I agree Mass Effect is still one of the best game series I've ever played, but that doesn't change the fact that the ending was really disappointing (I first played it original, no extended cut).A deus ex machina, almost literally, comes up and provides an explanation that has had really no buildup. You get the feeling that Dark Matter was going to come into play, with Kal'Reegar and Gianna Parisini both suggesting that they're investigating something big related to Dark Matter in 2, and then they both get written out of ME3. Then the three choices at the end are all terrible... Shepard transforming into the controller of the Reapers, destroying his humanity (the very thing he was fighting for), Shepard destroying the Reapers, committing a genocide of Geth and EDI along the way, or the synthesis ending, which, in the words of Mordin, is one of the worst possibilities for life forms (no soul, replaced by tech...).