While Mass Effect 3 is garnering well-deserved critical acclaim from all fronts (read our Mass Effect 3 review here), one thing a lot of fans seem to have reached consensus upon is their unhappiness with the ending of Commander Shepard's story. With fans already upset about the 'From Ashes' day one DLC, the Tali Face issue and PS3 players reportedly having framerate problems, BioWare already had enough on their plate before players began to complete the game.

Mass Effect forums around the world are filled with heated discussion, with the general opinion being that the entire series is fantastic up until the last 15 minutes, leaving fans garnering for an alternative ending DLC to give Shepard, his team and the rest of the galaxy the ending they feel a series like Mass Effect deserves.

A recent poll on the BioWare website shows that only 2% the voting gamers, which total around 22,000 at the time of this posting, thought the ending was satisfactory and 88% are entirely unhappy with the current ending and would like a brand new one. The online petition is gathering signatures as an active campaign is being fought on both Facebook and Twitter. BioWare have yet to comment on the issue, though producer Michael Gamble tweeted that he was aware of gamer frustration:

"By the way... I am reading all of your thoughts. Just not ready to comment yet."

Mass Effect 3 Ending Poll

While it's one thing to say you dislike the direction a game went, it's another to ask the developers to completely change an ending because you were unhappy with it. However, with such an overwhelming consensus voting in disapproval at the ending, it may be in BioWare's best interest to pull a Fallout 3 and work on some Closure DLC - something may fans would be willing to shell out cash for to see the ending they feel the galaxy deserves.

Obviously, spoilers will follow as we detail why gamers are unhappy with the original ending. Do not continue if you haven't finished single player for Mass Effect 3!

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Most are upset for a simple reason - the Mass Effect 3 ending as it stands provides no details on what ultimately happens to the characters players have bonded with in the series, and Shepard himself seems oddly out of character when he accepts that there are only 3 choices to deal with the fate of the galaxy. While the other two games emphasized that the player's choices made a huge impact in the galaxy, the ending of the third game takes nothing into account but your war assets - a simple numerical number.

Shepard, for whatever reason, simply accepts that he has three choices, instead of going into an expected 'Shepard Speech' to save everything he fought so hard for. It didn't matter if you'd saved the Rachni, procured peace between Geth and Quarians,or had Turians and Krogan fighting side-by-side - none of it mattered. You had three choices. None of them provided closure to what happened to the galaxy, anyone in it, or your squad. As many gamers put it, the endings all show essentially the same video, but the beam that shoots from the Crucible is a different color. Of course, there are other endings if you really tanked the war assets, but it ends just about the same and the majority of gamers are feeling like none of the endings are too different, and even so, fail to offer a good sendoff for the story and character based trilogy.

With a current Metacritic user score of 3.5, it's clear that gamers are unhappy about the ending, even after they raided the game rating website in response to DLC.

What do you think about the ending of Mass Effect 3? Were you satisfied with the conclusion, or would you like DLC to extend upon or change what happened?

[poll id="34"]

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Source: Destructoid