Mass Effect 3

[Dantius]

(I originally wrote this as a PM, but in retrospect I realized that there might actually be other fans of the game that either hadn't said so here or just got on the ME bandwagon now.)

 

So, what's your opinion on Mass Effect 3? Have you played/beaten it yet? What did you think about the ending? I'm totally starved for intelligent discussion on this, but this being the Internet, SW is probably my only non-RL source for such (and the two people I know IRL who are fans have either not bought it yet or haven't passed the Mars mission. Clearly they lack the proper dedication )

 

 

[Sudanna]

I wish I could play ME3, but I lost my ME1 and ME2 saves, so I've been replaying those.

[Lilith]

i've played a bit of both the single-player and the multiplayer and i don't have high hopes for the plot (it seems like it's got too much stuff to wrap up too fast) but the combat is pretty slick. the gameplay's a lot like mass effect 2 but with a few of the rough edges filed off and slightly more options for character customisation. my one big complaint gameplay-wise is that there are loads of permanently missable sidequests that can only be completed at some very specific time, although it's not too bad as long as you check your email regularly and pay attention to the stuff you find on missions

 

Originally Posted By: Thin Gypsy Thief

I wish I could play ME3, but I lost my ME1 and ME2 saves, so I've been replaying those.

 

man have i ever got good news for you

[Enraged Slith]

I liked the first game, despite its flaws, but the story took a real dive in the second (and everything on the Normandy kept trying to doink my Shepard). I haven't heard many good things about the third, so I don't really feel like shelling out the $60 for it.

 

I also don't appreciate EA trying to muscle Origin onto my PC or releasing DLC on the first day. I have no idea why they continue trying to piss their legitimate customers off. I doubt I'll buy Mass Effect 3.

 

Also:

Click to reveal..

 

[Sudanna]

Seen that already. Not the same, Lilith.

[Lilith]

gonna compile a list of gameplay changes between me2 and me3 now for the curious

 

good news if you hated the hacking minigames and bad news if you liked them: they're gone now. hacking doors/computers is just a short time delay to make it dangerous to do while under fire and that's it.

 

me1-style weapon mods are back, sort of. they give a small improvement to damage, accuracy, ammo capacity or weapon weight. you can use two at a time on each weapon like me1 but mod types are tracked separately for each weapon like me2. both weapons and mods are upgradeable, the first by paying small amounts of cash to slightly improve basically all of the weapon's properties and the second by finding/buying duplicates of the mod

 

instead of classes being limited to specific weapons there's a weight system. if you travel light with just a pistol+SMG your power recharge rate will be super fast, but if you weigh yourself down with every kind of weapon it'll be super slow. basically if you want to use powers a lot in combat you want to be careful about what weapons you bring, but if you don't care about powers then go nuts and carry all 5 weapons into every mission. your squadmates are still limited to two specific weapon types each though

 

the experience system is a little bit of a hybrid between 1 and 2 -- you don't get experience for killing enemies, but you do get experience dished out in little chunks for finding data logs and advancing the plot in missions, instead of getting a big slab of XP all at once. you also get a significant amount of XP instead of an insignificant amount of cash as the reward for finding medkits when you're already full up on medigel

 

you still have regenerating health/shields but health only regenerates to a limited extent -- the health bar is divided into five segments and you can't regenerate across segment boundaries, so if you get taken down to 50% health then you'll only regenerate up to 60%. medigel still brings you back up to full

 

you can revive squadmates in battle without spending medigel if you can get right up close to them and sit there for a few seconds. make sure you deal with whatever killed them first though!

 

power advancement is much the same as it was in me2, except there are 6 levels of each power now and the last three all give two options. shepard gets twice as many skill points as everyone else and starts at up to level 30 if you imported an ME2 save, so it's not hard to max out a couple of powers early on

 

those are about all the core gameplay changes i can think of right now. hope this helps!!

[Kendroxide]

Has anyone beaten it yet, how long is the game?

 

I was kinda disapointed that ME2 was only 24 hours (I was on the second hardest difficulty). If its less then 30 hours, then I'll wait till it goes on sale.

[Death Knight]

I actually got into mass effect 1 a few times as the story and what you could do was cool. The problem with mass effect for me is a few things. I was playing it on The xbox 360 and that wont play the game new or old. It was giving me problems reading the game, i got a new one 3 or 4 times from gamestop with it still just giving me that error. If i ever get a computer that can play it, ill start from mass effect 1, forget console games. I trust a pc of that anyday. Otherwise a great game.

