Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: Mizhara on 09 Mar 2012, 06:41
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Okay guys, a quick 'warning' as it were. I'll keep spoilers away for a few weeks yet, but if you don't have access to your ME1/ME2 savegames you should really download some from elsewhere to get the specifics you want. The standard "New Game" options in ME3 are fairly... well, I'm frankly not impressed at all. If I hadn't lost all the savegames before (and ME2 is now for some unknown reason crashing on Illium) I wouldn't have found this out, but just in case some of you are in the same boat...
Go download saves.
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And yet they say "You should play it once first unsaved to see the differences to your own story!"
How about I play a story I'm familiar with? :bash:
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Yeah, that's the main issue. You're not told/shown what this Shepard's previous choices were until you're facing the consequence of it, which is a pain in the ass. Having to go "Oh so THAT was the choice made..." after some ME3 event is freakin' weird when I should be fairly intimately aware of what the fuck Shepard had done.
So yeah, play through the games for savegames, or download savegames with the choices you prefer.
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On a game note... damn they're good at this. Garrus is amazing, EDI is awesome, Joker is superb and so on and so forth. The characters are just so well done. I can't help but smile at the friendship between Garrus and Shepard (depending on actions/conversations I guess) for instance. There's also those conversations between other people you pass and those little snippets of their lives in a galaxy where the Reapers are ravaging whatever they can get their C'thulhuesque claws on.
This game is definitely a worthy... err.. threequel? I have no idea what the name is for the third installment of a trilogy.
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Currently still working on Mass Effect 2 and the ongoing log for the whole adventure up until Mass Effect 3. Might include the progress of Mass Effect 3 as well, *IF* I manage to take breaks in between missions etc. to update the log on what's been done.
Though mostly these last few days I've been side-tracked playing multi-player quite allot, so progress is slow.
And no, none of you fuckers dare spoil me before I do ME3 myself with my own toon going through the effects of the choices made earlier. Spoiler tag is mandatory, obviously, if you want to talk about anything related to ME3's single-player.
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I had the time to try yersterday the prologue and the first mission (spoil : on Mars). The difference with the 2 other titles struck me. It was more mature and subtle, more intense atmosphere, less rubbish (ala hollywood, even if it is half wanted in that universe, it was sometimes a little too cheesy to my taste in the previous titles, especially ME2). A great, great opening, like in ME2. I just hope it does not turn less appealing like it was after the beginning in ME2, actually.
On the gameplay side, it is definitly a lot closer to ME2 than ME1. It is basically the very simple and working system used in ME2, but more complex and rich with improvements sometimes taken out of ME1. Skills are less minimalistic, weapons too (with something between the obnoxious ME1 inventory and the very flat ME2 inventory), and the cover system has been "improved" to something closer to Deus Ex 3 (with the possibility to jump between covers, etc), which makes the game a little harder to master btw. The AI, too, has gone under a lot of improvements. It behaves more like in DE 3, trying to catch you behind, moving behind their covers, throwing grenades at you to put you out of cover, etc. Also, when I saw the same difficulty options like in ME2 (easy, normal, veteran, hardcore and insane) I was like "ok, lets take hardcore directly, even veteran was too damn easy in ME2 and hardcore was quite enjoyable and not very difficult". Actually, it is a lot harder now. Not that enemies are especially lethal (though importing my old saves made me lvl 30 so maybe there is a little of this...), but they take AGES to take down. I mean, I am always emptying all my ammo before taking them down and sometimes have to go in melee to finish them off. It is funny but a little too much tough to my taste (1 or 2 rounds of ammo for a single NPC is... quite a lot). I am thinking to downgrade to veteran difficulty to try.
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I had the time to try yersterday the prologue and the first mission (spoil : on Mars). The difference with the 2 other titles struck me. It was more mature and subtle, more intense atmosphere, less rubbish (ala hollywood, even if it is half wanted in that universe, it was sometimes a little too cheesy to my taste in the previous titles, especially ME2). A great, great opening, like in ME2. I just hope it does not turn less appealing like it was after the beginning in ME2, actually.
On the gameplay side, it is definitly a lot closer to ME2 than ME1. It is basically the very simple and working system used in ME2, but more complex and rich with improvements sometimes taken out of ME1. Skills are less minimalistic, weapons too (with something between the obnoxious ME1 inventory and the very flat ME2 inventory), and the cover system has been "improved" to something closer to Deus Ex 3 (with the possibility to jump between covers, etc), which makes the game a little harder to master btw. The AI, too, has gone under a lot of improvements. It behaves more like in DE 3, trying to catch you behind, moving behind their covers, throwing grenades at you to put you out of cover, etc. Also, when I saw the same difficulty options like in ME2 (easy, normal, veteran, hardcore and insane) I was like "ok, lets take hardcore directly, even veteran was too damn easy in ME2 and hardcore was quite enjoyable and not very difficult". Actually, it is a lot harder now. Not that enemies are especially lethal (though importing my old saves made me lvl 30 so maybe there is a little of this...), but they take AGES to take down. I mean, I am always emptying all my ammo before taking them down and sometimes have to go in melee to finish them off. It is funny but a little too much tough to my taste (1 or 2 rounds of ammo for a single NPC is... quite a lot). I am thinking to downgrade to veteran difficulty to try.
Someone from Bioware described "Normal" as the "new Veteran" in terms of difficulty, a few weeks back. I'm not sure what difficulty I'm playing on, but it's a decent challenge as it is for a first playthrough.
I'm still working on my journal from ME1/2, and intend to continue it into ME3. (So yes, I've been taking notes.)
Also, we do have spoiler tags if you want to use them. they are <spoiler> and </spoiler>, only with [] instead of <> :3
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Yes I know, but I did not want to use a spoiler tag for just a word, cutting the sentence in 3...
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Yes I know, but I did not want to use a spoiler tag for just a word, cutting the sentence in 3...
Anyone using the darker forum theme will see the text rather clearly as you changed the color of the text. :p
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Oh THAT was what Lyn was trying to do. Yeah, I wondered a bit what that was about. It's not like it's actually spoiling anything important anyway, so no harm done. Still, spoiler tags are preferable since we don't have any other alternatives that works across themes.
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My outdated beat up technologically irrelevant little laptop is able to run this game.
I'm so proud of it :cube:
About to start the first mission after the prologue now, having to play a blank slate but hell I'll probably use this weekend just to do multiplayer till my PC returns.
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Well, I beat Mass Effect 3. Now, one of the themes of the ME series seems to be that choices have consequences. For example, my choice to buy Mass Effect 3 has had the consequence of creating an intense feeling of disappointment at the ending(s). I doubt I'll replay it - I completed pretty much everything, and the ending feels both far too short, a bit anti-climactic, and, frankly, I've never really enjoyed [spoiler]my character dying at the end of the game even when I did everything right. Even so, that wouldn't matter as much, if it weren't for a two-minute or so cut-scene to wrap up an entire trilogy of storyline. Seriously, Bioware? Really? :cry:[/spoiler]
I can't believe I played through ME 1 and 2 again just for that.
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This deserves a spoiler tag of it's own.
[spoiler]"I'M GARRUS VAKARIAN, AND THIS IS NOW MY FAVOURITE SPOT ON THE CITADEL!"[/spoiler]
#Crowningmomentofawesome
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This deserves a spoiler tag of it's own.
[spoiler]"I'M GARRUS VAKARIAN, AND THIS IS NOW MY FAVOURITE SPOT ON THE CITADEL!"[/spoiler]
#Crowningmomentofawesome
[spoiler]So very very very true. There's few games where you've really gotten to see a friendship grow like that.[/spoiler]
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Now that I have played it a bit more, I feel again like they just give me shit with their console portages, but this time much more than in the previous MEs : you will know what I mean after having played it a little, ergonomics wise on PC platform, its just terrible. Interfaces and menus are totally inapropriate for PC and definitly the contrary to something that you can grasp easily. It just seems like they just changed the commands behind without even adjustings the graphic effects and all the feedbacks that makes it understandable for PC users. It just feel like they forgot that we have a mouse to play. The way menu feedbacks behave is just full of nonsense. I am especially refering to weapons modifications and equipement, and also the upgrade system. It is nice to have a nice and shiney flash interface using Scaleform, but it would also be nice if they actually hired some specialists in ergonomics.
But maybe thats just me being too perfectionist, having myself had to work on interfaces feedbacks.
[spoiler]On another matter, I am also very sad we did not actually had to go on Palaven, but just on this little moon. :ugh:
I just hope it will not be the same for the other races motherworlds.[/spoiler]
Yes I know, but I did not want to use a spoiler tag for just a word, cutting the sentence in 3...
Anyone using the darker forum theme will see the text rather clearly as you changed the color of the text. :p
Oh right, I forgot that one...
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I'm more annoyed that they've got the close *hug the camera halfway up the player's arse* FoV setting.
Fortunately there is a fix: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2584112
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Oh yes that too, the character takes half the screen...
By the way, how the hell do you activate the prothean DLC with the collector's edition ? It keeps telling me that it does not recognize the redeem code on the social network ? How I hate their stupid system so much...
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Mine automatically downloaded with the game "Oh hey, it's a CE, here's your Prothean Edition"
I didn't even have to put the code in.
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Same. Downloaded automatically. As for the UI thing, I can slightly sympathize, but it's hardly any kind of problem. The weapons upgrades and everything else works just fine with a mouse. It's far from perfect but as far as games go these days, it's just fine. What does bother me is the "Space is used for ERRYTHING!" that comes from console-centric development. I have a keyboard and mouse combo where I have in excess of a hundred and twenty possible things to push. I have room for a separate cover, roll, sprint, interact-key even if consoles have barely two digits worth of buttons.
What I did find very nice is the removal of the minigames for doorlocks and hacking and so on. They never bothered me in ME1/ME2, but not having them in ME3 shows how much time and meh was wasted on those things.
The level design has gone up, that has to be said. I very much liked that.
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I'll bite on this. It does look very hopeful, though my University connection and Origin are not friends, to put it extremely mildly. If I want this I'd have to pull a trip home out of my backside. One of my 'fears' was that they'd end up listening too heavily to the 'I loved ME1 ME2 was shit give me ME1' crowd that seemed to become fashionable a few months after ME2's release. I suppose they wanted a game in which a super space hero saves the galaxy by day while moonlighting as a stores manager for a fairly large Military-grade equipment company who also owns a space hopper armed with a tank cannon.
Considering there's been a large bit of my hard drive labelled 'MASS EFFECT' for a little over two years now, it's good to hear that the game will probably get into my list of 'best games evarr'
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So yeah... that ending...
[spoiler]Right, this first playthrough was with no saves for two reasons. One, ME2 crashes on Illium for me so I can't make the saves myself apparently. I'll figure out what's wrong there at some point. Two: I'm told the first playthrough should be "clean" so you can somehow compare it to how things are in your own save. I don't know what the hell that means, but yeah.
Anyway, I just finished it and... it's bittersweet. Here's what happened: Shepard got seared and wounded into the Citadel. She talked down the Illusive Man and did that whole thing. The Crucible connected and Shepard shot the shit out of the power conduit. Things 'sploded and there was the end credits and some "Stargazer" that implied it had all happened a long time ago and a kid asking for one more story about "The Shepard". So, I ask those of you who have also finished it but maybe done different things... did Shepard die in your endings too? Is that the best damn ending we get? Hell, I couldn't even tell if the ending was good or bad.[/spoiler]
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[spoiler]Yep. Well, not exactly. If you do really well, you also have the "best option", where you stop the cycle by integrating synthetics into every organic and vice versa, seems to be the "good ending". But you still die, probably. This was my ending. And it's just as short.
If you have done really well and choose the "destroy reapers" option, there's a short scene where a piece of N7 armor moves under some rubble. That's the best you can do.
I was not pleased. No exposition regarding what happens to everyone else, and you always die, or possibly commit genocide and almost die. It's very disappointing.
[/spoiler]
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[spoiler]Yeah... it really is a bit disappointing. The game itself is beyond awesome. I love it to bits, really. Everything a Mass Effect game should be. Then the ending... the ending is not worthy of Mass Effect. It's not fitting for Shepard. I mean, sure, kill off Shepard in some of the endings. That's to be expected, but Mass Effect hasn't to me been the kind of universe where everything goes Game of Thrones. To me it's the cliché universe where there is a "happily ever after" option, where Shepard goes to live with (insert romance here) or whatever. Exposition on what happened next to the various races and so on.
Fuck, what WAS the point of all the different choices you had up until that ending if you don't get to see the consequences?[/spoiler]
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Yeah the scenario seems more mature, definitly. It is not that much about superheroes but more about surviving. For now....
Mine automatically downloaded with the game "Oh hey, it's a CE, here's your Prothean Edition"
I didn't even have to put the code in.
Maybe I missed something then... I know it downloaded stuff related to the collector's edition, but I thought you had to activate manually the prothean DLC. Will see how it works when I will get further in the game (if I get it or not).
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Figured out how to be able to play the game again. Story/Ending spoilers to come.
[spoiler]So we know the endings are made of fail. Almost everything from the point Harbinger's beam hits and you enter the Citadel has this shit quality to it, yeah? I was briefly considering making an account on the Bioware forums to join the massive choir of waaaah and stopped once I noticed an interesting 60+ page thread.
It was all a dream.
Yes, it sounds retarded and cliché but fuck me if it isn't a better option than we have now. There's a ton of people in that particular thread that's discussing this possibility (and the possibility of "It was all a Dream/The Awakening/The REAL Ending/Whatever" DLC in the future) that Harbinger's beam just knocked you out and your already fucked up mind deals with the major moral, ethical and political issues in the only way it knows how. By creating that "end sequence" where the issues are quantified, listed and the solutions are fairly clear cut. There's actually evidence to support this stuff being a hallucination like the handgun having infinite ammunition, Shepard not needing a helmet while standing in space (yes, other explanations exist, we know) and worst of all: The Catalyst taking the shape of a dead kid from Earth.
There's even that brief glimmer after one of the endings (only if you have 100% completion) where you see an N7 breastplate move as if the one wearing it is breathing, covered in rubble. As far as I have seen, there's no cement on the Citadel, nor rubble that'd resemble that. Shepard is waking up after being knocked out by Harbinger's beam. The Military Readiness thing is just to see if they can hold on (while Shepard is unconscious) until he/she wakes up again to get to the REAL ending.
Edit: I mean, COME ON! The "Destroy the Reapers!" option is one where the Citadel fucking explodes massively and there's just no fucking way anyone can conceivably survive it, and yet THAT is the one where you get the N7 Armor and breathing video? It's got to be a dream or something. God I wish it's a dream.
Edit2: Another thing mentioned in the thread... the only ending where you see a breath of life in what appears to be Shepard? It's the one where you destroy the Reapers and have a massive military score. During the game you're repeatedly told about how in the previous cycles, the doom came from compromises and attempts to control the Reapers. The only ending where you may be alive is when you show the determination and resolve needed to not give in to that. When you stand firm against the compromise, the greed and surrender. These current endings... they're definitely a dream sequence of sorts, determining Shepard's resolve and determination.
Yup, Shepard is going to wake up without having even entered the beam and there will be a righteous ass-kicking.
Wishful thinking? Unlikely? Probably a crap explanation? Perhaps, but I need this if I'm to ever touch a Mass Effect game again. Particularly this installment. And I need this, because frankly the game is that good. It's just the ending(s) that ruin three whole games. It's a complete first for me, really. Three games that all rate around 9 out of 10 (or higher) being betrayed by the ending of the third, turning the games into a 2 out of 10 at best.
Anyway, this allows me to create a tolerable headcanon at least, allowing me to play the game again. Who knows? Bioware may still earn my trust back with some DLC or something. If it remains like this, though... they've lost all my trust.[/spoiler]
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Figured out how to be able to play the game again. Story/Ending spoilers to come.
[spoiler]So we know the endings are made of fail. Almost everything from the point Harbinger's beam hits and you enter the Citadel has this shit quality to it, yeah? I was briefly considering making an account on the Bioware forums to join the massive choir of waaaah and stopped once I noticed an interesting 60+ page thread.
It was all a dream.
Yes, it sounds retarded and cliché but fuck me if it isn't a better option than we have now. There's a ton of people in that particular thread that's discussing this possibility (and the possibility of "It was all a Dream/The Awakening/The REAL Ending/Whatever" DLC in the future) that Harbinger's beam just knocked you out and your already fucked up mind deals with the major moral, ethical and political issues in the only way it knows how. By creating that "end sequence" where the issues are quantified, listed and the solutions are fairly clear cut. There's actually evidence to support this stuff being a hallucination like the handgun having infinite ammunition, Shepard not needing a helmet while standing in space (yes, other explanations exist, we know) and worst of all: The Catalyst taking the shape of a dead kid from Earth.
There's even that brief glimmer after one of the endings (only if you have 100% completion) where you see an N7 breastplate move as if the one wearing it is breathing, covered in rubble. As far as I have seen, there's no cement on the Citadel, nor rubble that'd resemble that. Shepard is waking up after being knocked out by Harbinger's beam. The Military Readiness thing is just to see if they can hold on (while Shepard is unconscious) until he/she wakes up again to get to the REAL ending.
Edit: I mean, COME ON! The "Destroy the Reapers!" option is one where the Citadel fucking explodes massively and there's just no fucking way anyone can conceivably survive it, and yet THAT is the one where you get the N7 Armor and breathing video? It's got to be a dream or something. God I wish it's a dream.
Edit2: Another thing mentioned in the thread... the only ending where you see a breath of life in what appears to be Shepard? It's the one where you destroy the Reapers and have a massive military score. During the game you're repeatedly told about how in the previous cycles, the doom came from compromises and attempts to control the Reapers. The only ending where you may be alive is when you show the determination and resolve needed to not give in to that. When you stand firm against the compromise, the greed and surrender. These current endings... they're definitely a dream sequence of sorts, determining Shepard's resolve and determination.
Yup, Shepard is going to wake up without having even entered the beam and there will be a righteous ass-kicking.
Wishful thinking? Unlikely? Probably a crap explanation? Perhaps, but I need this if I'm to ever touch a Mass Effect game again. Particularly this installment. And I need this, because frankly the game is that good. It's just the ending(s) that ruin three whole games. It's a complete first for me, really. Three games that all rate around 9 out of 10 (or higher) being betrayed by the ending of the third, turning the games into a 2 out of 10 at best.
Anyway, this allows me to create a tolerable headcanon at least, allowing me to play the game again. Who knows? Bioware may still earn my trust back with some DLC or something. If it remains like this, though... they've lost all my trust.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]
I chose door number 3. For one (okay, two) simple reasons:
1. I don't believe that the "Singularity" as described in Mass Effect is an "inevitability". Proved that in-game by bringing Peace to the Geth and Quarians, furthered by the obviously "misguided" actions of the Quarians during the Morning War.
