Reall the entire game played out like a giant ending. Almost every mission attempted to tie up some subplot that the game had been dealing with for years, whether it was the Quarian-Geth war or an individual character's story. Sure there were a few subplots that weren't resolved (what is the situation with Omega) but…

Part of me thinks he is ecstatic no one liked the ending because it is an excuse for more paid DLC.

SECOND SPOILER

Taking back Omega will be one of the DLC missions. Count on it.

Or maybe they felt the need to appeal to fans who knew the relay routes and would have been pissed if they didn't use the right ones?

You know there will be a taking back Omega mission at some point.

True, shooters probably aren't the majority however they do make up the vast majority of the big budget triple A titles. I wa really just trying to be a bit tongue in cheek, hence the inclusion of Sonic '06 on the list.

What about all the other great advances in gaming this generation such as;

With the Archdemon defeated there really isn't much left there unless they want to create another Blight and essentially re-hash the DAO plot. For better or worse the central conflict of the universe is now the Templars vs. the Mages.

Choices not mattering are certainly part of it, the ending is oddly separate from the rest of the game to the point where it feels like nothing before this point actually mattered. I can't get more into it without spoilers.

This isn't really all that uncommon at any baseball stadium, especially late in the season when the team is eliminated (or far out) of postseason contention. Too many games coupled with too large of stadiums means a lot of empty seats for everything but weekend nights and games where big names are in town (Yankees,…

It may not have been a direct result of K&L but the story makes it sound like his reviews and the reviews he approved by the staff had already brought threats from advertisers for the scores. The K&L review was simply the last straw when Eidos threatened to pull advertisements management decided the money was more…

Those are the only options because BioWare said so, but Wrex has shown himself to be reasonable. If you came to him and told him the only way for his people to continue was to selectively cure females and enact population controls until the Krogan proved they were not going to follow the path the previous generation…

Mordin is one of my favorite characters so I couldn't steal his chance at personal redemption from him. If that is true though, sabotaging the cure would save Mordin, then there is a real dilemma for me. I don't know if I could choose between saving Wrex's people and saving Mordin.

I think something else that warrants discussion is whether the decisions mean more if you played the game on a whim rather than without a plan. For my first run of each game I made all the decisions and dialogue choices as I thought I would make them. I also tried my best to make each decision quickly/in the moment…

I mean so much of the "canon" in this series is decided by the player (who died on Virmire or the suicide mission) that I am ok with throwing BioWare's unsatisfying ending out the window and decide that there must be something more to it.

They wouldn't have a choice, it was that or nothing. Plus I imagine Shephard could appeal to Wrex, promise him as the Krogran prove they can be responsible and not a danger to the galaxy the controls can slowly become more lax.

For me the toughest choice was curing the Genophage. I trusted Wrex and wanted to do right by him, but I can't deny Krogan nature. The problem was that there wasn't a good alternative presented. The Dalatrass gives you the option not to cure the Genophage but that wasn't the right choice for me either. Ideally I…

If you haven't checked out the conspiracy theory thread on the BioWare forum I would do so. Believing in it makes the ending much more bearable for me.

I think that has long been the problem of the Mass Effect series (and many BioWare games) as a whole. The choices are ultimately meaningless if you have enough points to simply use the dialogue option that gives you the best of both worlds.