Mass Effect

Dude, you should put a huge spoiler tag, there's plenty of those in your post.

I personally thought that ME3 endings were better without Extended Cut.

Spoiler

I'm subscribing myself to the "Indoctrination theory", and believe developers were waiting to release an ending DLC after the commotion was over (some clues indicate to that), but failed at it after a harsh (yet deserved) backlash from fans. It could've been a cool ending, but not in line with the rest of the trilogy - giving a metagame, philosophical ending to the more-or-less streamlined sci-fi role-playing shooter franchise is hardly fitting.

In any case, I'm personally disappointed with the series and don't have any real expectations from the sequel...whenever it is released. I probably won't (be able to) play it, at all.



I do listen to Sovereign quotes from ME1, sporadically, from time to time. Those are some of mine favorite lines of dialogue (or rather, monologue) I've ever heard. Too bad ME series went downhill from the first game, at least as far as story is concerned.



I'll post some more in-depth thoughts later on.

 

Yeah, if we're going to speak about ME3 and all, let this be a thread with unmarked spoilers for the trilogy. It's been two years now, after all.

I broadly agree with your assessment Alpha. ME1 had the best story of the lot but the combat is ridiculously unbalanced and clunky. It's also the first game with the dialog wheel, and it shows; several times the three options lead to the same line from Shepard.

ME2 had better combat but it was way too simplified, and also poorly balanced. The difficulty mostly came from every enemy being able to kill you in seconds even if you built tanky, so you sticked to cover at all times or died. Unless you were a Vanguard, which is bar none the best way to play both ME2 and ME3. The main story is a bit lame (mainly being forced to work with Cerberus and being forced to fall into the incredibly obvious Collector Ship trap), but the Suicide Mission is probably the serie's finest hour so it evens out. And of course as per Bioware tradition the characters were pretty amazing, and we didn't have to drag Liara the creator's pet around to boot.

ME3 has the best gameplay by a fairly wide margin. It's the best blend of action and RPG elements, and the dodge roll makes it far more dynamic. Being able to decide which and how many guns to pack is great, rather than the fixed proficiencies/loadouts of previous titles. Balance is better, normal enemies don't kill you too fast but Phantoms and Banshees will ruin your day. ME3's multiplayer would not have worked with the combat of the previous games, that I can tell you. The variety in guns is also fairly staggering, with the DLCs you have something like 40-50 available weapons not counting mods.

Story-wise, it was a huge mixed bag. The Tuchanka and Rannoch arcs were among the serie's very best, with really great writings and standout missions and cutscenes (Mordin ). The rest, however? Ugh. Cerberus becoming the Sith Empire? check. Terrible writing in the opening sequence? check. Rampant auto-dialog? check. Stupid scenes with the kid? check. The Crucible coming out of nowhere? check. Everything surrounding Kai Leng? ugh.

And of course the ending. With the EC it's less terrible, but originally there were strong implications that the team was stranded on some random planet (which means Garrus and Tali would likely starve, or the entire rest of the ship would, depending on the planet) and the Mass Relay network blew up, which meant the complete collapse of galactic civilization. it wasn't intended by the writers, but even then it was terrible. The explanation for the galaxy-destroying Reapers is that... the Leviathans suck at programming an AI? So that it's forced into a logical loop of ''to protect organics from synthetics we gotta kill organics''? Really? That was supposed to be a satisfying payoff?

Not to mention that thematically it sucked. In ME3 alone we had potentially two examples of organics and synthetics coexisting just fine (EDI and the crew, Geth and Quarians) yet the ending goes ''na, that doesn't count, you're all destined to kill each other''? Come on. Plus, as Alpha said, Synthesis was just abhorent, yeah let's brainwash the entire galaxy int accepting peace and love and turn every synthetic and organic into hybrids at once... somehow. Mass Effect was never the hardest sci-fi, but that was just silly space magic even for it.

It's a shame, because if the story held up to the other two game's, ME3 would have been such a stellar game. As it was it's still probably my favorite thanks to the great combat, but that ending... ugh.

 

HERESY.

I really don't have the time and energy to talk about mass effect again. Since I already discussed it to death in the past. But here's my blog post on the matter:

 

Yeah, Drew Karpshen (or however you spell his name) said that, I remember. I fully agree the Reapers should have been left unexplained; there is simply no way for them to live up to the hype. Bioware just chose a particularily stupid reasoning for their existence. They're the glorified attack drones of a bugged AI. Bleh.

