I was actually about to make a ME3 thread, until I dug back another page. I knew there was no way there wasn't one already.

A summary of recent events:

~ The Omega DLC is overpriced and not worth it. The 'new guns' it adds in are the guns they gave away for preordering and doing the promotionals, the new mods are all from the multiplayer, and there is only a single new power, Flare, which is honestly kind of boring, and is ironically best suited to being cross-trained onto a character that doesn't use powers much, like the Soldier.

The 'official' time added to the game is bullshit, and double what it will actually take you to play even if you explore everything, neither Ariya nor the female Turian become squadmates for you to use, the levels themselves are linear as fuck, you can't take your regular squadmates with you for nearly all of the DLC, you don't even get Omega as a new hub to use, and when it's all over with, your rewards are War Assets you probably didn't need, a cool sci-fi chess set that doesn't get used in the one non-Omega DLC scene where a chess set is used, and Ariya is right back to loitering in the Citadel, as though nothing happened. And the Adjutants, which were in the beta of the core game but were cut because their constant teleporting lagged out the game, have been put back in. . . but instead of fixing the teleport mechanic, they just axed it entirely, so they're nothing more than buffed Husks that an entire space station of alleged badasses are inexplicably terrified of for no readily apparent reason.

If this was a five, or even a ten dollar DLC, it would be worth it, but fifteen is just too damn much. Fifteen is one-fourth the price of the full game. That's not the kind of content you get. It's overhyped crap that costs too much, doesn't add anything really meaningful, and comes across as supremely lazy. In fact, pretty much everything in the DLC can be explained as "the devs were lazy." The old squadmates aren't in, so no need to get their voice actors involved, Ariya and Nyreen don't become permanent squadmates, so no need to record a ton of dialogue for them, they recycle in the guns and mods that were already in the game for other places, so no need to work at making a bunch of new stuff, and Omega doesn't become a hub, so no need to weave in new dialogue or interactions with the content that's outside the DLC itself. The only new things in the game are a single new power, a new Cerberus enemy (basically an enemy Paladin that is melee centric and can spread napalm as a persistent environmental hazard) that will inevitably be added to the multiplayer for free, and the Adjutants, but they're not even interesting, because again, they took the lazy way out, and just removed their ability to teleport entirely instead of streamlining it or giving them the Banshee's movement power or something.

For the same price, you can get far more entertainment by just buying one or two cool looking indy games off the Marketplace or Steam. Don't waste your time unless you are bored and have too much money.

That's the bad news. Now for some good news.

~ The Retaliation DLC is actually kind of cool. It doesn't really introduce any new powers, which some people complained about, but honestly, we have so many at this point that I personally didn't really mind. We kind of needed a DLC that got creative with what we already have, and that's pretty much exactly what we got.

Once again, the Geth top everybody, as the Geth Trooper (Soldier) is ten flavors of badass, sporting Hunter Mode, the Flamer, and Fortification. Activating Fortification after speccing it out for damage reduction actually mitigates most of the self-debuffing that Hunter Mode inflicts, allowing you to either focus on guns and be a Terminator, or focus on Tech and do more damage than even the Vorcha can.

The Drell Assassin (Infiltrator) is perhaps the first Drell that can be considered truly competitive in the metagame, as his Cluster Grenades and Recon Mine mix well with his Tactical Cloak, allowing for a variety of combinations and builds, including Stealth Melee, Debuffing, and Ranged Anti-Armor and Anti-Infantry.

The Krogan Shaman (Adept) is kind of meh when you look at his powers, as they're palpably worse than the powers of all the other Adepts. Then you remember that the Shaman has Krogan shields and Krogan health, which, when combined with Barrier, makes the Shaman the toughest Adept by several orders of magnitude, which can more than make up for the sub-par power selection if you build him correctly.

The Batarian Brawler (Vanguard), while not as powerful as the Novaguard, is still a force to be reckoned with. Charge/Heavy Melee is a potent combination, and his Blade Armor not only makes his melee attacks stronger, but gives damage reflection, allowing him to enter a scrum with greater impunity than most other Vanguards. And of course, his third power is Lash, because we can't have a Batarian without slavery connotations. Crack that whip!

