Mass Effect 3

Spoilers in bound people.

Okay, I could deal with the day one DLC, and don't give a monkeys cuss about the male homesexual relationship taht between them seem to get alot of fandom up in arms, this was one of the best gaming experiences of my life, I stormed through this game, grabbing every little secret I could and running for the end zone until...

Bewarned, long post is long.:

Fuck you bioware, fuck, you.

Oh God, don't get me started on that fucking ending.

That ending completely ruined any love I had for the series. I loved one and absolutely ADORED 2, but that ending was like being vivisected alive by a trusted partner. Unless they fix it with a DLC, I just find it completely unforgivable.

Damnit, I wanted my fem!Shep to blow the fuck out of the Reapers and spend the rest of her life as Admiral Shepard, exploring the galaxy with her surviving friends and Liara and their eighty-gazillion blue children, and somehow along the way find time to crush evil and be a Paragon badass. THAT WAS HOW THE SERIES SHOULD HAVE ENDED IF YOU PLAYED THE GAME CORRECTLY.

You know what I think Bioware did? I think halfway through Mass Effect 3's development they ran out of ideas and grew tired of the series itself, so to prevent themselves from being trapped into writing a bunch of DLCs and Mass Effect 4, they decided to BURN EVERY FREAKING BRING THEY EVER BUILT WITH THE FRANCHISE and make the ending an inescapable deathtrap for sequel development. They shot themselves in the foot on PURPOSE.

I agree. Fuck you, Bioware, for fucking the fans over and robbing us of the the decent ending we deserved for spending ungodly amounts of money on your games and being loyal to you. I'm just going to sit in my corner and pretend that Mass Effect 3 didn't exist.

But now that I think about it...

Spoiler:

I haven't played any of the Mass Effect games.

But I heard you get to bone an alien
Is that true
I have to play them now because I must know

Seriously, I'm starting the first one tomorrow. Also, I guess it's supposed to have good plot and gameplay and whatever and I read this neat article about the actress who voiced the female Shepard.

Quote :

Damnit, I wanted my fem!Shep to blow the fuck out of the Reapers and spend the rest of her life as Admiral Shepard, exploring the galaxy with her surviving friends and Liara and their eighty-gazillion blue children, and somehow along the way find time to crush evil and be a Paragon badass. THAT WAS HOW THE SERIES SHOULD HAVE ENDED IF YOU PLAYED THE GAME CORRECTLY.

>Implying Paragon Shep is how it should have ended

Doctor Mikey regrets to inform you that you have a terminal case of the retard.

But seriously. Worst ending of any game or series I've ever played. Eternal Sonata was less idiotic and shoehorned than this. Three options that manage the paradox of all being more asinine and unsatisfying as the other two. Kill the Rachni? Nobody cares. Save the encoded Cerberus Data from that side mission in Mass Effect 2? Irrelevant. Save the Collector Base? Mentioned once in passing but ultimately meaningless. "Cheat" on whoever you boinked in ME1? Two sentences in the whole game address it, no consequences regardless. Let the assclown council get shot out of the sky like a galactic clay pigeon? I'm not sure if even THAT mattered.

Plus I don't get the whole catalyst bullshit. He controls the Reapers. But the Reapers created the Citadel. Uh, Who Made Who? Did I miss that part, or did that go unexplained?

Really, floating up to heaven to talk to some synthetic God fairy hologram that explains to you some painfully contrived horseshit and presents you with a "deep" choice that has little to do with the plot up to that point? It's like Bioware went to Square Enix, the brains behind 95% of the most retarded plots in RPG history, and said, "Hey guys, we don't know exactly how we should end this whole Mass Effect thing. Could you take a look over what we got so far and lend a hand?"

And SE said, "Sure, why not? Let's see what you got so far... Ah, there's your problem. What you have right now makes sense and possibly resolves everything in a satisfying manner. What you need to do is what we've done in every game we've made in the past decade. Which is to say, reach DEEP up into your ass hole, and make a plot with what you yank out."

GAWD, I usually cut guys like this a lot of slack, but pretty much everything from Rannoch on was some degree of lame, with everything after the you leave the FOB being utterly, unacceptably, indisputably, heart wrenchingly TERRIBLE.