The Dark Energy idea has merit and imposes an interesting choice, and is actually foreshadowed by the series at least. I still think most people would take the ''figure it out ourselves'' option because humans are stubborn like that, but it would be much more satisfying than the crap we got.

Another big problem, as Akratus has said, is that ME2 doesn't address the Reaper problem in any way. We only know they are directly involve in the very last cutscene, and the story of ME2 doesn't advance Shepard on his Reaper-killing crusade one iota. So they needed to pull the Crucible out of their ass at the beginning of ME3, when it could easily have been found or developped based on data from the Collector base.

 

The idea of an AI construct which destroys highly advanced organic life in cyclic pattern in order to prevent the absolute destruction of organic life in the galaxy is fine to me. In fact, I quite liked it.
However, I do agree with everyone - Reapers should have been left without explanation, without motif. The idea and reasoning behind them could have been saved for some other project, if anything. This - not to mention the "Leviathan" backstory absolutely ruined an otherwise amazing antagonist. The original Lovecraftian mechanical gods of yore is a lot more powerful to me than, as Ilosar put it, a bugged AI.
As I've mentioned before, I love Sovereign's quotes - one of the main reasons is because it shows such indifference to life as a whole. That, in my mind, is what Reapers should have been. No malice, no benevolence. No redemption and no mercy. No emotions. No reasoning. Just indifference. And ours inability to comprehend them.



However, looking at the story, the only game that had a really good one was the first. The second game had an almost non-existant one - granted, the companions and their quests were okay, mostly, and I actually liked The Illusive Man's character, especially Sheen's performance, but the basic plot of fighting the Collectors was so disjointed from the first game that it was painful. Exploring and seeing the criminal side of life in the galaxy, Omega and so on was somewhat entertaining and a solid contrast to the first game, but the game still fades in comparison.
Basically, all the weight that game had on me was that I grew attached to some of my comrades, and that is all. It was the only motivation to try and finish the suicide mission with the least possible number of casualties.
Gameplay-wise, second game was an improvement over the first, even though I didn't like the new gun mechanics.

Third game was the best gameplay-wise, but again, the story killed it for me (you may have noticed so far I'm a storyfag). I really loved some segments of it - like the resolution of the Tuchanka conflict - but some parts felt rushed - Geth vs Quarians conflict which has not been mentioned in the least in the second game is now back, big time and you need to resolve it fast...it all felt kind of cheap to me.
Companions were again a high point of the game, a redeeming factor, especially if you played through the trilogy with the same character. As someone mentioned, fan service was well done here. The Citadel DLC, for instance, although basically a large chunk of fan service, was one of the most enjoyable DLCs I've ever played. It reminded me what I liked about the series.

The ending...the ending...
The mentioned Indoctrination theory - I also have a hard time believing that Bioware team could have pulled it off, but after seeing hours of footage and discussions on the topic, and reading several critical analyses, I do sincerely believe that Bioware did actually try to make an Indoctrination ending. As I've mentioned before, there was also indication that they were planning on releasing a DLC which would actually be the real ending, if the players survived the Indoctrination (that is, choosing the Destroy option).
Could all of that be nothing more but confirmation bias? Quite possibly. But I still like to think that Bioware was going for a metagame ending which would challenge players' perception of the game(s in general). Nonetheless, as interesting as that notion is, the execution was poor, the decision to actually go ahead with such an idea is a poor one. I do like the Indoctrination ending...but it simply doesn't fit as an ending to such a massive trilogy. Out of line, missing the point, not fitting the tone...simply a bad, bad decision. Great idea, but bad decision and execution.

The Extended Cut DLC was a last-moment, desperate move to fix things, and it...failed at it. I simply didn't like it. The three endings provided each came with their pros and cons, which I thought was fine, but I still think that it didn't wrap all things nicely, that it didn't address all the loose ties. We were left with a generic "a hero dies" bitter, but happy ending, a generic "galaxy prospers" epilogue and a whole mess of incomplete explanations and series of retcons which, in my view, denied and altered much of my most beloved elements of the series.


In the end, I was disappointed. I did enjoy the games, I did invest myself in them, but I was disappointed with the outcome.



P.S. Too lazy to spellcheck.
P.S.S. Can we put a spoiler tag on the thread title, please? Sorry for being so anal about this, but I hate spoilers and I hate spoiling for others...regular viewers and lurkers should be properly warned.