2. Control and Destroy are two extremes that are equally destructive in my view. Throughout the series, Anderson has shown he's absolutely obsessed with the notion of "destroying" an enemy. Definitely someone who can only see the world through the "barrel of a gun". The Illusive Man... same thing, different tone. Control is what he's obsessed with. I could go into the entire "he's been indoctrinated all along" theory (backed up by the novels and ending), and comparing him to Saren in actions (bringing Shepard back as an effort to counteract his "indoctrinated" plans), but I won't write that wall of text right now. ;)
Needless to say, just as I saved the Rachni and pushed for the Genophage cure, I don't believe in destroying a race (Geth or Reapers) when there is another option to end the war. To enslave them is an equally unpalatable choice.
So, the only option left... was synthesis. It may be forcing a change on the galaxy, but it's giving a chance for peace and survival to the largest number of individuals possible. Without making the sacrifice, the cycle continues. The suffering would continue.
Most people want to save everyone. This is one of those decisions that, based on your actions, may have very serious repercussions if not thought out fully. It's a ballsy f'ing ending, and it's one whose themes have been echoing throughout the series up to this point.[/spoiler]
With that said:
[spoiler]I enjoyed my Shepard's ending. I've never cried and cheered at the same time, or felt as satisfied with an ending. Now I know what Casey Hudson meant when he said the ending isn't as "cut and dried" as people are making it out to be.
Despite the romance overtones of the series, it was never about happy endings to me.
Regardless of any meta considerations (for instance, is Shepard indoctrinated? :eek: ), Synthesis is my only real choice.[/spoiler]
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[spoiler]Yeah, if those three options were the only options there, I'd probably have to go for Synthesis myself. Even if only to allow EDI and Joker to live in their sinful relationship. If the Geth had survived my initial playthrough (Seriously, you're fucking gimped on the 'default' playthrough. No way to unfuck things.) they too would have warranted the Synthesis ending.
If, as my headcanon now demands, these things were just tests of Shepard's resolve or something... Destruction is the only path. The other two are temptations. Weak choices. Indoctrination or just failure to stay true to the path. Destruction is when you wake up and go on to kick some major Reaper ass AND keep the rest alive, because you've shown the determination and so on and so forth.
Not saying there shouldn't be sad endings, but damn... I've played the shit out of three games to max out completions and get the best conceivable chances... and then get this kick to the nuts in the end? No, not cool. Needs to be at least one 'good' ending. Besides, they kept telling us through three games that choices matter and so on. This time, they fucking didn't. Three massively awesome games with awesome gameplay and story, then the last five minutes invalidates EVERYTHING you've done up to that point. That's shit, seriously.[/spoiler]
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzYLTbQQEZQ
Contains spoilers.
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Loved the ending quite a lot, as opposed to some loud bitchy opinions found here. I would have liked a longer explanation of everything in the closing cutscenes, but all in all I'm quite pleased with the tone of the ending.
[spoiler]Did you know that's Buzz Aldrin talking there at the epilogue?[/spoiler]
Interesting to see the writing team take so much from two vastly different sources -
[spoiler]Moore's Battlestar Galactica and Neon Genesis Evangelion.[/spoiler]
I'm going to wait a week or so, then start up my second Shepard that I've been building for the last decade. The paths the two Sheps of mine have taken thus far were divergent enough to make it fresh, but the differences this time around will be staggering.
I don't think I've ever enjoyed a series this much in gaming. I hope it's not BioWare's last hurrah, but if it is, it's a damn fine one.
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Parts of the ending that a lot of people fuss about make sense.
[spoiler]The mass relays were Reaper tech left behind to make everyone develop how they wanted. The relays had to go if the galaxy was to be completely free of their control.
"The Shepard" having a Jesus ending was something that could be seen coming from all the way back in the first one. And, my Shepard deserved some peace; she was living on borrowed time after the Collectors already killed her. She gets to relax and wait for Garrus at the bar while watching baby krogans.[/spoiler]
Other parts, um... not so much.
[spoiler]Silly Reapers, did you not notice EDI and the geth fighting you to save organics?(http://i1001.photobucket.com/albums/af134/gnosblax/yodawgme.jpg)
Annnnnnd, why was the Normandy in mass relay flight when we were fighting for Earth until the last second?
Joker saw Space Magic coming and thought "No, I'm not going to be part of that mysterious space mystery stuff, and neither are my friends!", so he took your squadmates and tried to escape.
[/spoiler]
I don't hate the ending,
[spoiler]A broken and exhausted Shepard climbing to her feet as she asks, "What do you need me to do?", summed the character up so well.[/spoiler]
and I don't like it.
[spoiler]After everything else, it felt out of place and tacked on. Sovereign's unfathomable to puny organic minds motivation turns out to be a bad case of "what if" with the synthetics in the game doing the exact opposite. ALL AI will wipe out organic life in the galaxy, hmm? Reapers sound like racists~[/spoiler]
But, I don't think it was enough to make me rawr at the game or the series.
[spoiler]Mordin singing when he cured the genophage because someone else might have gotten it wrong
Legion saying "I"
Thane's last prayer being for Shepard
The quarians having a home again
The lady with Alzheimer's looking for her son
The asari with PTSD
[spoiler]And the horrible realization the girl she killed was Joker's sister[/spoiler]
Jack with her biotic ducklings
Anything Garrus
Anything Wrex "It's time for krogan to do what we do best: saving the galaxy from giant monsters."[/spoiler]
Those bits and others make up for it.
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For the most part, I found the game excellent; certainly a worthy successor to the prior two games. There were a few parts before the ending that I found a little out of place, though, and the ending itself is something I find myself torn on.
[spoiler]Kai Leng -- I don't get it. There were several times when he seemed to use the sword for the sake of "cool points" rather than any sense; in a series that had, up to then, been fairly sensible about things it established, there were numerous occasions when calmly shooting someone rather than flipping about playing gymnast-ninja with the sword would have saved a lot of trouble. The Salarian Dalatrasse, for instance. Again during the final fight you have with him on Cronos Station.
For the ending, I honestly quite liked that a lot of the decisions made prior to it had no impact on that scene; to try and force what you did on, say, Rannoch into something on that scale would to me seem far more contrived than leaving it out. The Catalyst's explanation was, however, lacklustre and kind of undermined the menace of the Reapers, for me; that they were these Eldritch Abominations with no clear intent but some plan beyond human comprehension was a theme of which I was very fond.
Lots of little plot holes, too. The Citadel suddenly moving seemed very abrupt since it happened entirely off-screen -- and why were the Reapers building that beam to the Citadel long before the Citadel ever moved? It can't have been a quick construction job. Similarly, why on Earth was the Normandy in a mass relay jump when the Crucible activated?
The best way I've managed to try and reconcile it in my head was that Shepard was gradually being indoctrinated over the course of the series, with the Catalyst's ultimate aim being synthesis: an end to the cycle that pisses it off so. Constructing the Crucible according to Catalyst/Reaper specification would undermine the point of creating that combination of organic and synthetic life, so it was necessary to maintain the cycle up until the circumstances were right to allow the Crucible to both be completed and activated. Shepard, being the Big Damn Hero of the series, was ideal for this, and in initiating synthesis brought their machinations to an end. Destruction and control represented a last resistance to the indoctrination.
It's not by any means a perfect explanation, but it seems to me a bit better than "Catalyst AI explains the incomprehensible in minutes and then Shepard makes a big explosion". After all, in this interpretation there's no reason for the Catalyst to tell the truth when Shepard reaches it. Not the best route, but...
All in all, a fantastic game. An ending I'm not completely satisfied with, although I can see what Bioware wanted to do with it, but as much as I would have liked the catharsis of a grand finale tying all loose ends off, I can overlook the flawed ending for the sake of the main body of the game, I think.[/spoiler]
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Blasto the Jellyfish returns, in Blasto 6: Partners in Crime.
also thread is a bit wandered from original intent,
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[spoiler]So we're left with a Deus Ex Machina ending that largely represents... Deus Ex's ending.
After reading http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/9890470 I'm almost certain that this is a curveball ending for whatever reason, likely to avoid spoilers from data hacking/power gamers so everyone can see the ending at the same time etcetc (you know this game still isn't out in Asia yet?)
So instead they put in a swerve ending that makes no sense, people being on the Normandy who were with you elsewhere, breathing in space without a helmet when the Mass Effect fields only have a 7 meter reach and work in the Wards only, and not to mention how Shepard totally goes along with the whole scenario rather than go "Bullshit, we're winning this war and I'm not playing your game."
So you're left playing Adam Jensen. And suddenly I'm starting to think either game companies based in Montreal suck at writing game endings, or they're taking this opportunity to use the fake ending to parody the good folks over at Eidos for the crappy way DX:HR ended.
Also, consider this. Y'know how Bioware tries to put stuff in now that puts people off buying their games second hand? If the ending is free DLC and requires registration, who the hell would want a pre-owned copy?[/spoiler]
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Blasto the Jellyfish returns, in Blasto 6: Partners in Crime.
also thread is a bit wandered from original intent,
It's a bit late right now and I'm headed to bed, but if another mod doesn't come along and do it first, I'll split the thread either tomorrow morning before I leave for work, or after I get home. So people don't need to worry about starting a new one for now.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG0fTKAqZ5g (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG0fTKAqZ5g)
The reapers are here hrrr
More seriously though, this is damn awesome (courtesy of Nomakai on the AFC forums).
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Since it's not been split yet, I'll plop this here.
[spoiler]Like some others, I've fallen into the Indoctrination Theory camp.
Remember all the signs and symptoms and consider the last bits:
-All the buzzing when you meet the Illusive Man.
-The black tendrils at the edges of your vision during the same time.
-Anderson being there, and him coming in behind you but getting to the control panel first when there's only one path.
-The Catalyst looks like a "ghostly apparition".
-The part people really fuss about: Shepard just accepts there are only the Catalyst's options without argument. Very "trusting".
-The Catalyst lingers if you pick anything but Destroy. If you choose Destroy, it instantly vanishes.
-The "secret scene (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o_C18ytst0)", if you pick Destroy, of Shepard breathing under rubble in London as if you never made it to the beam after Harby made the kaboom. It has sounds like Reapers still moving around, too.
-James mentioning he hears humming when he has nothing new to talk about.
-And tweets like:User 7: "Its not that the ending was taken in the wrong direction its that it makes NO SENSE. Ashley was on the Normandy? she [was] with me."
@masseffect: "Probably a good thing to be cautious of."
This "leak" has an interesting flavor when taken with a grain of salt.[spoiler](http://i.imgur.com/xjXdX.png)[/spoiler][/spoiler]
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[spoiler]Failing the indoctrination idea -- which, honestly, I like; it seems very in-fitting with the Reapers to have their scheming and machinations so far above Shepard's head that he's convinced he's working against them despite indoctrination -- another route I experimented to try and reconcile it in my head was that when Harbinger hit Shepard, that was it; he was dead, shiny Lazarus implants be damned. The last sequence and all its inconsistencies was an aberration of a dying (potentially indoctrinated; not mutually exclusive) mind.
I would prefer it to be the indoctrination, but again, both appeal to me arguably more than "Shepard is the Big Damn Hero and destroys the Reapers to live happily ever after". Your mileage my vary, and neither's really a perfect fit, but taking the entire post-Harbinger sequence with several pinches of salt seems worthwhile given the inconsistencies and lapses of continuity.[/spoiler]
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Hokay, thread split. Keep the ME3 stuff - especially the spoilers! - here, and the log-posts and updates from marathon playthroughs to the original thread, please! :cube:
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Do we still need spoiler tags then considering there's a big fat warning?
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Do we still need spoiler tags then considering there's a big fat warning?
[spoiler]
(http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2012/03/Extreme-Car-Spoiler-Modifications.jpg)[/spoiler]
probably not, imo.
I said to someone the other day, about how in teh first real mission, poor James Vega :(
He's all "woo, lets shoot stuff", then p.much before anything much occurs, Shepard goes "Hey, New Guy, keep the shuttle warm, Kaidan, Liara and I have this covered."
rejected :(
I lol'd at the conversations that Liara and Matriarch Aethya had:
"You're giving me commandos?"
"Well, you're too old for me to buy you a damn pony"
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I never saw that conversation with Aethyta - when was that? I knew she'd make an appearance after some hints in LotSB and on Illium in ME2, but couldn't find her. oO
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Citadel station, presidium commons, there's a cafe that Liara sits at a table at when you visit the Citadel. (this is early game though, I dunno if it would change later in the game).
the barperson is Aethyta. You can talk to her and stuff. Then talk to Liara. Then Liara stands talking to Aethyta, in one of those conversations you hear when you're passing.
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Yeah, she (Liara) starts at the Apollo Cafe at the beginning (nearer to the elevator) and then moves to the other end of the Presidium afterward.
I did run into one of Aethyta's commandos, but as a side quest. I'll keep an eye out next time I head to the Citadel on my second play-through - thanks.
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Loved the ending quite a lot, as opposed to some loud bitchy opinions found here. I would have liked a longer explanation of everything in the closing cutscenes, but all in all I'm quite pleased with the tone of the ending.
Did you know that's Buzz Aldrin talking there at the epilogue?
Interesting to see the writing team take so much from two vastly different sources -
Moore's Battlestar Galactica and Neon Genesis Evangelion.
I'm going to wait a week or so, then start up my second Shepard that I've been building for the last decade. The paths the two Sheps of mine have taken thus far were divergent enough to make it fresh, but the differences this time around will be staggering.
I don't think I've ever enjoyed a series this much in gaming. I hope it's not BioWare's last hurrah, but if it is, it's a damn fine one.
Yeah, loved it as well.
Sure, the ending has been done before in different ways and various esteemed places like Evangelion, Galactica, Matrix... etc. I love the concept though and frankly could see it coming a million miles away (like well in ME2, or even ME1). I am thus a little amazed at the huge negative reaction to it, but I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised. That type of ending always gets the fandom's hate. Evangelion is a great example of that, where people went utterly nuts simply because they couldn't totally grasp what the fuck even happened.
The only criticism that I can agree with is that it wasn't terribly original, but this is Mass Effect we're talking about. It is in its entirety a pastiche of pretty much all known scifi cliches, but it works because you get to actually play through that stuff making the hard decisions yourself and because it develops astoundingly great and emotional relationships all the way through it.
Otherwise, I found it a good game and a worthy successor/finale to the series. Too bad there was so little Miranda (who was my romantic interest), though. Ashley was fairly boring too, but I guess she'd have been more meaningful if there had been a rekindling of that relationship (now she was just the mopey, vaguely pathetic ex who just doesn't leave you alove). Also, Garrus and Shepard... man.
In the end, I'm sad because my Shepard promised Miranda he'd be back and that girl's prolly gonna be an emotional wreck after just barely opening up in the end, she gets her emotions squashed like that. Though I guess the ending (with the N7 tag moving) leaves Shepard's return open to interpretation.
So, I guess the inevitable MMO will be set prior to the events of the Mass Effect series or maybe in an alternate reality version with no Shepard, just Goongeth and Band of Krogan to fight the reapers or what not.
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The anger at the endings isn't that they're dark or anything like that. It's that the "sixteen distinctly different endings" that were promised doesn't exist. It's one single ending with three different colors. There's also the quote that there'd be no A, B or C choose your ending thing, and that was -exactly- what it was. Except it was RGB instead of ABC.
No one minds that there are dark and grim endings, there's just massive disappointment to see that nothing you ever did mattered at all.
Frankly, a franchise such as this deserves better. Deus Ex did this well over a decade ago and did it right. This was just... meh.
In the end, it's simply not up for debate. When you piss off this many people and there's an uproar this big... you done fucked something up.
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That is a fair point (but not the most commonly vocalized complaint based on what I've been reading). Then again, I don't think any game I've played has succeeded in giving a truly broad range of endings. At best there is an illusion of difference (ie. ME2). There is one exception to this, though: Dragon Age 1.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=467pmIX-oZo laughing so hard right now :lol:
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lol @ the vid :lol:
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Also, just omg, they dared...
I just saw Tali's face. @_@
Its uh... well, I think this somehow ruins the mystery and it looks more like some kind of poor fan service than a real bonus to the story...
The anger at the endings isn't that they're dark or anything like that. It's that the "sixteen distinctly different endings" that were promised doesn't exist. It's one single ending with three different colors. There's also the quote that there'd be no A, B or C choose your ending thing, and that was -exactly- what it was. Except it was RGB instead of ABC.
No one minds that there are dark and grim endings, there's just massive disappointment to see that nothing you ever did mattered at all.
Frankly, a franchise such as this deserves better. Deus Ex did this well over a decade ago and did it right. This was just... meh.
In the end, it's simply not up for debate. When you piss off this many people and there's an uproar this big... you done fucked something up.
Bioware narrative technics have always worked like this : insert different choices for the player to use, then create several branches to make him believe that his actions impact on the way the story goes, then make sure said branches all lead to the same ending point. It can also be found at different scales in the story : the smallest, being in several choices in a conversation leading to the final same words, to the biggest, storyline branches that eventually have the same result and only the path that lead there is different. For me this is nothing new.
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Related to a discussion I had with Kyber earlier today on MSN. (Nicked from Kyoko's twitter feed.)
(http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17ghbbtac8v7upng/original.png)
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Haha, awesome Twitter convo! :D
Tali's face... where? I mean, she showed it to Shepard, but I didn't see it. Any screenies somewhere?
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Also, there are now some rumors that the ending of ME3 may be a false-ending, and the real ending will be released as a DLC later on. Of course, whether the signs/hints/leaks that have been spotted are really telling us this or that Bioware is maybe considering a revamp because of the reaction... who knows. It could all be bogus.
But that makes me chuckle. Because that would copying Neon Genesis Evangelion on a very meta level there. That is exactly what happened with it. Fans didn't like the ending and a new movie was produced with a slightly more comprehensible ending (and a cleverly hidden FU to fandom, too). If Bioware go down the same route, it would be too weird.
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Ye Olde Rumors. The latest (and most likely) word is that this is exactly the ending Bioware envisioned and somehow they just didn't see how much it sucked and how many enormous plotholes it left behind. The thing is, Bioware have no reason to change the ending and no one really wants them to. What tens of thousands of people are asking for are more endings and some sort of closure. Some explanation of what the hell happened would be nice too.
As for Tali's face: If you're a Talimancer, you're given a photo of Tali. Turns out it's a shitty stock photo with barely any photoshopping done at all. For all intents and purposes, she's a three-fingered cliché human who thinks adding glowy eyes in photoshop is a cool thing. Laziest thing ever. Speaking of stock photos, the Stargazer thingy? Those trees and the old guy and kid? Yeah, stock photo. Maybe a little sliding on the hue slider, just like with the 'sixteen distinctly different endings' that turns out to be one ending with three different colors.
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My current fear is this: it's ALL a publicity stunt (not totally intentionally, but definitely in the "we need a controversial story/ending" sense, which really cheapens the overall experience). Bioware wanted this game to go down in history. I just hope Bioware doesn't go down in flames.
:|
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My current fear is this: it's ALL a publicity stunt (not totally intentionally, but definitely in the "we need a controversial story/ending" sense, which really cheapens the overall experience). Bioware wanted this game to go down in history. I just hope Bioware doesn't go down in flames.
:|
Right now I'm roughly of the opinion that, if they do, I'll happily volunteer to be the one who makes sure that they fall into an inflatable kiddie pool full of high-octane gasoline.
