The ending is not meant to be taken literally. If you see the ending at face value, then yes, it’s quite incoherent. However, some of the people who worked on this game said that certain parts of the game have non-literal meanings. They also stated that the answers to what the ending is are in the game if you’re looking for them. I did a slow playthrough of the entire trilogy over the course of a couple weeks. Based on all the evidence I found, the ending is an indoctrination attempt. Before anyone says Bioware didn’t intend this, Shepard is showing every single symptom of going through an indoctrination attempt throughout the ending. Read the codex to confirm this. How is the ending not an indoctrination attempt if he’s showing every single symptom of the indoctrination process?

@ Luke Maciak:
My favorite romance was with Jack – very poignant. Tali’s was cute – Jack’s was powerful. She is so broken, it is a very well done scene – and well acted.

@ Luke Maciak:
Here’s a video of first meeting with her: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmYootDbC2s

@ Liudvikas:

I know. This one is good too.

As for Jack, she died in the suicide mission in ME2 and after I saw the bullshit ending I just could not make myself to play again with default-shep to see her. Screenshot?

I tried googling, but there are a lot of mods and fan made haircuts out there for her it seems. :P

@ Luke Maciak:

P.S. Does anyone else just love Jacks new haircut?

@ Luke Maciak:
The worst thing is that if you type “Tali” into search on deviantart you would get many many much better looking interpretations of how she looks.
One example: http://nebezial.deviantart.com/art/my-wife-s-tali-zorah-redesign-in-3d -290554560

I’m hoping for a fan patch, that’d be enough to convince me to buy a video card for my PC to play ME3 with a decent ending.

@ Morghan:

Damn it, did you have to remind me? Now I’m sad and disappointed again.

Sure, if Tali weren’t stuck on some random planet while I’m laying in a pile of rubble on Earth, and the relays (or even normal FTL travel which is based on Mass Effect technology) were still working.

@ Liudvikas:

Yeah, the whole thing with Tali – what the hell were they thinking. I mean, I get it – the gimmick with not showing her face is kinda understandable. I’m sure that bunch of fan boys would be like “that’s not how *my* Tali looks like” or whatnot. So fine, don’t show her face. But what the hell were they thinking when the Photoshopped that stock photo?

You want Tali’s face? Ok, fine. I’m gonna type woman into google images, pick the first thing that shows up, then use the clone tool to remove two fingers and MASSIVE LENS FLARE! Seriously that picture was seriously lazy.

I mean, they really did a great job with Liara and Jack. They had really detailed and expressive faces. I sort of feel cheated that they decided not to do that for emotional scenes with Tali. :(

And yeah – the Crucible was a massive fail. How exactly was the design incrementally built throughout the cycles? I mean, engineering just does not work that way. I think Shamus Young made the best analogy comparing it to building a pistol: so first civilization builds a trigger, without really knowing where it will go or how it will interact with the rest of the machine. The second cycle builds the iron sights without really knowing how the barrel will look… The third cycle designs the magazine without knowing what ammo will be used, etc.. It just does not make any sense.

@ Morghan:

It could totally work out with Tali. The codex entries said that Quarians can more or less survive on Ranoch without their suits due to unique radiation, and ecosystem features that are hard to replicate in space. Most of the Flotilla is composed of ships built by other races, that would need to have their life support systems completely rebuilt at a great cost to even attempt to emulate Ranoch’s very peculiar environment – which is why most Quarians choose to live in the suits.

Once you defeat the Reaper on Ranoch, Tali takes off her mask to enjoy the sundown with you. So if you built the house there like she wanted to, she could potentially live there without the suit. Also, she mentions her immune system has adopted to your germs and she no longer gets sick after sex so yeah – you could totally settle down on Ranoch. The food might be a bit expensive to import at first, since Sheppard would not be able to eat anything native due to that dextro thing but other than that there is no reason why it couldn’t work.