I both agree and disagree with you on the endings WD.

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I found the execution to be poor but ...

Personally, my take on the endings was that Shepard and co.s story really ended the second that he stepped into the transporter beam in London. Right there he ended the cycle - one way or another. After that moment what happened to him and all of his companions/friends/lover(s) was irrelevant.

The last bit on the Citadel was really about the beginning of ... something else and it was your responsibility to choose the path for everyone else. Two of the choices (Control and Destroy) allow you to pass the responsibility on to future generations to ensure that the cycle doesn't arise again while either giving the current generation of synthetics a chance or by restarting everything. The other choice (Synthesis) was taking the responsibility to decide onto yourself and merging organic and synthetic life - essentially kick starting a Singularity like event which Earth would be at the center of.

For the gripes that your choices didn't matter ... I think you're somewhat right and wrong once you look past the surface.

If you choose to destroy you throw away Legion's sacrifice and the newly sentient and sapient Geth (and if you destroyed the Geth than that's a choice that matters to this ending as well). If the Genophage was cured than the Krogan still go on to actually live another day and have the chance to perhaps better themselves. All of them will be separated but everyone has a fresh start.

If you chose control than even though everyone is still separated they have their technology and the chance to grow the cooperation that was beginning to show (or at least potentially show) in ME3 (Quarian & Geth peace, Joker/EDI).

When you chose to integrate all organics and synthetics you take the choice away from everyone else for what happens next. Everyone lives, there will be no runaway Singularity that causes Reapers mk2, because you are what the Reapers could have been if they had chosen cooperation and acceptance. The singularity/AI revolutions happens but it doesn't have the potential to go bad here as there are no longer the dividing lines that made it go bad previously. Oh and this is probably centered on earth as the majority of everything is there at this point, so humanity ends up coming out a bit ahead.

All three of those endings have broad effects on the galaxy at large, they just aren't really shown. We don't see the Quarians and Geth becoming one people as they rebuild on Rannoch or Wrex kicking the shit out of all the Krogan that step out of line, which I feel is the biggest problem with the ending - so much could change but we aren't really shown what actually happens.

I think that the other problem everyone (including me to a point) has is that the game pretty much pulled a bait and switch on us at the last point. Instead of getting the traditional type hero/bad guy wins/loses we got something that was outside of the standard Hero's Journey. We learned that the real game was something far bigger than what we had thought it was. Personally, I think that this would have been ok except it just wasn't done in quite the right way.

And then there was the Normandy bit afterwards ... I dunno what the fuck that was. I wouldn't have minded some real closure on squadmates, even though they didn't matter to the real story that Bioware was aiming for at that point we all cared about what happened to them.

Anyways, my two cents on the endings. I've though about this a fair amount over the past couple of days.

I enjoyed the game as a whole and mostly agree with what WD said.

On the dialogue thing, I found it to be hit or miss. I got the impression that they were aiming for being a cinematic where you could direct the flow of conversation but not have to worry about all of the details that arise. It worked in some places for me and not so well in others.

Bleh, too many words.

 

I'm not hating the dialogue at all. There are a few extended sequences where you can't pick your flavour of response and I can see why that rubs people the wrong way, but I'm cool with the decisions being saved for the big stuff. Not pausing every few seconds so you can get +2 Paragade points and a slightly different delivery on the same line of text makes the story flow so much better.

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Damn it Mordin! At least he went out like a fucking boss.

Squad roster seems hilariously thin so far. No idea how far I am through the game, just finished with Tuchanka and the Citadel and I think I'm off to find the Migrant Fleet next, but I only have Garrus, EDI, Liara and James to choose from. I'm not playing with an ME2 import yet though, so maybe some of the people who are apparently dead now could've been recruited.

Normandy at the end seems to be a hook for a sequel trilogy or possibly post-game DLC. I'm not expecting much DLC after the "rocks fall, everyone dies" endings, but it's EA and there's no fucking way they aren't going to milk the shit out of this universe.

 

I mostly agree with you about the dialogue. The way they handled it didn't really bother me. As for the endings,

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my complaint is not that I wanted a happy ending where Shepard could have his/her cake and eat it too. I was expecting Shep to die; Killing the main character is a fairly standard and predictable way to bring closure to a series. No, what bothers me is the sheer half-baked randomness of the last ten minutes of the game.