[Alorael at Large]

I'm also waiting for the reviews, although less urgently; I don't have the hardware to run ME3 very well, so it'll have to wait. I suspect the plot is mostly going to run on what was set up in the first two games, but plot per se hasn't been the series' strong suit. Characters and drama, and I expect to see those in spades.

 

—Alorael, who is most intrigued by the Metacritic results. The critics love it and the fans despise it? He finds it hard to believe that the game's a 3.5, especially on the standard inflated game rating scale.

[Lilith]

looking at the reviews people are mostly Really Angry About The Endings. i'm getting the distinct impression that it would have been a very good idea if me2 hadn't existed, me3 had been the second game in the trilogy and they'd given themselves an extra game to actually finish the story.

 

oh well. the original deus ex was a great game with universally abrupt and contrived endings and nobody holds that against it

[Alorael at Large]

I'd be fairly okay with dropping ME2 from the series. Sadly, I think the plot would also do fine with that; there are some characters who would be missed, but there are worse things.

 

—Alorael, who never expects good endings from games. Endings are hard to do and often come out wrong. Unfortunately, they're also the final impression, and that sticks, but the other 20-40 hours of the game should also count for something.

[Enraged Slith]

A lot of those fan reviews were written by people who have yet to play the game or simply wanted to use metacritic as a platform to get back at Bioware and EA.

 

I can't say I blame them for being upset, but it's not doing people who want to find fair reviews any good.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Lilith: one minor correction...you get experience for finding medi-gel whether you're maxed out or not. You might get more if you're maxed out (I've seen rewards ranging from 100 to 300), but that variance may just be based on the location/point in the game.

 

I finished the game yesterday, and my impression is strongly positive. The story has some amazing moments, and the gameplay is basically ME2 but better. I'd echo Lilith that the great majority of complaint online seems to be about the endings. I'm not too sympathetic to this: there were definite problems with the ending (some plot twists that came out of nowhere, and the lack of much in the way of epilogue), but a lot of the people on the BioWare forums and Mass Effect wiki come off as obnoxiously entitled fans being butthurt about the ending not being 'happily ever after.'

 

@Alorael: I don't think I'd want ME2 dropped from the series entirely, but I agree that much less happens in it than in the first or third games. Maybe cut it down to half size (focusing on the fight against the Collectors), play out the early parts of the Reaper war in the latter half, then have ME3 deal with the latter parts and go into more detail on the plot elements introduced in the last quarter hour. Still, we have the game we have, and I thought it made a satisfying end to the trilogy.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Kendroxide

Has anyone beaten it yet, how long is the game?

I was kinda disapointed that ME2 was only 24 hours (I was on the second hardest difficulty). If its less then 30 hours, then I'll wait till it goes on sale.

Well, it probably took me around 40 hours to beat it, and I did almost all of the sidequests and the DLC (collector's edition one with Javik, who was cool). Like most people who played it, I thought the game was excellent and polished and balanced and that the ending totally obliterated any chances I had of actually liking it.

Click to reveal..

In fact, "totally obliterated" might be an understatement. The ending was so bad that, like the Star Wars prequels, it has adversely affected my ability to enjoy the third of the series that was good. I might as well just lay out my problems, any one of which would be sufficient to ruin the game, but all three of which pretty much destroy the trilogy:
1.

Click to reveal.. (The Reapers)

It's difficult taking the Reapers as an incomprehensible malevolent and intelligent foe bent on destruction of organic life now that we know that they're actually synthetics destroying organic life in order to stop organics from making synthetics... that destroy organic life. That had to be the stupidest justification for their actions possible. I mean, "Because we're super powerful, so why the hell not commit genocide?" would have been vastly more terrifying than a chain of reasoning a five year old could poke holes in.

2.

Click to reveal.. (The kid)

Speaking of five-year-olds, the entire use of the child as way to generate sympathy, and the child's reappearance as the conduit for the Catalyst to speak. If the entire point of the character is to generate sympathy, there's plenty of better characters to do that. Here's a few of the top of my head: The casualty on Virmire; either Saren or Nihlus (possibly both), Mordin, who's the one character in ME2 everyone was guaranteed to recruit; the player's LI (dead or alive); Anderson; a character from the player's origin/background that had previously been introduced a la Tabitha... the list goes on and on. Randomly picking a five-year-old, giving him three lines, shooting down his shuttle, and putting him into a dream sequence makes me want to punch him in the face for being a cheap shot at generating pathos instead of an actual character, not feel sorry for him.