I'm just going to continue with my life, safe in the belief that there were no sequels to Mass Effect, and stopping Sovereign left the Reapers out to rot in Dark Space for the rest of time.

Is this similar to the ending-o-matic machine at the end of Deus Ex?

Is this sort of thing in vogue now or something?

WD40 wrote:

Is this similar to the ending-o-matic machine at the end of Deus Ex?

Is this sort of thing in vogue now or something?

Yeah, except there's no set up that even reasonably explains what this is or what it's happening. The choices at the end of Deus Ex came about fairly naturally as a result of the circumstances of the entire game, and all of it made sense through the general theme of controversy over the Augments and what to do about it.

The choices at the end of Mass Effect come out of left field. A left field of plot holes and one inattentive outfielder. Control the Reapers? That had been portrayed as a laughable option, even if possible, through most of the game, and was never even hinted at in the previous games.

The "Destroy The Reapers" option was weighted down with retarded ass pulls like killing ALL synthetics, including Shepard as he/she had cybernetic implants (something I think most Alliance soldiers had to some extent or another, so you're basically nuking AT LEAST the human military force as well). Why it fries ALL synthetics and not just Rapers is not explained. Why it doesn't fry ALL electronics as well is not explained. It's just some arbitrary, inane downside they added to that option because, if it didn't have some bullshit downside, EVERYONE would kill the Reapers without a second thought.

The "neutral" option of creating a new synthetic/organic hybrid master race or whatever dear God I don't even know someone was on drugs when this was conceived is brainlessly shoehorned in there solely for the purpose of adding a middle option. It makes very little sense, and there is no explanation of how the fuck it would work at all.

What also pissed me off was that there was no "What the surviving characters did with the rest of their lives" stuff at the end. Did Ashley retire and live in peace somewhere? Did Liara use her powers as the Shadow Broker to figure out who really killed Kennedy? Did Tali or Garrus win the Biggest Smart Ass In the Galaxy Award? These are questions that need to be answered.

Right, now my blood has reached a state other than vapour, I can some up my feeling on the ending in a few simple sentences.

1. Oh god! I just got Garrus and Tali Killed! And the game is acting like nothing happened, and now I'm gonna get zapped by a wait where is the reaper going? Hello, Harbingers number one topic of conversation still standing here, ah screw it.

2. Why can't I look at my feet, and why are there holes in this walk way and why is Bioware letting me walk over them, I normally have to walk round this sorta thing.

3. Okay, this talking TIM to death feels very like trying to talk Saren out of being evil too *bang* and he shot himself, wow, very deja vu.

4. He's proud of me

5. WHY ARE YOU THE DEAD CHILD I KEEP HAVING NIGHTMARES ABOUT!? Am I dreaming again? Also why am I not questioning anything you say!?

5. You do realise showing me Anderson shooting up the console, everything else aside, is gonna make me see it as the right thing to do? Insane Paragon Logic! *shootie shoot*

6. Okay, reapers blowing up that's good, Relays blowing up that's less good (shouldn't that be killing everything in the system anyway ala Arrival?), Joker crash lands on new planet, Tali is alive?! and on the Normandy? what the hell just happened!?

7. Oh hai sheperd, still alive I see, and in a pile of rocks? There was no rocks on Citadel, explain game!

8. You're not gonna explain are you.

9. Thought not.

10. How about an epilogue then? Even skies of Arcadia gave me an epilogue.

11. Thought not.

12. Fuck!

So yeah, there was something not quite right about that ending, it's almost like everything after the laser blasting away his feet is in shepherds head ala those fever dreams

Not to mention that, well, with the mass relays gone galactic civilization goes down the crapper, everyone is isolated and you get a load of people stuck in random points in space/turians stuck on earth/wrex stuck away from his family forever.

I think the Asari bartender on Illium in ME2 mentioned something about building more relays. So I suppose at least SOME knew what it took to make a relay, and could go about replacing them.

Why does everybody seem to forget that when relays go boom it takes all planets in the system with them Seriously, massive DLC where this is a major plot point last game.

Not to mention that YOU CAN SEE THE EXPLOSIONS FROM A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE GALAXY. You hath wrought more destruction than any Reaper could ever hope to achieve, bravo.