And for some (potentially) more good news, the next (and speculated to be final) Story Mode DLC has been put into production, and they are, apparently, calling back in a lot of the people who are known for not cocking up their ends of the Mass Effect equation to make it happen. Whether they can actually make something good remains to be seen, but, in spite of being shat on by BioWare and EA, I'm still not going to condemn them before we know anything about it. I doubt it will make the Story better, but it might at least be entertaining in it's own right. Since the latest patches have contained new coding for the Citadel, that is the speculated location of the DLC in question.

More details can be found here:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/412087/20121206/bioware-new-mass-effect-3-dlc-finale.htm

And, naturally, through Google.

A bit more bad news, though, in the form of the rumor that this next DLC is the "Grand Finale" for Mass Effect. Which means no more DLC. Which means that the Multiplayer, with all of it's free DLC and actually-good content, might die as it stands with Retaliation, just when things were starting to look good with new armies, new enemies, and playable characters that couldn't pass as humans in Star Trek makeup and monster suits.

 

So since I'm home for the holidays, lacking on liquor, and bored out of my skull, I bought and played this game,

Origin took a day and a half to confirm my purchase and actually let me download it. Wow, just wow.

My first playthrough was an imported ME2 save and I continued along with full paragon. Since I never played ME1, the Wrex interactions were something I missed.

As stated by so many, the Tuchanka and Rannoch missions were the best parts of any game I've played in memory. I managed the super happy ending for everyone in both cases. The Krogans are cured, but Eve holds Wreav in check. Legion dies to give sentience to all geth, but I get both the quarian and geth fleets.

After watching some of the other endings linked from this thread, I have to say that, as a long time Tali fan, Mordin is my favorite character. The Mordin agrees to sabotage and shoot Mordin in the back endings were even better executed than the Mordin sacrificing himself ending which I went with and which already had me shed a single manly tear.

Quite frankly it was amazing how well those two endings were executed. In my ending (Eve controls Wreav so Mordin suicides heroically for cure), Mordin never admits to his mistake. That line "Because I was wrong" was so strong and well-delivered, it made me want to replay it to get there.

The full paragon play through I did (starting with ME2) just seemed to leave everything as an easy decision. With Eve present, the genophage seems unnecessary. It's heavily hinted that it's the right thing to do and everything will be fine. It sounds like the other ending options for that mission have actual consequences. Choose between the continuation of thousands of stillborn babies and the possible uprising of the most violent species in the universe? That sounds like something that actually requires thought, which I didn't feel my ending did.

The Rannoch missions were great. The geth backstory was very captivating, and the mission endings were fun as well. Once again, though, I felt that my the choices I got from the full paragon ending were too easy. Geth and Quarians are both just so cool, and the sympathy for the Geth built over the last few missions fighting against my love for Tali's character and the relative coolness of the Geth compared to the intrigue of the Quarians would've made a much better conflict in my eyes.


A few gripes I had (not related to the endings):

Kai Leng. What the literal fuck? WHY ARE YOU USING A SWORD? This seemed so much like a spaghetti western anime bullshit trope that it made me cringe to see. The fact that he actually had repeat appearances and a boss fight pissed me off. As an infiltrator specced for energy drain, he actually rolled over in the fight on insanity with some careful dodging, but jesus did he piss me off.

To expand on that, he kills Thane. I always liked Thane's concept but never liked him in ME2. ME3 really brought me to like him a lot more, but his whole fight with Kai Leng was stupid. I brought him with me a lot, and I've seen him pull off some sick shots. To miss fucking point blank was stupid. To die to a sword was stupid. For me to stand and watch this fight and do nothing, only to then leave him bleeding on the ground to chase Kai Leng and take potshots with a weapon I don't fucking carry and then subsequently miss, pissed me the fuck off even more.

He's driving away slowly and I miss shots with a pistol? 1. I have not used a fucking pistol since the FIRST FUCKING MISSION TO MARS when you drop down the first fucking ladder five feet from mission start and find the sniper rifle that lets you edit your loadout. I discovered then I could opt to carry only a sniper, and then never looked back. I was carrying a fucking M-98 Widow, fully upgraded. Between the infiltrator dilation and the concentration mod, shooting is pathetically easy and I can count on one hand the amount of times I haven't nailed something in its head. I guarantee you, that fucker would be dead through his fucking pussy biotic barrier if he took the moment to fucking smirk at me. That whole scene was fucking retarded, and while the prayer with Kolyat was nice, Thane's death seemed so fucking silly.