3.

Click to reveal.. (The choices)

Eliminating any effect that your choices had in determining the final ending. I don't just mean that the choices you made in the previous games had no effect (they didn't, which is another problem). I mean that, regardless of which final option you picked, the endings were functionally identical other than the color. The basic sequence is:
a. Shepard bravely sacrifices her/his life.
b. Reapers are no longer a threat to Earth.
c. Mass relays are destroyed, and no consequences of this are investigated at all.
d. Everyone on the Normandy, including people who died via Harbinger's Thanix laser to the face, magically appear in a space Garden of Eden.
e. After the credits, Buzz Aldrin appears.
That's it. Period. In a game series where I made hundreds of hours of choices over nearly a half a decade, the final conclusion has been prewritten for me. I mean, how difficult would it be to just straight up crib Jade Empire's endings or KOTOR's endings and come up with something like this:
PARAGON OPTION: You destroy the Reapers and settle down with your LI as a hero revered by all.
RENEGADE OPTION: You wield the power of your fleets to take over the galaxy and become space-Emperor.
STUPID OPTION: You allow the Reapers to wipe out the galaxy in order to become ascended as one and live forever.

[Enraged Slith]

Just out of curiosity, which third do you think is good? Maybe it was because I had just played Avadon, but I was really disappointed with how Mass Effect turned out in spite of all its praise. Sovereign wound up saving the story for me, so it's disappointing to hear that Reapers are no longer the incomprehensible god machines they were portrayed as in the first.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith

Just out of curiosity, which third do you think is good? Maybe it was because I had just played Avadon, but I was really disappointed with how Mass Effect turned out in spite of all its praise. Sovereign wound up saving the story for me, so it's disappointing to hear that Reapers are no longer the incomprehensible god machines they were portrayed as in the first.

The first one. There were some flaws, sure, but mainly cosmetic in nature that a little thought could reason away, unlike ME2 or ME3's serious, gaping plot holes or characterization retcons.

[Sudanna]

Yeah, the games got a lot dumber between one and two. But two's saving grace for me was the companions. ME1's followers were, frankly, boring. Except Wrex, maybe. Perhaps ME2 only gets past that with exaggeration and some fairly cliched character types, but I still liked talking to them. It became so that the main reason I advanced the plot at all was so I could advance their dialogue trees and romances.

[Acky]

Dantius couldn't have summed my feelings up better. As a long time ME fan, the endings in ME3 really do ruin the whole game for me. It basically nullify's everything you've done in the games with the only notable difference being the color of the explosion. It's a big shame because everything up to that last 5 minutes was absolutely fantastic. Gameplay was smooth, plot was great, I didn't even mind the stock images that were used. But those last 5 minutes....you can't understand how it absolutely destroys the game experience unless you play it.

 

Come to think of it, there's a theory going around that the entire end sequence of the game is just a dream. Regardless of if its true, the ending is so bad people are starting to make craaaaaazy reaches, just for a sliver of hope. Good job Bioware!

 

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/9727423/1

[Alorael at Large]

ME2 has a good party and a much more cinematic feel, good or bad, but no real plot with the cinema. ME1, despite its sometimes slogging pace, gives you a top-notch villain to hate, and ramps up very well towards the end.

 

—Alorael, who gets the sense that ME3 may be one of those games that's great fun, but possibly most fun if you just stop right before the end and imagine your own resolution. He finds those annoying but still eminently playable. Canon is only binding if there are sequels.

[Dintiradan]

Well, I had originally intended to avoid all spoilers. But I've been hearing a lot of discontented murmuring, so I when ahead and read up on the ending (not on the rest of the plot, just the ending), since this could be a deal breaker for me.

 

But after reading up on the (mis)handling, I still feel the urge to play...

Click to reveal..

FreeSpace 1 and 2. :-P

 

Seriously. Anyone who's interested in seeing fundamentally incomprehensible and seemingly omnipotent antagonists that destroy all galactic life on a periodic basis -- done right -- should play these games. They're free as in beer.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

FreeSpace 1 and 2. :-P

Seriously. Anyone who's interested in seeing fundamentally incomprehensible and seemingly omnipotent antagonists that destroy all galactic life on a periodic basis -- done right -- should play these games. They're free as in beer.