I've played through Mass Effect at least three times, Mass Effect 2 at least twice, and since I tend to be obsessive about completing every last possible thing, each play-through probably took around 50 hours, if not more. I enjoyed the series that much. I anticipated playing through the complete series another 2 or 3 times once I finished Mass Effect 3.
After the ending of ME 3, however, I haven't been able to motivate myself to even try one of the other endings (I chose synthesis when I had the opportunity). It's that bad.
It's not bad because Shephard almost always dies. It's not bad because no choice is perfect. The problem is that, even if you try to fanfic in some sort of indoctrination, the ending makes no sense whatsoever, and it is an ending that conforms to an extremely low standard of quality.
Consider the indoctrination theory - which is that Shephard was indoctrinated by the Reapers, and that everything from getting hit by the beam onwards is some sort of psychic dream attack. This might be plausible, except for the fact that we know that indoctrination takes longer than that. Heck, Cerberus researchers running around inside of a Reaper managed to stay sane for probably a couple of weeks in ME 2. In the Arrival DLC, humans exposed to Reaper tech managed to resist control long enough to create an asteroid rocket of doom. Shepard hasn't been spending any concentrated amount of time around Reapers except when he is actively killing them, a situation that does not lend itself to indoctrination. Moreover, when someone is indoctrinated, they lose their free will and independent thought, which there is no evidence of Shepard doing whatsoever.
But let us suppose he is anyway. What then? Is he just sitting on the ground in front of the transport beam, adventuring in la-la land? If so, then why does Harbinger bother to offer him a choice at all? Why not, you know, just zap him again? Obviously, if Shepard is truly not on the Citadel, then there's no particular reason for Harbinger or any other Reaper to interact with Shepard besides killing him. After all, what is Shepard going to do from the ground? Think nasty thoughts at the Reapers? But if Shepard is on the Citadel, then the indoctrination theory is pretty much kaput. Incidentally, there are cement analogues on the citadel, remember ME 1's ending? So arguing that the scene of Shepard waking up must be on Earth due to the surrounding rubble is not entirely convincing.
But the rest of the ending doesn't make sense either. I took Garrus into the final battle with me, and I had a distinct feeling of "what the fuckity-fuck?!?" when Garrus stepped down off the Normandy. Which shouldn't have been in transit between gates, shouldn't have had any of my team on it (they were on the ground five minutes earlier!), and...why does synthesis make the gates explode, again? As well as the destroy option? And the control option? Does beaming an information pulse or a space magic beam really make gates explode in solar-system-annihilating fury?
Apparently.
And if Shepard was indoctrinated, why do I get the Normandy running at all, or the Reapers exploding? Is Harbinger simulating that, too? What would be the point of that? Indoctrinated or not, what happens to Tali, Liara, Garrus, EDI, or my other contacts/friends/allies? For that matter, if the whole Citadel thing is a hallucination, why do I end up confronting the Illusive man, how is it possible for him to kill me, and why am I with Anderson?
This whole thing reeks of Bioware either conducting a massive troll, developing sudden and extreme incompetence, or deciding that we really need a DLC ending or a Mass Effect 4. It's so good as a troll that if it were so, I'd almost admire - no, fuck it, I would admire it - except for the fact that I paid sixty fucking dollars for this game and I want my money back. And I want the money I paid for Mass Effect 2 back, because Bioware has stained that, too.
I could and can take sad endings, or even not-fully-explained endings, and certainly I love happy endings and endings where my choices matter, as in Fallout 1,2,3, and New Vegas. What I really find to be a complete butt-munch is when someone promises me endings completely different from each other that depend on my choices over three games, and then gives me an ending where I get red, blue, and green, none of which have any relation to choices I've made save whether I completed enough side missions...and then, on top of that, can't even manage to make those endings consistent with in-game lore or the events that occurred inside the game five minutes previously.
Now, this may seem like a lot of raging over a video game, but I would have spent that money on something else if I hadn't spent it on ME 1, 2, and 3, and I spent that money with the implicit assumption that Bioware would make a dedicated effort to avoid being incompetent or evil in their treatment of players. Worse, I've probably spent at least twenty hours playing ME 3 alone, which I could have spent working or playing Eve, or whatnot. If a supplier were to provide me with a chemical that cost me twenty hours of extra work and sixty dollars, you can bet I'd be complaining, and I don't think it's unreasonable to question the ethics of charging customers as much as Bioware does for a game that doesn't fulfill the claims made for it. Even if you like the options at the end of Mass Effect 3, the ending does not live up to the promises made pre-purchase, and it is objectively bad when considered from a standpoint of consistency, plot-coherency, and comprehensibility.
There. I'm done. :P
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I strongly believe this was never the intended ending.
You do not make three games of brilliant lore and story and then murder it with 5 minutes of plotholes in a non satisfying Deus Ex Machina. It's illogical to the point of inconceivable and there is no way in hell Bioware could drop the ball on the one thing they're constantly praised for, writing.
Anyway, Bioware has a Panel at PAX on April 6th. I think we'll get answers there.
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Vik: it's stated in a couple places over the course of the game that the speed and power of indoctrination can vary based on the intent. I think it's safe to assume that the Cerberus researchers at Mnemosyne (Reaper IFF) and the Alliance people in Bahak (Arrival) would have fallen under the category of passive indoctrination - the former due to it being a more or less wrecked and dead Reaper shell, and the latter due to it being, well, an artifact, not an actual Reaper.
That said, Object Rho did manage to put out enough power to knock Shepard out after a few minutes of fighting in the same room as it. So as far as the Indoctrination Theory goes, it's not *too* unreasonable that there's the possibility of "burst" indoctrination that can have a semi-immediate effect.
It obviously doesn't excuse the (lacking) quality of the end, nor does it explain a damn thing after Deus Effect: Mass Revolution or whatever we're going to refer to The Choice as, but the Indoctrination/Hallucination theories are one of only a few things that have any remote chance of "explaining" the result of the "destroy" ending in a way that resembles *any* kind of sense.
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Selected tweets from Bioware, yoinked from the Bioware forums:
User 3: "I kinda feel lost after that ending...not what I expected and left me feeling everything done was for nothing."
@masseffect: "We know it's a lot to take in! But hang in there. Your decisions matter."
User 5: "I loved 98% of ME3..but something has to be up w/ ending..too much talent at BW for that business. Keep my saves?"
@masseffect: "We're keeping our saves, that's for sure."
User 8: "Do y'all have any ETA when more news will be released? Dying for news on a new ending/DLC."
@masseffect: "No ETA yet, but you will be updated via Facebook and Twitter when the news is available :)."
I can't read that in any way but that this is not a true ending.
Additionally, there was a theory floating around that the reason they did this is so that the actual ending wouldn't be spoiled by the varying region release dates of the game.
...and if this is the true ending? I'll be off imbibing liquor through my emergency induction port.
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They've confirmed this was the intended and 'true' ending through other means. Drew Karpashyn (who is no longer part of ME's crew) have spoken of how the endings are pretty much how he saw them and other known douchebottles have said the same. Particularly that Casey Hudson (was that his name? It feels wrong, somehow) fellow who pretty much forced these endings through according to the "Final Hour" documentary app on the iOS store thingy.
I have no faith in these endings somehow being tricks and the tweets and so on are probably damage control and nonsensical placating that'll in the end turn out to be about multiplayer DLC packages or whatever. If Bioware adds to the endings, it'll be because of the massive outrage, not because it was planned somehow.
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....bleh.
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I felt that5 years of game lore being cast aside for the ending sort of...fits, IMO. Exact type of species, culture, politics, government, religion, society is all inconsequential considering the scale of what is taking place. This is about organic life and synthetic life; it all boils down to that. The ending being so disconnected and making everything else trivial sort of fits...
What do people prefer, anyway? A sort of voiceover about what happened after? Earth rebuilding, Thessia rebuilding, Rannoch rebuilding...seems a bit cliched IMO. "And they all lived happily ever after?"
I picked Destroy the Reapers. Didn't wipe out the guys on earth, the marines were cheering (there are some variations of that ending where they don't cheer, or if you suck really badly, they die). What I want to know is if the mass relay explosion destroys the solar systems/clusters it is in, as per Arrival?
Also, the bitching I've seen elsewhere about having to do multiplayer is silly. I got a full bar halfway through the game at 60% readiness.
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You mean that playing multi increases the galactic readiness ?
Also, i loled when i saw this a little bit after i wrote my last message :
[spoiler](http://igxpro.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Tali.jpg)[/spoiler]
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Also, the bitching I've seen elsewhere about having to do multiplayer is silly. I got a full bar halfway through the game at 60% readiness.
Actually, unless you import a savegame where a lot of things are done exactly right, it's completely impossible to get the 'full bar' without multiplayer. The stock playthrough without importing saves can't get the "good" Destroy ending nor the Synthesis ending at all without multiplayer. Silly? I find it rather justified to bitch about being forced into multiplayer to not have your endings derped. Oh wait, they got fucked up anyway. Nevermind, silly me.
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Figured imported savegames made a big difference. But multiplayer is well done IMO anyway. Very fun co-op.
I must agree that the differences between endings are trivial...although I understand what they were trying to do with it...as far as I can tell, depending on war assets...
- Destroy the Reapers, but Earth is destroyed, along with the rest of the cycle
- Destroy the Reapers, but London is shown as devastated, with no cheering from the ground forces
- Destroy the Reapers, with London and Earth left intact, marines cheering (Shepard survives, de facto 'best' ending?).
- Synergy (only one type)
- Control the Reapers, but London is shown as devastated, with no cheering.
- Control the Reapers, Earth is left intact, cheering.
I mean...if marines cheering over a victory or left not cheering over a phyrric one counts as 'distinct', well...
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I would recommend checking youtube for Mass effect 3 ending comparison. I find it very depressing.
After a 1000+ choices made during 3 games it boiled down to claimed 17 wildly varied endings that would not just be about chossing A, B, C being 6 that barring a few seconds difference is actually 1.
Not to mention collecting warassets and bothering having anything but base galactic readiness/effective military strenght is totally pointless.
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You mean that playing multi increases the galactic readiness ?
Yes. It drops back down slowly over time. I find it usually goes from about 100% to 96% or so between me going to bed and me starting the game up again the next day after I get home from work. Which is roughly 1-2 completed Bronze challenges.
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I'm probably biased, but did anyone find London absolutely awesome for the final level? It was grim, dark, depressing...completely opposite to the sci-fi vistas we're used to in Mass Effect. Captured the essence of the threat.
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http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/594/fxktm.jpg/ some more laughs. If nothing else i am getting alot of enyoment from various pics/comic strips/youtube vids about all of this.
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I'm probably biased, but did anyone find London absolutely awesome for the final level? It was grim, dark, depressing...completely opposite to the sci-fi vistas we're used to in Mass Effect. Captured the essence of the threat.
I generally found the surroundings and atmosphere good/excellent. Unfourtanetly i found the actual missions very short. Might just be a personal thing.
While i liked the game at times it felt too much like watching a movie with all the cutscenes and autodialouge and i doubt anyone having this as their first experience of the Mass Effect universe would get hooked on it.
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Indoctrination theory explained in a 14-minute fan-made video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbghjn7_Byc)
The more I think about it, the more I am seduced by it.
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I generally found the surroundings and atmosphere good/excellent. Unfourtanetly i found the actual missions very short. Might just be a personal thing.
Not just you, I had the same feeling.
Save the Elcor from the reapers! Potentially epic mission involving lots of fighting reapers and protecting civilians, maybe at least as cool as the saving the biotic kids from the school right?
Fly out to system, probe the planet...wait what? Mission completed? Seriously?
Yeah. Some of the missions were just stupid short involving like 10 NPCs and 40 square feet of level. Some of them didn't even exist. I dunno. The fact that I finished the game in 22 hours of gameplay felt like it was too little when I managed to pour 50+ into ME2.
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While i liked the game at times it felt too much like watching a movie with all the cutscenes and autodialouge and i doubt anyone having this as their first experience of the Mass Effect universe would get hooked on it.
I am not sure. It might be more complicated than that. I think it depends a lot on the people themselves. Remember games like Heavy Rain, or some japanese RPGs ? Even more cutscenes and linear action. A lot of people loved that, and a lot of people hated it. It always generates a good deal of debates, especially in critics. Mostly because for everyone its always about "freedom" in that kind of games.
The other side (probably a minority in the western population) that actually love linear stories where the player has absolutely no control over the scenario, is far, far less outspoken. But eventually this always comes down to story quality vs player generated story.
Save the Elcor from the reapers! Potentially epic mission involving lots of fighting reapers and protecting civilians, maybe at least as cool as the saving the biotic kids from the school right?
Fly out to system, probe the planet...wait what? Mission completed? Seriously?
This is quite usual with classical RPG structures involving a primary quest and secondary quests. Secondary quests are mostly here to fill the inability of the devs to fill the blank in terms of story and content. For me it is just a way to strongly increase the lifetime of the game, generally with very poor content.
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So, everyone pays full price for a terrible game that needs DLC to complete it to satisfaction, is the feel I'm getting? I'll wait for a steam sale...
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I'll wait for a steam sale...
This is my plan. I haven't even really gotten into ME2 yet, trying to find my ME1 disk to reinstall, play through that, etc, and this thread has put a mild hurt on my eagerness for ME3. So I'll take my time and wait for it to be cheaper.
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Casey Hudson on the "Conclusion". (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/324/index/10089946)
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So, everyone pays full price for a terrible game that needs DLC to complete it to satisfaction, is the feel I'm getting? I'll wait for a steam sale...
Nono, the game is absolutely fantastic, the last 5 minutes (of a good 40-60 hour+ game) are absolutely crap.
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Goddamnit EA.
They murdered DA2. Turned it into this horrible mutant thing that wasnt good at any one thing. A good story, a horrible game.
I started playing ME3. Thought "meh" at first, then really got into it.
Thought "ha! EA didnt fuck up the ME series! Im enjoying this!"
Then the end.
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Goddamnit EA.
They murdered DA2. Turned it into this horrible mutant thing that wasnt good at any one thing. A good story, a horrible game.
I started playing ME3. Thought "meh" at first, then really got into it.
Thought "ha! EA didnt fuck up the ME series! Im enjoying this!"
Then the end.
I rather suspect Bioware did this one itself. Maybe I'm wrong, but the developers are certainly coming out swinging with the typical anthem of "why is our player base so sucky?". IOW, blaming the victim. Next will come the appeal for patience, I'd guess, followed by the hope that it all blows over.
You know, when you go to tell a story, the story might have a happy ending, a sad ending, whatever. What it must have, if you want the audience to be satisfied, is an ending, one that goes with the story. What we got with ME 3 was an ending that belongs to another game, with the faces of Mass Effect's characters pasted in.
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You are starting to scare me, I havent finished the game yet.
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Looking at what some people are saying in response to the ending, I think in some cases, Bioware overestimated their fans. I'm noticing a handful of comments of people who want fairytale endings...
If I were to die in fighting then this beautiful song would be what I want to hear as my last moments remaining as I say goodbye and think back to everything and everyone I loved and knew. Liara how I love you and wish I was with you instead, Joker you were my best friend, Ashley for seeing the good in me exists still, giving Anderson one last salute. This is my goodbye. This is Commander Shepard and this is my last favorite song on the Citadel. [Smiles & closes eyes] “Death, do your worst”
Yeah, I'll stick with the current one, though I am hoping for an Epilogue DLC that confirms Indoctrination Theory.
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I don't want a fairytale ending, I just would like one that isn't covered in plotholes and dooms the galaxy to a death by technological withdrawl.
I don't need my Shepard to live forever, he can die riddled with bullets and torn apart. Give him the "I'm going to hell, but taking you all with me!" style ending where he's dead but the Galaxy is safe and able to progress without the future being a bleak uncertain-yet-likely-doomed mess.
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My counterpoint would be "why should the galaxy be saved and/or the Reapers eliminated as a threat?".
That said, I'm extremely fond of both the explanation that Shepard has been indoctrinated for a long while now, and even more fond of the one saying that Shepard was killed outright by Harbinger's laser on the run to the beam and the end sequence was entirely hallucinatory. Pinches of salt might be necessary.
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I'll wait for a steam sale...
This is my plan. I haven't even really gotten into ME2 yet, trying to find my ME1 disk to reinstall, play through that, etc, and this thread has put a mild hurt on my eagerness for ME3. So I'll take my time and wait for it to be cheaper.
You two are going to be waiting a long time if you're waiting on a Steam sale. :lol:
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"Over-estimated their fans"? Nice bit of arrogance there. There is nothing inherently 'better' with depressing or bittersweet endings. They're just endings just like any others, fitting to some story-arcs and not fitting to others. It's certainly one of the ending types that can work for a game like this but it sure as hell doesn't work as the only possible ending.
For a huge amount of the players out there, Mass Effect has always been about the hope against the odds. Triumph against the impossible. I don't know if any of you remember that moment when you first finished Mass Effect. When everything came to a peak and you finally took out Saren/Sovereign. Explosions, the caught breath when the tower gets hit by a piece of Sovereign, the resignation on your team-mates and Anderson and so on. Then that blink of motion, Anderson turning, then Shepard shown climbing wounded but alive on top of the defeated enemy with a cheeky smile. Reading the forums and remembering my own experiences at the time, it was the moment when fists were pumping in the air, whoops and cheers filled living rooms and computer dens alike. Hell, the time spent just staring at the credits with the amazing music going, getting strength back in your knees and the time needed to get down from the high.
That is what Mass Effect is to a staggering amount of players, and there is nothing wrong with that. I'll admit it myself, I loved that feeling and the victory. The reward for perseverence. The pay-off for all that effort. The win. You can call it a 'fairy-tale ending' as much as you want, but the derision inherent in that is misplaced and frankly rather ignorant. Not to mention the fact that you have to keep in mind the medium as well.
Video games differ heavily from movies, books and TV series and so on. It differs because the players put so much of themselves into it, games like Mass Effect and other RPGs in particular. There's so much time and effort spent. When it all comes to a head and it turns out there's no reward at the end, no pay-off for the hard work... just a loss, no matter what you do... it's not good enough. Three whole games worth of gameplay and there's absolutely no way to win? No way to beat it? How the hell are people supposed to react to that?
This series deserves so much better and so do the players. Of course the bittersweet and bad endings should be kept for those who like that kind of thing and for those who's playthroughs reflect that, but a lot of people played these games to win. A lot of people played this game to get a good ending. How about a middling good/bad ending? A really bad ending where the galaxy goes poof?
There is absolutely no excuse for locking all these players into one single utterly shit ending. Especially when there's absolutely no answers given as to what the hell happens to the galaxy and the races in it, plot holes not even mentioned. The plot holes alone are terribad enough.
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Looking at what some people are saying in response to the ending, I think in some cases, Bioware overestimated their fans. I'm noticing a handful of comments of people who want fairytale endings...
If I were to die in fighting then this beautiful song would be what I want to hear as my last moments remaining as I say goodbye and think back to everything and everyone I loved and knew. Liara how I love you and wish I was with you instead, Joker you were my best friend, Ashley for seeing the good in me exists still, giving Anderson one last salute. This is my goodbye. This is Commander Shepard and this is my last favorite song on the Citadel. [Smiles & closes eyes] “Death, do your worst”
Yeah, I'll stick with the current one, though I am hoping for an Epilogue DLC that confirms Indoctrination Theory.