Why are we talking to some mysterious little boy/god creature? Why does said god-creature assume that synthetics and organics must come into conflict? Most conflict comes from struggle over resources. Synthetics and organics require two vastly different sets of resources to survive. Simply put, we don't need the same things, so there's little incentive to fight. Using the Geth as an example doesn't work, because the only reason the geth rose up was the quarians' pre-emptive attack, which itself was motivated by the same irrational fear of synthetics rather than any real reason for conflict.

The Reapers being some sort of mysterious cosmic being's solution to this imaginary problem is so fucking retarded and anti-climactic it's not even funny. It means that at one point, that god/kid thing said to itself "Hey, lets stop organics and synthetics from randomly killing one another by creating a vast fleet of synthetics to periodically kill all organics! Yes, that makes perfect fucking sense!" And millions upon millions of years of suffering and death ensued for the greater purpose of stopping millions upon millions of years of suffering and death from ensuing!

Seriously Bioware, what the fuck were you smoking to pull this mangled, nonsensical shit-stain of an ending out of your collective asses?

 

I have to disagree with you, Othalan. It's not..

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"Hey, lets stop organics and synthetics from randomly killing one another by creating a vast fleet of synthetics to periodically kill all organics! Yes, that makes perfect fucking sense!" And millions upon millions of years of suffering and death ensued for the greater purpose of stopping millions upon millions of years of suffering and death from ensuing!

But instead is...

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"Hey, lets stop synthetics from completely wiping out all sentient organic life by having a bunch of synthetics 'trim the rose bush' and 'archive' what is currently at the top of the food chain/cycle." Thus also creating room for the next races to lift themselves to be the dominant races in the galaxy. I really think the god/kid thing was doing the best it could, even if the best solution wasn't particularly awesome.

For instance:

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Despite the fact that they're sentient. The Reapers are ignoring the world that the race of people that the previous Shadow Broker came from. And they were ALSO taking over the Geth. So that they couldn't completely Dominate a Organic-Spacefaring-Civilization free galaxy.

Fuubar: You have some really good points. You put a lot of what I thought more elegantly than I was capable of at the time that I wrote my review. So I went for blunt-bastard instead.

 

I enjoyed the majority of this game a bit more than ME1 and far more than ME2. There were a few points that ignore events from previous games, the one that Dr. Strange mentioned was definitely annoying. Still, I thought the overall plot was good, the dialogue style changes honestly didn't seem that different from the first two and didn't bother me, and the combat was the best in the trilogy in my opinion.

The face import sucked a bit, but through careful editing I got a face that looked nearly identical to my other Shepard. The main difference was the lack of facial scarring(not the glowing ones, normal looking scars) but I explained that away in my head as surgery, amusingly Dr. Chakwas made a comment along the same lines later, although I believe that was supposed to be about the glowing ones.

Some things about the ending bothered me although not to the extent that it seems to have bothered most.

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I brought Garrus and Liara with me to the end, when we charged the beam to make it to the citadel I turned because I wanted to see them charging. They were just chilling back with the shuttle, guess that's how Joker picked them up. Kind of just felt wrong though.

Why is Joker fleeing with the Normandy? Why is he leaving Earth? This definitely needed explaining, as it stands it makes him seem like a coward which seems quite out of character.

Those are my two issues with the ending I had, the rest of it I'm cool with, particularly since my Shepard must be a damned mutant that can survive anything judging by him groaning at the end.(There was little reason for me not to destroy the reapers since the geth were already dead, sorry EDI but your life isn't worth risking Shepard going crazy from countless years of isolation in a limbo state and having the reapers attack again.) Also, fuck the middle option of playing God.

One final note. With the Geth I was given a paragon/renegade dialogue option and had maxed rep, I was thinking I could have them work together. I told not Legion(Legion died in ME2 for me, wanted my original playthrough not a perfect one,) to do the upload, when he got to 40% Tali told the fleet to stand down. For a moment I smiled, thinking I'd succeeded, then she was overriden by another admiral and I was given the choice to stop fake Legion or let the upload continue causing the obvious death of the Quarians. Goodbye Geth. If this failure is all because of Legion dying in my Mass Effect 2 file I definitely like how some things from the other games have huge consequences.