Wait, FreeSpace 2 is freeware now? Since when? (And more importantly, link please?)

[Dintiradan]

http://scp.indiegames.us/

 

and

 

http://www.hard-light.net/, and specifically for people who want to download and install, http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Getting_Started%28Main%29

 

(I said 'free as in beer', but the source has been released, just under a non-OSS license. It's the next closest thing to 'free as in freedom'.)

 

EDIT: As for 'since when', 2002. :-P Though it took a while before the improvements really started pouring in.

 

EDIT: Hmm, apparently you have to buy FS2 now? I didn't have to do that back in 2007-ish. Try to see if you can get it without buying the game, but if you do have to buy it now, it's cheap on Good Old Games.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

(WARNING: HERE BE MAJOR ENDING SPOILERS)

 

Click to reveal..

@Ackrovan: I've heard that claim (that the ending nullifies everything you've done) several times online, but I've yet to get a straight answer as to why. The destruction of the mass relay network and Shepard's death (in most endings) don't change the fact that you cured the Genophage or didn't, saved the Rachni or didn't, forged a peace between the Quarians and Geth or allowed one species to kill off the other, and mustered a military force that either survives to rebuild Earth (if you had many war assets) or dies there (if you didn't). Yes, many people are stranded in various places, and star clusters are cut off from one another (at least in terms of travel and trade; quantum entanglement communications allow for limited contact), but that's not going to last forever, as there's still enough galactic civilization left to gradually advance travel technology. I can see how Shepard's death renders some of the personal aspects of the story irrelevant, the council is probably dead whatever you do, and it's unlikely that any living Quarian who isn't already on Rannoch will get to see it again, but that's a fraction of what Shepard has done over the series.

 

Is the lack of a more thorough epilogue the basis for your complaint? That's a complaint I can understand and mostly agree with, but I don't think it invalidates Shepard's actions in the game.

 

Also, to answer a completely different question that I missed before: I did almost everything in the game (96-98% of content), plus the From Ashes DLC, and my timer at the end was about 53 hours. Plus a few more it didn't count because I was playing on hardcore, which netted me a fair few game overs. I've heard people give the figure for 25-30 hours for a speedy completion featuring only the main missions and a few of the more important ones on the side.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Othar Trygvassen: Gentleman

Also, to answer a completely different question that I missed before: I did almost everything in the game (96-98% of content), plus the From Ashes DLC, and my timer at the end was about 53 hours. Plus a few more it didn't count because I was playing on hardcore, which netted me a fair few game overs. I've heard people give the figure for 25-30 hours for a speedy completion featuring only the main missions and a few of the more important ones on the side.

Sounds about on par with ME2. I finished basically every mission and all DLC in a little under 60 hours, and I wasn't particularly rushing.

also it might be a good idea to use spoiler tags for the rest of your post!!

wait what am i thinking i'm a mod, i can do it myself

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Lilith: I figured the conversation as a whole had gotten spoilery enough that those weren't necessary, but I'll defer to your judgment.

[Lilith]

ok yeah i just finished it and the ending was exactly as dumb as advertised. i'm not really annoyed, just kind of awestruck that anyone thought that ending was a good idea. i get the feeling they were kind of going for a 2001: A Space Odyssey vibe but come on, even Kubrick could barely pull that off

 

also either it's significantly shorter than ME2 or i'm getting significantly faster at finishing games. my final time was just over 35 hours and i did pretty much everything.

[Acky]

To Othar:

Click to reveal..

Quote:

@Ackrovan: I've heard that claim (that the ending nullifies everything you've done) several times online, but I've yet to get a straight answer as to why. The destruction of the mass relay network and Shepard's death (in most endings) don't change the fact that you cured the Genophage or didn't, saved the Rachni or didn't, forged a peace between the Quarians and Geth or allowed one species to kill off the other, and mustered a military force that either survives to rebuild Earth (if you had many war assets) or dies there (if you didn't). Yes, many people are stranded in various places, and star clusters are cut off from one another (at least in terms of travel and trade; quantum entanglement communications allow for limited contact), but that's not going to last forever, as there's still enough galactic civilization left to gradually advance travel technology. I can see how Shepard's death renders some of the personal aspects of the story irrelevant, the council is probably dead whatever you do, and it's unlikely that any living Quarian who isn't already on Rannoch will get to see it again, but that's a fraction of what Shepard has done over the series.

