Quote Originally Posted by Serenity View Post
Narratively speaking, it does make sense for Shepard to perform a heroic sacrifice to ensure final victory. But it makes no less sense for him to survive and live happily ever after. And in a game series that has thrived on choice, and institutes a system for tracking how ready you are to take on the final battle, I don't see why players should be denied the chance to earn their happy ending.
I do - if there were a "golden" ending, all the others would be demoted to merely being failures, rather than difficult choices. It's like the suicide mission - sure you CAN get a bunch of squadmates killed, but doing so becomes attributed to incompetence on Shepard's part rather than any true impossibility of the mission itself. It's even become a joke among the players: "Jacob cheated on me?? Guess who's going in the vents" etc.

The Collectors and their base of operations went from being the scariest aliens in the galaxy to bumbling henchmen in the span of one game. I can't blame Bioware for wanting the Reapers, the cosmic horror big bads of the whole trilogy, to be afforded a bit more gravity than that.