Jump down to my Critical Notes if you can’t stand one more pass at the plot, lol.
ONE
The Reapers land on Earth. We knew it was coming, but it’s worse than we ever imagined.
TWO
The Boy doesn’t escape in the shuttle, which is destroyed. All of the Mars mission is included in this section: Finding the ultimate Prothean device. (Using it — the Crucible — is the key to the Eight.)
THREE
Dream One
FOUR
Checking in with the Council, conducting business on the Citadel, and gathering allies fill the Four. Rescuing the Primarch on Palaven’s Moon is the first step. Mordin on Tuchanka — the genophage cure — and subsequently helping or tricking Wrex, complete the Four.
SWITCH
Dream Two
FIVE
The rest of our alliances are determined. Quarian and Geth — will we manage to placate both races or only one — and our mission on the Asari homeworld become the Five.
SIX
Dream Three
SEVEN
Hitting Cerberus and the Illusive Man’s Cronos Station is the decision. The timing will send us to endgame. We now know that the Catalyst is the Citadel, which must dock with the Crucible we and our allies built.
EIGHT
I’m going to roll London into the Eight. In some ways, it’s just another trash battle, but it is the precursor for going up to the Citadel where we have our showdown with the Illusive Man. Of course, ultimately, we end up with Boy and his harvesting solution.
NINE
The Stargazer and whatever ending comes up resolves our story. Joker may step off the Normandy onto a verdant world, or Liara’s hologram warning may be all that remains of our civilization. Shepard is dead.
Or not, if you hit all kinds of perfect markers. I could massage war assets — playing strictly toward endgame and not for pleasure — but I don’t care enough to try.
CRITICAL NOTES
Well, look at that Three and Six. Now we know why those dream sequences were extra annoying.
Boy at the Two and Eight is brilliant. He seems real, he’s tragically killed by the Reapers, and he sets a tone of sadness at the Two. Yes, he’s twee, but if I never see him again, his recurrence at the Eight packs a punch.
But we do see him. Again and again and again. This is why I just want to shoot him. That stupid Boy, running through the molasses, has no purpose whatsoever. Does he advance the story? No. Does he provide any fighting fun? No. He’s nothing. Worse, he’s a detriment to the Enneagram.
A good Three/Six will mirror. That means that a visual and its information will present itself at the Three, and then develop further when it echoes at the Six. You can’t show the exact same thing at both beats, with no deeper meaning, and call that a successful plot. An Enneagram mirror is not, except for some decorative variations, identical. It’s the juxtaposition of the two images, with the majority of the story in between to develop our understanding and give it shape. Boy running through the dream trees, no matter how many regrets are added to the sequence, is not profound.
Worse, Bioware also uses Boy at the Switch. This is a catastrophe of storytelling.
Initial thoughts? I would use Wrex as a Three/Six. He’s such a huge influence. His request — no, demand — for a cure to the genophage hits me immediately as a Three. His confrontation with Shepard on the Citadel before endgame — is the cure real, or a trick? am I going to have to shoot him? — seems like a Six. This is not how the story is shaped (and this is an event that doesn’t always occur!), which means rewrites are necessary. The fact that Wrex may well be dead, depending on what Shepard chose in ME1, complicates this immensely. However, when I think of the flow of ME3, this is the impact, the crux of feeling and storytelling. I would move all aspects of the story to make this mirror happen.
As for the Switch, right now the story splits the races into two groups: Turians and Krogan before the midpoint, Asari and Quarians/Geth after. What lands in between them, though? I guess, if I must, I would use a dream sequence with Boy, as long as the other two interludes are deleted. It’s not a great choice, but it would be acceptable. Here’s the choice that I just invented out of nothing, though: Give me a Salarian quest. (I love them. Their voice modulation, character design, and attitude are so perfect and unique.) It doesn’t need to be long — make it Switch-sized. Right now they’re rolled in with the Krogan: Help Wrex, lose the Salarians; sabotage Wrex, gain the Salarians. A little mission, instead, would make a lovely Switch. Untie their military from the Krogan decision, or expand it further and let Shepard negotiate directly. More Salarians, yay!
When I first played ME3 I hated the Boy ending. As the climax to the entire trilogy, it’s difficult. (I’ll look at that later.) As the climax to this story, it’s better. If the above changes were made to Boy’s dream sequences, this ending might work. The biggest problem is not story-related, it’s game mechanics. So many moments that Shepard walks in slomo is deeply frustrating. (My tendonitis kills me because I’m slamming the stick forward hoping to make Shepard move faster, lol.) This is endgame. The London sequence is unbelievably difficult, with the game throwing multiple versions of its hardest trash mobs. And then . . . nothing but a slow grind. It’s boring, of course, but it is also a mind trick. Is Shepard dead? Is the Citadel walk a dream sequence? Because Bioware has introduced all of those Boy moments, we doubt reality. It’s a risky and unsuccessful theme for a game. Boy is already going to test our patience, and by the time we get there we’re out of charity. Give us something to shoot! It’s actually a fascinating problem. This game didn’t fail its ending because of faulty storytelling but because of faulty battle design. ME1 is the cream. We have a tricky Boss fight, followed by a deeply emotional sequence beautifully edited and scored. ME2 is superb. The battle through the Collector base is a test of fight mechanics and strategy, and when it’s done we see a reckoning of who lived and died due to our choices over the span of the game. ME3 is . . . a crawl. Yes, it must give us an end to, not only this game, but to the trilogy. Where’s the Boss fight, though? Saren in ME1, the Reaper Husk in ME2, and . . . Boy? No. The other two games drop a surprise. Saren resurrects as a creepy husk in ME1. The Collectors juice colonists to concoct a monster human Reaper skeleton in ME2. Thematically, Boy is similar. The events of the game are taken to an extreme conclusion. But we can’t fight Boy. We just jaw-jaw. It’s a complete failure. Bioware has broken the rules of gaming. The end of the story equals the biggest Boss battle. That’s how gaming goes.
That explains part of the gamer hate of this ending. The other part is Boy’s relation to the end of the trilogy. It’s daunting, but the time has come to examine the whole ball of wax. Stay tuned.