When you destroy a Relay, the subsequent explosion results in the star system that the Relay orbits being destroyed, as we learn in the ME2 DLC "Arrival." Thus, it doesn't matter if you cure the Genophage. The planet Tuchunka is destroyed, and all newly-fertile Krogan along with it. It doesn't matter if you reunite the Geth and the Quarians, because Rannoch gets blown out the proverbial airlock. Same goes for the Rachni, presumably, depending on what planet the Queen goes to. It doesn't matter if you build a huge armada of dozens of fleets, because the Sol System will be destroyed once the Relay self-destructs. You're not just wiping out the best known method of travel, you're exterminating trillions of lives in the process. Without Relays urban populations, that rely on farm worlds like Eden Prime, will experience mass starvation. Isolated worlds will have no way to contact their mother planets. The ending basically forces you to restart all galactic civilization by plunging the galaxy into a Dark Age. Thus thus, EVERYTHING you do up to that point means nothing. Everyone died, the end, is about what you get, which is really, really off-base with the rest of the trilogy. There's just absolutely no consistency with it.

 

If the point of this outcome was to support the idea that the Reapers are so powerful nothing but restarting civilization will work, they don't do a good job convincing the player. Throughout the game I was getting the distinct impression that the Reapers aren't this omni-potent entity and could be defeated (since, you know, Shepard kills 2 of them), albeit with big help and at great cost. The ending just isn't consistent with the Mass Effect games theme of "Choice And Consequence".

 

Note that I don't think the idea of this sort of ending to a game is a bad idea. You just need to convince me it works in the story. Bioware does not convince me it works in the story.

 

A lack of a thorough epilogue is putting it mildly. BW, bless their hearts, drops the ball really freaking hard on the player with the ending sequence. There's no epilogue because there's no epilogue left to write.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Master Ackrovan

To Dantius:

See, that would make some amount of sense, which is how you know it isn't actually what happens.

Click to reveal..

The official line seems to be that the destroyed relays don't explode in system-shattering bursts of energy like the one in Arrival did, because space magic. Don't think too hard about continuity or what the hell was actually going on at the end there, you'll just get a headache.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Master Ackrovan

To Dantius:

Othar Trygvassen is not me. You can tell because my PDN is "Dantius" and will always remain such.

Click to reveal..

That said, I agree with what you say, though I could see the destruction of the Relays as a reaper as more "controlled demolition from inside" as opposed to "whipping a massive asteroid at it at an appreciable fraction of c", which is probably bound to produce a pretty big explosion anyways.

Interestingly enough on a math note, I actually sat own and worked out the computation, and it turns out that the figure in the Codex of a 38 kiloton explosion checks out for a 20 kg dreadnought slug at that speed, meaning that they actually bothered to come up with internally consistent physics (energy is conserved, momentum is not) for the series. I can't really recall any other AAA soft-scifi games that bothered to do that (midichlorians! wooo!). Point for Bioware, I guess?

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Ackrovan: Othar Trygvassen is Othar Trygvassen (formerly FnordCola, and possibly again at some point), and not Dantius.

 

As for the mass relays, I'm basically with Lilith and Dantius on this:

Click to reveal..

There's no evidence that the controlled demolition of a mass relay via the Crucible works the same way as dropping an asteroid on one. Moreover, there is at least circumstantial evidence that it doesn't. First, the explosions look different: Arrival features an opaque wall of bluish light, while the light in the end of ME3 can be one of several colors, and is mostly transparent. Second, the light from the Crucible looks the same as the light from the dying mass relays, and the former leaves the non-Reapers fighting on Earth intact in all but the really bad endings (which difference also suggests that the mass relays don't just kill everyone, since otherwise the distinction between good and bad endings would be irrelevant). Third, one would think the Catalyst would mention something as major as the extinction of nearly all life in the galaxy, given that it mentions the (much smaller-scale) destruction of the Geth if you eliminate synthetics. Indeed, if the destruction of the relay network actually killed off all life in the galaxy, it would seem redundant to mention Geth extinction at all. I agree with Lilith that this could've used more exposition and less hand waving, but I still think it's much more likely that life in the galaxy continues.

[Dantius]

Well, it looks like Bioware has finally admitted to their mistake and is covering for it...

 

...By making an anime that will be so bad we forget about how much then ending sucked.

 

How bad you ask? Well, for starters, here's the main character:

 

Click to reveal..