Just in general, this was one of the spots where I could tell they cut corners. Some scenes would show me pulling out my widow or black widow or javelin, while some would show me shooting with an assault rifle I don't carry or a pistol I don't carry. Fuckin stupid.

I enjoyed raping his side with an omni-tool blade very much. I did the same thing to you that you did to Thane, but I did it without looking like an asswipe you pretentious weeaboo fuck. In general, I liked the omnitool blades very much. The vanguard's biotic fist punch thing was infinitely less cool.

Unskippable content: It takes way too fucking long to get through some things. You have to commit 20 minutes to cinematics if you want to explore the mechanics behind another class to decide on what to do for your next playthrough. 3 hours fucking later, I just import the ME3 save and start over.

Jacob. Nothing you do can kill this guy. Fuck that. You take Mordin and Thane, but leave Jacob? EAT A DICK.

Grunt's "epic last stand": really? REALLY? Why didn't we all just stay? At this point in the game, I can literally 2 shot a ravager and their AI is completely useless against cover. Cloak-->shot-->incinerate, reload and repeat, kills them in 2 rounds. With one rock to stand behind, I could've taken every one of them in a minute or less. The fact that you have no say in it at all, not a single bit of dialogue even in the paragon/renegade options for the same damn decision, just makes it worse. On top of that, the ENTIRE SCENE is skippable with one space-bar. Just pathetic.

The gay shuttle pilot throwing his dick in your face while the lesbian personal assistant does it in a much better way. Finished your first mission? BOOFCUKINGHOO I LOVE DICK AND MY HUSBAND DIED, COMFORT ME. Honestly, get the fuck out.

Tali's picture. I was happier with the clever camera angles. A slightly edited picture of a stock photo that makes her have a lazy eye is so lame.

Combat as an infiltrator got a little stale. With the Widow X, energy drain and incinerate, I pretty much took care of everything the same way. Vs shields: stealth, aim, energy drain, boomheadshot. Vs armor: stealth, aim, boomheadshot, incinerate. Vs anything else: boomheadshot. The tenth upgrade on the rifle made it so that I could literally snipe every person in a fight and still not run out of ammo, without the spare clip mod. On the Grunt/rachni mission, I lost both squad members to ravager rounds (insanity difficulty) at the very start of one fight, before they fired a shot. I was able to kill every single husk, cannibal, and ravager on the field without rezzing them. Early on, before any upgrades, ammo was tight running 1 sniper vs husks, but I could deal with them using singularity and incinerate, with an occasional grenade. Once I had the upgraded Widow with 34 spare rounds, I was sniping husks because I was out of things to kill.

Did anyone not use recon hood?



Finally, on the endings. First time the paragon ending didn't have an "everything works out, more or less" ending for me to choose. I could not bring myself to pick destroy, even if I already knew that was how Shepard got to live.

I just spent the entire game conversing with EDI and championing the Geth. Fuck Legion having a soul, or the strong indications that EDI had one too ("You made me feel alive"), kill them with the reapers.

I couldn't pick control, because I didn't understand what exactly it accomplished except make me into a creep child-ghost thing that would eventually die with the reapers once the now not-being cultivated species continued their lines of scientific progress. I guess it kinda saved everyone, but I just spent an hour and a half arguing with TIM that we couldn't be trusted with that kind of power.

I couldn't pick not do anything, because that's pretty much the same as destroy, except instead of killing EDI and the geth, I also kill every single fucking person and alien in the universe. Wait--what?

All signs pointed to synthesis, because that's the only way everyone does live happily ever after. But at the same time, what hope is there when I make this change for everyone? It didn't sit right with me to do either.

So I wander between the three, only sure that I didn't want to not do anything at all. Derping around, I shoot the child in the head and trigger the SO BE IT ending. Whoops, facepalm.


Eventually I reloaded and decided on the synthesis ending, when the cinematic ruined that for me too. It's all about how everything worked out perfectly, yet everyone is walking around glowing green with circuitry and with green eyes. It felt very much like that one-shot fic where Voldemort is giving Rita Skeeter an interview about how Harry Potter is evil magic or whatever and is slowly consuming people's souls to become part of the hivemind. The one that ends with Voldemort's eyes glowing green to show that the hivemindHarry got him in the end?

