The problem players took with this ending was that none of the three choices given provided proper closure to the story that they spent three entire games shaping through dialogue options and major narrative choices, and that the Reapers’ motives and actions came across as nonsensical and hypocritical. This program explains the Reapers’ mission of protecting organics from rebellion by synthetics and gives Shepard three options to stop the cycle of violence once and for all.
This culminates in 2012’s Mass Effect 3, where Shepard finds themselves face-to-face with the AI commanding the Reapers. Throughout the original Mass Effect series, the fully customizable Commander Shepard and their ever-growing team of allies were fighting to defend the Milky Way Galaxy from the Reapers, a race of AI-controlled warships whose goal was to eradicate all organic life. One of the possible endings for Mass Effect 3 had Sheppard transfer their mind into a Reaper, but BioWare was originally planning to take things a step further and have the hero become the ruler of the machines after a confrontation with their “Queen.” Even nearly a decade after Mass Effect 3 was first released, the ending to BioWare’s sweeping sci-fi RPG storyline remains one of the most controversial in all of gaming.