Let me be clear. I assumed Shepard was dead from day one. Its not the type of ending that bothered me, I'm all about the grim dark, its the fact that after 100hrs of game play and a huge focus on continuation in the game and in the storyline, all those choices boil down to "door 1, 2 or 3".
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I'll wait for a steam sale...
This is my plan. I haven't even really gotten into ME2 yet, trying to find my ME1 disk to reinstall, play through that, etc, and this thread has put a mild hurt on my eagerness for ME3. So I'll take my time and wait for it to be cheaper.
You two are going to be waiting a long time if you're waiting on a Steam sale. :lol:
Yup. as EA pulled most of their games from steam for their own Origins service.
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I don't know if any of you remember that moment when you first finished Mass Effect. When everything came to a peak and you finally took out Saren/Sovereign. Explosions, the caught breath when the tower gets hit by a piece of Sovereign, the resignation on your team-mates and Anderson and so on. Then that blink of motion, Anderson turning, then Shepard shown climbing wounded but alive on top of the defeated enemy with a cheeky smile. Reading the forums and remembering my own experiences at the time, it was the moment when fists were pumping in the air, whoops and cheers filled living rooms and computer dens alike. Hell, the time spent just staring at the credits with the amazing music going, getting strength back in your knees and the time needed to get down from the high.
I remember it too well. The first thing that came to my mind was "oh fuck no, thats just too obvious and cheesy, they should really stop that kind of hollywood screenplay that usually makes me vomit". I also thought the same at the end of ME2. I hope it will not be like that in ME3, especially considering how grim dark this one is compared to the 2 other ones. Then, I realized that this is actually at least half wanted and openly admitted in something that is B series by artistical choice (at least a little...). But tbh, I was not pleased at all when I saw that. This continues to happen in all the ME titles here and there when it comes to stupid rubbish clichés that hold the gift to totally ruin the sequence they are inserted in. But well yes, it is not that bad as it is in the spirit of the game and the story.
Anyway, the fact that Bioware lets the choice to their players to choose their own stories and how it might end, they could have actually implemented several endings suited to different tastes (much like in ME2 where you can kill whoever you want if you know how the storyline works behind, including Shepard) : a happy end, a happy-bitter end, a bad ending, etc.
But for now I am really pleased by ME3, which is a lot more grim than the other ones to my opinion. ME2 was dark and grim, yes, but not visceraly like this one. ME2 was very "dirty" before all, with obvious gore things. Here in ME3, everything is a lot more subtle and deep. I mean, like the time when I came back to the Citadel after the Cerberus attack and I do not find Chambers at her usual place, and someone just tells me bluntly that she has been killed a bullet in the head. It was almost shocking considering the suddenness of the moment and how I was definitly not expecting that, and they throw it to my face like this. It happened several others times here and there with more secondary characters or just the war in the background behind, where it tends to get sometimes very, very grim just by simple suggestions done by the story, letting a place for people's imagination.
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(http://i.imgur.com/fIJIO.jpg)
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My counterpoint would be "why should the galaxy be saved and/or the Reapers eliminated as a threat?".
So you should play through three games with that one goal in mind and then fail to achieve what you set out to do ever since Eden Prime back on Mass Effect 1?
That'd be ridiculous, you don't end a game series where no matter your efforts you will fail to accomplish your goals. You have games where you accomplish your task but at great sacrifice (like blowing yourself up in Ikaruga to destroy the enemy) But never to fail to achieve the mission that drives the plot.
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We have different tastes, then. I don't see the problem in a series ending without the protagonist's / protagonists' goal(s) being accomplished, provided that the reasoning behind them not is sound -- and given the godlike intelligences that have wiped out all civilisations to reach a certain level of advancement have done a good job of it thus far...
I definitely struggle to see it as ridiculous, but hey, ymmv.
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This may also be because we do not see the story like some players see it Kyber. I am not sure for you but I have always seen a RPG story like a story involving characters. Even with games ala Bioware where they do whatever they can to make the player feel he is the main protagonist (oh look how its you in control and how awesome you are, blabla). But most players do not see their character as... a character. It becomes quite obvious when you hear them refering to Shepard as "me", "I have done this, this and this", etc.
Oh and I just finished the game. I found the end pretty decent tbh. There was something really deep behind with a good screenplay (for once...), but it got somehow lost in stretched concepts like "we have been protecting you from being eradicated by synthetics since day one by sending to your advanced civilizations the reapers".
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We have different tastes, then. I don't see the problem in a series ending without the protagonist's / protagonists' goal(s) being accomplished, provided that the reasoning behind them not is sound -- and given the godlike intelligences that have wiped out all civilisations to reach a certain level of advancement have done a good job of it thus far...
The Reapers were close to losing the last war, the Protheans managed to hide off in some places and were close to developing a counter weapon. Without the Prothean's time capsule style aid then I'd agree it'd be a very one sided fight, but with the knowledge and the benefit of foresight the current Reaper harvest faces it's biggest challenge.
Still, I don't think I've ever seen a game you can't complete your main story objective (not initial objective as plottwists and swerves often change that to the real driving force of the story)
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Having read into the Indoctrination theory now... I must say I like it. I didn't -hate- the ending as it appeared to be, but the Indoctrination option would be an utterly epic way to conclude the series.
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This may also be because we do not see the story like some players see it Kyber. I am not sure for you but I have always seen a RPG story like a story involving characters. Even with games ala Bioware where they do whatever they can to make the player feel he is the main protagonist (oh look how its you in control and how awesome you are, blabla). But most players do not see their character as... a character. It becomes quite obvious when you hear them refering to Shepard as "me", "I have done this, this and this", etc.
Possibly; my approach to RPGs like this has always been that Shepard is just another character in a story. One you have a limited degree of control over, yes, but at the end of the day nothing more.
The Reapers were close to losing the last war, the Protheans managed to hide off in some places and were close to developing a counter weapon. Without the Prothean's time capsule style aid then I'd agree it'd be a very one sided fight, but with the knowledge and the benefit of foresight the current Reaper harvest faces it's biggest challenge.
Devil's advocate: the Reapers have had tens of millenia before the races of the next cycle even began to establish themselves, and technology far beyond any other group in the galaxy. Who's to say they haven't forged bits of the past?
Still, I don't think I've ever seen a game you can't complete your main story objective (not initial objective as plottwists and swerves often change that to the real driving force of the story)
In which case I echo what Lyn said. I have absolutely no problem with a game ending with the failure of the main story objective. If you do, cool, but it doesn't reduce the validity of it as a storytelling device.
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In which case I echo what Lyn said. I have absolutely no problem with a game ending with the failure of the main story objective. If you do, cool, but it doesn't reduce the validity of it as a storytelling device.
It does call into question the intent behind the whole thing, though. This is a product that's got a gigantic playerbase and choosing to use only a storytelling device that will only be appreciated by a minority is frankly a bit stupid by Bioware. Every last ending turning out to be the same one, when there's so many different kinds of people playing the series needing different kinds of endings to find any kind of closure or reward... well, like I said it's frankly very stupid.
I have nothing against those who like the ending as it is, as long as it's not that arrogant and haughty attitude that 'people just don't get it' or the rest of the implications of inferiority on the part of those who don't like it. (And yes, a lot of the people who do like the ending get very haughty and arrogant about it). Hipsters of the gaming world, almost.
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Bugs me that the major theme of Me3 was mostly pointless also - the gathering of allies and warassets.
I ended the game with 7000 or so military strenght and an readiness rating of 50%, giving an EMS of around 3500.
Only difference this brings is i do not get the "breath" scene. In fact i can probably ignore most fetch quests and some other things and just get enough to get to the minimum level of 1100? ems and it changes nothing.
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cure/deceive/do not cure genophage. Implications for future of krogan? if mass relays & associated technology "destroyed", then Tuchanka's ecosystem collapses more, making it all moot, no ?
quarians/geth/co-operative. Implications for future? again, if technologies destroyed, then it is all moot.
state of Earth, moot. Without mass relay for imports, and heavily damaged infrastructure on planet, then population will starve, no ?
Sure, civilisations go on, on the now (relatively) isolated colony worlds, and the various species continue, but as it is, is it not the case that the 3 planets that your actions would have had the most effect on, (Tuchanka, Rannoch, Earth), then ultimately, your actions did not matter, because those planets, are doomed.
Unless synthesis, vOv
danger:large
[spoiler](http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a231/bertcom1/psyducklarge.gif)[/spoiler]
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWIimukNeAE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2JvFph0FXg&feature=g-all-u&context=G258d4f6FAAAAAAAAKAA
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I am not sure how the main objectives are not reached anyway.
Bugs me that the major theme of Me3 was mostly pointless also - the gathering of allies and warassets.
Well, compared to the major theme of ME2 where you spend all your time to recruit your team to go to that suicide mission, its in the same vein imo. Though here the story is way more richer to me, I especially loved parts where you finally come to solve the issue between Krogan/genophage, and especially the Rannoch ending.
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I think it's easy to lose a sense of focus here.
Shepard waking up alive in rubble ONLY by having a full bar of war assets and ONLY by picking the destroy Reapers option needs to be explained.
That's all that matters IMO.
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I think it's easy to lose a sense of focus here.
Shepard waking up alive in rubble ONLY by having a full bar of war assets and ONLY by picking the destroy Reapers option needs to be explained.
That's all that matters IMO.
Yeah, I think that is the most compelling piece of evidence for something actually being fishy.
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C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Mass Effect 3\BIOGame\Movies\End03_Shepard_Alive_Male.bik
file names are suggestive
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Oh man. With a possible future DLC, if one or both of the other non-"kill all reapers" endings make you fight an Indoctrinated Shephard with your remaining team members.... sign me up!
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Oh man. With a possible future DLC, if one or both of the other non-"kill all reapers" endings make you fight an Indoctrinated Shephard with your remaining team members.... sign me up!
I play Vanguard. Guess I'm fucked. :lol:
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I think it's easy to lose a sense of focus here.
Shepard waking up alive in rubble ONLY by having a full bar of war assets and ONLY by picking the destroy Reapers option needs to be explained.
That's all that matters IMO.
It's the only option that leaves room for an epilogue. The other two quite definitely end in the death of Shep.
It requires some sacrifices, sure... but then, Shepard's already sacrificed to become an N7 (lore ftw).
It makes sense to me from that perspective. I just think there needed to be more options. If you've ever seen the movie WarGames... yeah, genocidal thinking machines sometimes need to learn that Tic-Tac-Toe is a no-win scenario. :yar: Also, more polish, more explanation.
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Side note. It annoys me that the BF3 Soldier has the most overpowered combine of abilities, they get both Adrenaline Rush AND Carnage. Drop them in with just an Assault Rifle to have low cooldowns and they're a constant slaughterhouse machine.
:bash: Damn you EA
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Old 2007 BioWare video about the ME1 voice actors here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh9TOf3EbVk).
Just thought I'd share because at 1:00, it's Lance Henriksen (voice of Admiral Hackett), and his voice just makes me gush everywhere.
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His voice is nice of course, but I don't he's really acting all much in ME. :P
Somehow I get the feeling he isn't taking "video game voicing" all that seriously. Martin Sheen, for example, is just pure acting gold in the series. Then again, it could be that Lance Henriksen was just directed to be pure monotone anyway.
Overall though, Mass Effect has such amazing voice work that it truly stands out.
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From a thread called "ME3 Suggested Changes Feedback Thread - Spoilers Allowed" on Bioware's forums:
Jessica Merizan wrote...
I think I need to clarify myself. For the past few weeks, I've been collecting feedback. I have excel sheets, word documents, quotes, graphs, you name it.
In order for a collaboration between the devs and the fans to work, I need you guys to CONTINUE being constructive, and organizing your thoughts. I know where to look, but I need you to help me by contributing to the dialogue.
Saying "this blows" helps no one. Saying, "I enjoyed X but I found Z _____ because of A,B,C" is what I'm looking for. Channel your frustration into something positive (such as the RetakeME3 movement - constructive, organized thoughts).
Chris and I are both collecting your feedback. We're listening. Make yourself heard.
It's not committal, but you can post critiques there for what you'd like to see/not see in some sort of ending change.
Too bad that means the "'real ending' was a planned free DLC all along" rumor was wrong. Don't make me go through the cycle again, Bioware.
[spoiler](http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/85/85327.jpg)[/spoiler]
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Does it really mean the rumour is wrong? Could just be smoke and mirrors.
Ah, god, this is such a clusterfuck, one needs to take a step back from it.
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Could it be that Bioware is not that good at making video games?
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most disappointing thing about ME3 was this:
[spoiler](http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a231/bertcom1/excuseme.png)[/spoiler]
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Could it be that Bioware is not that good at making video games?
I think it's just a matter of a game not living up to exceedingly high player expectations and marketing hype. It's a good game. It could have been a lot better, and I think right now people are just trying to express that sentiment. Bioware wrote themselves into a corner with Mass Effect 2; a lot of people did want their team from ME2 to survive so they could be squad mates, not 20 point war assets (me included).
:bash:
For the sake of transparency, I LOVE the game, even though I do agree and sympathize with those expressing disappointment. The ending is so final that it's hard to push through a second playthrough. It's hard to motivate myself to start a new Mass Effect trilogy playthrough to see a Renegade ending... I don't think that was the intended response to the ending, and I honestly can't see how the developers couldn't see that reaction coming. That final 'continue the adventure!' screen just... yeah, I'll agree with Louella there. Most disappointing moment.
I didn't want this to be a choose-your-own-adventure novel.
:cry:
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Could it be that Bioware is not that good at making video games?
The plothole ridden ending isn't on par with the quality of writing over three games.
Bioware are great at making videogames and they're excellent at storyline and dialogue, that ending was as if they ran out of time and hired Tommy Wiseau to script it.
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Bioware are great at making videogames and they're excellent at storyline and dialogue, that ending was as if they ran out of time and hired Tommy Wiseau to script it.
I did not script it, it's not true. It's bullshit, I did not script it. I did naht...oh hi Casey.
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most disappointing thing about ME3 was this:
[spoiler](http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a231/bertcom1/excuseme.png)[/spoiler]
I've not played ME3 yet. Please, please tell me this is some kind of horrible joke.
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most disappointing thing about ME3 was this:
[spoiler](http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a231/bertcom1/excuseme.png)[/spoiler]
I've not played ME3 yet. Please, please tell me this is some kind of horrible joke.
It's not. Fortunately, after the ending, you're so dead inside that you don't even really see it as that much of an affront. :P
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Bioware are great at making videogames and they're excellent at storyline and dialogue, that ending was as if they ran out of time and hired Tommy Wiseau to script it.
I did not script it, it's not true. It's bullshit, I did not script it. I did naht...oh hi Casey.
Let's play a game of football!
:yar:
In all seriousness though, there are people saying that it's possible that the ending was changed after the leak in November. :| The "Leak" did have all the endings, but there were actually answers, apparently. I haven't read the leaks though.
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Link!
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Don't have the links (they're buried under hundreds of pages of threads. Those forums are on fire.) but from what I read the Reapers were actually protecting the galaxy from (insert Dark Energy related bad stuff here, foreshadowed on Haestrom in ME2) and you'd have a talk with Harbinger near the end. There was talk of you being able to sacrifice the human race to the Reapers in order to safeguard the galaxy or destroy the Reapers and take your chances with the dark energy stuff yourselves.
There was more to it, but even this alone would be infinitely better than the ending we got.
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Yeah, that's the biggest plothole, really. :| why on earth did they make such a big fuss in ME2 about dark energy, from Parasini of Noveria talking about it, to Haestrom, to numerous other hints sprinkled through the game AND DLC? And then not even use it in ME3?
It reeks of some kind of weird executive decision tbh.
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Ok this really needs to be posted, its a true gem...
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/105/index/970146/1
scroll down to the 6th post.
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Right, I can very vividly imagine that person finishing ME3. The force of the facepalm would launch his/her brains across the room.
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Yeah, that's the biggest plothole, really. :| why on earth did they make such a big fuss in ME2 about dark energy, from Parasini of Noveria talking about it, to Haestrom, to numerous other hints sprinkled through the game AND DLC? And then not even use it in ME3?
It reeks of some kind of weird executive decision tbh.
Drew something that was the writer for that left Bioware and the gaming industry to focus on his novel writing as i hear.
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Actually there IS dark energy references in ME3.
It requires you recruiting the aid of your biggest fan, it's the ultimate completionist reward in the game.
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[spoiler]
Published years ago by Dr. Conrad Verner, this doctorial dissertation on xenotechnology is a lengthy but intriguing argument that dark energy causes a minute but empirically observable difference in the passage of time. Hotly debated when first published, the paper's theory is supported by recent data. The dissertation illuminates several instructions left by the Protheans on how to build the Crucible.
[/spoiler]
is in ME3
though, every mass effect thing is something to do with dark energy. Dark energy is the thing that makes element zero do stuff.
So maybe the Reapers were wanting to stop all these civilisations using mass effects, because the dark energy use is causing the universe to slow down and die, or something.
YOU MUST DIE SO THE UNIVERSE CAN LIVE, or something. Hence why "preserving" cultures in Reaper form, and general weirdness that would lend itself to the Reaper Plan being "incomprehensible" to mere individual persons.
because, it is a bit of a difficult thing to grasp, that using biotic powers makes the universe freeze to death or something. People would go "surely my personal use of things isn't significant?" and so on.
I dunno, vOv, I'm not really all that bright tbh.
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Actually there IS dark energy references in ME3.
It requires you recruiting the aid of your biggest fan, it's the ultimate completionist reward in the game.
In other words it is completely unavailable to people who continued an ME1 save to ME2 on PC, because even if you Paragon'd the shit out of Conrad's mission in ME1, it always marks you as having Renegaded it when you import.
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Actually there IS dark energy references in ME3.
It requires you recruiting the aid of your biggest fan, it's the ultimate completionist reward in the game.
In other words it is completely unavailable to people who continued an ME1 save to ME2 on PC, because even if you Paragon'd the shit out of Conrad's mission in ME1, it always marks you as having Renegaded it when you import.
I was able to talk to Conrad in ME3, using a game progressed from ME1 through ME2, so... ?
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When you import an ME1 save into ME2, it marks you as having taken the renegade route with Conrad even if you didn't; hence the "even had a gun shoved in my face by... Commander Shepard!?" line in ME2.
He's not exactly your biggest fan at that point, which would kinda preclude that option, wouldn't it? I know I saw him in ME3 and took the paragon-ish route in that conversation, but I definitely did *not* get any result like that.
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ah,there's 2 ways to meet Conrad, only one of which will get the dissertation.
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Yeah, I looked it up. It's odd, because I *know* I completed the requirements for that, so what gives?
I'll have to look at the flags in the save files later and see. Bleh.
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[spoiler]iirc, you meet Conrad when you're involved with a mission to deal with medi-gel dispensers, from a doctor on the refugee section. The doctor talks about 2 things. A person talking about Cerberus, and the sabotaged medigel dispensers.