Plus the circuitry skin was so fucking stupid. I hated that too.

When I then came here and read through the thread and came across that info on the Indoctrination Theory, I decided that's the way it was. It's an infinitely better ending and I failed the test and got mind-fucked indoctrinated. Whatever, I'm going with it.

Overall, game was well-worth it, for the Tuchanka and Rannoch missions alone. I wouldn't even uninstall it if it had come without Origin.

 

Nice summary of the game, but do you have a link to this fic?

 

It's a Ruskbyte fic.

 

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5614134/1/Quo-Vadis


Another thing I forgot to mention was the Charr subplot. I thought that it was incredibly sweet and better than most of the missions themselves.

 

For those of you who may not know already, there is no weekend event this weekend, or for a few after this week, as the multiplayer team is on break. That's why the put in the two new packs and unlocked the rest of the DLC stuff.

Basically. Mass Effect 3 has the best combat out of all three games, and it has arguably the best upgrade and loadout system as well, but that is literally all that can be said for it. ME2 had infinitely better character development, and the all-around solidity of the first game was not carried over, either.

The sad part is that, for all its faults, it still would have been a solid "pretty good," were it not for those last ten goddamn minutes.

You apparently did Synthesis. Allow me to fill you in on the others.

Control: Shepard 'dies' and is 'converted' into an AI. He is then uploaded into all of the Reapers, so the Reapers are now all Shepard, and they begin working to rebuild everything. Shepard is now The Galactic Police, and his law enforcement baton is Cthulhu. This is supposedly the Paragon ending, but when it turns the protagonist into an immortal Cthonic Judge Dredd hivemind, it doesn't feel very paragoney. It also fails the litmus test of the endgame, which insists that organics and AI can never get along, ever, because now Shepard is an AI and also the Reapers, and this isn't a horrible idea in any way.

Destroy: Shepard decides that compromise is for pussies, and blows up the. . . the thing. The thingey. Anyway, shit explodes, and it wipes out the Reapers, killing them. Assuming your war assets are high enough, Shepard is shown to be alive in the rubble in London at the end. It is the only ending to do so. It also kills EDI and the Geth arbitrarily and for no apparent reason whatsoever, presumably because the devs figured if there was no downside to this, everyone would pick it. This makes absolutely zero sense, because if the device wasn't specifically targeting Reapers, then Shepard should have become EDI and the Geth in the Control ending as well. But it doesn't work that way, because fuck us, apparently.

Rejection: Proving that the devs are all thirteen years old and that they really do stamp their feet and cry when people disagree with them and their stellar artistic vision, they added in a "bad" end that you can only get by shooting the Starchild, because everyone liked doing that for twenty minutes with the infinite ammo Carnifex because nobody likes the Starchild. It's basically "SO BE IT," and then the Reapers kill everyone, and the old man at the end is supposedly an alien (that looks exactly like a human for some completely bullshit reason, because God forbid we go to the trouble of making another picture where the old guy's silhouette looks different) who elaborates that, while "The Shepard" lost, Time Capsules were made by Liara detailing everything that they could find out in the final years as the Reapers murdered everyone, and the space governments of the next cycle, being infinitely more competent than the rodeo clowns we've got now, found this and went "oh shit, better get ready," so when the Reapers showed up, they curbstomped the motherfuck out of them.

It's worth noting that even though the game spoon-feeds you the idea that Synthetics cannot Organic, and vice versa, and even though that is literally something that was just made up in the last ten minutes (EDI! THE GETH! WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN, STARCHILD!?), absolutely none of the endings actually pan this alleged fact out. Within the confines of those last ten minutes, they can't even keep their own shit strait on a minute to minute basis.

It's also worth noting that not only does no ending have you not committing some sort of travesty against sentient beings (Destroy, all sentient machines die, Synthesis, you change all sentient life in the galaxy forever without anyone's consent, Control, I'm the Immortal God Emperor of Mankind, if the GEOM was also the C'tan. Like, all the C'tan), but that the endings are in fact the opposite of what you expect them to be. The 'Paragon' Ending is the closest thing to a pure Renegade ending as you can get, as you're essentially enforcing your will on everyone forever whether they like it or not, and Space Jesus help anybody who disagrees with you on anything. Or at least, he would help them, if he wasn't you. Synthesis is basically the body horror bad end, even though that's pitched as the diplomatic compromise end, and out of the three main endings, Destroy is the closest thing to a "good" end, because it's the only one where Shepard lives and the Reapers die, even if they had to tack on a bunch of extra shit to try and make you feel bad for picking it.

