My 2 cents about endings.
I can accept that Shepard has to die. It is no issue to me at all (although in one of the endings he lives). One of main themes in mass effect series was personal sacrfice for "greater good". If shepard can ask the ultimate sacfice from his comrades (like in virmire for example), i'm sure he has no issues taking the fall if the situation requires it. He is a soldier after all.
So what bugged me was the whole star child concept. Why on earth did they bring up something like during last 5 minutes? Why not just run with the perfectly good
"destroy reapers" ending with various differences, such as how you handled sever key decisions during 3 games. (Like: companion quests, geth vs quarians, Genocide cure, rachni queen, faith of councill etc).
And why not make the end battle more interactive? I would have liked to see that the choises during the games actually influenced the outcome of it. Talk about letdown when the end battle was basicly one big non-interactive railroad ride. It was a fun ride, but I expected more from it.
Anyhow back to the endings…
Wasn't the main idea all along to destroy reapers? They were never ready to negotiage about their mission. Even the leviathan DLC pointed to this direction. Now all suddenly they threw our face this silly idea that Shepard could
control the reapers. I get that TIM was indoctrinated so obviously he pushed this idea, but Sherpard would never do something like this, unless he himself was under reaper control. Maybe this was the ultimate renegade choise in a way.
However the third "hippy" choise which required most of the war assets was likely the most idiotic ending I could have imagined. First of all how could some machine just change the DNA structure of all machines and organics throughout the galaxy? Green space magic? And isn't this basicly what reapers wanted? Sure their methods were more crude, but by choosing this ending you basicly gave up and submitted to reapers will.
And it doesn't even make sense. I spent whole freaking series solving the geth vs quarian conflict and I managed to make a peace between these two races. It was one of the most beautifull moments during the entire series and the game robbed me the satisfaction at the end.
Or what about EDI who was genuinely trying to understand organics. The discussions between edi and shepard were just best bioware. Or how about Joker and edi who formed a friendship/romance during me2 and me3?
So during last minutes of me3 some silly reaper a.i claims that peace between machines and organics can't be done? Machines and organics can never understand each other? Cycle just continues? What a load of horse shit.
The fourth ending was kind of satisfying. You can actually shoot the brat, although it has severe consequences
So which ending was my favourite? Well the obvious one: destroy reapers. Sadly destroy reapers ending meant the end of all synthetics, even the friendly ones such as geth and edi. The cost was high, but acceptable. It however robbed the whole conclusion from geth vs quarians conflict. Bioware kind of pulled the carpet under our feet with that ending.
Ah but I better stop ranting now