I was going to call this post "How Commander Shepard's pot-boiler of a love life validates the ending" but that seemed a tad long for a title. So, spoilers. There will be a lot of them. If your virgin eyes haven't beheld ME3's endgame, or if you are replaying it trying to get a different outcome, navigate the hell away. Alright.
By now most people have heard a bit about the outpouring of fan rage over the endings. I'm not going to dwell on how stupid I think all the hullabaloo is, but its worth mentioning. By the time I got to the end, I had heard about the controversy but had studiously avoided any details. And when I got to the end I just sat there, torn and perplexed and miserable, pondering the final choice. It was a good five minutes before I made a decision. Why did it take so long? Because Commander Shepard was no longer just a series of moral choices to me. She'd become a real person with real emotions and desires and motivations and a SERIOUS wish to not die. And that's what stumped me.
You see, somewhere towards the beginning of Mass Effect 2 I stopped playing with the rigid "all Paragon all the time" mentality that had ruled the first game for me. My concept of Shepard was that she was generally a good person, but with all the Paragon points I'd gotten from importing my character I found I could be a dick sometimes and still max out the Paragon meter. So my thought was no longer "Is this going to get me Paragon/Renegade points?" but rather "What is she feeling right about now, and how would she react?" Like the Velveteen Rabbit, Shepard had become real. She was always snarky with the Illusive Man because she could tell he was holding out on her and that drove her nuts. Even some of the gameplay elements formed her personality for me. In ME2 and 3, I always did the interrupts no matter if they were Paragon or Renegade, so I started to think Shepard was more than a little impulsive. In the second game I reactivated Legion without a second thought, and brought Grunt out of the tank even though my crew didn't think I should. That told me that she will give anyone a chance, but just one. But the formation of her personality was the most present in the romance subplots.
Anyone who isn't interested in squishy feelings talk should also leave. This is going to be long winded. That and the spoilers.
So in the first game I hooked up with Kaiden. I got some grief from friends about passing up the hot alien nookie, but I'm old fashioned. Also, once I heard Carth Onassi's voice from KOTOR coming out of his mouth I was done. In the second game, I had my eye on Thane from the beginning. But I had to stop myself and think, because in my concept of the character she had real feelings for Kaiden. That night before Ilos wasn't just a fling for her. So why would she leave him for someone else? One word, Horizon.
It wasn't just that Kaiden was so harsh with her on their reunion, though that was part of it. Being accused of being a puppet will cool fuzzy feelings in a person. But I realized that even though it had been two years since the first Normandy went down, in Shepard's personal timeline she'd just seen Kaiden a few weeks previous. That's gotta cause confusion. So even though he sent her an apology letter, I think she figured the book was closed on the two of them. And there was Thane, with his tragic past and lovely voice. (Seriously, me and voices. Its like the deciding factor.) When I realized that Garrus was a potential hookup I thought about it, but realized we'd hit the friend zone long before and it would be weird. And so the game's characters ceased to be code constructs for me - they were all real people.
Cut finally to the third game, and Shepard is reunited with Kaiden. But he just can't stop with the suspicion, and during the mission at the Mars archive basically accuses me of being a Cerberus clone. Nothing I say can appease him, and that hurt. Of course, I see where he's coming from as I have concluded that Cerberus = Evil. But he doesn't trust that I'm myself, so there's resentment there. But then he gets his face smashed in by a Cerberus robot, and you have to get him to the Citadel for medical attention. And guess who's in residence there? Thane Krios, having reached the final stages of Keprel's Syndrome.
This was another instance where my thought processes were less "How can I get the Paramour achievement?" and more "What would she do right now?" When I visited Thane in the hospital, there's the option to drag him into a corner for some private time, but I wasn't sure I should do that. After all, before I even started playing the game I was pretty sure I was going to try to patch things up with Kaiden. But all that stuff on Mars really threw me. I felt guilty for letting him get hurt, but I was still angry about the whole clone thing, which made me feel even more guilty. And there was this dying assassin, not judging me and wanting to spend some of his last moments with me. So yeah, there was private time. But afterwards, he as much as told me to move on and live my life. It was poignant. Especially later, when he died protecting me from Kai Leng.
When I visited Kaiden in the hospital, of course he knew about me and Thane. Where would the drama come from otherwise? In the moment, there's the option of being matter-of-fact about it or contrite. I went with contrite - I was still feeling guilty for letting Dr. Eva smack him around and now even though I thought our book was closed apparently he didn't. Fast-forward to the Udina's coup on the Citadel, and our dinner at Apollo's Cafe. In game terms, Kaiden was my locked-in love interest at that point.
And that brings me to the ending. My Shepard had thought she'd lost the love of her life, found another one, lost him too, but found the first one again. And she wanted to keep him. She wanted to retire on some beach with Kaiden, sipping mojitos, where the most important decision she'd have to make was what to order for dinner. But the Catalyst gives you three options, and there was only one with even a slight possibility she might survive, and that's to destroy all synthetic life in the galaxy. The Geth and EDI included - and these were two forms of life that she'd had a hand in making who they were. Could she do that, just for the dream of a beach and mojitos? Turns out she couldn't, and as I limped up to the synthesis option all I could think about was how sorry I was I'd never see Kaiden again, but that I was bringing peace to the galaxy.
That's what validated the ending for me, all the choices that led up to it. And the heartbreaking decision to give my own life for the rest of the galaxy. It was a fitting end for Commander Shepard, a character who deserved nothing less than a polarizing, inspiring, and final conclusion.
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