And sadly, the closest thing to a true Paragon end is Rejection, where you tell the bad guys and their offers to go fuck themselves. . . which kills everybody.

And that's just the endings. Nevermind what happens to the characters. Liara is literally the only love interest that's worth a damn now. Ashley is a crazy bitch and is also overly sexualized (shunning armor and practical hairstyles for an Alliance version of the Cerberus catsuit, long impractical supermodel hair, and she apparently used her Specter pay hike to get breast implants), your romantic options for Jack and Miranda are getting to say "hi," Tali shows you her love by giving you a stock photo from tumblr that she photoshopped in thirty seconds, Jacob cheats on you and gets another woman pregnant (because the only black guy in space has to be a cliche), Thane dies, but not in a cool badass manner like he should have, Kaiden is still made of cardboard, and they couldn't have more obviously crowbar'd the homosexual options in if Gordan Freeman had been on the ship. And Garrus. . .

Well, okay, I take that back. Garrus and Liara are the only love interests worth a damn now. And Liara is clearly superior anyway, because she has more content, and the developers obviously cared more about it.

And even with those two, there are too many lost opportunities. Liara is the Shadow Broker, but never helps for shit, and can't tell you anything important that you actually need to know. Garrus is the son of one of the Turian Primarchs, but that never matters at all or is used, and it only comes up once in passing.

And the Rachni are around no matter what you did in the first game. In all fairness, it was implied that there were other nests that were hiding out, as you could hear the song in a number of other places in the first game, though you had to be standing in the right spots to hear it. However, it would have been nice if they at least pretended for a moment that your choice mattered. Like, at all.

Also, one of those places where you could hear the Rachni song was on the freaking moon, which clearly implies that there is a Rachni colony hiding on Earth's moon. However, as cool and interesting a hook as that was, that literally never came up, ever, not even once.

 

^This, even though I winced in near-physical pain every time Raine misspelled Rachni.

 

And I have no idea why my autocheck did that. Rachnai is not even a word.

 

Honestly the romance wasn't something I mentioned, but you're completely right that it was another really lame part of the story. Only played it as male shepard and probably won't replay as female (because my female saves were on my last computer and I don't want to start from scratch), but it honestly felt so lackluster.

Now, I didn't get to Tali's "love-scene" and think "wtf no tits" but I definitely did think that it was probably the least intimate scene in the storyline. Even if Liara isn't your love interest, her friendship scenes are more in depth and intimate than your love-scene with Tali. It felt like Liara was pretty much being forced on you and if you wanted anything else then they were just tacked on. I think the devs took people's outrage at Liara being missing in ME2 as a sign that people really loved Liara and not that people were pissed that their choices in ME1 didn't play out logically in any way.

First playthrough, I accidentally locked in Liara as the romance option because that option came up before Tali ever entered the storyline because that makes sense. Allers is essentially, "hey wanna fuck?" and I've heard that the other carry-overs from ME2 (Jack, Miranda, Kelly) are essentially the same. I mean, at that point, at least let Shepard manwhore his way through all of them, since there obviously isn't any emotional attachment there.

Anyway, thanks for the breakdown but after finishing the game and making my post, I did reload it (it saves when Shepard wakes up with his armor/helmet blasted off) and play through it to see all the endings. Pissed me off that somehow, despite the perfect paragon playthrough, I couldn't convince TIM to suicide. I must have needed a conversation somewhere.

I honestly wish they had gone with the indoctrination thing, because it was definitely superior.

 

In all honesty, to me, the big problem with ME3, was that simply built it up too much. They kept on promising that we would have all of these different endings based on the choices that we made, and the shit that we did, and instead, we got Starchild...

 

You had to Paragon all of the things, pretty much.

 

It's also been pointed out by the fandom, just for the record, that both of the "good" endings Bioware gave us (Synthesis and Control) are, in fact, what Saren and the Illusive Man wanted, respectively. Saren wanted to work together with the Reapers, which is Synthesis, and TIM believed we could somehow take control of them and use them to maintain order in the galaxy, which is Control.