Terrible ending to a great series. I'm going to pretend that Shepard died beside Anderson in the heart of the Citadel and the Crucible just blew all the Reapers up and dissolved itself in the process, then everyone towed the Citadel back and started rebuilding. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Somath Cegem wrote:

Why does everybody seem to forget that when relays go boom it takes all planets in the system with them Seriously, massive DLC where this is a major plot point last game.

>Paying extra for shit that should have come with the game in the first place

I seriously hope you guys don't do this.

I'm not even sure how cannon DLC even is. Considering they completely ignored THE MOST AWESOME HUMAN SQUADMATE from ME2, just because he was DLC.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Somath Cegem wrote:

Why does everybody seem to forget that when relays go boom it takes all planets in the system with them Seriously, massive DLC where this is a major plot point last game.

>Paying extra for shit that should have come with the game in the first place

I seriously hope you guys don't do this.

I'm not even sure how cannon DLC even is. Considering they completely ignored THE MOST AWESOME HUMAN SQUADMATE from ME2, just because he was DLC.

you can find Zaeed in Mass Effect 3 during a sidequest on the Citadel, plebe
l2p

DLC is canon; the entire setup for the beginning of ME3 directly follows on from "The Arrival." You can also find Zaeed and Kasumi and recruit them as war assets.

Some general thoughts.

I didn't hate the ending, but I didn't like it either. That damn kid really started getting on my nerves, though the third nightmare did provide one of the two moments of "holy shit, what have I become" introspection in the game. Agreed, more closure on what the hell happens to all your squadmates (not to mention some of the other eight hillion skillion people you've interacted with) would've been nice.

The gameplay also has me on the fence. The combat is really good in this game (gunning down Cerberus operatives trying to advance through smoke is hilarious, as is sticky grenade tag) but there's literally nothing else going on. This isn't all bad- in parts 1 & 2, the minigames were basically obnoxious bits of make-work that provided no real challenge ("remember the old days, when you could just slap omni-gel on everything?") but to have the game be nothing but combat and cutscenes started to wear. There are a couple points where it seems like they're using interrupts as a sort of ghetto quicktime event, and that might've been an idea worth pursuing.

As far as fixing the ending via DLC- not my favorite tactic, but when the alternative is not fixing it, I'll take what I can get. Bethesda, you'll recall, did this exact thing in response to fan backlash against the (similarly terrible) ending of Fallout 3, and in the end that seems to have worked out OK. At this point, I'm really liking the fan theory that says that nothing that happens after Harbinger nukes you is real, but is symbolic of your mind fighting indoctrination.

So yeah, a rushed, weak end to the series. Admittedly well-written (up until the end) and with good combat, but it has only the writing and combat to sustain it- so when the former falters, you really feel it.

Hadiya Tannous wrote:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Also, am I the only person who was really, really happy to kill Kai Leng, because he annoyed the shit out of me. It's one thing for Saren to taunt you, because he's a genuinely threatening presence and a tough fight, but Kai Leng sending you a boast e-mail after getting his ass handed to him and needing to be rescued by his close air support was an "is this guy for fucking real?" moment for me.

I was okay with the endings. Sure, there were problems, and I will certainly agree that they could have been handled a lot more expertly than they were, but the choices presented, while they relied a bit too heavily on the more "magical" side of the technology in the Mass Effect universe, seemed basically sound, and if anything struck me as perfectly fitting. They were that awful Virmire decision from way back in the original Mass Effect writ large, forcing you into a decision wherein not only is there no good option, but there isn't even an option that seems like it could be in any measurable way less terrible. You can't rationalize it as doing something terrible for the greater good, can't say "I sacrificed X here so that X+1 elsewhere would survive". The game keeps telling you that not everybody is going to survive, that the road is going to start rough and get rougher, and you have only yourself to blame if you're surprised when that actually happens. The ultimate choice is based on what you believe would be the correct option, not what will get you more Paragon or Renegade points, or lead to other in-game bonuses. Like Virmire, the choice has nothing to do with gameplay. You choose the fate of the galaxy not based on what you hope will get you the better and more satisfying ending cinematic to watch, or based on what will feel good to see, but based on what you feel is the right answer in an unimaginably difficult situation, all on its own merits, full stop. I agonized over this choice for several minutes. This is a thing I have never done in a video game. I have never cared so much and been confronted with such a choice.