 

I always pick the control ending in ME3, is not as stupidly wastefull as Destroy, nor sappy space magix as synthesis, and you just basically created an army of reapers at the service of the galaxy.

I like the franchise a good deal, I don't have the "TRUE ARTZ!" Reverence to it, but I still found them a fun romp, altho ME1 got really monotonous and if it was a standalone gam I don't think it would be able to stand on it's own, the story was pretty generic until about the last fifth of the ending, the way new squadmates joined the team was kind of unsatisfying, most of them having no real arc after joining the team, but it did have a fair mount of choices and consequences, but the gameplay really hurt it.

ME2 is he best one in my opinion, the Suicide mission was just fantastic, and we saw less clean space colonies. And the gameplay feels less like nails on a chalkboard than before, but it came at the cost of a reduction in character skill customization.

I hope the new game strikes a better balance of cinematic and exploration than the last 2 entries.

 

I played and enjoyed the Mass Effect trilogy, but only once. I did feel the urge to keep playing and continue the story - I didn't care for the combat at all.
I agree with most points made above. It is also good to see that I am not the only one who felt Mass Effect 1 was the most interesting of the trilogy. Most people I know who played Mass Effect felt 2 was the best.

Anyway, one point I'd like to add is the cause and effect in Mass Effect regarding your team. I really disliked the fact that if you did not complete all "loyalty" sidequests for your companions they might die in some completely unrelated event later on. This has probably been mentioned in other threads before though. That was something that should have been integrated more logically into the story.

 

No, Walpknut. The only, even remotely sensible option is destroy. Destroy, destroy, destroy. I did 2 or 3 playtroughs, I don't care to remember. Never even a shadow of doubt in my mind that I wanted destroy. First time I was given the options? No hesitation. Destroy.

Control is a retarded ending. The logic is so terrible I'm having trouble describing how idiotic it is. But basically, this is the exact opposite of what you worked for throughout the series. It is also a very ill explained ending. Shepard keeps talking about helping people and putting the needs of the many before the needs of the few. But that's al she/he does. I are in control now, things will be good. The end.

When I finished talking to starkid I thought to myself:


Who would ever merge with the brat?

God I just hate this game so much I can't even say all the things I want to say. I guess I've put it behind me for so long It's hard to dig my actual thoughts, ideas and initial reaction back up.

 

You don't merge with him, you replace him. Also I saved the collector ship, so my Shepard never was singlemindedly trying to just destroy the Reapers.

 

I think my bottom line is the Reapers are just a crap enemy and no fun. Everything about them is terribad. There is nothing interesting about them and they are just boring.

Sovereign the character and plot device however is an exception and an extremely effective villain. If I could beam one idea back in time to the Mass Effect 1 team it would be to just make Sovereign either Prothean or a one ship galaxy killer(standard MO could be controlling the Mass Relays and using alliances and Indoctrination to cleanse the galaxy). That way the sequels could have just gone their own way without the reapers hanging over every single second. ME2 would barely need changing and you can just remove reapers and replace them with anything and keep the best parts of ME3.

 

Am I the only one who enjoyed the Synthesis ending?


I love the idea of turning every single creature in the galaxy into a machine-organic hybrid. They can hate me for it, but fuckers can't do anything about it. Ha!

 

It was done better in Battlezone 2.

 

In the control ending Shepard becomes eternal, and if Joker can bang a robot I don't see how Shep could't just build him/herself a robot body to go back and bang Jack/Garrus.


Also, how could Shepard survie in the destroy ending? He is kept alive by synthetic organs and other robot crap, wouldn't he get destroyed too? Or at least become a limbless torso?

 

In the Destroy ending, if you've gathered enough military support during the game, you will witness Shepard "awakening" on Earth among the ruble, wounded, and heavily gasping.
I guess falling from the sky can be somewhat painful. Also, implants don't count, apparently.



Another stupid moment in the whole ridiculousness of ME3's endings.

 

Except Destroy directly states that EDI and the geth will be destroyed too.... so, yeah it kills synthetic life, and Shepard is partly synthetic.

Also I don't have to agree with the speeches of the game, I tought I was roleplaying Shepard, not being led by the hand. The Illusive man only failed because he was already indoctrinated, Shep wasn't, so yeah, I just decided to take the less dumb option.

I also picked the "use demons to further humanity's progress" ending in Devil Survivor, I would prefer the the more transhuman endng (synthesis), but it comes out of nowhere and is way too sapy, so.... Reapers for The Peoples!