Mass Effect 3 (Spoilers)

[PeZook]

The only reason the reapers don't just kill everyone immediately is that they're picking people up to "process" them into reaper-people to pick more up and so on. This makes sense if there is some ulterior motive than "kill everyone", like in Mass Effect 2 where they are processing people to use them as paste to make new Reapers out of. (Oh, and the fact that humans are special and make the best reaper paste? Completely not mentioned here).

But there isn't, because the glowy brat just wants to kill everyone every so often because otherwise, errr, Geth? Well we done solved that problem, either we shot them all or made friends (and it's not even true, because the Geth only ever acted in self defence).

No, actually he doesn't want to just kill everyone, he wants to "preserve" some species as Reaper-encased organic paste. This is why I think he's a great opportunity to explore possible reasons why an AI might commit incredibly vile crimes - due to poorly stated goals, strange programming restrictions...you know, statements on the nature of artificial minds.

Since the entire Reaper thing is so bizarre, I really thought they'd try and do something like that. Because the cleansing seemed so ritualistic and unnecessary, it just reeked of the Genie syndrome, an AI going psycho because of poorly stated goals. A more menacing paperclip maximizer, so to speak.

Worked for Bethesda in Fallout 3. Except the original ending of that was just small scale stupidity not "The last five minutes make literally everything you have done in three games irrelevant". I mean it was bad enough that the whole plot revolves around an "I win" bomb (Hell, Kasumi even calls it that) and writers who use that as a plot device want shooting in the balls/ovaries delete as appropriate, but the ending is basically "destroy advanced galactic civilisation so the reapers can't".

Well, even if this cycle ended with the Reapers destroyed and all advanced civilizations eradicated, it's actually a positive ending because it stops the endless cycle of genocide. A bittersweet positive ending, yes, but still a positive one

[Losonti Tokash]

Every theme of cooperation in the face of adversity and self determination and stubborn hope was thrown away in the last five minutes. They even threw away all their foreshadowing with the dark energy and why the Reapers were particularly interested in humans and went with a completely different and nonsensical ending. They failed to make use of Harbinger at all except for the bit at the end. The game is full of great characters, moments, and set pieces that will never be remembered or talked about because of how awful the last five minutes are. That is one hell of an accomplishment.

[PeZook]

Yes. God, they should've had Harbinger there. They should've had Harbinger there taunting Shepard and Shepard telling it something like "We killed your idiot scout, we killed your newest child, we killed your invasion force and now I'm coming over to kill YOU, motherfucker!"

EDIT: And then you'd board him with your surviving friends and rip out his fucking brain, making him beg for his life like all the countless species he destroyed during millions of years.

Like Stark, I have no idea why they didn't take the obvious route of simply saying "Hey, the war is actually winnable if we stand together and fight like there was no tomorrow."

[Vendetta]

It's not like the game doesn't show repeatedly that Holy Shit we can actually kill Reapers!.

You take out three Reaper destroyers, one of them with the point defence guns of the Quarian fleet. The main guns of dreadnoughts, or anyone who's managed to build Thanix cannons, should actually give a really good chance of destroying the Sovereign class ones as well.

But hey, why have an ending where all those war assets you gathered matter a damn, and you really see the galaxy banded together to fight the Reapers in one last all out showdown? That would be dull as shit, man!

[PeZook]

You could have the first major victory of the war be a very profound moment. When you lead a small-ish fleet to reinforce some world which everyone expects to lose anyway, and you refuse to retreat and say your goodbyes because FUCK I'm done letting them just murder people unopposed...

And then you face down a Sovereign class reaper and tear him apart. Wouldn't that be awesome? When the galaxy suddenly sees hope, the resistance solidifies etc.

[Losonti Tokash]

It's just another example of the codex meaning jack and shit. It says that even Sovereign class reapers can be taken down quickly with focused fire from 3 thanix-equipped dreadnoughts, destroyers go down to massed fire from cruisers. Kinetic barriers also don't protect against nuclear weapons, which is a way for various resistances to inflict losses on groundside reapers, and there's at least one instance of a relativistic vehicle being used in a terrorist action. You blow up that smaller reaper with the AA gun using a shoulder mounted heavy weapon.