Also: short of some sufficiently advanced magical-seeming technology, how did anybody think the Reapers would go down? It took an entire Alliance fleet's worth of vessels, if I've done the math right*, to bring down Sovereign, and that only worked because he was distracted with the attempt to kill Shepard and Co. by way of possessing Saren. The very presence of the Crucible, and the way it's talked about -- "We don't know what it does, exactly, or how the hell it even works, but we're pretty confident it's going to kill the hell out of the Reapers! I mean, the Protheans sure thought it was worth a shot, and look at where that got them. Er... Anyway, that's what we hope; it isn't as if we have anything in all of our combined caches of weapons and current level of technology that looks like it will stand a chance!" It's space-magic from the word go. The ending would be every bit as unrealistic if it were Shepard and Liara roving the galaxy and punching evil in the face, with their (undoubtedly adorable) blue asari children tagging along.

In a game that is largely about choices, what could be more appropriate than letting you choose.

As far as the Mass Relays go...

Spoiler:

Said math goes like this: the War Terminal mentions three Alliance fleets attacking Sovereign, each of which lost a third of its ships. So about one whole fleet, I think. I'm terrible at math.

Edit: And Kai Leng could go fuck himself. He marks the one time in all of Mass Effect 3 that I used a Renegade interrupt. And I do not regret it, even slightly.

Actually only the 5th fleet attacks Sovereign from the human alliance, they lost 8 Cruisers, two of those ships you lose to the Geth while saving the Destiny Ascension, the Turians on the other hand lost 30 ships, half of which is because they were surprised and Sovereign just plowed right through them and the rest still had a geth fleet dropping right out of there asses which ment by the time they got pulled round and ready the geth had blown up even more.
I will admit that until you kill Hyper Husk Saren Sovereign is just not going down however but we'll get to that.

In the final space battle on ME3 no only do you have near enough every surviving fleet and ship left in the human fleet, you've also got, if you played your cards right, Turian fleets, Asari, Salarian, Quarian, Geth, Mercenaries, That one Volus ship with more Phalanx cannons than an entire fleet you can find and hell even what's left of the Batarians if you play your cards right, and I'm pretty sure I'm missing things.

Also remember this time that it's the reapers who in uncharted territory, they have always relied on being in and established before anybody had a clue what has happened, cutting everybody off from each other, never before (as far as we know) have the races of the galaxy managed to band together like this.
Also I know I'm prolly over stating it but a single Phalanx cannon shot from the Normandy ripped right through the collector ship, I see no reason why a could of decent hits from the ships armed with them on the reapers own doom laser, a confirmed weak point as of Rannok, would not take them down and hard.
So yeah, I expected a lot more damage to be done to the Reapers by sword alone than was actually managed, especially with the Normandy flying around out there, about to take a shot at a reapers weak point then be gone before it can retaliate.

On the relays, the moment you said seems likely, anything else you say goes out the window, we have seen a relay blowing up and taking an entire solar system with it, we are not told that this will be any different, we are not shown that this instance is any different, ergo, a lot of people are left asking "did I just wipe everybody out" especially when we get a galaxy wipe view of massive explosions which does nothing to assuage these fears.

Also why the relays always have to go, I could understand if I'm not got enough materials
and some corners got cut so in channelling the energy from the crucible they over loaded and were damaged, even blew up if i really fucked up, but at the 5000+ war assets you need to bet the ending where shepherd 'might' be alive, wouldn't make more sense for the device to have worked perfectly and form nothing to blow up, cause as it goes, this is a bit of a design flaw someone should have noticed.

Oh and one more thing, I find it hard to believe nobody twigged they had to use the citadel before the VI told us, I figured it out the moment I heard "It gives off a tremendous amount of energy but were not sure how it disperses it, we're assuming the catalyst is how" I twigged exactly how it work, and how it could bite me if I didn't get enough resources eg, the relays blowing up, what i did not expect was the relays to go up no matter what, which just reeks of cheapness to me.

Somath Cegem wrote:

In the final space battle on ME3 no only do you have near enough every surviving fleet and ship left in the human fleet, you've also got, if you played your cards right, Turian fleets, Asari, Salarian, Quarian, Geth, Mercenaries, That one Volus ship with more Phalanx cannons than an entire fleet you can find and hell even what's left of the Batarians if you play your cards right, and I'm pretty sure I'm missing things.

