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If you haven't beaten the game yet, you're not allowed to read any further.
Seriously, go back.
There's a lot of discussion going around about the conclusion of ME3. To jump on this bandwagon of immense emotion and argumentation, I'll share my thoughts: Mass Effect 3 was soul-crushingly beautiful. I've never been so profoundly moved, so tremendously affected, by a video game. By any form of entertainment.
Allow me to elaborate.
It took a video game to make me realize how important choices are. That's stupid, right? Twenty years of life, and I'm just now figuring that out? Idiotic, huh?
Not so. How many people wander through life thinking that even their most miniscule actions have no effect on a younger sibling, or a bystander? How many people claim the "I do what I want, it's MY life" mentality? I don't know the answer. What I do know, however, is that Mass Effect ingrained a very unique concept within me. It taught me that even the tiny, seemingly-unimportant choices that we make matter. The things we say, the small gestures we make, everything. They matter to someone, somewhere, somehow. And just because we aren't there to see the effects or conclusions of our decisions doesn't mean that they don't exist.
Mass Effect isn't just a game. It's a story -- an event -- that you invest yourself in. All the way from ME1, I tailored my Shepard to be the "Ideal Me." I made her look the way I wanted to look, I made her speak the way I wanted to speak, I made her reputable in a way that I knew I could never be. I put myself, and what I want for myself, into this character. In this way, she became more than a character; she became the ideal incarnation. To be so personally invested in something, to escalate this experience to a level in which it felt more like an extension of real life rather than a game is absurd. It's magnificently ridiculous.
The moment of the final decision was unbelievably hard. A part of my mind thought that maybe I had done something wrong; the rational part of me, however, realized the grim reality. I wanted to sit there, I wanted to scour the internet for alternate options, for different endings, for something I could have changed, some way I could have made it better...but I didn't. It was too late for that. I could have stared at the screen for an hour, contemplating my decision, but again, I didn't. I knew that there was only one way, only one conclusion -- and I knew the one to make. It wasn't the option I wanted or expected; there was no right choice this time, but I made the best one I could. So I slumped, mouth agape, as my Shepard slowly staggered toward that green beam, toward her doom. And her salvation.
I don't think I will ever forget the moment when Shepard, broken and bleeding, drops her pistol and sprints, summoning what life she has left in order to give it away.
A small part of me died during that scene. More importantly, however, something much larger grew within me. A concept. An idea. Something that can't be destroyed. I can't pinpoint exactly what it is. Hope, maybe?
Nevertheless, that scene made me realize one thing: Mass Effect isn't a game. It's more than a simulation. It is an event. It is something that happens.
  
Video games in general are a medium for storytelling. Yet, developers have advanced that concept to make it something interactive, something that you are involved with in a very personal way. So, instead of watching events unfold, we are now able to shape them. We tailor actions, choices, relationships - everything - to our individual will. It's because of this interactivity that games can have a much, much stronger effect on people than any other medium.
After watching the ending of the game, I felt drained. Emotionally. Physically. I couldn't get out of bed, so I curled under the blankets, exhausted, and fell asleep. I had a dream that I was crying. I woke up with sore eyes and a headache.
No game, no movie -- hell, no entertainment medium -- has ever affected me like that.
Yes, the ending of the game was dark. It was mature. It was full of depth and grim determination and painful uncertainty. And again, still, hope.
Although we don't get closure -- we don't get information on our squadmates, or on other civilizations, or anything else we've come to care about -- we get enough. We get enough knowing that Shepard's choices matter. She changed lives. She changed entire civilizations. It doesn't matter whether or not I know exactly what happened after curing the Genophage or making peace between the Quarians and the Geth. It's enough that you, that Shepard, did it.
So you don't like that the conclusion to the trilogy is open-ended. You need to know what happened, you need confirmation. My question, is why? Why do we need confirmation? An amount ambiguity is warranted. Mass Effect is a different experience for everyone who plays it. In this way, we can all, individually, interpret the ending as we see fit. So maybe you interpret the ending as dark, gloomy, hopeless. Me? I'm confident that life somehow finds a way, that Shepard somehow created a better future (at the very least, a future itself) for everyone. But if you see it another way, if someone else sees it differently than both of us, that's acceptable.
I'm stepping off this soapbox now, and leaving you with a few final thoughts. I realize that none of us will ever accomplish anything as momentous as our Shepard characters have. And while I'm irritated and I'm devastated and I'm confused by the ending, I'm also very moved. I'm inspired. Decisions, little or big, don't just happen in role-playing games.
So get out there and punch a reporter!
I should go.
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