Mass Effect 3 (Spoilers)

[lordofchange13]

I know this is kinda stupid but...maybe they sleep in shifts?

[FaxModem1]

Those pods that lead to the weapon room are supposed to be bunks that they hot bunk in, according to the Codex.

[HMS Sophia]

Mass effect wiki says 51...

[Zinegata]

No, it's pretty clear that the shit-tastic ending is entirely the fault of Mac Walters and Casey Hudson. What with their notes about the ending literally having "Like the first Matrix!" and "LOTS OF SPECULATION FROM EVERYONE" all over the place. Walters in particular wrote the weakest parts of the game (the beginning, ending, and the dream sequences) and also refused to allow any other writers on the team to offer input on the end.

Which is doubly hilarious since Bioware was bragging how they had a team of writers who regularly met and discussed each other's work!

I heard from someone that ALL the writers EXCEPT Mac Walters actually didn't like the ending, but he vetoed them as head writer and Casey Hudson backed him up because he loved the ending too.

The latter part (Casey and Mac loving the ending) is already confirmed. The rest of the writers thinking it was retarded... not yet.

[PREDATOR490]

I thought those pods were for stasis but even with them being used to sleep in... the amount of crew dosent really match up with the accomodations.
51 people on a ship with 2 bathrooms and Joker really got shafted on that one.

[lordofchange13]

I don't know if this has been addressed yet (or even if the following is true), but I just read that the reapers were originally intended to be explained as having been created to serve as a defense against extragalactic dark energy causing all the stars in our galaxy to die prematurely (e.g. Haestrom's star). That's why we had so many references to dark energy in ME2.

Apparently, the reapers acted as giant energy sinks which is why they loiter outside the galaxy for 50,000 years: to act as a giant shield. However, as the centuries pass, the amount of dark energy increases so they need to harvest more species to create more reapers, hence the vicious cycle.

The end of the game would have given Shepard the choice of either destroying the reapers and hoping that the advanced races of the galaxy can eventually come up with a new way to stop dark energy OR bargaining the reapers down to just harvesting humans to make a new reaper, thus sparing everyone else.

And then they replaced Drew Karpyshyn with Mac Walter, who gave us ME3.

Take it FWIW.

That would have been an interesting story

[lordofchange13]

Mass effect wiki says 51...

I'm reading it over again right now and can't find the listing of 51.

[FaxModem1]

Well, I finished the game, and I chose the Red option. Destroyed all synthetics, sorry EDI, sorry Geth, but the Reapers have to die. Humanity will survive. And at the end, Shepard breathed. So, ME4 or another DLC?

I think this video is probably true, or one heck of a fan theory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbghjn7_Byc

[PeZook]

I thought those pods were for stasis but even with them being used to sleep in... the amount of crew dosent really match up with the accomodations.
51 people on a ship with 2 bathrooms and Joker really got shafted on that one.

Why is it unfeasible for a ship to have two bathrooms per 50 people?

Remember: that's one bathroom for about 25 folks (since the alliance is emancipated and all) and half of these guys are going to be on duty at any given time.

Same with bunks: with hot bunking it's easy to accomodate a 50 person crew using as little as 20 bunks (Type VII uboats had about as many bunk beds and similar sized crews)

[Omeganian]

Mass effect wiki says 51...

I'm reading it over again right now and can't find the listing of 51.

Well, there is a mention of a cruiser with a crew of 80 (in the Migrant Fleet article, I think). It seems likely there was a small retkon on the subect for the sake of the Crash Site DLC ( it certainly retconned a "few" casualties into over twenty).

[HMS Sophia]

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/SSV_Normandy
Half way down there is a list of crew, many of them named. I added them up to get 51

[Simon_Jester]

51 people and two bathrooms should work as long as the average crewman spends significantly less than an hour in the bathroom every day. It may be mildly annoying, and showers will be curtailed (i.e., shower for ten minutes every three days or whatever), but it's totally manageable.

[lordofchange13]

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/SSV_Normandy
Half way down there is a list of crew, many of them named. I added them up to get 51

That is a different ship

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Normandy_SR-2

[FaxModem1]

So, how big are these Mass Effect 3 rumors?

[PeZook]

Probably just a troll. The "subtle hints" people think are on the ending don't strike me as deliberate, and it provideas just enough closure to be quite final. Poor Joker

[lordofchange13]

Probably just a troll. The "subtle hints" people think are on the ending don't strike me as deliberate, and it provideas just enough closure to be quite final. Poor Joker

What are these "subtle hints"? the whole Joker/EDI colony thing?