 

We're done, Bioware. You hear me? FINISHED.

[Callie]

For some reason I think that guy strangely resembles a dog.

[Erebus the Black]

Originally Posted By: Excalibur

For some reason I think that guy strangely resembles a dog.

You're thinking of full metal alchemist
(Greed's dog chimera)

[Duck in a Top Hat]

I picked up the first two games on Steam when they were on sale last October and I've finally beaten ME1 and started ME2. I absolutely loved ME1, but so far I think the gameplay and side missions are a lot more developed in ME2. I'm dreading when I beat ME2 and have to get Origin just to play ME3 without starting a new character on the Xbox and losing my choices.

[Juan Carlo]

I really loved the ending, actually. The first 3/4 of the game is more or less the same as the previous games with all of the strengths and a few of their flaws, but the last 2 or 3 hours it's like the game switches gears entirely and becomes some bizarre, morbid, sci-film from the 1970s.

 

I really admired the hard left turn the game took in its very last portions mostly because Bioware very much has a formula that they tend to follow with all of their games--which is something I've criticized them for in the past and which, I think, often prevents them from being really innovative in their game design/storytelling. They were innovative at one point, but mostly for the past decade they've just been repeating the same basic formulas. So it was nice to see them take some risks and break out of that formula in ways that genuinely suprised me (and I don't mean "surprise" just in terms of plot points, but everything--style, direction, tone, acting, etc, etc. This game did stuff in its last hour that video games don't normally do--which I loved).

 

I don't really understand why some fans are so up in arms, either. Yes, some of the stuff in the last few scenes was a bit.....out of no where on the surface, but I think it was all set up well enough if you really look closely at the themes of the series up to that point. Plus, I definitely don't think anyone can claim there's no closure (as I am seeing some fans do on the forums). It seems like this game was nothing but closure for every single character who ever appeared in the series (I mean, I'm pretty sure Shepard said "Good bye" to some characters like 4 times). If anything there was too much closure.

 

So, yeah. All in all, I thought "Mass Effect 3" is the best game in the series. By a mile. Plus, I don't hear many people talking about it, but the combat was definitely the most refined it's ever been (in past games it's often been a headache).

 

But then again, I always find myself defending the ending to the revamped "Battlestar Galactica" to sceptical fans (which I only bring up because I actually see alot of season 4 BSG in "ME3"--i.e. with the sudden turn towards mysticism to explain some things and some plot threads left open to interpretation, etc, etc).

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Juan Carlo: That's an interesting point. I agree with it in principle, but not with all the specifics.

Click to reveal..

To wit: I agree that BioWare games tend to follow a formula of sorts, and that the ME3 ending broke with many elements of that formula. I'm not as averse to that formula as you seem to be, but I'm happy they decided to go for something different and a bit more challenging to end the Mass Effect series. When I hear many people describe how they would've liked ME3 to end (certainly not all, but many), it sounds basically like they wanted the Crucible to be a really big gun that blew up the Reapers conventionally, then everyone lives (relatively) happily ever after. I, for one, would have been disappointed with that ending, not least because it would essentially have been a rehash of the endings of Dragon Age and the Baldur's Gate series.

 

That said, while I liked the ending in principle, I thought the execution needed some work. In particular, many of the plot twists surrounding the Catalyst came completely out of nowhere, and struck me as simple poor plotting. Yes, they reflected themes like the conflict between organic and synthetic life that had been with the series since its inception, but the actual conversation and decision felt abrupt and somewhat shoehorned. They had much less emotional and intellectual impact than I think they would have, had they been set up in a more competent manner. Still, my opinion of the ending is favorable overall.

 

I'm also with you on the gameplay: it's really fun, and the best in the series in my opinion (granted, my impressions of the first game are mostly secondhand). I think this is one of the reasons professional critics have been kinder to the game than many fans: unlike the various "OMG ME3 ending raeped my childhood 0 stars!!!1!" reviews on Amazon and Metacritic*, critical reviews have to be comprehensive, and thus tend to recognize that games with worse stories than ME3 have gotten high ratings based on the fact that they're fun to play.

 

I thought ME3 took the gameplay from ME2, which was already very fun, and improved on it in a number of worthwhile ways. Combat was more diverse and exciting because sitting around behind cover was no longer the optimal strategy for 90% of situations. The modified skill system was better balanced. The weapon mods allowed for interesting new options and moved the game back a ways toward its RPG roots, but without making inventory management as cumbersome it was in ME1, or many other RPGs for that matter.

