The real reasons
Trying to be objective on this subject is nigh on impossible. There are a lot of invested emotions in the Mass Effect series and it plays out in a particular way. You essentially experience the Mass Effect World and it is extremely personal. All the choices made lead you to expect something big and gravitating at the end. Essentially you put yourself in the shoes of your character and have been living this world for 5 years. The responsibility of the developer becomes apparent in such a situation you can't end it in a way that would cause distress or anguish in doing so it is almost as if you have ruined some one’s life and changing it forever.
However the Mass Effect Ending does something worse, it is an ending applicable to everything and nothing. Deus Ex Machina Latin for God out of the Machine is an ancient plot device that details a superficial ending where it applicable to anything. To question it is to question God and is sacrosanct. This gives rise to the Hypocrisy and the Sanctimonious attitude of those defending the ending.
The ending is literally Deus Ex Machina where by the God Child or Star Child unceremoniously appears / materialises out of nothing in the story to end it giving you 3 very similar ending choices resulting in death and destruction of some sort. It is neither both poetic, intelligent nor sincere. The ending is Convoluted and disingenuous in that it does not end the series its duplicitous nature ruins the entire series, ending the series with such hypocrisy and nonsense leaves a niggling feeling in everyone’s mind. It is neither satisfying nor relevant to the series as a whole. Anyone who criticises the ending is attacked by sanctimonious duplicitous cohorts of those who created the ending.
The PR team for Bioware were for a while saying we’re accepting all criticism from everyone and creating spread sheets analysing the data. Now they have suddenly changed their tune to we are blocking anyone who critiques our ending and that it is somehow incredibly clever and sanctimonious. Jessica Marizan has been comparing it to the ending of inception. Inception is convoluted and as South Park so adequately puts it “Just because it’s complicated doesn’t mean it’s clever.”
The best comparison to the Mass Effect Ending is to think of Scooby Doo, where by at the end of the episode some either exceedingly minor character or unseen character is suddenly revealed and we are supposed to be in shock and awe. This is quite ridiculous.
The Game Reviewing Press seems to have been busy comparing Games to Art and saying that they are inviolable, what reason is there to have Art somehow elevated to a status for which you cannot question. It is both irrational and sanctimonious to elevate it to such a position, literally you have to be devoid of all scientific thought process in order to think that because you made something it should be regarded as inviolable. The gaming press even goes as far to say it would be a dangerous precedent to set to change the ending, it is almost the same sort of rhetoric deployed by those practising religion, have we got to the point where we can’t speak out against anything now? Just because someone disagrees they can’t be heard? The now somewhat clichéd expression of its Art you can’t question it belies something sinister that is more “dangerous” than any threat to changing the ending of a game, it threatens Freedom of Speech, Freedom of thought, Freedom to intellect.
The other main problem with the Gaming press seems to be the level of funding they receive from advertising which results in it being very easy to manipulate them when it comes to game reviews. Threatening withdrawal of funding because you gave a game a bad review is worse than lying to the gaming public and giving them inane reviews. The conflict of interest here is astounding yet the press don’t seem to think it’s a problem.
What is more baffling are the people that actually like the ending citing it as poetic, with no real reason to back this up, the ending in literary terms is already described as the worst type of writers cop out that can be used for people to actually consider it poetic is completely irrational.
Next we come onto the Indoctrination Theory, basically saying the ending is a Dream sequence, which is fine in itself but for the ending to be so bad that people would rather think it to be some sort of Dream sequence is incredible.
The Wintersun groups 2004 song Starchild has been used also as a comparison with some saying they almost completely plagiarising the song and an image used in the album. A video of this can be found on youtube and just the image alone is enough to accuse Bioware of plagiarising which cannot at all be thought of art.
The choice at the end of ME3 is possibly the most insulting thing to fans, after many years of multiple choices and routes effectively shaping your own experience of the game and how the story plays out they take that all away and replace it with 3 colour choices which no self-respecting fan will ever be able to accept as the ending to the Mass Effect Series.
The ending is just a convoluted, plagiarised, deus ex machina mess any attempts to rationalise it or hold it in high regard is just hypocritical sanctimonious nonsense and should be met with utter contempt.