I personally don't think ME3 deserves all the hate it gets or deserves to be EAs "baby" or whatever. Saying this, they obviously did have a hand in the series. Especially when it came to thermal clips (which was proven to actually have fun gameplay, the Particle Rifle, collector sniper rifle, and M7 lancer being proof of concept) and the forcible inclusion of 2 gay characters in the third game. The main problem with the series was lack of proper planning stemming all the way back to ME1 sovereign fight, the game basically setup ME3 having to create a super weapon against the reapers, ME3s ending was fucked from the get go. The main story of ME3 is a classic bioware formula though, unite as many people as you can against a common foe, the same exact formula DAO had, a giant recruitment mission. Can someone please explain to me how the ending of ME3 could have shaped up any differently if Bioware just cast aside all the writing they did with the characters and world building and focused on the main plot ME2 instead??? Bioware promised the player base to have multiple endings to ME3, and I just don't see how it would have been possible without an RGB asspull of an ending, or them going back on their promise and making it a one ending game, which would have made far more sense in the first place. Having the crucible having only 1 function would have made the most sense as a conclusion the the trilogy, as if the races of the previous cycles would actually waste their time creating something unnecessarily complicated and not just have a single plan to wipe out the reapers. What would have probably ended up as the best ending is if the crucible sent out a signal to every reaper in the galaxy to be put into a hibernation state (what they use in dark space), thus destroying/deactivating all of them without having to sacrifice the geth or technology trillions are depending upon in the process, magically synergizing all organic life to be synthetic, or somehow controlling them despite them being "unknowable" as setup in the first game.