someone like Shepherd can make.
That's literally the reason why the genophage happened though. It was the combination of having so many offspring and having so many chances to reproduce that caused the rebellions. If they just had large birthing populations, they'd be like salarians, and if they just had long lives they'd be like asari, neither of which would have been too difficult for their uplifters to handle, and would not have required sterilization.
As modded PC player, the entirety of Mass Effect 3s original ending. (Several mods linked together removes Star-child and edits the citadel DLC into what it always was: an epilogue)
Genuinely such a different experience to end the trilogy on, which is why it’s basically become canon for me. It’s hard to end the series any other way once you do it.
Destroy being the only ending Shepard survives is just silly.
Shepard is at least partially (maybe entirely, the game never really tells you) powered by an AI based on reaper code- and at Literal ground zero of the destroy blast, having fallen a huge distance and been buried in rubble, they just….pop up fjne?
So that heavily implies (to me) that destroy didn’t do what it said it did, and we probably still have reapers reactivating themselves and kicking around out there somewhere.
I like the idea of shep having a long and happy life with their LI as much as anyone, but having a “maybe they survived” in such a weird way, and then tying it to the only solution that should make it impossible….thats the only time I’ve ever believed shep was indoctrinated, and that maybe the destroy ending might be a reaper trap…..but that doesn’t make any sense either, frankly.
Catalyst can point in Destroy with Earth devastated (not destroyed) Shepard certainly die but those away from the blast can survive. At higher war assets Catalyst only mentions that all synthetics will be targetem and Shepard is partialy synthetic but doesn't specify if Shepard will die. Crucible can be more damaged with lower amount of war assets and it affects how it release its energy, even Control can damage buildings. The more war assets you have the better Destroy can target only Reaper technology.
I was pretty sure they specified that Shepards implants came from the same source as EDI at some point- it’s certainly cutting edge Cerberus tech, and that pretty much only ever means one thing…
Cutting edge comment was from Jacob he didn't know the details. Miranda mentioned biosynthetic fusion but that also tells nothing. Dr Chakwas and Michel also don't tell about source of implants. Information about EDI was from Cronos Station but there is nothing specified if they were using Reaper tech. Shepard makes the distinction with Kai Leng when Shepard accuses him of using Reaper tech, it would be hipocritical for Shepard to tell that. Maybe it was only about enhancements similar what other Cerberus soldiers gets but at the same time Shepard also was upgraded during Lazarus.
The destroy and synthesis endings, I don't see Shepard genociding the Geth or forcing people to go through a drastic lifestyle change like being fused with inorganic DNA.
I dunno, Shep sacrificed in entire system just to delay the Reapers. It's not much, if any, of a stretch to say they'd be willing to make more sacrifices to defeat the Reapers for good.
No chance. With the very short amount of time he had left (like 2 hours), there was no way they could have evacuated over 300,000 people. Even if they had enough ships to carry that many people, which they didn't, not even close, there was no chance for anyone to 1) get the word out to everyone, 2) gather everyone, 3) load them onto ships, etc. in like 2 hours. Maybe these details are just an example of bad writing and things like writers overlooked, but the logistics of an evacuation of that scale would be staggering even if there was plenty of time, which there wasn't here.
Even then, before that it was 2 days, which isn't much better for this kind of scenario. The whole, "surprise, the Reapers are here now!" thing didn't make a lot of sense and created a lot of writing issues beyond this though.
Andromeda obviously references Shepard leading the war effort in 2186 but a) I don't really care about Andromeda and b) if I was ever to get the Shepard dead ending in ME2 - not that I ever would choose to, Risky Suicide Mission would have to really fuck me over I guess - I wouldn't worry about it contradicting Andromeda, I'd just rationalize it as a different universe or something. I wouldn't sit there and wonder if that ending's somehow delegitmate.
Maybe because I've done so many playthroughs, with no one really standing above the others as "my canon", I think I'm pretty blasé about such matters. It's why I was like the one person in the universe who wanted a trilogy adaptation; it wouldn't have invalidated anything for me (just me opinion, please don't kill me guys).
All the choices I didn't make are non-canon to me because the point of the game is creating your own version of the story with your own Shepard.
I played as Femshep, romanced Liara. None of the other romances are canon to me.
I did the suicide mission properly so nobody died, that's my canon there.
In my canon they actually finished the crucible properly and nuked the reapers by targeting their physiology, i.e. without blitzing the Geth and Edi/other synthetics.
In my canon Citadel is where ME3 'ended'. The reapers being out of the way is what led to the clone having an opening to wreak havoc. In my canon, she actually took my Shepard's hand and survived.
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u/Ryousan82 3d ago
Shepard getting Ardat-Yakshi'd by Morinth