[Agent Fisher]

Well, hmmm. Mass Effect one. I played it a year after it came out, on a friends recommendation. First playthrough, a paragon soldier. Second play, a renegade tech. Third playthrough, my main one, a middle of the road adept. Hell, in the beginning of February, I pulled ME1 out and did it again, making a character with a background with parents, made sure I choose all the right choices. ME2, played with my soldier, adept and my final character. I mean, I got the collectors edition and took the next three days off work. And Mass Effect 3? Oh my god, I was so freaking excited! I went to the midnight and got my N7 edition, booted it up, got it started with my Adept. I went 36 hours without sleep, slamming down red bull and monster rehabs, destroying a couple boxes of wheat thins and a pizza. I think there was some chinese food too, but my brain was fried at the end. I still didn't finish it all. I'm playing through, and I'm thinking, 'ok, some things I don't like, but damn, the FemShep Garrus romance? Freaking touching. The other stuff, love it! The return of Conrad Verner, Mordin! Holy shit, Mordin, I was freaking misting up. Samara! I never really cared too much for her, but still!'



Then we get to the endgame. The whole time, I'm thinking, damn, dude, freaking epic, it's gonna be great to see how we get through this. I may not actually win, did I do enough? Did I go to early, should I have waited? The brief pauses in the battle, Garrus and Shep sharing a moment, had me smiling.



And then, well, to quote the movie 'Club Dread' : "There's always one fuck-head that's gotta shit in the apple pie". That's you, BioWare. You shit in my pie. And damn it, I was loving that pie. That whole plan I had of doing two playthroughs back to back and then maybe even going to the beginning and doing an evil renegade all the way through? Yeah, forget that. So, guess what, Bioware, you did it. You got me to shell out the money for a game that I was gonna play for years to come. I was gonna extol it's virtues and decry anyone that said a cross word about it. Instead, you ruined a game that I was gonna rate as 9/10 with the last five minutes. And I'm pissed that I'm gonna ignore all the really great parts of the game cause of that last five minutes.

Right now? I feel like the most valuable thing I got in that collector's edition was the fucking velcro N7 patch... Which is awesome and currently attached to my airsoft rig.

[Vendetta]

That whole plan I had of doing two playthroughs back to back and then maybe even going to the beginning and doing an evil renegade all the way through? Yeah, forget that.

Yeah, I pretty much did the same thing. I was going to do a run through of the whole series again, but now, well, no. Because not just is there a weak payoff to what choices you make during the game, but I know that it will actively shit on everything I do as that character right at the end.

Good job Bioware, you've surpassed George Lucas in your ability to retroactively shit on your own accomplishments.

[PeZook]

Jesus christ. I had just come back home. Today I saw my bud do Tuchanka (my wife hates me right now because we talked about nothing but mass effect).

It was EPIC. Glorious. Awesome speeches. Awesome one-liners. Difficult, non-binary moral choices. Friendships lost. Sacrifice. Learning there's so much more to the Krogan than "tough fighters RARGH" in the process of shooting Reaper infantry in the face.

A TRESHER MAW EATING A FUCKING REAPER.

Wrex standing in front of a bunch of ravagers and going "I am Urdnot Wrex, AND THIS IS MY PLANET!"

Someone really, really good wrote and directed Tuchanka. And it makes me even angrier, having seen the heights that the series can get to, to know the utter, total shit that the ending is.

They really should release a "FUCK YOU, LITTLE HITLER!" DLC, with the option to tell Little Hitler (I love that nickname!) to go to hell and a nice VO epilogue, and I'd even pay for it. God, it's like Bioware doesn't want my money! I so want to justify spending money on that game so that I can ruin my cicardian cycle playing it.

[Stark]

If only the whole game was about the people you'd met throughout the series following you or your example to their glorious deaths, saving billions, I guess. It'd even have been cheap to do with some voice here and there about xyz character doing abc on planet P. the context for people invested in the games should have made it easy to succeed.

[Starglider]