So not only are they completely retarded and out of the left field, but two of them give the distinct impression that you've just completely wasted your time playing the games, because if we were going to just do Synthesis all along, there was no point in fighting Saren, and if you think Control is cool, why the fuck did we side against Cerberus in 3?

Plus, you know. TIM and Saren were villains. You kind of don't want to pick the things that they wanted just on principle. So really, you're just left with Destroy and Reject as the only two "reasonable" endings that aren't full of bullshit and space magic and dubious morals.

Really, I could just sit here all night and poke holes in the side of the boat. I really could.

The thing though, is that it's their attitude that really sinks the whole deal. It really is. Because what EA as a company is know for, infamous for, is their bureaucratic insistence on pushing games out in accordance to a predetermined timetable that was set down years before, when the games were first created. There is a reason, for instance, why EA makes so many sports games. It's because every sports game is literally the last one, repackaged, with slightly better graphics and maybe some improved controls. And you can do fantasy football or draft picks or something on them. My point is that they're easy to make, because you already have 95%+ of the game already made by virtue of having made the last one.

So there was always going to be a time crunch on this game. It was inevitable. And while I can't remember his name, we know for a fact that one of the lead writers basically shat the bed in regards to the ending, and they had like, one month to go from no endings to endings.

However, that being said? Just because EA have to be dicks about scheduling, doesn't mean Bioware has to be. Even if the Bioware team answers to EA, they still could have handled it with better grace and tact. They could have been honest with us. They could have had Shepard walk into the light, credits roll, and then a little pop-up thanking you, the player, for playing to the end, and saying that the Bioware team apologizes for running out of time to finish the ending, so in order to do it justice, they decided to put in a placeholder while they make the ending into a DLC (which will be free), so in the meantime, go play Multiplayer or something.

They could have done that. They really could have. That was an option that could have been on the table.

But they didn't. They stuck to their guns, pretended it was always supposed to be this way, talked shit about the fans who disagreed, and forever ruined the phrase "artistic integrity," which can no longer be used unironically by any intelligent gamer ever again.

And that was really what killed it. Not just that the game was bad. That the developers refused to acknowledge that any part of it was in any way rushed, halfassed, or otherwise incomplete, even when large chunks of it obviously are. Even when it's obvious which romances were tackled first (Liara, Garrus), which ones were only halfway done (Tali, Thane), and which ones had to be shoved in at the last second because Jesus Christ we ship in three weeks (Jack, Miranda, Jacob). Even when it's clear which levels were designed first (Tuchanka, Rannoch), and which levels were not (Thessia, Sur'Kesh, Palaven, which didn't even make it into the final game, and was cut entirely).

How many unfired Chekov's Guns did they leave hanging? I can't even count. How many of them did they solve halfassedly via e-mails (Hi, Quarians here, Kal'reegar is dead, sorry)? How many choices wound up ultimately not mattering? Actually, no, easier question: How many really important choices that totally should have changed everything wound up not mattering?

It didn't matter if the Rachni lived.

It didn't matter if Destiny Ascension survived.

It didn't really matter what happened on Virmire, so long as Wrex didn't die.

It didn't matter if you destroyed the Collector Base or not.

It literally did not matter if you did the DLC or not. Even if you deliberately didn't, Liara is still inexplicably the Shadow Broker and Shepard is still under house arrest. Possibly for being too awesome, or perhaps because they were torn about whether or not having someone that is Kirk and Picard combined running loose in the galaxy on their side is worth there being no more virgins anywhere, ever.

And of course, let's not forget that if you play the multiplayer at all, literally none of your choices in the third game matter, because they decided to boil all choices down into War Assets, and while that's not that bad of an idea, what is a bad idea, is creating a War Asset linked to your multiplayer rank, that goes up every time you promote a class, and which has no upper cap WHATSOEVER.

That one War Asset is now more valuable for me than literally, literally, every other War Asset in the game combined. The few hundred soldiers I have promoted to the front lines of the campaign are literally doing more work than the entire Liberation Fleet, everyone in it, every species associated with it, and every ship, weapon, device, and recovered artifact that is put to use in the war effort.

