The Extended Cut does sort of help take some of the sting out of the endings by giving hope spots (ex: Samara w/ her remaining daughter, Krogans rebuilding, etc), while the Citadel DLC gives those who played it a bit of a breather before the final plunge into the endgame. So at least the developers realized that fans needed something to lighten the mood a bit.

In retrospect, I think a lot of fans hated the ending because there's really no "good" ending to the whole trilogy. Only one ending ("Destroy") holds even a slim hope of Shepard surviving, but the trade-off is that you condemn a major character and a major race to oblivion with the unspoken guarantee that you've just delayed the eventual "machines wipe out organics" future. Two others guarantee Shepard dies while also feeling like the Reapers "won" to one degree or another. And the Extended Cut adds a fourth ending that seems less like a choice and more like the developers saying "You want to act like children? Fine! Rocks fall, everybody dies!"

And really, that's what makes the ending ME3's biggest crime, that all of the emotional weight and turmoil of the game ends with an info dump and a Sophie's choice: Save Shepard at the cost of billions of lives or kill Shepard for a hollow victory. And now they want to write a fourth game, which means choosing at least one of those endings as "canon." Zod help us all.

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CdrMike, Overwatch Reject