User blog comment:Koveras Alvane/The Beauty of Mass Effect 2 Ending/@comment-68.193.155.192-20130424033031

All Mass Effect 3 would have needed was the ability to tell my war assets where to go in space and on the ground, maybe so if you don't do it right you never even make it to the beam?

I also think all the original ending needed to be good was some text and a few cut-scenes. The "Extended Cut DLC" actually ended up changing the ending believe it or not. Judging by the games original script it was supposed to be something like this:

- Even though you stopped the Reapers you annihilated the Mass Relays, whole civilizations where cut off and many went into dark ages. Some civilizations rebuilt but could only travel in their home systems and those near by due to FTL restrictions. Much of the fleet starved to death ( Turians / Quarians ) while the Humans / Krogans / Asari / etc. lived in Sol and the surrounding systems. It took nearly 200,000 years to unlock the secrets of the Mass Relays and the civilizations then discovered the ancient wreckage of the Normandy on a world littered with ruins. ( the humans on the ship reproduced and that's where the cut-scene of the old man comes from ). They also found the descendants of the ship and welcomed them into galactic civilization.

- Alternatively if destroy was chosen with a low readiness score the crucible worked like the Halos from the Halo series, After being fired the crucible exterminated nearly all life in the galaxy and only those in systems without mass relays survived. These species had to develop FTL on their own and it took millennia ( think anywhere from 50,000 - 1,000,000 years ). These civilizations discovered the Reaper shells and found out about the Reaper's cycles and the dramatic conclusion.

This is the conclusion that a group of people on Bioware Social Network came up with last year but everyone else was to busy saying "it sucked change it" to even care.