I can only assume my Novaguards are soloing Harbinger-class Dreadnoughts. It's the only explanation that makes sense. And while that's extremely funny, it also means that I can fuck up absolutely everything and still get the 'best' possible endings. I can play Shepard as Captain Dickcheese McYoualldie, and the doors of Valhalla still can't open fast enough for me. Piss off the Salarians? Sure. Let the Turians burn? Why not? Mock the Asari for being arrogant space elves and let them all get eaten? Why the fuck not. Kill Wrex, kill Eve, and reinstitute the Genophage? Ha, sure, whatever, I'll be in my cabin, replaying the video of Tali killing herself over and over again and laughing. Do doughnuts in the Normandy while Earth burns to death? I never liked that shithole anyway, Earthborn is for chumps.

And I still get the best ending. You can literally leave a sea of innocent blood behind you in your wake, stepping over the corpses of entire species and civilizations that died due to your negligence and sense of humor, and still fight the Reapers to a standstill and get the best endings.

So long as you play the multiplayer.

Because that's not unbalanced or unfair at all.

 

Personally IT is my headcanon and it allows me to be at peace with the ending...even if everyone dies and the next cycle has to be the one to pull it off.

Of greater concern to me is the trajectory of the Mass Effect franchise. Despite the numerous flaws with some aspects of the story it was still one of my most enjoyable experiences with gaming. Even knowing what I now know about ME3 I'd still buy it, Tuchanka alone was worth it for me. What worries me is that the games progressively had less focus on choice(here's looking at you autotalking and my Shep seeming OOC) and more focus on combat. Between that, the likelihood of it being a prequel, and how much time people have spent on the MP vs the SP, with good reason, I'm worried that they'll continue this trend into ME4 and it'll be even more linear.

 

Pretty much what Lord Raine has already said.

That said I do like that if you dont hook up with Garrus or Tali they both get together which is cute.

But yeah... ME3 basically boils down to Nothing you do really matters. None of your decisions have an effect beyond giving you the choice between red, blue or green.

For the record I went with Synthesis my first run because Fuck you starchild Transhumanism is better than mass destruction and becoming the Illusive Man.

went with destroy all the next runs.

Which if you think about is a real kick in the teeth. They spend almost 2 whole games building up the idea that EDI, and to an extent, the geth, are people. that they deserve to live their lives as best they could.

And destroy: "Wait what? Im condemning to death an entire race and one of the most sympathetic characters I've known. What the fuck."

Which my reasoning for picking destroy will be "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Because fuck you its a hard decision alright *sobs*


XD

Actually come to think of it the synthesis ending is weird too. I mean the whole rationale is "you're part cybernetic so jumping through that beam would... uh.. um... Spread your dna throughout the galaxy cybernetics and all!"

"I dont think thats how DNA wor-"

"Shut up and just jump in the green beam!"


And like LR said the whole "Synthetics vs Organics" thing.

They can never get along! Except I just spent the better part of the game taking Rannoch and forging peace between two races. Geth and Quarians. Synthetics and Organics.

HOW ABOUT THAT.

It really lends credence to the idea that there were separate writers for each part of the game and no one felt like they should read through it all so that it would maintain theme and idea integrity.

Also to get the Illusive Man to shoot himself you dont need to paragon or renegade everything. They changed it to be more liek ME1. Now you just have this rep meter that fills no matter what you do. Para or Ren.

The problem is that you have to talk to everyone.

EVERYONE.

Go to a planet? Talk to everyone on your ship. DO a mission? Talk to everyone on your ship again.

Rinse repeat. I know I missed some convos after Thessia. I essentially went "This Kai Leng Mother fucker... LETS KILL HIM!"

Oh and Kai Leng that asshole. Oh noes its a Gunship covering him. Well how about it sucks down a coupel of Missile from my-

HEY! Where's my missile launcher?! I HAD ONE IN ME2!

This cyborg ninja assassin asshole. Getting stabbed in the chest with an omniblade was too good for him I say.

Who the hell brings a sword to a gunfight anyways?!

Oh and lets not forget the stupid decision to give shepard a pistol every single fucking time a cutscene happens. I wasnt even carrying one! And sometimes it gives him a rifle only its NOT THE RIFLE I WAS CARRYING ITS AN AVENGER. WHY?!

