the ending in itself was a cliched cop-out.
okay, okay, shep is meant to be a tragic character. okay, i guess. it happens. i could have accepted that. kind of lame considering the material and what shep's been through, but ok.
but.
#1: the stupid star child, ugh.
in the beginning you see the stupid kid die. he haunts your dreams. the writing, however, does NOTHING to ACTUALLY make me like the kid or feel sorry for him or care about him at all. and then, guess who talks to you at the crucible? not a hologram of a wizened species from one of the many millenia ago. a "ghost" of saren would have made some form of sense, since saren was a major antagonist in shep's life, he would have elicited some form of emotional reaction from the player, and also saren had had a lot of interaction with the reapers so he could be seen as a sort of "inside man" on it.
but no, it was a stereotypical "dream-come-to-life" sequence featuring a "kid-who-is-magically-wise-because-he-is-an-embodiment-of-your-dreams-or-something". which i guess could have also been some kind of metaphor for shep as a little boy, but then i played as a female so obviously that doesn't work for any fem players.
it was hackneyed and lame as shit and elicited ZERO emotive response.
#2: what the ... the normandy ... how? what? why did you bother when no one can enjoy your victory
how did the normandy get away. you saw your teammates get blown up, but they come out of the normandy with joker. you worked for limitless hours to make things right throughout the galaxy, and then all star systems are summarily blocked off entirely forever. joker and the normandy gang(tm) wind up on some random jungletimes planet, with no way to get off of it, or any guarantee they'll find any sort of civilization, and your teammates have no way to get back to their homes (most tragic for wrex and tali). why would they look happy?
#3: your prior actions in past games have nothing to do with the ending, other than an EXTREMELY minor difference if you choose to destroy or keep the reaper tech in ME2.
why? they were important in many other facets of the game, but NONE of your other major feats or achievements have ANY affect on your ending? at all?
thats bad writing
#4: what in the bleeding fuck was that after the credits
a badly voiced scene with a kid and his grandpa, talking about "the shepard". what? why should anyone care who those people are? does it mean that the whole thing was a fairy tale? was it supposed to be a "glimpse" of the distant future, made possible b/c of your sacrifice? it looked snowy and desolate, that's kind of sucky. was it an allusion to jesus or something? what in the bleeding unholy shitwiggles
was that? was it supposed to provide some happy closure to the player? it was just random and stupid and completely unnecessary.
MAYBE if like ... that old man was Joker, and like he went "... and the years I spent flying that ship were the best of my life" ... or something, THEN it would have been closure.
but otherwise it HAD NO REASON TO BE IN THERE and it was BAD WRITING