Also remember this time that it's the reapers who in uncharted territory, they have always relied on being in and established before anybody had a clue what has happened, cutting everybody off from each other, never before (as far as we know) have the races of the galaxy managed to band together like this.
Also I know I'm prolly over stating it but a single Phalanx cannon shot from the Normandy ripped right through the collector ship, I see no reason why a could of decent hits from the ships armed with them on the reapers own doom laser, a confirmed weak point as of Rannok, would not take them down and hard.
So yeah, I expected a lot more damage to be done to the Reapers by sword alone than was actually managed, especially with the Normandy flying around out there, about to take a shot at a reapers weak point then be gone before it can retaliate.

My point remains. It took a good chunk of an Alliance and Turian force to bring down just one Reaper. Sure, you have a lot more ships this time around when you set out to liberate Earth. Small problem: so do the Reapers. Honestly, the conflict is just as proportionally unbalanced. Sure, the Citadel races have better weapons. On the other hand, there is really only the one known weak point to strike in order to kill the Reapers, and even then, a single hit doesn't necessarily do the job (remember, you had to hit the destroyer on Rannoch about three or four times with an orbital bombardment, and the Reapers you're facing on earth are full-fledged Reapers, not the smaller and less powerful destroyers). Meanwhile, one hit with that red laser, and any of the Citadel races' ships are done for. And while we're not given exact numbers (or if we are, I never saw them), my sense of the conflict is basically the same as in the ending of the original Mass Effect, in that all the firepower you can bring to bear is not enough all by itself. It is buying Shepard time to do what he does best, which apparently is to fuck up the Reapers in ways they don't expect.

Somath Cegem wrote:

On the relays, the moment you said seems likely, anything else you say goes out the window, we have seen a relay blowing up and taking an entire solar system with it, we are not told that this will be any different, we are not shown that this instance is any different, ergo, a lot of people are left asking "did I just wipe everybody out" especially when we get a galaxy wipe view of massive explosions which does nothing to assuage these fears.

I said "seems likely" because even when it comes to pretend science, I'm still bad at it. My reasoning was basically this: in the Arrival DLC, the system where the mass relay was stationed got obliterated. However, the ending to Mass Effect 3 pretty clearly indicates that galactic civilization did in fact survive the destruction of the mass relay network. I think this because most, if not all, Citadel races have their homeworlds and governmental headquarters in a system with a mass relay. Settlements further distant from the relays tend to be colonies which rely to a greater or lesser degree on the more "entrenched" territories for their survival. If the mass relays were destroyed in the same fashion -- and with the same results -- as in the Arrival DLC, we probably wouldn't have two humans in the epilogue to talk about "the Shepard", because the settlements which survived the blast would have withered and perished without support from the more stable territories. At any rate, since the destruction of the mass relay network did not wipe out galactic civilization in this way, something must have been different about it as compared to the destruction of the relay in Arrival.

Somath Cegem wrote:

Also why the relays always have to go, I could understand if I'm not got enough materials
and some corners got cut so in channelling the energy from the crucible they over loaded and were damaged, even blew up if i really fucked up, but at the 5000+ war assets you need to bet the ending where shepherd 'might' be alive, wouldn't make more sense for the device to have worked perfectly and form nothing to blow up, cause as it goes, this is a bit of a design flaw someone should have noticed.

The Catalyst makes it pretty clear that the reason you're even presented with these choices is because the Reapers' entire approach to maintaining stability in the galaxy has broken down altogether, and they are relying on you to remove them and their influence from the galaxy completely. That would include the mass relays they've built. Essentially, it boils down to the current cycle's races having to "go it alone", or at least stop relying on Reaper technology. Yeah, the explanation is weak, but it's there.

Somath Cegem wrote:

Oh and one more thing, I find it hard to believe nobody twigged they had to use the citadel before the VI told us, I figured it out the moment I heard "It gives off a tremendous amount of energy but were not sure how it disperses it, we're assuming the catalyst is how" I twigged exactly how it work, and how it could bite me if I didn't get enough resources eg, the relays blowing up, what i did not expect was the relays to go up no matter what, which just reeks of cheapness to me.

The Citadel being the Catalyst didn't exactly shock me, but it's something I wasn't thinking too much about, anyway.