If you go looking around first, you will see Conrad, and you can talk to him then, this will get you the dissertation.
If you fix the medigel things first, then go back to the doctor, Conrad appears there as well, and then disappears at the end. You cannot then get the dissertation.[/spoiler]
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[spoiler]Published years ago by Dr. Conrad Verner, this doctorial dissertation on xenotechnology is a lengthy but intriguing argument that dark energy causes a minute but empirically observable difference in the passage of time. Hotly debated when first published, the paper's theory is supported by recent data. The dissertation illuminates several instructions left by the Protheans on how to build the Crucible.
[/spoiler]
is in ME3
though, every mass effect thing is something to do with dark energy. Dark energy is the thing that makes element zero do stuff.
So maybe the Reapers were wanting to stop all these civilisations using mass effects, because the dark energy use is causing the universe to slow down and die, or something.
YOU MUST DIE SO THE UNIVERSE CAN LIVE, or something. Hence why "preserving" cultures in Reaper form, and general weirdness that would lend itself to the Reaper Plan being "incomprehensible" to mere individual persons.
because, it is a bit of a difficult thing to grasp, that using biotic powers makes the universe freeze to death or something. People would go "surely my personal use of things isn't significant?" and so on.
I dunno, vOv, I'm not really all that bright tbh.
I really like that idea, tied to the Big Rip / Big Crush (point Omega) and all, and have already thought about it when I got on Haestrom in ME2, but this explanation would have to be strenghtened to get a little less stretched : like, people using biotics accelerating the death of the galaxy ? Huh... A little too stretched for me. :p
But I love the idea.
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[spoiler]Published years ago by Dr. Conrad Verner, this doctorial dissertation on xenotechnology is a lengthy but intriguing argument that dark energy causes a minute but empirically observable difference in the passage of time. Hotly debated when first published, the paper's theory is supported by recent data. The dissertation illuminates several instructions left by the Protheans on how to build the Crucible.
[/spoiler]
is in ME3
though, every mass effect thing is something to do with dark energy. Dark energy is the thing that makes element zero do stuff.
So maybe the Reapers were wanting to stop all these civilisations using mass effects, because the dark energy use is causing the universe to slow down and die, or something.
YOU MUST DIE SO THE UNIVERSE CAN LIVE, or something. Hence why "preserving" cultures in Reaper form, and general weirdness that would lend itself to the Reaper Plan being "incomprehensible" to mere individual persons.
because, it is a bit of a difficult thing to grasp, that using biotic powers makes the universe freeze to death or something. People would go "surely my personal use of things isn't significant?" and so on.
I dunno, vOv, I'm not really all that bright tbh.
This would be kind of like making comparisons with individuals polluting the Earth and such.
Maybe it was scrapped because it was too controversial.
:eek:
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It wasn't scrapped because that particular stuff was never on the table. What did get scrapped was most likely scrapped because it was leaked beforehand. (Remember the Bioware leak? The work-in-progress script was part of it.) That is the general opinion on why it never made it to the game, anyway.
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When you import an ME1 save into ME2, it marks you as having taken the renegade route with Conrad even if you didn't; hence the "even had a gun shoved in my face by... Commander Shepard!?" line in ME2.
He apologises for that if you didn't really do it.
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This will forevermore be my true head cannon ending:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzYLTbQQEZQ
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Made it onto BBC News on the front page of the Technology section here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology/) (correct as of 21st March).
EDIT - Seems to have been knocked down a few pegs, so here is the article directly (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17444719)
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17458208
Change comes
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17458208
Change comes
I seriously don't trust any of the dogfuckers anymore. If this is something he really means, he'll have regained a little respect. If they actually follow through with something decent, they'll regain a little more. Until I see these things, though... dogfuckers. That is all.
Edit:
(http://i39.tinypic.com/118q8ee.jpg)
Knew it. Dogfuckers.
Edit the Second:
Forbes article on the matter. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/21/bioware-co-founder-apologizes-to-fans-for-the-mass-effect-3-ending-sort-of/)
I am kind of impressed by Forbe's stack of articles on this subject. On the other hand, I am disgusted by the actual gaming news sites and their coverage of the matter. It's starting to become very clear who's worried about losing ad revenues and who aren't.
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Saying this from a view not even considering the actual ending of the game:
Anaylizing it from a pr talk view it basically do not actually says much.
Yet more about "art" which is always excelelnt to toss in as its so hard to define and easy to defend without actually having to make a clear point on why.
Talk about all the excellent scores, when more or leass all major releases nowadays gets 9+ and are praised to the skies (i mena even Kane and Lynch 2 got decent and even good reviews from many ot the main game reviewers).
At the same time they can not of course actually come out and say they had to rush it due to deadlines etc (and there are a number of points int he game itself that indicates a rush) same happened with DA2, they defended it, saying it was not rushed, and how inovative etc it was. Then when 2 or 3 months had passed and major sales period was over they said right out that, yes, it was a rushjob.
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Yeah, that's the biggest plothole, really. :| why on earth did they make such a big fuss in ME2 about dark energy, from Parasini of Noveria talking about it, to Haestrom, to numerous other hints sprinkled through the game AND DLC? And then not even use it in ME3?
It reeks of some kind of weird executive decision tbh.
To be perfectly, translucently clear:
[spoiler]The Catalyst is specifically stated to be a "dark energy amplifier" thingy. I think they just decided to hand wave the ending and tie everything into the Citadel, and end on a relatively simple "high point". Additionally, note the reference to Harbinger SPECIFICALLY leaving to deal with Shepard in the current game...
...I'd say there are foreshadows of DLC that will answer these "questions", or at least shoddy last-minute rewrites that accidentally left those plot points in.[/spoiler]
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Yet another Forbes article, this one primarily detailing why reviewers and gaming media aren't particularly trustworthy. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/21/gaming-the-system-how-a-gaming-journalist-lost-his-job-over-a-negative-review/) In fact, it's rather impressive that some sites manage to record podcasts with publisher dicks so firmly lodged in their throats.
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Yet another Forbes article, this one primarily detailing why reviewers and gaming media aren't particularly trustworthy. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/21/gaming-the-system-how-a-gaming-journalist-lost-his-job-over-a-negative-review/) In fact, it's rather impressive that some sites manage to record podcasts with publisher dicks so firmly lodged in their throats.
Its actually rather funny to see how much of the main game media and a large part of the most rabid ending supporters (liking that the ending is fine is no problem, personal opinion and all that but there are limits) rant and rave about entitled whiners while coming across as incredible whining themselves as well as having entitlement issues as regards to main gaming media.
Getting so many laughs out of this one just because of that. and ofc the ART argument. lmfao
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Hitler explains rather well how a lot of people feel about it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b33tJx8iy0A)
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Yet another Forbes article, this one primarily detailing why reviewers and gaming media aren't particularly trustworthy. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/21/gaming-the-system-how-a-gaming-journalist-lost-his-job-over-a-negative-review/) In fact, it's rather impressive that some sites manage to record podcasts with publisher dicks so firmly lodged in their throats.
Its actually rather funny to see how much of the main game media and a large part of the most rabid ending supporters (liking that the ending is fine is no problem, personal opinion and all that but there are limits) rant and rave about entitled whiners while coming across as incredible whining themselves as well as having entitlement issues as regards to main gaming media.
Getting so many laughs out of this one just because of that. and ofc the ART argument. lmfao
Ok now I feel concerned because that "ART argument lmfao" as you say it, is the main reason that made me like the ending. Also, I am myself an artist in video games, at least currently. So I will try to explain what I like, and what I dislike after having taken the time to think about it a little more with more detachement, because to be honest, I was totally confused about how I felt about it. People more generally have to keep in mind something that everyone seem to always forget, that developping a game is not about doing something "cool", or even something "that you and you alone think is fucking awesome", but is rather about doing something for consumers, here being the players. So I will try to make a difference between what are my personnal tastes and what does or does not work in terms of game developpement.
On the gameplay mechanics tied to the ending, it is where they obviously screwed the most. Everyone knows how you only get one end in different colors and how the choices made by the players are eventually more or less irrelevant. Some players might not mind because they care more about the story than their achievements, while other players think the opposite. Which basically means that half of the playerbase - if not more, considering the tendancies - are directly concerned by this and were going to be obviously pissed. And they are.
Now then, everything is not to throw into the thrasbin either, even if I think the gameplay part of the ending is the most fucked up part of all, in terms of coherence mostly. Some things were really nice, like for example the fact that you knew more or less that all your troubles are finished when Shep gets hit by the reaper railgun shot. The only thing the player have to do is to follow the cinematic and scripted feel of the following sequences, and occasionally have to do something like walking endlessly and slowly while killing the dreaded Marauder Shields. The walking part of the end, that did not seem to end, was to my opinion well done due to the sheer realism it makes the player feel. I mean, the player can directly feel what Shep is living : an endless and painful walk in the middle of bodies because he has something vital to do. Also, the quite long dialogue with the IM was interesting because it was the end, and thus it had to be important. Of course, this is a conscious choice from the developper because it might not please players that do not care particularily about the story and just want action. But the core target of Bioware has always been roleplayers and players willing to live a story, which makes sense here.
On the story now, they did something resembling to the ending of the Deus Ex series where you have to choose between several buttons to get the end you like the most, or to make the choice you prefer. In the Deux Ex series, the story is not oriented on the choices you make all through the game and how your actions change the background, but it is rather a more linear approach where everything is focused on the coherence and strenght of the story itself to offer to the player the choice to choose the ending they like the most at the end. In that, Deus Ex is coherent. Mass Effect 3 is not : the end is totally disconnected from the rest of the game.
Also, the end tends to butcher the rest of the story considering the plot holes that appear, the stretched concepts or the story points that are not adressed (dark energy, the true nature of the reapers, etc etc).
But what makes the end of the story interesting are some of the concepts, including fatality/doom (where the reapers have a role to play to prevent something bad or apocalyptic to happen), and puts back everything in perspective and tend to surprise the player. Surprise is good, unlike hollywood seems to think, where they make actually everything to stay in line with the clichés the spectator is expecting, to please him. Surprise is one of the good points of ME3's story, like when you suddenly hear about Kelly Chambers death, for example (there are plenty things like this in ME3). But in that ending, surprise is definitly there, but when the concepts you start to introduce are too weird or stretched, and before all, do not always make a lot of sense, surprise gets negative and disgusts the player, even if at first he will still continue to play in the hope to be explained wtf is going on, in the hope something will make sense after all.
At last, on the artistic direction : this is what pains me the most here. At the opposite of the very cheesy endings of ME1 and especially ME2, the end of ME3 is very, very deep and well executed in ME3, artistically. The rubbish side is not here anymore and we get a deeper, darker and more emotionnal end than ME1 or ME2 will ever achieve (where in ME1 and ME2 the end is totally spoiled by this hollywood cheesyness). In the ME3 end the player faces a great setting in London where apocalypse is the key, in a very dark ambiant atmosphere leading to a huge ray of light. Quite ominous. It gets even better after, when Shep awakes right in the middle of a mass grave of butchered bodies and ends up in a surreal and ethereal environnements in coherence with the godlike/eerie feel of the end. Of course, one can feel how much money they surely have had to put in this considering the mass amount of cutscenes and cinematics they did here, but at least it is well done. Then, we can like or dislike the abstract and dreamlike feel of that ending (especially that snowy landscape with trees and the Earth above), but artistically its definitly something. And something quite deep.
So, what pains me ? The coherence, again. This does not really fit with what we have come to see in the ME saga. ME directly comes from the pop culture (Starwars, BSG references, for instances, among many) and has a B-series / hollywoodesque feel that reminds us of the great space adventures and sagas we all know. But a difference has to be made between something very pop culture, for the masses, and a cheesy something (which was the case in the end of ME1 and ME2, with all that overdose of slowmotion and the cheap screenplay/dialogues that went with it). Anyway, the ME3 ending almost seems to belong to another game. What we get is something else, more serious, mature, and spiritual. Something that would have belonged to a more realistic, serious, dramatic and dark story. What pains me here is that everyone now is spitting on this end while it is actually a very good end, but totally stretched and strained by the fact that Bioware tried to paste it somehow to ME, where they should not have.
Or, in short, tl;dr : the only thing i loved in that ending was actually the ART. Yes.
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I agree with you, Lyn, with regards to the artistic standpoint. Taking the story and other contingents out of it, the insanely dark setting of London, the music, the general execution of it, and so forth. That was my favourite part.
Maybe Bioware can't do non-cliched endings. Look at KOTOR1, ME1 and ME2, Dragon Age (not played 2) and so forth...
Then look at KOTOR2...the 'dark' sequel...was in same league as ME3.
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Problem is they way they use it. Its ART!! and that seems to be enough.
sorry, no, its a commercial product so its commercial art at best.
The way they use it now, while also seeing themselves justified calling anyone disliking the endings idiots, retards and yes entitled whiners while themselves acting like like major shills is absurd. since its art it must not be criticiced, doing any changes to the VISION will set back the ARTFORM a decade, yada, yada, hyperbole, rant, rave
And this is major gaming media doing it.
As i said before that on average in this special situation the "proenders", even the gaming media are way more demeaning, whining and acting entitled than those with complaints.
Its interesting to watch the pr talk and damage controls. I always knew it was a dirty business but just realizing how dirty.
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I've never played any of the ME games (will plan to do the day Bioware releases a trilogy pack with all DLCs TBH)
But, after reading countless news posts, comments on forums, rumours, youtube videos and so on, i can distill the following:
People felt their efforts to SAVE anyone or anything were meaningless, forget self-sacrifice and making shepard dissapear for ever (which is actually a good thing if you want to have an ending), it was just this whole fiasco of reaching a point to where you stand in a ledge and convince yourself to jump it because you will submit to others, or jump because you are doing it for the right reasons........either way you are fucked.
Now, if you ask me, anyone playing the "hero" role will probably feel cheated, people wanted to play the role well, did do everything they could to take everyone into account, invested timeand every trick to beat the game the best possible way, and the climatic conclusion to all that? bye bye galaxy (come again?).
If you ask me, Bioware could be the gods of game creation, but they need a pyschologist to really tell them and assist in the creation of content that fosters people to enjoy themselves :s
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Sorry to say Bruno, that is it but more than that even: a literal deus ex machina both in the classical sense and the gmes Deus Ex Machina (even to ripping of the actual choices). Shepard is suddenly lobotomized with no will. I could go on and on about it but will try to not do so ;)
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(http://penny-arcade.smugmug.com/photos/i-dfFJj7N/0/L/i-dfFJj7N-X2.jpg)
:lol:
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(http://i.imgur.com/SyupG.jpg)
saw this, lol'd
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10 pages worth of bitching about the end, impressive. Let's talk about something more interesting and enjoyable; the remaining 95% of the game called Mass Effect 3 that took place before the admittedly shitty ending. Because it was shitty, you all said what is worth saying about it, we all await a fix to it that makes it all better.
Where to start... might as well start with the things that annoyed me, to get the negative things out of my mind. In order of recollection, not how much I like/dislike.
James Vega. Could they come up with a more bastardized amalgamation of all stereotypical american marines ever? Spanish tendencies, testosterone-leaking figure and shape, wears the buzz-cut, thin sweaty short, wears his tags around his neck for display of loyalty to "the core" bitches about his lost companions and his guilt over choosing the mission over his comrades, bitches about leaving Earth and the first when adding one more soldier is the obviously right thing to do, assigns annoying nick-names to people, recklessly Idon'tgiveashitifIdie brave, and so on.
I wanted to be able to enjoy him as a character, but found that I couldn't, he just came off as a completely overdone stereotype to me. This is a shame, he's the only Human team-member AFAIK, and falls into the same pit as Jacob, Miranda, Kaiden and Ashley - comrades that see minimal use. The result? Shepard goes to town with her alien team-mates helping her do the job Alliance Marines should be doing.
The cliché guilt-trip with the damn dead kid on Earth and the ensuing nightmares. Entirely a waste of my time and patience. No, with the estimated 400 or so harvesting ships on Earth killing about 1.8 million Humans EVERY.DAY. my Shepard has more things to worry about than one measly kid not making it out when it's quite likely tens of thousands to hundred of thousands of kids die every day on Earth. When the war with the Reapers is over there will be plenty of space to go around for the survivors as there won't be 11 billion Humans on the planet anymore, but I still have to slow-walk around this over-blown nightmare section caring that this kid got put on fire at the end of it.
Absurd cut-scene animations - Okay, so we just beat a mission and Garrus is covering us with his weapon while we get into the shuttle. Wait, why is he using an Avenger rifle, I kind of gave him a Revenant LMG to mow down reaper scum with... guess he ran out of ammo, or something. The most absurd example would have to be the scene on Mars where you gun down Eva, with the Predator pistol that you did not take with you, replacing it with a light-weight SMG and other weapons. Why oh why could they simply not swap out whatever weapon you were using? All you needed for the scene was 2-3 shots at her to get by. Would it be to hard to animate in the shape and sound of whatever weapon you and companions used in different cut-scenes? Apparently so. This kills a bit of the immersion, tbh.
Final mission is in London. Of course, of course it is, because London is the center of the universe. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TokyoIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse)
Except is isn't really, but I'm sick and tired of this trope. The Reapers could have built their damn tela-pota-towa any-fucking-where on Earth but they had to chose a well-known and oft-invaded-by-aliens-and-the-occult city in a well known nation. Why not the capital of Lithuania, some speck of farm-land deep in China or some other place in Britain (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BritainIsOnlyLondon) or wherever? Well, likely same reason as dangling the soon-to-be-dead little guilt-trap in front of your face; you are supposed to care, and this is just to help you along - after all, who gives a fuck about any other little place when a well-known location in the world happens to be the eye of the storm?
I'm sure there is more but can't recall atm, so let's get to some of the positive things.
Javik. I love him, his entire character-build is just flawless. From his interactions with Liara and her growing disillusion about the Protheans to his companionship on missions and the wonderful way he burned James after the latter inquired about his humor and jokes. I had not laughed that hard in quite some time. Or the first time he meets Tali and his instant response to her question. Priceless. I'm still rather annoyed about the day-1 DLC thing even if the reasons why were explained to me (and the reasons were legit, AFAICT) and I still loved it's content. It was worth the money, even if 800 bioware points wasn't much.
The whole relationship between the Krogan, Turians and Salarians and the missions derived from them. Very nicely done. I loved the fact that I found myself quite literally agonizing over the choice presented to me before and during the last mission on Tutchanka. This whole section felt very well done, and along with the different points of view presented from Eve, the Salerians and the ancient history of the Krogan cemented the entire feel of that section very, very nicely.
The Quarian/Geth war and it's events. I loved every second, and hope to alter my desperate last actions to salvage the situation. Honestly, the entire part of the game going over these two's history was amazing - diving into the Geth's memory, seeing the past, weighting the opinions and deeds of both towards each other... the best, and worst, part was the end. Originally I tried to salvage the situation and get both the geth and quarians with me. Good of all, right? That failed, but I did not know that until I had unceremoniously chosen the geth and saw what became of the flotilla and Tali. Few other games have created a reaction like that, fighting off that sinking feeling in my gut while asking myself "What have I done?!" as if I'd just killed someone. Loading back to see the alternative, losing the geth and Legion was not in anyway better, it was in fact just as bad. Having to chose between them was in fact quite agonizing, and I loved it for it.