[Vendetta]

Probably just a troll. The "subtle hints" people think are on the ending don't strike me as deliberate, and it provideas just enough closure to be quite final. Poor Joker

Presumably he is now full of very useful devices.

[Shinova]

Maybe I'm the only person who was fine with the ending. If it was another the reapers are dead, the war is over, and everyone lives happily ever after ending I think I might've been disappointed at how generic it'd be.

[Kuja]

I found this hilarious in a sad sort of way. Apparently there's a movement for SW:TOR players to cancel their accounts over how badly Bioware botched the ME3 ending.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic ... 10218268/1

Angry Joe did a video pointing out the many holes in the endings. I thought it was a good listen, he actually refrains from going into his usual OTT rants.

http://youtu.be/6M0Cf864P7E

[Grumman]

I found this hilarious in a sad sort of way. Apparently there's a movement for SW:TOR players to cancel their accounts over how badly Bioware botched the ME3 ending.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic ... 10218268/1

It's unsettling how many people are doing this. Lets get one thing straight:

Mass Effect 3 was made in Edmoton, Canada.

Star Wars: The Old Republic was made in Austin, Texas.

Contrary to what Mev186 believes, this actually supports their boycott. Drew Karpyshyn moved from Edmoton to Austin during the production of ME2, to work on SWTOR. In his absence the other writer screwed up Mass Effect. I don't think that's a coincidence.

[PeZook]

What are these "subtle hints"? the whole Joker/EDI colony thing?

The video posted by FaxModem explains what the desperates would like to see in the ending: basically, people are grasping at straws and making up an alternate universe where Bioware writers aren't useless hacks but clever masters of double meanings and metaphors meticulously planned out over all three games

[Stofsk]

Contrary to what Mev186 believes, this actually supports their boycott. Drew Karpyshyn moved from Edmoton to Austin during the production of ME2, to work on SWTOR. In his absence the other writer screwed up Mass Effect. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Can people stop wanking over Drew Karpyshyn? He was lead writer on Mass Effect, not the messiah. PS Mass Effect 1 has some really terrible writing in it.

[Grumman]

Contrary to what Mev186 believes, this actually supports their boycott. Drew Karpyshyn moved from Edmoton to Austin during the production of ME2, to work on SWTOR. In his absence the other writer screwed up Mass Effect. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Can people stop wanking over Drew Karpyshyn? He was lead writer on Mass Effect, not the messiah. PS Mass Effect 1 has some really terrible writing in it.

I didn't say I'd take a bullet for the man, I said he was a better writer than the dumbass who gave us the ending of ME3 - or the one that wrote Deception, for that matter.

[Vendetta]

The video posted by FaxModem explains what the desperates would like to see in the ending: basically, people are grasping at straws and making up an alternate universe where Bioware writers aren't useless hacks but clever masters of double meanings and metaphors meticulously planned out over all three games

Yeah, there is an air about the whole thing that people are in denial that Bioware aren't as good as they think.

The trouble is that whilst Bioware have always been praised for their nonsense they chose the end of Mass Effect 3 to buy into their image and disappear up their own arseholes. (so we get an ending that seeks to retroactively impose meaning where there was none, and writers and producers telling us "it was always about this theme").

[Lagmonster]

Maybe I'm the only person who was fine with the ending. If it was another the reapers are dead, the war is over, and everyone lives happily ever after ending I think I might've been disappointed at how generic it'd be.

It's impossible to say this without sounding like a condescending old grandpa, but it takes a teenager to state that a heroic, positive outcome to a story would be dissatisfying. I mean, maybe this isn't you, but I'm hearing that if the hero goes full-Arnie, wipes out the enemy army single-handedly and gets the girl, the cool people roll their eyes and pronounce how utterly predictable and boring that was, and that their tastes demanded something deep or obtuse (I like to imagine them smoking a Gauloise with a lady's opera cigarette holder while doing this, and going on to complain about how the ending to the original Dawn of the Dead was changed because people don't want to be taken away from their lollipop fantasies about life). Like the kids I knew back in the 80s who didn't think they were cool until they'd seen a horror movie while under 18, because horror movies were ballsy cinema, pushing envelopes and turning conventions on their ass.

Commenting on the story itself, it was already about Space-Jesus himself come to life, guided by an all-knowing force of luck and creating great peace, loving great love, and kicking great ass. I'm sure the writers congratulated themselves on pulling the rug out from under people by suddenly transforming him into an impotent mortal in the last chapter, but that's probably what has people dissatisfied; it fucks with their expectations of the experience they've been having. It wasn't the worst offender of this type, however, as anyone who remembers the ending to Red Dead Redemption and wondered where their ability to slaughter entire armies suddenly went to.