Quote :

My point remains. It took a good chunk of an Alliance and Turian force to bring down just one Reaper.

One Reaper that caught everyone but the humans by surprise, and had the humans playing catch up, in addition a Geth armada that's on our side this time.

And Sovereign was a "Dreadnaught" class Reaper. Not every Reaper at Earth was on Sovereign or Harbinger's level. The first volley of Shiny Space Lasers from the organic fleet knocked a couple of Reapers out of the sky right off the bat.

Granted, unless you managed to get E V E R Y L A S T R E S O U R C E beating the Reapers in a "conventional" dogfight would be a "by the skin of your ass" affair at best. The Crucible was propped up to be something that would bring those odds up. It could have done any number of fairly believable things. It could have been a ludicrously powerful cannon, capable of penetrating a Reaper's shields with ease. It could have been some gizmo that disabled or severely limited Reaper's shields. It could have been some oversized Barrier that granted extreme levels of protection from Reaper cannons to anyone within range. It could have summoned Space Chuck Norris to roundhouse the Reapers back to hell.

Instead, it was some bullshit that enlightened some glowing sky fairy that came out of fucking nowhere to three options presumably pulled out of a VERY tired writer's ass, all of which more nonsensical, idiotic, and ASS PULLED (I can't stress that enough) than the last.

Side Note: The Reapers, at best, get one new Reaper per "cycle." This cycle killed two Reapers before the Earth Battle. It killed one ON Earth with the Thanix missiles. It killed at least a few more in the battle above Earth. At least one other cycle killed a Reaper (the Derelict Reaper from ME2). Combined with the fact their usual Citadel ambush tactic has apparently been shut down forever by the Protheans, and Liara's beacon's increasing the likelihood of future cycles being prepared to fight, and it seems the Reapers are on the losing end of a war of attrition. It's a wonder how they even GOT has many numbers as they had in the first place, as the first Reaper or two would have been VASTLY overmatched by every known cycle.

As far as "you can't save everyone," that's all well and good. But the sacrifices could have at least PRETEND to be explained by some events in the story. Virmire had at least some set up. Due to extremely limited resources, you had to split up and attempt a plan that was established to be borderline suicidal. Due to a little bit of It Got Worse, you had to stretch yourself even thinner to drive off Saren and secure the bombsite while you went to bail the other wing out so everyone could get off. But then It Got More Worse, and you had to choose to either continue on to help the other wing out, or double back to pick up the one left to defend the bomb.

Later, you had to choose whether or not to divert warships off Sovereign to protect the Destiny Ascension from the Geth. By the way, I seriously hope you goody-two-shoesing fruitcakes don't do this. This also made sense within the story.

ME2 didn't have as many choices like that. Besides whether or not to blow the Collector base (a choice that I don't remember EVER being relevant in ME3), the biggest choice was which weapon to take from the Collector ship. ME2's problem was that it was too On The Rails (and no Mako. I don't care that it handled like a "drunken rhino," the faggot shuttle pilot can deal).

Drifting back to my point, ME3 could have had plenty of decisions like that, or more subtle decisions that end up with consequences in one direction or another. For instance, the Quarians brought pretty much their entire civilization, not just their armed forces, to the fight. They could have went the way of the dodo if they weren't careful. If you dawdled too long, Palaven could have been completely wrecked, leaving the Turians without their two biggest planets and hard pressed to totally recover. Thessia could have been less horseshit. The penultimate fight was on and above Earth, and considering humanity is really just Earth and a bunch of small colonies that have also mostly been hit by Reapers, if you weren't sufficiently prepared, or if you made a tough choice in an unfavorable direction, or both, humanity may not have survived. The Motherfuckers were already about extinct, and there could have been options to save them or do the galaxy a favor and let them die off.

Instead of "touch choices" arising from situations that occurred naturally within the context of the story, they came up with a completely unsatisfying ass pull that seemed to come out of an uninspiring SE game and not from anything I've ever played from BioWare.

