I checked what the lead writer, Mac Walters, had done previously to see if it would've been possible expect the way the trilogy will end. IMDB credits Walters in Jade Empire (writer), Mass Effect (writer), and Mass Effect 2 (lead writer). In ME3, I guess I can see his touch in the way the party is picked up along the way, much like in ME and JE. ME2 is an exception to this, however. Maybe because it made more sense for the plot to put the crew gathering in focus.
Mass Effect had a pretty solid ending, and Jade Empire's was as happy as endings can get, but the second Mass Effect, the game Walters lead-wrote previously, didn't feel like an ending to anything. I doubt this could've helped anyone see what was coming, though. Which is funny as for quite a while I haven't really been surprised by BioWare's writing. But from now on I will remember Walters's name.
I still feel the ending wasn't how this particular game trilogy should've ended. It felt somehow detached from the previous ME experience. But the more I think about it, the more it seems like a fitting ending to a huge scifi saga. An ending to remember, although it's hardly original, regardless of how much it may feel like a sucker punch -- Battlestar Galactica is written all over it. In the finale, the Reaper AI was pretty much saying "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.", a line familiar for people who have seen the tv series.
Regardless of the ending, the result is effectively the same for all of the current life in the galaxy; each mass relay is destroyed, leaving all star clusters separated from each other, since plain faster-than-light drive isn't fast enough for travelling such distances. And as Mass Effect 2's DLC Arrival lets you understand, the destruction of a mass effect relay wipes out the whole star system where it is located. Thus the majority of the advanced civilizations are gone, or what was left of them after the reaper attacks anyway.
Somehow Joker and Normandy, and all of your crew, managed to jump through the Sol's relay, though, riding on the blast and crashlanding on some paradise planet. Where in the hell were they when Shepard was deciding the cycle's end in the Citadel?
On BioWare's forums, some are thinking the ending didn't really happen, that the brief scene in the all-synthetic-lifeforms-get-destroyed ending where Shepard gasps (and is evidently still alive) in some ruins is actually just after the reaper beam hit her/him. I doubt that's the case, though. It doesn't seem likely Walkers and rest the writers made Shepard just imagine everything. But it would be damn amusing to see Of Course That's Not What Really Happened DLC in the future.
Sadly, it's likely only wishful thinking. People just have so much emotional attachment to Shepard that it's hard to let it go. I too, already in the beginning of Mass Effect 2, thought "Hey, I know this person."
While reading everyone's thoughts about the ending, I met this picture, which sums up the flawed Reaper logic quite well:
There's nothing to add to that. That is the reason the reapers are destroying everything. Although, maybe that's the point; their programming wasn't perfect. The reaper AI or the "Catalyst" even admits this, saying that Shepard's presence there proves they can do better.
The Prothean DLC character, Javik, actually had some interesting dialogue regarding that, and what the Catalyst confirmed: synthetic lifeforms fear organic life. This is because the synthetics are created for a purpose, but their creators, the organics, don't have one, and thus the synthetics see them as chaos, beings without purpose, and a thing that should not be.
It's an interesting thought really, and I guess it's the ultimate theme of Mass Effect, although it's not very obvious until the end. It has been hidden behind all the fighting for survival.
Also a curious thing is how in the finale your choices are color-coded with the familiar blue and orange. However, they are not so clear. The destroy-reapers-and-other-synthetics option is orange, the renegade color, and is the one Admiral Anderson would choose (as shown in the short cutscene). The blue paragon option, sacrifice-yourself-to-control-the-reapers-to-save-everyone (though the mass relays still explode), would be The Illusive Man's choice. At first glance, it seems the colors are reversed. Maybe on purpose to make you think twice, or maybe that's what the writers really think. Quite impossible to say. My first thought when looking at the choices was "whoah". (And my first choice was the orange one.)
The third option, to-make-everyone-part-organic,-part-synthetic, seems pretty bluish as well, though I guess it's just light. It's also the option the Catalyst thinks to be the best one. The color in which the Citadel/Crucible explodes and the mass relay beam shoots, depends on your choice; orange for destruction, green for synthesis and I guess blue for control (I didn't bother crawling through the end for the third time).
As a final conclusion, I would say the ending is not as upsetting as it may seem at first. This is how the game trilogy ends, and you just have to deal with it. Shepard won't do all the things he/she plans to do "after all this is over". No blue babbies with Liara will be had. (Too bad that -- I was looking forward to seeing such obviously cute things.) BioWare certainly managed to end it all in a way people won't immediately forget.
It was pretty nasty to hint Shepard surviving in one of the endings, though. I mean, surely they're not making another sequel, so why leave something open like that. Evidently more DLC is coming, but how can any form of DLC be worth playing now that you know how the trilogy ends. Unless, of course, it adds something to the end...
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