There is more, but I'll leave it at this for now. I wonder what people think of the rest of the game, in all honesty.
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My ending didnt have to pick between the Geth or the Quarians. I had both actually.
EDIT: the fact that I only have one ending is a huge indictment of this game. I normally run through like three endings of the first two MEs before I was happy. Now? No interest in playing it again, even though 99% of it was great.
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10 pages worth of bitching about the end, impressive. Let's talk about something more interesting and enjoyable; the remaining 95% of the game called Mass Effect 3 that took place before the admittedly shitty ending. Because it was shitty, you all said what is worth saying about it, we all await a fix to it that makes it all better.
Where to start... might as well start with the things that annoyed me, to get the negative things out of my mind. In order of recollection, not how much I like/dislike.
James Vega. Could they come up with a more bastardized amalgamation of all stereotypical american marines ever? Spanish tendencies, testosterone-leaking figure and shape, wears the buzz-cut, thin sweaty short, wears his tags around his neck for display of loyalty to "the core" bitches about his lost companions and his guilt over choosing the mission over his comrades, bitches about leaving Earth and the first when adding one more soldier is the obviously right thing to do, assigns annoying nick-names to people, recklessly Idon'tgiveashitifIdie brave, and so on.
I wanted to be able to enjoy him as a character, but found that I couldn't, he just came off as a completely overdone stereotype to me. This is a shame, he's the only Human team-member AFAIK, and falls into the same pit as Jacob, Miranda, Kaiden and Ashley - comrades that see minimal use. The result? Shepard goes to town with her alien team-mates helping her do the job Alliance Marines should be doing.
Yeah, though weirdly enough he did not annoy me as much as Miranda for instance, or even Jacob, considering how dumb the answers the latter gave me. I was ok with James because somehow he was not making his way on the foreground himself as much as the other ones. I found him pretty retired at times, which was welcome.
Also, I am not that harsh with Kaiden and Ashley. I think they still perform OK as characters, even if sometimes built on cliché (like the whole series anyway).
The cliché guilt-trip with the damn dead kid on Earth and the ensuing nightmares. Entirely a waste of my time and patience. No, with the estimated 400 or so harvesting ships on Earth killing about 1.8 million Humans EVERY.DAY. my Shepard has more things to worry about than one measly kid not making it out when it's quite likely tens of thousands to hundred of thousands of kids die every day on Earth. When the war with the Reapers is over there will be plenty of space to go around for the survivors as there won't be 11 billion Humans on the planet anymore, but I still have to slow-walk around this over-blown nightmare section caring that this kid got put on fire at the end of it.
Oh yes, that was annoying. I facepalmed everytime I saw that.
Absurd cut-scene animations - Okay, so we just beat a mission and Garrus is covering us with his weapon while we get into the shuttle. Wait, why is he using an Avenger rifle, I kind of gave him a Revenant LMG to mow down reaper scum with... guess he ran out of ammo, or something. The most absurd example would have to be the scene on Mars where you gun down Eva, with the Predator pistol that you did not take with you, replacing it with a light-weight SMG and other weapons. Why oh why could they simply not swap out whatever weapon you were using? All you needed for the scene was 2-3 shots at her to get by. Would it be to hard to animate in the shape and sound of whatever weapon you and companions used in different cut-scenes? Apparently so. This kills a bit of the immersion, tbh.
It has been the case since ME1. Here in ME3, it doesnt do it 100% of the time, which is at least better...
Final mission is in London. Of course, of course it is, because London is the center of the universe. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TokyoIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse)
Except is isn't really, but I'm sick and tired of this trope. The Reapers could have built their damn tela-pota-towa any-fucking-where on Earth but they had to chose a well-known and oft-invaded-by-aliens-and-the-occult city in a well known nation. Why not the capital of Lithuania, some speck of farm-land deep in China or some other place in Britain (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BritainIsOnlyLondon) or wherever? Well, likely same reason as dangling the soon-to-be-dead little guilt-trap in front of your face; you are supposed to care, and this is just to help you along - after all, who gives a fuck about any other little place when a well-known location in the world happens to be the eye of the storm?
Art.
More seriously, it makes sense artistic direction wise. It maybe does not make a lot of sense besides, but it does for art. Choosing the asshole of the world as a location would have been... Weird. For the scenario, you just ruin the climax, or at least do not maximize it, if the location has no meaning for us, humans. Choosing any other capital of any country would basically get us back to the same point, where it would have been "why X and not Y?", especially if the trope was a city like NY that have been done and redone countless times thanks to hollywood. Well at least, to that why X and not Y question, I think I can propose an answer, for what it is. They were looking for a dark setting fitting with the apocalyptic atmosphere, almost black and white, they wanted. The London architecture style is the key for me. It is dark and sharp in its own way. There is almost something goth and historic in it you do not generally find elsewhere. Of course, this is choice, and other choices could have been made with a little work, but this one works.
The whole relationship between the Krogan, Turians and Salarians and the missions derived from them. Very nicely done. I loved the fact that I found myself quite literally agonizing over the choice presented to me before and during the last mission on Tutchanka. This whole section felt very well done, and along with the different points of view presented from Eve, the Salerians and the ancient history of the Krogan cemented the entire feel of that section very, very nicely.
The Quarian/Geth war and it's events. I loved every second, and hope to alter my desperate last actions to salvage the situation. Honestly, the entire part of the game going over these two's history was amazing - diving into the Geth's memory, seeing the past, weighting the opinions and deeds of both towards each other... the best, and worst, part was the end. Originally I tried to salvage the situation and get both the geth and quarians with me. Good of all, right? That failed, but I did not know that until I had unceremoniously chosen the geth and saw what became of the flotilla and Tali. Few other games have created a reaction like that, fighting off that sinking feeling in my gut while asking myself "What have I done?!" as if I'd just killed someone. Loading back to see the alternative, losing the geth and Legion was not in anyway better, it was in fact just as bad. Having to chose between them was in fact quite agonizing, and I loved it for it.
There is more, but I'll leave it at this for now. I wonder what people think of the rest of the game, in all honesty.
Nothing to add really, this is mostly how I felt it too, even if I did not tried the "choose between the quarrians and the geths" possibility.
But as I said somewhere in this topic, the art and screeplay was a lot better than in the previous titles and the setting was more, more mature and serious.
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I'm just glad James Vega didn't say "ese"
Also, I really didn't think London was a cliched choice at all, considering it's always some boring, grideron American city. As Lyn said, the London architecture really played into the feel of the last mission.
It's also a War of the Worlds nod (Reapers and their trumpets).
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The cliché guilt-trip with the damn dead kid on Earth and the ensuing nightmares. Entirely a waste of my time and patience. No, with the estimated 400 or so harvesting ships on Earth killing about 1.8 million Humans EVERY.DAY. my Shepard has more things to worry about than one measly kid not making it out when it's quite likely tens of thousands to hundred of thousands of kids die every day on Earth. When the war with the Reapers is over there will be plenty of space to go around for the survivors as there won't be 11 billion Humans on the planet anymore, but I still have to slow-walk around this over-blown nightmare section caring that this kid got put on fire at the end of it.
Well, to be fair, the whole world could be burning and I could focus on doing what I needed to do for the greater good. Suffering in Africa, the homeless, same thing... I continue to live my life. If my son or daughter (or even the crazy good-for-nothing kid I've only seen while he tags my front door) is injured in front of me, that will scar me. If I find out a child I know is starving or being abused, I'm going to do something.
There's some psychology mumbo-jumbo that explains it all, and some evolutionary biology papers and market research backing it up. Also, they don't put video of kids starving on those "feed the children" commercials just because they can; there's quantifiable data (and cold hard cash) showing that it's more effective than spouting off statistics.
Yes, it's cliched, but it's cliched because it works (generally speaking).
EDIT: Also, the kid is probably supposed to represent the faceless masses (also represented in the nightmares as the "shadows"/"whispers"... there's a whole mixed dream symbolism thing going on there that I just try and nod, smile, and continue on as if it didn't happen, because DAMN Shepard is one messed up dude/dudette).
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I loved the dream sequences.
So Suck It.
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I loved the dream sequences.
So Suck It.
A bit more elaboration on the why would be nice, so get to it ;)
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The dream sequences are indeed pretty cliche and I took them as such, but as I like to say "everything in this game is a scifi cliche in a playable format" so it doesn't put me off the game.
For a Renegade or one struggling with/incorporating Renegade inclinations Shephard, the kid can be seen to represent his innocence. You are trying to save him in the beginning and he runs away, raising the question "are you a monster?" I found that rather compelling, in fact. I guess for the Paragon he's more about the humanity you are out to save.
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When you see the kid in the beginning, he TELLS you the part of the ending that drives people crazy.
"You Can't Save Me."
You can't. Him, or the galaxy as you know it.
Chasing him through the whispers of (all dead) compatriots from the three games was an attempt to save him anyways. You still can't. Everything goes into the fire. Everything.
When the last of these sequences showed Shepherd joining him (happily) in the flames, I knew the ending that was coming for the game. The hows and why and particulars were yet to be explained, but I knew: You can't save this galaxy of yours, and you can't save yourself.
Usually, dream sequences are simply used to build drama and give portents of doom. This was a correct prophecy of doom, handed to you, making you walk through it. Three Times.
Also, I loved the music. 8)
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Yeah, Graelyn, stick it to 'em! It's lonely in this thread being one of few who didn't go ballistic at the ending. 8)
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Don't get me wrong, I UNDERSTAND the rage at the ending.
I wish there was more choice. I really do.
What I don't think is that the ending I got had no place there. In many places the game was literally beating you over the head with the outcome. The whole Orgs v Synth was a weird way to get to that point tho. The other glaring inconsistencies bug me too.
Still, EVERYTHING IS REBOOTED/KILLED/PURGED IN FAVOR OF NEW PARADIGM shouldn't have been a massive surprise.
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Yeah, I agree. If I hadn't seen it coming, I might've been more disappointed. That said, the ending suggested by the Indoctrination Theory would be magnificent.
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[irrelevant]
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So I've come to realize that once you complete ME3 once, the percentage of Paragon/Renegade you got is solidified and unchanging. It appears to be completely impossible to take a character that has already run through ME3 once again and changing the morality percentages; if you had 50/50 Paragon/Renegade but want to change this to say, 100% Paragon, you can't. No matter what you do, no matter what choices you make the messages that pop up with morality score is a lie; your morality bar will not change. At all.
So when I ran through the second run hoping to tweak the bar slightly to get a few options available that were unavailable in the first run, I soon found that I was wasting my time. The only way to get a different mix would be to re-start a fresh run with a stock or imported toon, once again.
And I really wanted to know how things went with peace between the Geth and Quarians, too. Oh well.
Maybe in a couple months will I run a fresh toon through the game, because the morality won't change on a second run and neither can you alter class, even if you changed classes between ME2 and ME3. At least this point makes more sense...
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http://kotaku.com/5899373/free-mass-effect-3-extended-cut-dlc-to-give-more-closure-this-summer
http://www.digitalnoob.com/sony-news/ps3-news/mass-effect-3-extended/
Looks like the DLC will be a) free and b) out this summer.
EDIT: http://blog.bioware.com/2012/04/05/mass-effect-3-extended-cut/ Official Bioware blog post.
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And completely worthless. None of that was ever asked for. "Oh, you guys didn't like the giant turd we put at the end of the game? Here, let's add more turd. THAT'LL FIX IT!".
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ythY_GkEBck&fb_source=message (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ythY_GkEBck&fb_source=message)
This video explain the Indoctrination theory perfectly and I highly recommend watching it
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I'd just like to let everyone know I haven't gone past ME1.
That said, I still find this video hillarious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6e9nokg1NQ&feature=g-all-lik&context=G202df41FAAAAAAAAQAA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6e9nokg1NQ&feature=g-all-lik&context=G202df41FAAAAAAAAQAA)
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I'd just like to let everyone know I haven't gone past ME1.
That said, I still find this video hillarious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6e9nokg1NQ&feature=g-all-lik&context=G202df41FAAAAAAAAQAA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6e9nokg1NQ&feature=g-all-lik&context=G202df41FAAAAAAAAQAA)
You made my day :lol:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ythY_GkEBck&fb_source=message (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ythY_GkEBck&fb_source=message)
This video explain the Indoctrination theory perfectly and I highly recommend watching it
This video is the sole reason I feel compelled to buy ME3 now
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"Why, yes Harbinger, our Shepard unit will gather all potential threats to our invasion and bring them to Sol system, where we can destroy them in one piecemeal battle"
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And completely worthless. None of that was ever asked for. "Oh, you guys didn't like the giant turd we put at the end of the game? Here, let's add more turd. THAT'LL FIX IT!".
Krogan Vanguard.
It's TOTALLY worth it.
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Still demanding Niftu Cal, Volus Vanguard.
._.
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Still demanding Niftu Cal, Volus Vanguard.
._.
+1
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And completely worthless. None of that was ever asked for. "Oh, you guys didn't like the giant turd we put at the end of the game? Here, let's add more turd. THAT'LL FIX IT!".
Krogan Vanguard.
It's TOTALLY worth it.
That's different DLC to the one I linked, Cael.
But yes, +1 to Kyber. Niftu Cal ftw.
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Still demanding Niftu Cal, Volus Vanguard Biotic God.
._.
Fixed.
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Still demanding Niftu Cal, Volus Vanguard.
._.
Wait, you didn't see Niftu in your ME 3 playthrough?
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And completely worthless. None of that was ever asked for. "Oh, you guys didn't like the giant turd we put at the end of the game? Here, let's add more turd. THAT'LL FIX IT!".
I'd like the game that was advertised on the box. I didn't get it. This isn't going to fix it.
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I have to imagine there was some... internal bioware issues with either scheduling/ writing, or -something-. They took such care with the endings and final missions for the first two games, it really, really doesn't add up that they didn't stick the landing on this one.
The plot falls apart completely and its a giant turd, so I'ma chalk it up to EA being jerks and somehow poisoning the well, maybe making them worry about pay-to-play forced multiplayer microtransaction bullshit and not finishing their damn single player game.
One (of the many) things that really annoyed me, was that at least in ME2 (EA influence not withstanding), it actually -mattered- who you brought on your squad, and what tasks they were given. you had an actual sense of being on a difficult suicide mission, and a crack team working together and making it happen.
This game was just you running around collecting a bunch of numbers to throw at the enemy. How much more interesting if you had to make actual -decisions- with the finale? Tough decisions about how to use all those war assets you had been collecting the entire damn game? Send in the Krogans as shock troops? Suicide the Geth fleets first? That kind of thing. Make it effect the outcome and how you play the final missions.
Illusive man, built up as the master strategist and always one step ahead, leader of an entire army, shows up to the final confrontation by himself with a handgun? And then you just.... talk him into suicide.... good effing gravy.
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That was pretty much my reaction too - throughout ME1 and ME2 it was clear that your actions had meaning and effects, everything was set up in a way that made choices have consequences and the world moved according to how you did things. Some things were minor and some major, but the effects were very nicely made and I got the impression they really though it all out from ME1 all the way to ME3 how things would play out if you did X instead of Y etc.
Then we hit the end of ME3, its painfully obvious something happened that was not planned, and I'm convinced EA somehow is to blame. There was no proper epilogue, there was no change to whatever the hell you did, there was no choices to be made towards the end, there was nothing. A swiftly thrown together mix of 'endings' that were practically identical.
They ran out of time, or were forced to make and end entirely different from what they envisioned. There is no way the ending we got with it's identical outcomes and horrible plot-holes was planned from the start, unless Bioware planned to fuck over all their PAYING FUCKING CUSTOMERS and FANS with this horrible joke of and end.
The only real questions is what the fuck happened? And what will be done to remedy this joke.
If anything. I'll do Bioware a HUGE favor, and not bitch on them for their behavior. Yet. I'll give them a few months or so to fix this, and only if they never get to solving their crap will I consider them to have failed as badly as most others think they have.
My problem is especially the fact that ME3 is for the most part brilliant - I find myself playing the campaign a little every now and then because X Y Z parts, mostly all of it, was freaking epic. However it never lasts more than and hour or two or a mission at a time as such, because it all leads to that ending...
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I don't honestly think EA's to blame for this one. This is squarely on the shoulders of Hudson and Walters, they wrote the ending and pushed it through without external review, they're also the ones standing square behind it now like a Captain on a sinking ship (no Bioware isn't a sinking ship, I just wanted to use a metaphor that explains pointless stubbornness for the sake of "honour")
I'm fine to accept that the game might have no "perfect" endings, infact it's hinted multiple times throughout 3 that there will be losses, casualties and that you can't save everyone. What I don't accept is the actions I chose are non consequential and the end is railroaded into a generic ending, which is irrelevant to how I played the game.
Bad enough that the ending felt empty and left me with more questions than it answered, but it's more empty by the fact that playing through three games, crafting saves and carefully picking my choices the entire time was meaningless when I could have just picked up the third game, played it through quickly and gotten the same result.
This extra bunch of cutscenes best have some pretty epic polyfilla to cover up all the holes in the last 10 minutes of the game. How Anderson got there, why my crew are on the ship, what the hell happened to all life, and why I couldn't just tell the little kid to piss off. My Shepard had spent three games making his own decisions and going through people who said he "can't" do stuff. For him to kowtow to a hologram is just ugh.
I don't want the perfect ending, I just want one that makes sense. I don't want Hudson's "Artistic vision" Soft piano music and confusing dialogue does not make it art, it makes it confusing bollocks.
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For me ME3 was 10 times above the two others put together. And the end, bleh... well, I hope they will do something really good to keep the depth and artistic side of that end and turn it into something coherent and solid.
One can dream...
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For me ME3 was 10 times above the two others put together. And the end, bleh... well, I hope they will do something really good to keep the depth and artistic side of that end and turn it into something coherent and solid.
One can dream...
The rest of the game is absolutely phenominal. I just feel robbed at the end, I felt the same way about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, so much potential just gone.
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For me ME3 was 10 times above the two others put together. And the end, bleh... well, I hope they will do something really good to keep the depth and artistic side of that end and turn it into something coherent and solid.
One can dream...
The rest of the game is absolutely phenominal. I just feel robbed at the end, I felt the same way about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, so much potential just gone.
If you watch the video I linked on the last page it does prety much explain the ME3 ending to the point where it actualy makes sence
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For me ME3 was 10 times above the two others put together. And the end, bleh... well, I hope they will do something really good to keep the depth and artistic side of that end and turn it into something coherent and solid.
One can dream...
The rest of the game is absolutely phenominal. I just feel robbed at the end, I felt the same way about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, so much potential just gone.
I am not sure that DE3 is comparable. The game is not about choices, but about the story before anything else. It just offers you to choose what ending you would prefer, maybe according to your personnal (and/or political) beliefs. It was already the case in DE1 and nobody said anything, even if it was a little more camouflaged.