I went into ME3 with the expectation of blowing up both the Citadel AND Earth (for reasons that made total sense in my head at the time) so if the Crucible had been a production model of whatever made Haestrom's sun shit the bed, and the only way to win would be to blow up Sol and kill everyone, I would have been cool with that. "Previously unmentioned superweapon" is a lot more bearable when it ties back logically into elements we've already encountered. This thing can be employed in numerous ways (OK, fair, from what we know it's basically the mother of all space-batteries) but blows up the mass relays and citadel if employed because shut up it does. That part does make some sense- the citadel being the heart of the mass relay network was established in ME1, but ME2 established that blowing up a mass relay made bad shit happen. If the citadel was going to go boom anyways, they didn't need to have the mass relays explode, just power down. It still ends galactic civilization as we know it, tying into the "human(oid) cost of victory" theme, but leaves a glimmer of hope for the future and, frankly, doesn't involve directly contradicting something the very end of the last game told us.

The part of the ending I liked was more the themes than the execution. Going back to the decision on Virmire, that wasn't a tough one for me: I sat down and thought it out: the facility needed to be destroyed, and for that, we needed the bomb. As a result, the squad member working the bomb lived, and the squad member reinforcing the salarians died. Not a choice you ever want to make, but once presented with it, it's fairly easy to suss through. The ME3 ending isn't like that; instead, you're presented with three valid-ish choices that will all accomplish your mission and asked to simply choose. From an OOC standpoint, you know that this is the end, and that choosing to die is valid. Given everything that's hinged on your choices up to this point, concluding not with a big battle or even a ludicrous speech check but simply taking the path that you prefer is the perfect note for the end.

The problem here is twofold: first, that being thematic isn't the same thing as making sense. The journey to this point has been one hell of a ride, but now that we're here, the final choice we're being asked to make is weird and arbitrary in it's causes and (certainly) effects. OK, so it disperses the energy of the Crucible through the mass relays (it makes sense, though I think I saw this episode of SG-1) to destroy all synthetic life, (OK) hijack all sythetic life (not generally something you do with a battery, but sure, why not) or... re-write the DNA of everything, including stuff that doesn't have DNA? OK, game, now you're just fucking with me. Anyway, you choose, blowing up the mass relays and causing Joker to crash- wait, why the hell was he in transit at all, didn't we kind of have this GIGANTIC FUCKING BATTLE we were supposed to be attending and what the fuck, are those my last two squadmates with him? Even if they survived Harbinger's dalek death ray, how the hell did they get back on the Normandy? If I tried to sprint through capital ship direct fire when all I needed was Geordi to beam me over, I will be very much annoyed.

...sorry. Tangent. As I was saying, the other big problem is that the final three choices do sort of render your previous choices pretty arbitrary. There's no subtle variance, no nuances gained or lost by your previous actions beyond "did you do every sidequest in the game or suffer through several dozen matches of the monotonous multiplayer []Yes []No" By having a limited selection of choices and having them be the exact same choices (with a direct sliding scale or "better" and "worse" variants depending on your readiness- hell, if increasing your readiness had simply added more choices to the end, that would've made it more platable) no matter how you got to them, it renders the rest of the previous games pretty much arbitrary.

So, yeah, the word "arbitrary" seems to be the big problem with ME3's ending. I respect what they were shooting for, and they did hit the right time zone, but they left way too much collateral damage in terms of story to call it a "good" ending. "A" for theme, guys, "D+" on execution.

EDIT: WD40: Yeah, this point has been kicked around the internet since about 48 hours after ME3 hit shelves. Apparently there was some kind of leak at some point, forcing them to move their release date up or something (I only started paying attention after I finished the game, so I'm way behind on all the previous news) and BioWare's been dropping heavy hints about there being more to come, though predictably sparse on the details. For my part, I'm keeping my new game plus mothballed until I get some DLC that's a substantial addition to the game (hopefully, I won't be waiting too long.)

Hmmm?

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As co-founder and GM of BioWare, I’m very proud of the ME3 team; I personally believe Mass Effect 3 is the best work we’ve yet created. So, it’s incredibly painful to receive feedback from our core fans that the game’s endings were not up to their expectations. Our first instinct is to defend our work and point to the high ratings offered by critics – but out of respect to our fans, we need to accept the criticism and feedback with humility.

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Building on their research, Exec Producer Casey Hudson and the team are hard at work on a number of game content initiatives that will help answer the questions, providing more clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey. You’ll hear more on this in April.

