User blog comment:Kaloneous/Mass Effect 3 Ending DLC Denied and PAX/@comment-1786741-20120326203422/@comment-4933332-20120329131247

I believe the reason why they tried to be ambiguous.because they wanted to do something different to what they have done before.

Dragon Age Origins: You unite many factions to stop the blight that threatens to destroy the world. One of the endings was that you sacrifice your life to save the entire world. At the end, you have a funeral and have people reflecting the impact you have on their lives and mourning your lost and then an epilogue about your legacy.

They didn't want to repeat that and probably felt doing that would be conventional or cliche or expected and wanted to do something different. They probably had in the back of their mind, throughout the ending of not rehashing Dragon AGe origins which is understandable because most artist don't like the idea of rehashing their earlier ideas. This resulted in the "ambigious ending"

unfortunately the something different didn't replace the functions that the DAO ending have. The funeral was there to create a personal connection you have with your companions. The epilogue was there to show that your choices made a different and left a legacy on the world.

I don't mind something different as long as they replace it with something that fulfils those same roles. That's where ME3 ending failed.

If you want to know more about the mindset of creators who fall into this trap, have a listen to the audio commentary of Star Trek Generations where the writers apologise for the movie and admitted that they wanted to do something different and unexpected without caring whether the different actually improves the story or make sense