I agree with most of the above with regard to serious flaws in the writing. However I was more concerned by the gameplay. Frankly it was far more monotonous and mechanical than the previous two. I imported my Infiltrator save and played through on Insanity, and almost the entire game was 'spam incinerate from cover while getting Liara to use singularity'. I really missed the heavy weapons, because in ME2 I added variety by taking a different heavy weapon on each mission. The ME3 weapons had very little variety by contrast. I know some people compain about mini-games, but taking out the security/hacking games made me less engaged with the game world, removed part of the pacing between combat segments and generally reduced player agency and suspension of disbelief. ME2 also had some non-combat side-missions which also added variety, almost completely gone here (the only puzzle I recall was the trivial crane one). Abilities I used heavily in the previous game e.g. combat drone (for player) were removed for no reason and replaced by useless boring powers ('armour fortification'). Finally difficulty, I don't claim to be a particularly talented shooter player, but I completed ME1 and 2 on Insanity without any excessively frustrating segments; there were a few challenges I had to retry a lot of times, but I always felt they were possible. In ME3 the weapons do so little damage on Insanity that you have to sit in cover for an age very gradually wearing enemies down (while they insta-kill you if you expose yourself), and that makes escort and timed sections (e.g. defend the exposed Turian guy at the bomb site) almost impossible; your DPS is just too low to actually kill enemies within the time limit. Thus I resorted to exploiting the crappy AI and getting enemies to lodge themselves in level geometry much more than in previous games.

No ground vehicle sections; I'm in the minority in prefering the Mako to the Hammerhead, but both made their games a more varied experience. The collecting war resources thing was farcical, because it was so easy to evade the Reapers and so trivial to get 100% by spamming scan and just exiting and re-entering the system until you appeared in a good spot for pickup - it completely destroyed the threat of the reaper ships, their inability to even do a proportional pursuit / proper intercept trajectory on your ship made them seem dumber than a simple air-to-air missile in Ace Combat. Finally a golden opportunity was missed with the strategic war resources thing. It would have been trivial to put fleet indicators on that galaxy map and let the player make choices about how to use them, who to save, who to sacrifice. Again good for player engagement and it would have made the whole galactic war thing significantly more real. Instead gathering all the resources doesn't do a damn thing (well, maybe change a line or two of dialog in the final sequence and your colour choices for the energy wave). In particular everything you do for the Citadel defence force is irrelevant, as they all just get slaughtered offscreen no matter what.

So I would say well done on art/modelling/music quality (I can forgive the excessive use of screen-space ambient occlusion since everyone is doing it ATM and the ME look has always had lots of glow, shine and bloom), but a D on game mechanic design.

[Stark]

I dont think preferring the mako puts you in the minority.

Do you think they could have spun the finale in a transhumanism way, as a long-running plot to prevent the singularity or whatever? The enemy being (thematically) social conservatism would use been a laugh.

[CaptHawkeye]

Politics and subplots based on actual topics people care about are totally beyond these people.

[Vendetta]

I agree with most of the above with regard to serious flaws in the writing. However I was more concerned by the gameplay. Frankly it was far more monotonous and mechanical than the previous two.

There's way more "survive against waves of guys" in this one.

I didn't find a significant problem with DPS, but I did spec everything I could into +damage%. The only serious problems were the sponge enemies like banshees (seriously man, fuck enemies that teleport up to you and have a one shot kill melee). Early game though I was running out of ammo all the time (which was why I prioritised damage, so I could kill things and have some not-really-bullets-honest left).

[Losonti Tokash]

Why would you say they got rid of combat drone? I use that shit all the time. They even added defense drone as a bonus power any of your characters can use.

[Havok]

I like the ending.
In fact, I am thoroughly pleased with the whole series and 3 redeems 2 for me.

[Vendetta]

I seem to recall you like dressup in your RPG games (or was that someone else). So maybe picking out the colour of your space magic was what did it for you.

[Zinegata]

Any scene involving Mordin and the Krogans will generally be awesome.

Also, it may just be me but I really enjoyed the combat. Enough to actually play multiplayer for fun.

Also...darn you for making me remember that idiot from SEED...God I hate her...(obviously the character...not the VA...that would just be weird...)

Well, the VA hated her so much that she reportedly said this in between takes:

"God, what is wrong with this bitch?! I wish she would fucking die already!"

[Zinegata]

I like the ending.
In fact, I am thoroughly pleased with the whole series and 3 redeems 2 for me.

You have been indoctrinated!

[Havok]

I seem to recall you like dressup in your RPG games (or was that someone else). So maybe picking out the colour of your space magic was what did it for you.

Or I thought it fit well with the themes of choice in the game and balancing power and control and how it drives the galaxy, it's civilizations and "cycles", from the humans (Illusive Man, Udina) all the way up o the most ancient civilizations (Protheans, Reapers, Citadel AI)

I also don't think the kid in Sheppard's dreams is the AI, more that that is what struck him the most and that is the general form the AI took.