This writer on Mary Sue is speculating that these "game content initiatives" will most likely be post-ending continuation gameplay. But her guess is as good as anyone's at this point.

What do you reckon? It could be that time restraints forced the lacklustre ending, and work on the "true" ending has been ongoing... But that's probably a nerd-fantasy-best-case-scenario.

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What do you reckon? It could be that time restraints forced the lacklustre ending, and work on the "true" ending has been ongoing...

1.) Lackluster, goddamn it. You don't so much speak the language as chew it up and spit it out.
2.) I thought they DELAYED the game's release initially in order to "make it satisfying" or something. Like, they wanted to get it done in time for Christmas 2011, but they realized they'd probably end up with some rushed piece of crap that would just piss people off, so they pushed it back some months. Only to end up with a rushed piece of crap that pissed people off, apparently.
3.) Another side note: How in hell did Captain Kirrahe survive Virmire? No, seriously, when I saw him on the Salarian homeworld, I thought it was a different Captain Kirrahe, like a son or cousin or some shit. As I recall, Kaidan (leaving Ashley to die in a fireball the size of half the planet, I seriously hope you chumps don't do this) was with Kirrahe, helping to distract the Krogan and Geth. If Kirrahe made it off, why didn't Kaiden go with him?
4.) I will gladly give up 800 of those stupid Microsoft Points in order to get an ending that isn't complete horseshit. Like, rewrite EVERYTHING that happens after the orgasm inducing killing of Kai Leng to make it less awful. Anything less than that and I'd rather wipe my bunghole with the money and keep on pretending ME was just a one-off game and that the galaxy was saved forever when Sovereign failed.
5.) I could have done without Kai Leng and those fucking Phantoms. They seem like some half thought through attempt to force OMGNINJA into a game they really didn't belong in. It doesn't help that they pull cheap shit like apparently dodging sniper rifle fire and some powers. I also appreciate the help from the loading screen "shoot the sword out of their hand." Are you serious? That would be hard if they ever stood still, with all their horseshit "psychically sense when you pull the trigger and jump out of the way" bullshit it's goddamn difficult just to hit center mass.

Don't get me wrong, TIM having a completely loathsome Dragon to be some sort of rival/recurring miniboss for Shepard is cool. Why couldn't it have been some Zaeed-esque merc with the usual Cerberus cybernetic enhancements and advanced weaponry or something else that made a little more sense in the context of the universe? Instead we get a cross between Adam Jensen and the faggiest ninja ever.

I think Kirrahe further subdivided his forces, and Joker could only get to the one group. That's how I remember it, anyways.

Also, I liked the Phantoms (granted, they don't know how to play sticky grenade tag more than any of the other mobs, but nobody's perfect) just because they helped mix it up. Sniping made ME2 really easy, so giving them units that could put pressure on entrenched PCs was a smart move to compliment the improved AI.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Lackluster, goddamn it. You don't so much speak the language as chew it up and spit it out.

Biscuits! Armour! Trousers! Autumn! Colour! Aluminium! Sums!


On topic, having been reminded of a few points:
I had actually forgotten that the Collectors were the big bad in ME2, they left that little an impression over the Geth and the Reapers. Do they have anything to do with the story in ME3? Are they anything other than a cheap stand-in for the Geth?

WD40 wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Lackluster, goddamn it. You don't so much speak the language as chew it up and spit it out.

Biscuits! Armour! Trousers! Autumn! Colour! Aluminium! Sums!


On topic, having been reminded of a few points:
I had actually forgotten that the Collectors were the big bad in ME2, they left that little an impression over the Geth and the Reapers. Do they have anything to do with the story in ME3? Are they anything other than a cheap stand-in for the Geth?

No, you literally kill every last one when you blow up/neutron pulse the collector base, though as for being a stand in for the geth there where there as a narrative devise to big up the reaper thread what with them being Prothian style husks.

Did we win?

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Electronic Arts Inc. announced Mass Effect™ 3: Extended Cut, a downloadable content pack that will expand upon the events at the end of the critically acclaimed Action RPG. Through additional cinematic sequences and epilogue scenes, the Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut will give fans seeking further clarity to the ending of Mass Effect 3 deeper insights into how their personal journey concludes. Coming this summer, the Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut will be available for download on the Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and PC for no extra charge*.

Bit that got me:

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for no extra charge