Ultimately, I didn’t care for it.

No doubt the original endings, in terms of visual presentation, seemed a bit cheap, especially in the way they were essentially copies. (Though guess what, the new endings are still essentially copies). Still, some additional/extended scenes I am not necessarily unappreciated of.

But the changes make the ending boring and uninspired. Big fight, you win, all is good. The problem, I believe, is that the endings are not just visually similar. They are the same thing in all the things that matter (Destroy and Control most of all); the difference is academic and abstract. Shepard is (mostly) dead, everyone else is (generally) happy, and the Galaxy is saved. Tight and neat.

The old ending was itself somewhat abstract. It wasn’t as clear on what happened with the relays. Maybe earth would indeed have become the showplace of an another apocalyptic fight for sustenance. Maybe it was all intoxication. The ending, in its open-endedness, carried on the appropriate amount of depressing bleakness that the story was going for up to this point.

Because the details of what happened weren’t clear, the ending used to be a true Sophie’s Choice. Now, the additional explanations show your choice to be irrelevant.

Also, I’m not going to mention the ridiculous attempt at closing story holes that is the evac to the Normandy scene.

There’s also another article I enjoined, and my thoughts on the original ending.