I have no problem with how your war assets end up being used... I mean, what is Sheppard supposed to do in a giant space battle? Survive cut scenes? The way it works, Sheppard lives up to the legend, trust and faith that everyone in the galaxy has built up around him and makes, literally, galaxy altering decisions. Not just decisions he is forced into. i.e., by the Alliance, Council, Cerberus or the Reapers. For the first time in the series, he gets a choice that can actually change things.

And so what if the mass relays are destroyed? The Citadel isn't, the Prothean archives (the same Protheans that constructed their own relay) still exist. FTL travel is also fully possible as well as deep space missions and travel, along with now super advanced stasis technology.

Turns out the one race everyone was so worried about, the Geth, had it right. They wanted to forge their own path and not use the path of the Reapers. They even proved the Ancient AI wrong. It is not synthetics that will turn on organics, but organics that turn on synthetics. Javik confirmed that for his own cycle as well.

As I said, I liked the ending and think it is a good climax for the series that leaves the galaxy in a state that will certainly keep me interested if they decide to continue on in the game-verse.

[Zinegata]

Turns out the one race everyone was so worried about, the Geth, had it right. They wanted to forge their own path and not use the path of the Reapers. They even proved the Ancient AI wrong. It is not synthetics that will turn on organics, but organics that turn on synthetics. Javik confirmed that for his own cycle as well.

If anything, the Geth prove that Little Hitler didn't know shit and was a complete and utter monster for genociding multiple civilizations before the current time period. He's a walking Mein Kampf and even uses the same euphemisms - "Chaos" to describe sentient life. "Solution" to describe systematic mass-murder. "Ascendance" to describe a horrid death to become machine part components.

Little Hitler hasn't proved anything other than it's a giant douchebag and that players are right for wanting to kick his ass. But nooooo.... you're forced to go along with his latest "solution" just makes you his latest Concentration Camp prison guard.

[Stark]

If you want a story not driven by massive generalizations, Bioware might not be for you.

[Havok]

Turns out the one race everyone was so worried about, the Geth, had it right. They wanted to forge their own path and not use the path of the Reapers. They even proved the Ancient AI wrong. It is not synthetics that will turn on organics, but organics that turn on synthetics. Javik confirmed that for his own cycle as well.

If anything, the Geth prove that Little Hitler didn't know shit and was a complete and utter monster for genociding multiple civilizations before the current time period. He's a walking Mein Kampf and even uses the same euphemisms - "Chaos" to describe sentient life. "Solution" to describe systematic mass-murder. "Ascendance" to describe a horrid death to become machine part components.

Little Hitler hasn't proved anything other than it's a giant douchebag and that players are right for wanting to kick his ass. But nooooo.... you're forced to go along with his latest "solution" just makes you his latest Concentration Camp prison guard.

Uh... what? I dunno, maybe it is because I pay attention to the actual game or something, but the AAI straight out says that he is wrong, and has been and that now the cycle needs to end.
What the cycle entails are the Mass Relays, The Reapers and the Citadel. Everything that tricks the civilizations of the galaxy into setting themselves up for the cycle.

All the choices seem to end the cycle as well as leaving the galaxy to progress in a more natural state. How that is just becoming another goose stepper, you'll have to explain to me.
I mean, you do realize that he is giving up his power and giving it to an organic right?

He gives Sheppard the choice to take over for him, (control) and impose his own will on the cycle to do as he pleases, destroy everything he has been doing for, maybe, millions of years or, (destroy) and leave organic life to whatever fate it makes for itself, or evolve (synthesis) and take everything the AAI has done along with what the current cycle's civilizations have done and join it together with synthetics to create something completely new.

[Havok]

And so what if the mass relays are destroyed? The Citadel isn't, the Prothean archives (the same Protheans that constructed their own relay) still exist. FTL travel is also fully possible as well as deep space missions and travel, along with now super advanced stasis technology.

A note: The Citadel is not destroyed in the Control ending, which I chose. It folds up and seems to leave with the Reapers under Sheppard's control. So, while it does exist, it may not be accessible anymore.

A thought: Sheppard should have no problem recreating himself and his body if he deems it necessary with the control ending. He is shown to survive the destroy ending if you have a high enough EMS. The synergy ending though, seems to be the only final one for Sheppard as the Reapers and Citadel are destroyed completely and he got digitized.

[Stark]

Hav, what interesting things do you think there are for ongoing stories? Assuming Shepz doesn't just come back for yet more amazingly tiresome space Jesus. :v Do you picture the benefits of the stupid repeats brig gone and the interesting races and people???