Of course this is squad that's never heard of submachine guns or clearing a room with a better weapon than a fucking pistol.

Oh and dont give me that shit about submachine guns according to ME. Those things are fucking machine pistols. Not. Submachine guns. If anyhting the Vindicator should be a submachine gun. Its small enough.

 

Swords make sense because Mass Effect shields work just like Dune shields. The shields aren't on all the time. They only activate when something of sufficient velocity enters the field that they protect. That's why they can deflect bullets, but not your chair.

Melee weapons don't achieve sufficient velocity to trigger Mass Effect shields, so by definition, all melee attacks are, or at least, should be, shield piercing. And in the first Mass Effect, they all were. This is what made the Rachni so goddamn dangerous; they were fast, durable, and their primary attacks ignored your shields. This is also why Thresher Maws could, and would, oneshot you at range. Their acid spit attack counted as a melee attack, which means fuck your shields.

Sadly, this doesn't pan out in multiplayer or ME3 campaign, but it's still part of the lore, and thus, is justified.

I'm actually kind of surprised it took us this long to see it. That weakness has been intrinsic to ME shields for at least a thousand years in the lore. Why Asari Justicars aren't running around with swords, I have no idea.

 

That'd be cool. Maybe I should work that into that ME rewrite fic I still have notes for and will probably never get around to writing ;_;. It would make the knight-errant/samurai/Jedi parallel even closer, and also establish that carrying swords like that isn't just a crazy Cerberus thing. But they shouldn't be the new lightsaber or anything -- just a useful, though relatively uncommon outside of select circles, secondary weapon. They shouldn't ever be like longswords either, more like arming swords.

If I recall right, Saren was going to have a sword in an early concept of him for the first game. A lot about Saren changed along the way though.

 

@Mercenary: About convincing him to suicide, not really. Yes, for most checks in the game its completely dependent on the rep bar but that's not how it works with TIM at the end. You HAVE to have used the paragon(renegade might work too but generic definitely doesn't) options in the previous conversations with TIM in order for the option to be available in the final conversation.

Edit:The synthetics vs. organics logic that starchild uses to argue against destroy was the only thing that gave me pause as I had just failed to make peace between the quarians and geth since Legion died in ME2 for me. I think that was an important point to leave in his conversation as its the only thing that made me slightly hesitant to choose destroy initially, the issue is that for those that did make peace they ought to then have the option to call bs on that and have it stick.

 

No, the problem is that "Synthetics cannot Organics" is pitched like it was the main theme of the entire series or something. Only it wasn't. That was never the theme of the games. It was never the Big Problem that needed solving. It's not like this is Deus Ex or Shadowrun or something. People aren't rioting in the streets about AI and cybernetic implants, and having too many augs doesn't destroy your soul and turn you into cold, insane killing machine. Shepard is basically a Terminator in ME2, with how much they had to rebuild him. Watch how few shits he gives about it.

If anything was the "big problem," it was stars going supernova billions of years too early because of darkmatter buildup, which is implied to happen by overusing mass effecting technology and biotics. Remember that plot thread from 2? The one that was completely ignored in 3 in favor of this bullshit? Yeah. That.

Starchild goes on and on about this being the core problem, but the thing is, even if the Geth and Quarians don't make peace, that's still not the core problem here. The core problem is the Starchild and the Reapers and all of their bullshit. So some forerunner race millions of years ago couldn't program a decent AI like EDI. Good for them. And that's a reason to systematically commit galactic genocide, why now?

The Reapers used horrible logic. If it wasn't for the fact that the game forces you to assume that the scenario the Starchild spins you is legit, it would be painfully obvious that the Starchild and the Reapers are all broken and insane, glitched subroutines carrying out esoteric standing orders repeatedly because they don't know any better.

 

Has anyone played the Leviathan DLC?

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Leviathan

Consider these spoilers, but apparently the Leviathans were the species that designed the starchild went on to destroy them. They view themselves as the apex species of the universe, but their logic is so fantastic. "All of these subservient species are creating AIs that are rebelling and wiping them out? Better create an AI to deal with this problem, it totally won't turn on us."

Reading it makes me facepalm. Apparently these things are hundreds of millions of years old, as well.

 

I haven't played it, but I know everything that's in it.

Best part was the husk head.

Worst part was there is no "galactic lobster bake" option.