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In DXHR they also had the limitation that the game was a prequel to the first one that already had a premise set up - they couldn't let the ending of DXHR be loose enough that you couldn't plausibly get back to that starting point - which is why I ended up going "fuck you guys" and took Eliza's suggestion.
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For me ME3 was 10 times above the two others put together. And the end, bleh... well, I hope they will do something really good to keep the depth and artistic side of that end and turn it into something coherent and solid.
One can dream...
The rest of the game is absolutely phenominal. I just feel robbed at the end, I felt the same way about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, so much potential just gone.
This. As I explained ME1 and ME2 was great, and so was ME3, better than the other two indeed.
But we all know how it ends. That's pretty much the only issue that's in any way major, but it's such a crucial part to mess up. It creates a large draw-back on an otherwise excellent product, ergo my opinion that someone somewhere fucked up.
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something that struck me today was this:
[spoiler]At the point where the Salarian Dalatrass is arguing with Shepard and Wrex about the genophage, and Shepard and Wrex storm out, the Dalatress says something about how "this will have consequences". Which would hint at there being an effect on the Human-Salarian diplomatic relations.
[/spoiler]
Except, given the endings, it doesn't.
Another thing that struck me, was the Prothean's dialogue.
[spoiler]In some of the random on-board ship chit chats, He pretty much says that paragon/renegade doesn't matter, only what strength the allies bring. I forget the exact words, but.. it kind of sets you up for only caring if the magic number is +1X or +2X, and paragon/renegade and consequences for the future, don't matter.[/spoiler]
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And both of those build up on an ending that don't exist. They are examples that the final outcome was different from what the game, and those before, had built up to.
Javik is Javik - he's very renegade-like in that he ultimately don't seem to care how the work is done, so long as it does. He wants to kill reapers and knows first-hand what's needed, and how such a task will play out (casualties galore) but he still pushes to get as many folks in on the fight as is possible simply because the more people help out the greater are the odds that anyone at all survives.
Basically, the idea of critical mass, ergo "Fewer than X will just die, more than Y will grant the greatest chance of Victory. Most are going to die anyhow." He's a scarred, pragmatic realist and despite that he will berate you for siding with the Geth if you do. Synthetics can't be trusted, etc.
The Dalatrass makes it clear that curing the genophage is unacceptable due to the Krogan nature and the fact that, if they are cured, it's only a question of time before the Krogan becomes a serious problem that everyone else is not guaranteed to be able to handle. Ergo, though they are needed, she would favor keeping them down. [spoiler]This is the reason she later calls you and offer the alternative to stealthily sabotage the genophage, and ask if you really think a long-time peace with a cured Krogan will last. Shepard can even tell her that "Yeah, I know the Krogan will be an issue after the Reapers, but the Reapers are an issue now." She will agree, and if you do sabotage it, she will commend you for thinking ahead and grant you Salarian support and a cover-story for the coming genophage cure failure.
It's likely that going along with the cure as planned would have long-term consequences and issues between Humanity (represented by Shepard's actions) and the Salarians, but we never get to see that, because of no epilogue or anything :bash:[/spoiler]
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Somtimes all this makes me think that developpers should sometimes just choose not to offer any choices at all considering how whiny and unhappy it makes the players. xD
( yeah i know im unfair )
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Somtimes all this makes me think that developpers should sometimes just choose not to offer any choices at all considering how whiny and unhappy it makes the players. xD
( yeah i know im unfair )
It's about delivering a consistant product. Don't raise the bar if you can't maintain it, etc. Don't raise expectations for years and then not stick the landing, etc.
Part 2 was worse than part 1, and part three was worse than part 2, so I suppose this does keep the trend up in some ways :P
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For me ME3 was 10 times above the two others put together. And the end, bleh... well, I hope they will do something really good to keep the depth and artistic side of that end and turn it into something coherent and solid.
One can dream...
The rest of the game is absolutely phenominal. I just feel robbed at the end, I felt the same way about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, so much potential just gone.
If you watch the video I linked on the last page it does prety much explain the ME3 ending to the point where it actualy makes sence
I watched your video link. I already watched the old ones. They made a little bit of sense, but they were still clumsy and blurred somehow to me. This one is more extensive and better done. It makes sense and I really like it. It proves to me that this ending is awesome in its own way, and is able to cover all the stretched and unconsistant things that were really annoying me. Except of course that we still do not see what happens of the final galaxy afterwise (depending on the final choice done ofc), which is still frustrating I guess. And of course, the fact remains that they kept doing a very pop-culture accessible franchise filled up with clichés and the likes, to give us that at the end. This is just weird, and where they fucked up to me is really there : what did they expect ? The target to understand everything ? I find it really surprising that they needed all this outrage to ensure that they will deliver a free complementary DLC, which should have been there since the beginning ! Of course, this assumes that this theory is correct.
Also, there is one thing that this theory assumes about the SYNERGY choice that makes sense : fusion between flesh and machine, citing husks and reprocessed beings as examples, and thus concluding this is the 2nd of the wrong choices. It is only possible to me, but not mandatory. The theory assumes that SYNERGY is about husks. It could also be about geths. It could be an alternative to the destruction choice. It can also lead to another "theory" of my own that I developped unconsciously myself while watching that end (while I was totally unaware of any indoctrination theory of any sort, but they are not mutually exclusive). Instead of questionning myself about the obvious indoctrination that Shepard went through (even if I was wondering at the end that it was probably some sort of imagination trick/trip), I asked myself a lot of questions about the true motives and essence of the reapers. They say they are here to "prevent organics to create synthetics and be eradicated by their creations" or something like that, which is totally stretched and absurd. I was like wtf, and at the same time it made me think that the reapers are something more than what they seemed to be : reapers.
What if the true purpose and existence of the reapers was actually to bring organics and synthetics to a fusion of a sort ? To push them in a new layer of evolution ? This is how I felt the SYNERGY part. Maybe the CONTROL choice is the trick choice that makes Shepard lose to indoctrination, and DESTROY the choice that makes him resist, but actually LEARNING NOTHING ? What if SYNERGY is a new comprehension ?
Dunno. Must be opening a lot of plot holes that I havent seen. This is mostly how I felt it. Sansha Kuvakei got into me ?
Also, does Shepard only re-breath at the end with the DESTROY option ? I dont think I got this one with SYNERGY... Or is it tied to something else ?
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Only with destroy, and a very high effective military rating.
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I too found the Mass Effect 3 ending to be pretty fail. And though I enjoy the Indoctrination theory from a writing standpoint, from a gameplay standpoint and the core of the ME setting, it suffers from many of the same problems a straight reading of the ending has. I wrote about it on my blog, here (http://www.goldendaydreams.com/blog/2012/04/10/mass-effect-3s-ending-the-indoctrination-theory-and-why-great-writing-cant-save-poor-design/).
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Sources of mine in BioWare say of 'Indoctrination Theory': "Very well put together, but no, sorry."
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Sources of mine in BioWare say of 'Indoctrination Theory': "Very well put together, but no, sorry."
Thing is, if it was right they aren't going to come out and admit it.
So either:
A: This is the ending, :dealwithit:
B: They're keeping hush on some real ending DLC that'll make everything satisfactory and it planned as some big surprise all along.
While B is unlikely I believe I'm going to go with what Asquith said on this one.
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Bioware already has your money and the Mass Effect franchise has reached its conclusion.
What motivation would the have to pander the masses?
The fanboys are still going to think that Bioware is awesome, SWTOR will still reel cash in, remake of Baldur's Gate is coming out that is going to placate those fanboys that got ruffled feathers out of this thing.
Maybe they just don't give a shit anymore.
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Sources of mine in BioWare say of 'Indoctrination Theory': "Very well put together, but no, sorry."
Thing is, if it was right they aren't going to come out and admit it.
(http://i.imgur.com/KiZXQ.jpg)
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Only with destroy, and a very high effective military rating.
Ok, then I guess it invalidates more or less my idea then :lol:
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Even if it was right, it still doesn't make the ending good. It makes it better written, but that doesn't make it good, because the writing is only a part of what makes a video game ending done.
But BioWare does have something to gain by altering the ending. The Mass Effect universe seems like something they wanted to continue working in. If they wanted to make a sequel and have people be more excited about it, they would want to alter the ending to get people invested in the world again. As the fanboys tend to be the people screaming the loudest about the ending and talking about boycotting all BioWare products.
Which, of course, is ridiculous. No one should boycott BioWare products because they didn't like 5 minutes of one of the games. This 5 minutes is amplified because it came at the end of the game, and people put more emphasis on the importance of endings than is actually relevant. But BioWare still makes good games with amazing stories and the bad ending is one small stumble that will likely be forgotten once their next game comes out.
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Regardless of the ending content, it was ridiculously short. My NES and SNES RPG's from 20 years ago had endings that were longer by twice. FFII and III were what, 35 minutes or something? 35 minutes of epilogue covering all major characters so by the time the credits rolled you were 100% content and feel like you really completed the journey with these people?
Yes the fancy new graphics are harder than small sprites and and the animation wasn't as complicated, etc etc, but they also didn't have EA's gargantuan multi-million budget and manpower.
Fail.
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Eh, boycotting actually does have a purpose. There's only one single way to influence game devs and that's to vote with your wallet. Bioware no longer have my trust as a developer and I'm not giving them a penny as long as they're this arrogant.
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Regardless of the ending content, it was ridiculously short. My NES and SNES RPG's from 20 years ago had endings that were longer by twice. FFII and III were what, 35 minutes or something? 35 minutes of epilogue covering all major characters so by the time the credits rolled you were 100% content and feel like you really completed the journey with these people?
Yes the fancy new graphics are harder than small sprites and and the animation wasn't as complicated, etc etc, but they also didn't have EA's gargantuan multi-million budget and manpower.
Fail.
Its unfair, FF unending endings are an exception :D
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was linked some interesting posts on biowares forums about the endings:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10289506
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10036548
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10225078
some are a bit extreme, but i can see how they came to those conclusions.
and I kind of agree with some of it. especially for a paragon shepard. Who would have spent much time in ME1 and ME2, and ME3 as well, pointing out there's another way, whenever someone says "genocide is the only option".
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Regardless of the ending content, it was ridiculously short. My NES and SNES RPG's from 20 years ago had endings that were longer by twice. FFII and III were what, 35 minutes or something? 35 minutes of epilogue covering all major characters so by the time the credits rolled you were 100% content and feel like you really completed the journey with these people?
Yes the fancy new graphics are harder than small sprites and and the animation wasn't as complicated, etc etc, but they also didn't have EA's gargantuan multi-million budget and manpower.
Fail.
Its unfair, FF unending endings are an exception :D
Apparently, XIII-2 doesn't have an ending; it stops with a "To Be Continued" so Squenix can string people along to buy more DLC to actually get a final ending. If not for the Mass Effect effect, and if more people outside Japan played it, I think it would get a lot more noise and attention focused at it.
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My thoughts on the Indoctrination Theory (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv8XMX2ITt4&feature=g-vrec&context=G289a648RVAAAAAAAACQ)...
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For me, the thing I noticed was this: when you play Fallout 1, Fallout 2, or Fallout: New Vegas, you get a bit of exposition at the end. Specifically, you get a few frozen images with a bit of text on what happens to that particular location or person. It probably takes a minimal amount of effort to do something like that, and yet, the endings of the Fallout series (aside from 3) were awesome.
You don't need massive exposition to make a good ending. You don't need great graphics and pretty cut scenes, although I certainly won't reject them. What you need is to take into account the theme of the game, the history and actions of your character, and maintain narrative coherency.
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...and that's what you're going to get with this new DLC thing.
You will NOT get a re-write.
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To be perfectly fair, "more exposition" actually kinda does constitute a rewrite given there's absolutely none at all in the current ending...
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To be perfectly fair, "more exposition" actually kinda does constitute a rewrite given there's absolutely none at all in the current ending...
Actually, they're just putting back in what Casey Hudson mandated they take out.
If I were a cynical man, I would say this seems like the plan all along, considering the company lines of, "we'll see what the players ask for in terms of closure," and, "any DLC after the ending would be in a wasteland," in the launch day interviews I've seen. Can't find a link right now to one, but they're up on youtube somewhere.
What easier way to release DLC than to add in what would have been there in the first place?
I, of course, am not a cynical man. :|
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So I'm guessing this is still a relevant theory, then; They planned it from the beginning! (http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/711)
...no, I don't think they did. But deliberately fucking up everything about the end they could fuck up, then getting you a payable DLC to fix it?
That would be a very bad plan. I still want to hear the official excuse for exactly why the game was brilliant but the ending flopped about as badly as it possibly could flop. Was it EA's decision? Was it a Bioware manager/programmer/employee/asshole who decided? Did they run out of time? Did they plan this face-slap from ME1, or what? I'd like to not have several ideas and several indicators for all those ideas to possibly be valid. I'd like the straight answer and a single location to place the blame and the request that they kindly take responsibility and fix what they broke.
Namely, customer trust in their brand-name and the idea you actually get what you pay for. ME3 player's didn't.
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So I'm guessing this is still a relevant theory, then; They planned it from the beginning! (http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/711)
From what I've seen, this is the truth. From a certain point of view. :|
...no, I don't think they did. But deliberately fucking up everything about the end they could fuck up, then getting you a payable DLC to fix it?
I don't think it was deliberately fucking up from their point of view. With a little bit more exposition, the endings could be bloody magnificent. The scene with Anderson and Shepard, absolutely awesome. I actually wish they'd ended things there instead of extending it out with "Starchild". They could have even left it with a cliffhanger, and I'd be more satisfied. "Shepard... Shepard are you there? Nothing's happening, something went wrong with the Crucible..." /fadetoblack
That would be a very bad plan. I still want to hear the official excuse for exactly why the game was brilliant but the ending flopped about as badly as it possibly could flop. Was it EA's decision? Was it a Bioware manager/programmer/employee/asshole who decided? Did they run out of time? Did they plan this face-slap from ME1, or what? I'd like to not have several ideas and several indicators for all those ideas to possibly be valid. I'd like the straight answer and a single location to place the blame and the request that they kindly take responsibility and fix what they broke.
As they say, "no publicity is bad publicity".
They hyped the heck out of ME3, and it's still being "hyped". They got their launch numbers, their preorder numbers, and they're probably getting a lot of positive feedback from multiplayer (on PC requiring Origin no less, so EA is probably VERY happy).
The assumption here is that a loud, unhappy player base is a bad thing. If the money is still coming in somehow (Multiplayer requisition packs, for instance...), and there's people buying the game "just to see the bad ending", then the fact that this is the last game in the trilogy pretty much guarantees that they won't have to worry about bad blood hurting their next successful franchise.
I could go into the whole marketing/demographics reasoning behind this, but I think I'll end here. Point being, this isn't a niche game like EVE where alienating the core audience is going to sink the company. Bioware is diversified enough, and EA is giving them enough backing, that they will probably survive this PR hiccup.
Namely, customer trust in their brand-name and the idea you actually get what you pay for. ME3 player's didn't.
That... is the only potential problem. If this idea is the one that survives all this, then yeah... ME3 could be an end to trust in future products from Bioware. But it's just a "potential" problem. As it stands, they have SWTOR still going strong (presumably), VERY successful ME3 multiplayer (probably making them a bit of cash from "whales" maxing out their arsenal and character selection), and the experience to move beyond RPG games into more mainstream shooter/pvp/f2p MMO territory. They even have some experience now with social games (Dragon Age Legends, and ME Datapad/Infiltrator apps).
And about the multiplayer side of ME3... unlike one-time DLC, multiplayer DLC "Lottery Packs" can be purchased multiple times by the same customer. So, yeah. More cost effective to make a multiplayer expansion (with new races and weapons, unlockable by either grinding away at the multiplayer or paying money to get a chance of unlocking what you want) than resource-intensive and one-time-purchase DLC storyline content for the single player game.
So... would it be "stupid" to make a bad ending for a game, and then later "enhance" that ending? NO, not if the expanded content was already written/voices already recorded. "Cut" content is more cost effective than "new" content. If they already thought the ending was "brilliant and artistic", why would they worry about customer response? If they didn't know it was bad, and had blinders on in regards to fan interest because "the die-hard fans aren't the ones we're marketing this to" (see the Battlefield 3 early access promotion), then it makes much more sense.
It may not be 100% "ethical", but it's 100% in line with making money and ensuring that you can get the most bang for your development resource buck.
:ugh:
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So I'm finding myself playing more and more MP recently. I've managed to find the one thing more fun to play (and more annoying to your teammates) than a Krogan or Vanguard (or even a Krogan Vanguard)
Melee Geth Infiltrator. Dear god this build is just :eek:
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Every ME1, ME2, ME3 video has a "OMG BIOWARE ENDING SUX" as top comment.
Pleeeeeease just shut up now. We get it.
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(http://i40.tinypic.com/f8n87.jpg)
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And that picture and joke is even more disgusting than Seri's new avatar. I'm impressed with the things some people bother to waste their time on.
There isn't even a good connection to be found here. :bash:
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Seriphyn being a Dolan fan doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
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Let's not forget that the story/writing/fiction people at Bioware are quite separated from the money/corporate/monetizing people in charge at EA, and are subordinate to them.
EA's interest is turning a lucrative franchise into a revenue stream via DLC, exclusive pre-order vanity items, and recurring dlc-to-play multiplayer. Your $60 game is now really a $90 game, multiplied by a few hundred thousand copies. DLC and pay-multiplayer is serious money for EA's bottom line.
Bioware's interest is (was) about producing good stories and a great experience.
EA owns bioware, and does not give two shits about the ending, or the story. If some fiction/writer peon tries to complain they need more time for x ending scenes or whatever, do we honestly think any EA corporate types are going to alter scheduling, etc to satisfy? They've got deadlines and profit projections, etc.
This isn't bioware from 10 years ago
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Seriphyn being a Dolan fan doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
It is genuinely awful. Absolutely abysmal. The fact that something so poor can get proliferated regardless of its quality. Which is what makes it hilarious, especially people's reactions to it.
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So we'll be seeing you in Goonswarm then?
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jev pls
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This isn't bioware from 10 years ago
This isnt any serious game company. Milestones are to be respected or projects are going to the trashbin for being too expensive. Exceptions are rare. Even a game that has started for long and is on its way to get released and that does not respect the milestones is probably going to be dumped, just because it costs less to stop the development than continue paying for its release. Thats damage control.
Except in the underground and indy milieu, ofc.
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So I'm finding myself playing more and more MP recently. I've managed to find the one thing more fun to play (and more annoying to your teammates) than a Krogan or Vanguard (or even a Krogan Vanguard)
Melee Geth Infiltrator. Dear god this build is just :eek:
Heh, Biotics were my thing up until Resurgence launched. Nothing funner than taking 2/3rds of a Banshee's HP in two hits (biotic explosions are insane, and warp/throw combos are just sick if properly spec'd). Heck, even a Quarian engineer and Incinerate/Cold Blast combos are devastating.
However, my new favorite is the Batarian Soldier. Oh my God... that blade gauntlet attack... High initial damage, and then an explosion 3 seconds later, with increased fire cone and damage. Throw in a Disciple shotgun for some stagger goodness, and I can hold pretty much any position indefinitely against anything but a Banshee or Brute.
