Just finished. I was aware that a lot of people were not happy with the ending, but tried to avoid as much as possible.. ..I can now see where people were coming from. I kinda get what they were trying to do, but it wasn't explained or tied up well, like.. {spoiler}Is Shepard dead? How did my crew get from almost certain death, to looking healthy and running away on the Normandy?{Spoiler} Still a great game (though I think I prefered the second).
{Spoiler}and now I find out the other 2 choices have exactly the same outcome{Spoiler} Seems pointless even giving you any choice.
Now you know why so many ppl are up in arms. And don't be fooled. The new DLC coming this summer will at best fill in gaps, it will not change the story or outcome.
{Continued spoilers} I wouldn't want them to. I've played these games by excepting my choices, even when I felt 'damn, maybe i should have gone the other way'. I lost Wrex in the second game (my second favorite character), but excepted it, and treated it as part of my Shepards story. In other words, as much as they screwed up the ending, and left you feeling that your choices didn't really matter, it would just cheapen it even more if they tried to change it completely. Some explanations and closure, in terms of what happened after might help a little. I mean weren't the entire fleet trapped in a devastated milky way?? Oh, and we shouldn't have to pay for this DLC.
BioWare just announced that the free Extended Cut DLC will be released this Tuesday. It'll be a 1.9 GB download, and they suggest you load up a saved game from before the attack on the Cerberus base to see the new content. BioWare says that this new DLC won't change the ending, but it will give it more closure, and show more effects of player's decisions. I'm on the record in saying I hate the endings for ME3, but I'm a little hopeful this will solve some of the problems the original endings have. We shall see. I guess I'm going to have to play some MP this weekend to get my readiness rating back up.
I read that you should start from the attack of the Cerberus base, but I didn't notice any changes in that mission from before. If they were there, I missed them. The first time I started to notice any additional dialogue was when you talk to your crew at the base on Earth, but even then it was just an extra line or two. Most of the additions seem to happen once you approach the beam to the Citadel. There's no substantive changes from the original endings. It's still doors 1-3 (although there is a fourth ending now), and it's still all about the war assets. They do however flesh out the endings a bit more. You get to see a little more of what happens around the galaxy after you finished. They explain how your party got off Earth and why Joker was flying away. It's still not great, but it's better than it was. With all the changes though (especially the new 4th ending) it makes the indoctrination theory a little harder to believe.