 

*Again, before anyone accuses me of setting up straw men, I recommend reading over user reviews on these and similar sites. This style of thinking and writing is not in the majority, but it's depressingly common. Pretty much all of the criticism of the ending I've seen on here has been more intelligent in both form and substance, but that wouldn't be the first time the discourse on the SW forums has been markedly smarter and more civil than that on the broader internet.

[Dintiradan]

'Director's Cut' free DLC announced

 

Pretty much what I expected. Bioware can't change the endings, because that challenges 'artistic integrity' (and more importantly, would make them admit they were wrong). Releasing Closure DLC lets them get around that. And releasing it for free was a given; otherwise, they would (rightly) be accused of holding the 'true' ending for ransom.

 

Makes me glad I follow (a slightly less severe version of) this strategy.

[Enraged Slith]

How many additional colors are they adding?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith

How many additional colors are they adding?

the smart money's on a thing where they don't add new endings or significantly alter pre-existing content but include a Fallout-style montage showing the consequences of your actions for the galaxy. there might be some actual playable content if you're lucky but i wouldn't bet on it

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Lilith: The BioWare blog says:

Quote:

BioWare will expanding on the ending to Mass Effect 3 by creating additional cinematics and epilogue scenes to the existing ending sequences.

 

And:

 

Quote:

BioWare strongly believes in the team’s artistic vision for the end of this arc of the Mass Effect franchise. The extended cut DLC will expand on the existing endings, but no further ending DLC is planned.

 

An ending montage seems most likely, though the blog post suggests pretty strongly that it will include FMV (to answer, among other things, the "pick a color" criticisms), rather than exclusively the sort of still montage that ended Fallout or Dragon Age. Playable content doesn't seem likely, given their goal, and they've specifically said they aren't adding new endings or seriously altering the existing ones.

[Sprinkles29]

I did not buy Mass Effect 3 because of the BS day one DLC. I watched some people play it on Youtube and the DLC has a very fleshed out and awesome Protheon character. Which is part of what makes it so ridiculous that it is considered "optional DLC"

 

They used to call this "Shareware". But at least you got the incomplete version for free back in the day. Nowadays you have to pay $60 before you even qualify to pay for your complete game.

 

Absolutely not.

 

Mass Effect 3 going insane is the reason I bought Avadon =)

 

So it's not all bad.

 

Anyways, the first game was my favorite because of the structure of the gameplay and storyline. The last 2 games are more "crisis mode" from the very start. But I think that having periods of relative normalcy + adventure is good in an epic RPG. And the very beginning of the game when you acted sort of like a galactic constubul on the citedal was really cool in ME1.

 

I've also seen the endings on Youtube. And I think that like someone said on here, that Mass Effect 2 didn't really need to exist. The 3rd should have been the 2nd. And then the REAL finale should have featured more of that "incomprehensible god machine" stuff that someone else mentioned on here. Not a situation where Shepard just makes a choice in a dream sequence. But an actual palpable ending where everyone you've met has an inpact on the final moments in the story. Bioware definately had the budget for a more fleshed out ending(s)

[Dintiradan]

If you're interested, there's an Extra Credits episode that talks about the reasons that day-one DLC is made (tl;dr version: no one buys DLC for older games, and pushing content after the certification deadline). I don't think this excuses them, but they at least have reasons for doing things the way they do. Personally, I'd prefer Blizzard/Value style deadlines rather than having plot-relevant stuff in DLCs, but that's just me (and a lot of other people, by the looks of it).

 

Speaking of deadlines, there's a good chance the palette-swapping in ME3's ending is due to just that.

 

(As for ME2, I agree, it didn't advance the plot much, but it did add a lot of atmosphere to the setting, and it worked as a 'darkest hour' chapter when the protagonist's allies turn their backs on him/her. Could they have done this while advancing the plot. Well, yes, but I don't think it's a terrible game.)

[Alorael at Large]

ME2 is a good game. It doesn't have the save-the-galaxy scope of the games it's sandwiched between; even if it's save-humanity, it doesn't ever quite feel like it has the same urgency, perhaps due to lack of immense space battles and armies. Still, it's a good, character-driven game. It's the middle of a trilogy, but it's not the worst example of that.

 

The litmus test, I think, is how much people care about characters from ME1 and ME2 reappearing in ME3. There's plenty of attachment to the ME2 crew.