 

@draconian

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I haven't tested it but I've read that there are similar consequences if you destroy Maelon's research or kill Wrex on Virmire. Also, I loved the revelation that the Morning War was also Quarian civil war.

 

Do the Rachni ever come into play? (I hate that my copy got delayed because of 'demand')

 

@fuubar

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That's nice to know, I think bioware put a lot of effort into making our choices have repercussions. They did more in this regard than I was expecting so I was pleasantly surprised. As far as the Morning War, my own interpretation was that a few individuals attempted to protect some Geth but it was fairly isolated incidents, not full blown civil war. Either way I liked that touch as well.

@LBG(don't know if this needs spoiler tags but no real details included)

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Yes.

 

So I haven't got the game yet but there are some questions I wouldn't mind getting answers to.

One, do we get to see Tali's face at long last? Two, what alien race worlds are we going to go to, with the exception of the council races?

 

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You can see a picture of her face. A stock photo of a woman Bioware took and added some alien features to (this is apparently a really big deal to the Tali obsessed fans).

You go to quite a few of the Council races homeworlds. Off the top of my head, the big ones are Thessia, one of Palaven's moons, Tuchanka and wherever the Salarians come from. You also spent a good deal of time on Earth for the first time, though that isn't alien. Can't remember if there is any other important ones.

Also, really impressed with the multiplayer. Did not expect it to be worthwhile at all - I hated the sound of it when it was announced. Currently N7 rank 90 though and trying to get some more of the Ultra Rare weapons to compliment the amazing Black Widow I got in a Spectre pack.

 

How about the Drell(not sure if this is the correct term for Thanes species) homeworld where they live with the race with two names?

 

Drell live with the Hanar right? Yeah, don't think you can go to their homeworld. Or at least if there was a sidequest to go there, I missed it - though I doubt it.

Also, just thought I'd preemptively say you can't go to the Elcor's homeworld either. Well you do for a sidequest, but you just scan the plan and don't actually land. So not really.

 

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Plus the trololol scene where they show her taking off her mask, but use clever camera angles so you can't see her face. I raged at that scene.

You forgot

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Rannoch, the Quarian homeworld.

 

^ True, but I didn't include that as it was effectively the same as what you saw in ME2 and you don't see anything new.

And I knew I'd forgotten something. That was actually the first one I though of, but I forgot to write it I guess. Thanks.

 

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Kahje, the shared drell and hanar world does play a small part, though I'm not sure if you ever get to visit it or not. You also get to see Sur'Kesh (salarian homeworld), Thessia (asari homeworld) and Rannoch (quarian and geth homeworld).

 

So finished this game and while liked most of it. The only part that irritated me was how readily Shepard accepted being a soldier and how he always talked about how normal he was... I am just really confused by the ending.

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So I had pretty much the perfect paragon game, I played male Shep and had a nearly Paragorn only me1 save (romanced Liara, Kaiden died), and also a paragon me2 save (romanced Miranda (and then Liara but that seems to have no effect) with all dlc´s and with everybody happy and healthy at the end of it.. and I also played a paragon me3 game.. I cured the Krogan, made peace between geth and quarian, did every sidequest (had 7700 points) and made friends with all of my squadmates (no dlc) and even talked the illusive man into killing himself. And at the end none of it matters? The only options I have always include sacrificing myself and destroying all mass effect portals...And whats with that kid?
I find the endings just terrible.. it seems that my choices didn´t matter and I don´t understand how the ending and the rest of the game are connected. It shows that Bioware really seems to lose its touch. First Dragon Age 2 (which also had one of the worst endings I have ever seen) and the mediocre SW:TOR (which also has some weak endings) and now ME3... Seems like I have to play a game like the Witcher 2 to see how my decisions really affect my ending.

 

Just to confirm something, is there supposed to be a way to catch the chick you have to chase on Mars before she gets to the shuttle? A quick Google indicates that it's a no, but a bit more confirmation never hurts.

 

Nope, it is scripted.

 

Alright. Thought that was the case, but I couldn't completely shake the feeling that if I did things just right I might actually be able to take her down and get some sort of extra bonus.

 

Soudsn like a good sign. The game was able to convince you that a scripted sequence could be changed through your actions.