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I never quite got how to not be shit at Batarian soldier, honestly. Turian, I'm fine with; perhaps the Striker is just an awkward weapon to use. (Although I have the same issue of not quite getting it with Krogans and various shotguns, too.)
Asari adepts (vanilla) and Turian soldiers are probably my favourite classes, though; stasis with a scoped Carnifex wreaks havoc on enemies that can be frozen, whereas warp chased with a throw will play merry hell with the rest. Turian soldier's a lot more straightforward: hit 1 to activate marksman and vomit bullets from the Phaeston into enemies' faces. \o/
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I never quite got how to not be shit at Batarian soldier, honestly. Turian, I'm fine with; perhaps the Striker is just an awkward weapon to use. (Although I have the same issue of not quite getting it with Krogans and various shotguns, too.)
It's definitely a CQB class. Using the Disciple (if you're lucky enough to get the unlock) is pretty much a necessity. You don't have too much reduction in cooldown, and plenty of ammo to survive a wave, plus stopping power/stagger effect. Plus, both Batarian classes give a shotgun/sniper rifle weight reduction boost if you want/need it.
Then again, I've had success with using an Avenger with both Batarian classes, as well as the Carnifex. Very flexible race (and don't let anyone tell you otherwise).
Asari adepts (vanilla) and Turian soldiers are probably my favourite classes, though; stasis with a scoped Carnifex wreaks havoc on enemies that can be frozen, whereas warp chased with a throw will play merry hell with the rest. Turian soldier's a lot more straightforward: hit 1 to activate marksman and vomit bullets from the Phaeston into enemies' faces. \o/
Yup yup, though I'm starting to favor the Batarian Sentinel to the Turian Soldier. The Batarian is an awesome race to learn using shotguns with, regardless of class, because they're very forgiving when it comes to accuracy. Tons of HP, and the submission net ability is as effective as a Stasis attack (with greatly increased DOT at higher levels) or the "fire and forget" blade gauntlet (with aforementioned wider firing arc and longer range modifiers, and delayed explosion).
The Carnifex is a good gun too. Stasis/headshot combo is always fun, but you'll almost always be outscored by the Infiltrators/Engineers with sniper rifles. :( Takes too long to Stasis the enemy and then line up a shot. Learning how to take the shots without worrying about stasis (and let's face it, if you can do that, a shotgun at point blank isn't much harder to weild), you'll be able to do anything with just about any race. Of course if you're not worried about scores, then by all means it's a sick weapon that will get you out of a LOT of tight spots.
As for Krogan: it's not about shotguns, it's about melee. They're the battering rams of the game. Used appropriately, they're more devastating than any other class (except for facing Banshees). Not my cup of tea, but once I get a little better with my Batarians I'll probably start mastering the Krogan. I also need to unlock two of the Krogan classes though. :(
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Still demanding Niftu Cal, Volus Vanguard Biotic God.
._.
Fixed.
/me practices his mad necromancer skillz/
So this is old, but despite the game's ending and all, I still occasionally play the multiplayer. In recent days, a new free MP-DLC added the collectors as a possible enemy, more weapons etc. and a few new characters, including a Volus Adept and a Volus Engineer. Biotic God, served for you all.
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Leviathan and the extended ending thing made it a lot better imo.
still not the greatest ending, your opinion may of course vary.
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I haven't picked it up again since my first playthrough prior to the ending revamp.
Is it uh, worth my time to check out the DLC and re-run the last few missions? Not looking forward to having to re-grind MP to get the best ending again...
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I haven't picked it up again since my first playthrough prior to the ending revamp.
Is it uh, worth my time to check out the DLC and re-run the last few missions? Not looking forward to having to re-grind MP to get the best ending again...
Yes. The EMS scores needed for the endings was lowered, and you don't need MP to get the "best" endings.
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Explains??
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Explains??
To get the best ending, your effective military strength, from the war assets (from missions) and readiness rating (affected by MP), needed to be ~4000. There were only around 7500 total assets in game that you could acquire, which without playing multiplayer, and thus only having 50% readiness rating, meant you could only get 3750 EMS maximum, which meant you had to play some multiplayer in order to get all endings available.
the extended cut lowers the effective military strength to get all endings to 3100, which is a lot easier to get, and does not require multiplayer.
Leviathan adds around 600 war assets as well, so if you have Leviathan, but not the extended cut, you can still get all endings without any multiplayer.
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Still demanding Niftu Cal, Volus Vanguard Biotic God.
._.
Fixed.
/me practices his mad necromancer skillz/
So this is old, but despite the game's ending and all, I still occasionally play the multiplayer. In recent days, a new free MP-DLC added the collectors as a possible enemy, more weapons etc. and a few new characters, including a Volus Adept and a Volus Engineer. Biotic God, served for you all.
I got the Volus Adept the day before yesterday and it's a fucking blast to play with. Two special abilities, Biotic Orbs (little throwable biotic balls ala warp/throw that increase your cooldown rate the more you have around you) and Shield Boost (a squad buff skill that boosts shields/barriers of you and nearby squadmates), coupled with a hilarious melee attack (not telling, it'll ruin the lols) and the ability to hide behind cover without being able to use cover like other classes - seriously, you can kill Cerberus turrets over low cover without getting hit by them even if they're shooting at you - make this class quite entertaining to play with.
I have both of the new Turian kits - more a fan of the Havoc Soldier, but I haven't really given the Ghost much of a try yet.
Silas, if you have the PC version you should try MP with the rest of us sometime. Bunch of us play on a regular basis. :p
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Bah, it's on XBOX for me... ONLY because I'm still playing my ME1 character that is buried in that xbox harddrive.
Too much emotional attachment to re-roll new char on PC :)
My evil queen bitch femshep dominates all ;)
THanks for the clarification.
Yea i had max points for single player and had to grind up the multi to get best ending, this is great.
Quick question... I was like 1 renegade point short of getting martin sheen to suicide at the end, am i right to assume the leviathan DLC will put me over the top on renegade points? :)
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There are plenty of paragon/renegade options in Leviathan. :P
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Yeah, I think the extended ending at least explains things and make it overall more consistent/coherent. Like Louella said, not the best they could have done, but at least it fixes most of the things (most...) and make it work.
Explains??
To get the best ending, your effective military strength, from the war assets (from missions) and readiness rating (affected by MP), needed to be ~4000. There were only around 7500 total assets in game that you could acquire, which without playing multiplayer, and thus only having 50% readiness rating, meant you could only get 3750 EMS maximum, which meant you had to play some multiplayer in order to get all endings available.
the extended cut lowers the effective military strength to get all endings to 3100, which is a lot easier to get, and does not require multiplayer.
Leviathan adds around 600 war assets as well, so if you have Leviathan, but not the extended cut, you can still get all endings without any multiplayer.
Never having even tried MP, I still fail to see what ending I did not have access to before I got the extended cut DLC. What ending required 4000 ?
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There are plenty of paragon/renegade options in Leviathan. :P
God's damn it, now I've got to go get 800 bioware points.
I was letting that DLC be for now because I wanted more ren/par points to manage ot get enough of either to influence more options, but did not know if there was many options in the DLC.
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Leviathan is worth it regardless of the paragon/renegade stuff. It answers a number of questions previous stuff hadn't, and raises some interesting ones. I enjoyed it thoroughly, though I haven't gone and finished the playthrough after having done it yet.
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My little Biotic God lays waste to all before him!
Volus Adept FTW.
Leviathan spoiler follows:
[spoiler]On a more serious note, playing against Collectors in MP has helped me realize one failing in the SP game; there's no sense of urgency like there is in MP. The Collectors are just so much more awesome and scary than the Reaper ground forces. They say the Reapers will win in a conventional war, but there's really nothing that demonstrates this decisively. Leviathan even gives hints that with them on the side of the good guys, there's a chance to turn the tide...[/spoiler]
Would pay $20 to have the option of adding Collector enemies to the existing Reaper lineup in the ground combat (especially during the final push on Earth, since Harbinger's there to lead potentially lead his Collector minions). It would really drive home the point that it's do-or-die with the Catalyst.
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Never having even tried MP, I still fail to see what ending I did not have access to before I got the extended cut DLC. What ending required 4000 ?
the "control" and "destroy" endings had variations that mostly affected what state Earth was in, these variations had higher requirements. The highest "destroy" variation required 4000.
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What happens in that particular destroy variation ?
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it's the one in which someone in N7 armour is seen under some rubble, taking a gasping breath.
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Then I got it, even without playing multi.... oO
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I don't expect anyone to read an egregious necro like this, but I wanted to process this shit in writing, since I only just got back to the states and was finally able to play this...game. (Of course that also means I've only seen the extended version, which probably colors my perception relative to those who saw the original, shortened ending scenes.) I can't say that I hated it, as much as it ripped my heart out seeing Ashley put Shepard's name up on the memorial wall. (Headcanon: After that last night they spent together, there's going to be a little Shepard running around shortly.)
However, there was one thing that bugged me. It's not that your choices don't matter, which is an open question, but that it's only your choice that matters (or doesn't.) I don't know how many other people cared what they had to say, but for me Shepard's teammates had been the sanity check, the clarifying voice, the sounding board across three games. Hell, you spent the majority of the time in the series gathering allies, because one of the biggest themes of the entire setting is that you cannot do it alone.
But there Shepard is, at the end of it all, alone. (Except for a shithead AI that's basically an insane troll logic generation algorithm run amok.) Even granting the faintly contrived circumstances of being forced to evacuate your comrades, the radio is fully functional! You're talking to Hackett just a few moments before having to decide the fate of the galaxy, and yet no one thinks to put him or her in contact with the Normandy. No chance to ask advice from the people he or she's been to hell and back with, or tell them the truth about what's happening, or even time for an actual goodbye to the love interest. (That evac chat was weaksauce and an afterthought anyways, so it doesn't count.)
And thus was the end rendered significantly less interesting.
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Seems I need to replay it. You seem distinctly less ragey than anyone who played the original ending. :P
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Well, I heard all the rage beforehand (though managed to avoid spoilers, praise FSM), so I went in with very low expectations.
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You cannot be put into contact with the Normandy because Shep's been indoctrinated, is it really that hard to understand? :psyccp:
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This article more or less sums up my feelings on the endings as written. (http://doycetesterman.com/index.php/2012/03/mass-effect-tolkein-and-your-bullshit-artistic-process/)
Even with the extended cut, it's just... Yes, I'm glad they actually fleshed out what happened (because the original endings were vague as fuck). But the fact they had to create a DLC pack just to explain their ending in the hopes that the customer base won't storm their HQ building with torches and pitchforks? That's not a good sign. That's not a good sign at all.
Now, all that being said, I had (and continue to have) a ton of fun with the multiplayer aspect. Kudos for them on getting that right (mostly; I've lost a couple of packs to crappy net code since release, although they seem to have finally cleared that up). I just wish I could say the same for the campaign. You know, what the game was supposed to be designed around.
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I play the multiplayer most evenings with Karm, his roommate and Inara, and occasionally with a couple of the guys from Veto.
This weekend's challenge is gonna be hilaaaaaaaaaarious.
In other news, Citadel, the last single-player DLC was released yesterday.
Storyline is kinda short - took me maybe... 3-4* hours to finish, compared to maybe 6-7 for Leviathan and Omega, the other single-player DLCs - but there's LOTS of stuff to do after that in the new area of the Citadel that's opened up to you. I haven't done it all yet, and I didn't do anything else last night.
Leviathan and Omega are also worth picking up, and I highly recommend them if you haven't already.
* I tend to play things as a completionist the first time through, so my playtime estimates may be high compared to someone who doesn't go exploring every single nook and cranny on every level for goodies and easter eggs.
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I should pick up the DLCs and try the game again.
I never finished the first time through, thanks to stupid, stupid BSOs.
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The DLC was, as much as I hate to advocate giving EA more money for this game, great. I haven't played the new one obviously, but Omega and Leviathan were fun.
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I think I've spent more time playing ME3 multiplayer than playing all three games' campaigns put together. It also helps that the multiplayer expanded content is free.
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The most recent one contains a LOT of funny references to other games and series, as well as a lot of jokes at the expense of the Mass Effect series itself. There are also a lot of references to the multiplayer too, but those are few and far between until after the main story of the DLC.
Not going to provide spoilers for the main storyline just yet, but you learn a lot of interesting little things about the history of the Mass Effect universe, and the stuff available in the Silversun Strip (the new area of the Citadel) after the storyline is a bunch of fun.
Quasar and some other casino games reappear, and there's an arcade with some other minigames to play with.
The best part, IMO, is the Armax Arena - which is basically a combat sim where you can pick enemy types, maps and difficulty - then add penalties to increase your score. You can then purchase upgrades for the arena with the points earned through matches.
There are three tiers of upgrades: Bronze, Silver and Gold, which correspond to award levels for your score in the combat sim. Each win will give you a 'token' for that tier, which can then be used to redeem a prize from that tier, converted into credits, or converted to 3 tokens for a lower tier (1 Gold = 3 Silver = 9 Bronze). You can pick up additional handicaps, ally options, maps and more through this, and the matches are fairly short (I played for an hour or two after finishing the main part of the story last night and have most things unlocked already).
NPCs will also give you challenges to complete certain enemy/map/handicap/ally combinations for goodies.
Also confirming what Karm just said. We've racked up a LOT of hours in multiplayer together.
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Is there more to the multiplayer than sitting on a map shooting wave after wave of [insert mob type here]? That was my impression playing it for the hour or so I spent on it when the game first came out.
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No, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun to play with friends.
Getting to play with other races (and powers) that aren't available to be played with in the singleplayer game makes it worth it to me, anyway.
Also, to be perfectly honest - the multiplayer is harder than the singleplayer, even with an additional person available for a total of 4 per squad. It's a nice challenge. If you've got the PC version, give a poke sometime and we'll drag you on board for a couple matches.
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Yeah, I enjoyed the gameplay to mass effect as much as the storyline. ME3 seemed really easy on single player so it's nice to actually be able to enjoy the action in multiplayer without having your NPCs nuke everything with particle rifles.
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ME3 Multiplayer seemed to me like a wannabe Halo Firefight mode. Far more customizable, no doubt, but it didn't hook me, at least not yet. On the bright side, at least, it's free to play if you own the game, so that's something positive.
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No, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun to play with friends.
Getting to play with other races (and powers) that aren't available to be played with in the singleplayer game makes it worth it to me, anyway.
Also, to be perfectly honest - the multiplayer is harder than the singleplayer, even with an additional person available for a total of 4 per squad. It's a nice challenge. If you've got the PC version, give a poke sometime and we'll drag you on board for a couple matches.
If I get into the interest zone for ME3 MP again, I'll keep this in mind. 10 times more fun with good team-work, and on 100% public play it get's hard to find people interested in using the mic and being tactical...
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I assumed Mass Effect 3's multiplayer was a PVP kind of deal? If not, well ... damn. :( Something like a Blue Suns vs. Eclipse team deathmatch sounds fun to me.
Still haven't picked up ME3 and somehow saved myself of too many spoilers in the meantime, got my old ME->ME2 save also. Seeing it on a Steam sale would be nice.
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Seeing it on a Steam sale would be nice.
You'll sooner see the sky turn green. EA didn't distribute it on Steam, only on Origin.
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Seeing it on a Steam sale would be nice.
You'll sooner see the sky turn green. EA didn't distribute it on Steam, only on Origin.
Deja vu, anyone? :p
I'll wait for a steam sale...
This is my plan. I haven't even really gotten into ME2 yet, trying to find my ME1 disk to reinstall, play through that, etc, and this thread has put a mild hurt on my eagerness for ME3. So I'll take my time and wait for it to be cheaper.
You two are going to be waiting a long time if you're waiting on a Steam sale. :lol:
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Rawr, you guys are right.
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Eh, I found the ending of ME 3 to be rather disappointing. Not just because you couldn't earn a happy ending, but that was a large part of it. The whole game has been, thematically, a denial of inevitability and certain death, and then star child basically railroads you into dying one way or another. Yay. I understood it in Dragon Age - that sort of "someone has to die" was very appropriate there. In ME 3, it was a giant dramatic disconnect. It's a bit like if Luke died in Star Wars:RotJ...all that build up, all the heroism and struggle, and then "oops, guess Vader couldn't change". It would still be a story where the good guys win, but it would suck, comparatively.
Anyway, the thing that really irritated me was the gates going boom and the lack of any description regarding the future. I mean, I've watched the extended cut, and it still sucks. What happens to your squad mates? Does the fleet survive? How bad off is Earth, and the human race? How about the Asari, Krogan, Geth, and all the others we tried to save? Huh? Instead, we get a plaque on a wall, and a couple stills of happy aliens. Oh, goody.
As far as end-game goes, Fallout 2 had a much, much more satisfying end sequence, and it did it without any flashy cut-scenes or action sequences, or even choices. Because they gave you a real conclusion that tied up the threads - not always happily, but reasonably well. ME 3 just left you going "uh, okay, so I'm dead, my friends are sad, and the galaxy is saved. But what happened?"
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It's been a year since its release and I still feel the urge to vent and rant about the ending, before and after the extended cut. And about the plotholes. About the sheer stupidity of some scenes and revelations.
There were great moments in this game, I won't deny that. The Leviathan DLC is pretty good. I'm not happy there were chocolate chunks in the shitpie -I'm pretty pissed about the shitpie.
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It's been a year since its release and I still feel the urge to vent and rant about the ending, before and after the extended cut. And about the plotholes. About the sheer stupidity of some scenes and revelations.
There were great moments in this game, I won't deny that. The Leviathan DLC is pretty good. I'm not happy there were chocolate chunks in the shitpie -I'm pretty pissed about the shitpie.
TBH, the proper metaphor would be that your not happy with the chunk of shit in the chocolate pie - ME and ME2 and pretty much all of ME3 besides the ending-fail was down-right amazing. There are multiple things I was not totally happy about in ME3, but the big let-down overall was the end, no doubt, and from what I've seen this was the general impression.
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Exercise in fairness : the whole Eve-Wrex-Mordin arc was swiss-level of delicious chocolatery, and a sizeable portion of the whole game. The conversations between Eve and Mordin, Urdnot "THIS IS MY PLANET !" Wrex, Mordin singing while the tower is crumbling around him : awesome.
Same goes for the conversations Hepard witness between the crewmembers of the Normandy. Or shooting at cans while exhanging boasts with Garrus at the Citadel.
But my grudge with ME3 isn't just about the ending. Since I don't want to start a rant, I'll just point at this guy, the "Team Rocket poses are awesum :B" ninja cyborg.
The thing is : After finishing ME2 for the first time, I made different saves of the first two games -your average bioware fanboy with half a dozeen Shepards on his harddrive, yup. I played ME3 once, vented and raged and ranted a lot, and have no intention of making another full run of it.
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The thing is : After finishing ME2 for the first time, I made different saves of the first two games -your average bioware fanboy with half a dozeen Shepards on his harddrive, yup. I played ME3 once, vented and raged and ranted a lot, and have no intention of making another full run of it.
Snap!