 

—Alorael, who can't get worked up about immediate DLC. It's annoying, yes, but if they just admitted they were selling premium and basic versions would it be so bad? They want to make more money. You don't have to buy the DLC.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Sprinkles: I agree that the day one DLC thing was stupid and greedy, especially given the Prothean's relevance to the wider story, I just don't see how not buying the game helps. Boycotts are a questionably effective form of protest in the best circumstances, and it's been pretty obvious from the beginning that those advocating one wouldn't be able to motivate the majority of the Mass Effect fandom, let alone most people who were considering buying the game.

 

Quote:

The last 2 games are more "crisis mode" from the very start. But I think that having periods of relative normalcy + adventure is good in an epic RPG. And the very beginning of the game when you acted sort of like a galactic constubul on the citedal was really cool in ME1.

 

I agree that ME3 is pretty much all crisis mode all the time (with the occasional Action Movie Quiet Drama Scene), but I'm puzzled that you think that about ME2. The Collectors are a threat pretty much from the start, but most of the game involves exploring the galaxy and solving people's problems so you can get more crew and resources for the eventual suicide mission. Even in a rushed playthrough, the game feels like it's half sidequests to me, and a perfectionist play will take that figure to more like 80-90%.

 

@Alorael: I'm somewhat more sympathetic to those who are annoyed about the DLC. The best way I can describe it is that most DLC comes across as an addition to an existing game for those who wish to buy it, but From Ashes came across more as a subtraction for those who don't want to buy it. Part of this is because it's so clear that they could have just bundled it with the main game, which isn't so much the case with DLC released six months or a year down the road. I mean, they could give the latter away, but in theory at least the prospect of payment acts as an incentive to get companies and game designers to follow up with new content.

 

The biggest main reason this feels like a subtraction rather than an addition is that said DLC is much less 'optional' than many others. Packs like Bring Down the Sky and Overlord were fun and added something to the story, but they didn't have nearly the impact on their storylines that From Ashes does on ME3's. Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival were more essential in that they served as bridges between the events of ME2 and ME3, but they still didn't invite a reevaluation of the entire series' back story in the way that from Ashes does.

[Lauren CW]

On the subject of CRAAAAAAAZY out there theories,

while indoctrination theory does have a few points of really shady evidence, a lot of the evidence they call into question REALLY makes sense. All game long Vega asks you if you hear that hum in the engine room, and it plays the noise that the reapers make. I noticed this, and a few other pieces of information that I wasn't sure what to do with, until I saw the indoctrination theory.

 

Also, believing the indoctrination theory is the only way I can bring myself to forgive BW. And I really wanna play ME4. Or whatever the hell else they come out with.

[Dantius]

Personally, I think that Bioware could have avoided the whole DLC thing easily by just not releasing From Ashes as a DLC, and just requiring you to buy the Collector's Edition to get the Prothean (geddit?). That would totally undercut any argument against it (I mean, could you imagine trying to argue "You're charging extra for including extra content in a special edition? GREEDY FASCISTS!"), and the content would still be included for the people willing to pony up. Then, they could release it several months down the line if they felt like it, but the anger over day 1 DLC would be totally defused.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Dantius: Yeah, I got the ME CE as well. I think releasing it only in the collector's edition would have reduced the complaints about day one DLC, but I still think something as plot-important as Javik should have been in the main game. If he'd been a party member more along the lines of Zaeed or Kasumi, a DLC/CE exclusive would have been fine, but holding back someone actually important that way seems like going too far.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

requiring you to buy the Collector's Edition to get the Prothean (geddit?)

You, sir, win one (1) Internet.

[Sprinkles29]

http://hisnamewasmaraudershields.tumblr.com/

 

some say he was the true hero of ME3

 

 

[Dantius]

*RESURRECTION*

 

The Extended Cut DLC has been released as of today. As should be expected, they're already up on YouTube for perusal at your leisure if you don't feel like spending an hour staggering through the ending levels at 10% speed.

 

Personally,

Click to reveal..

I thought the addition of the "refuse" ending was interesting. I would have loved to see what happened if they simply replaced all endings with that one. I mean, people would be up in arms over it, but it would really make sense given that you learn that the Catalyst was really a puppet of the Reapers the whole time, and not the other way around, so it's not like there would be any difference anyways.

 

So it would be interesting to say how that would change what people would say.