Mass Effect 3

[Captain Qwert Jr]

It's clearer why it sucks now at least.

I knew something was up in ME2, when instead of continuing a Great Romance, I was blown off by my choice in ME1...and not in a good way.

There was no overarching theme. It had great elements, and I think a decent theme can extrapolated from what was given, but what they chose was still just too random. It could have just as easily been revealed that the Trix Rabbit was behind it all. 'If humanoid life wont let me have My Cereal, that has My freakin' name on it, then humanoid life must go!'

[Jax]

Just read that the DLC allows you to refuse the final offer my 3rd renegade character will like that.

[HotRod]

Ok, ya know what? I'm satisfied! Never thought I would say it, but I am. I went with Destroy just because I could not allow the Reaper to continue in any way, shape or form. And as long as the 2km tall death machines were still flying around, that threat existed. I feel horrible for what happened to EDI and the Geth, they did not deserve their fate. But, the needs of the many...... Still, I feel horrible and in my mind, EDI and the Geth somehow may have found a way to survive. Being software, not hardware, maybe they found I way...to.....back themselves up.......I dunno. I enjoyed the extra little scenes with my LI (Ashley), even made me tear up a bit I will admit. Plus, I noticed something. Alot of people have complaining that the "breath scene" is still the only thing pointing to Shepard being alive. But I noticed that unlike the other 2 choices where your love interest clearly places Shepard's name on the wall, accepting his death, in the Destroy option she held his name, looked up and smiled as if she somehow knew at that moment that he was alive. So I have a feeling my Shepard and Ashley will be having a reunion. Plus, the last bit of the game was obviously not in cronological order so here is how I figured it all went down.

D-Day

-Catalyst does its thing.
-Fleet retreats via FTL.
-Mass Relays and Citadel are badly damaged.
-Normandy makes a soft crash landing for whatever reason on alien world not that far from Sol.
-Normandy communication equipment damanged, out of contact with Alliance.
-Shepard wakes up onboard badly damaged citadel, likely receives treatment.

Weeks Later

-Crew holds memorial for Shepard, whom some think is likely dead (not Ashely).
-Shepard recovering.
-Repairs on Mass Relays and Citadel underway.
-Normandy is repaired, takes off from planet to reconnect with Alliance.
-Crew reunited with Shepard, finding him to be alive and recovering.
-Fleets still trapped in and around Sol system.

Months Later

-Mass Relays starting to come back online, slowly but surely.
-Fleets begin to make journey back to respective homeworlds.
-Citadel repairs continue.

Years Later

-Mass Relay Network back to 100%
-Citadel fully repaired
-Everyone living happily ever after (as seen in the "slide show")


And somewhere in all that, EDI and Geth are found to be alive......somehow......probably not....but I can dream.

Either way, THANK YOU BIOWARE! Thank you for fixing most of the issues I had with your otherwise GREAT game.

[PsychoPere]

Jax wrote:

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Just read that the DLC allows you to refuse the final offer my 3rd renegade character will like that.

Ah, but...

...if you refuse to choose one of the three options (or alternatively if you shoot at the Catalyst), then the Catalyst / Starchild / Harbinger gets all pissy, says the cycle will continue, and you watch the destruction of the allied fleets. Then you get a little cutscene of Liara's time capsule before going into credits. Post-credits, you get a female Stargazer talking to a child about having achieved "peace" due to those who came before.

So, if you refuse, you doom everyone to certain death, hence the above characterizations of this ending as a "fuck you" from BioWare.

[Steven]

TheGodBen wrote:

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That took 3 months? That was 1.9GB? Don't get me wrong, it was an improvement, but I was expecting more considering the size of the thing. Firstly, why did we have to play from the Cerberus base mission when all the additions (that I noticed, at least) were from the conduit run on? It took me almost four hours to get to that point because it has been a while since I played and I didn't remember the controls.

I think there may have been a few additions during the early parts of the Earth mission, but I can't say for certain.

This new version makes it even more clear to me that the star child is a crazy AI with a few important screws loose. The moment it mentioned killing its creators and turning them into Reapers, I realised that destroy was the way to go once again. That thing and its creations are the genocidal remnant of a short-sighted civilization that put their trust in a computer in order to end a war, and it paid back that trust by turning them into a thick organic mulch that fly around the galaxy in giant metal squids. You can't get much more crazy than that. The Catalyst needed to die, and though it sucks that the countless civilizations that the Reapers absorbed will be lost for eternity, it's time for the galaxy to send this abominable construct and its toys to the ash heap of history.

We'll keep its mass relays though, those things are pretty rad.

I was thinking exactly the same thing during that little discussion Shepard had.

By his own admission, the starchild was just another creation by an organic race. So he's doing exactly what he says that the Reapers are "saving" organics from - destroying organic life. He's just trying to justify it in his warped little mind by saying they keep the old life in Reaper form, only harvest advanced civilizations, yada yada yada. I ended up going with destroy again.

Well... actually, I first went with shooting him in the face. Then I played it through to destroy.

Anyways, as for my thoughts on the overall experience... It was meh. That's it. Just meh.

The parts I liked:
- Showing the outcome with Liara's warning message to the next cycle if you choose to not take one of the 3 options.
- The montage at the end of the destroy ending (and presumably the others - I haven't watched them yet).
- Some (flimsy) explanation of the 3 options.

The parts that I didn't like or made it worse:
- Still no option to throw the geth-quarian peace in starchild's face as an example of synthetics and organics getting along. Were the writers just unable to come up with a counter-argument? Sure, that peace has only existed for the better part of a week at that point, but it's sure as hell more evidence than starchild is providing.
- Normandy doing an evac on the run to the beam. I mean... what the hell! That one scene made it even worse! Sure, it explains how Javik and Garrus (in my run through) got back on board, but in just introduces a whole crap-ton of other problems. Like... how did Normandy get from orbit to the ground in 5 seconds? Or maybe, why did Harbinger just sit there and watch?

Overall, I think Bioware has proven that while you can polish a turd, it's still just a turd.

Meh. Whatever.

[-Brett-]

Well, it's an improvement, although that doesn't say much, in this case.

The new one at least gets some fundamentals right. You're not left scratching your head as to why the ship left the battle. You're not just taking wild guesses as to who survived and who didn't.

The ending monologue was pretty good. The "funeral" was good. The Normandy taking flight is a much better way to close the series than the Normandy permanently shipwrecked.

Overall, I'd give the new ending a C+. Up from the original F. Not stellar, but I may be able to stomach playing the series again.

[Reverend]

PsychoPere wrote:

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Ah, but...

...if you refuse to choose one of the three options (or alternatively if you shoot at the Catalyst), then the Catalyst / Starchild / Harbinger gets all pissy, says the cycle will continue, and you watch the destruction of the allied fleets. Then you get a little cutscene of Liara's time capsule before going into credits. Post-credits, you get a female Stargazer talking to a child about having achieved "peace" due to those who came before.

So, if you refuse, you doom everyone to certain death, hence the above characterizations of this ending as a "fuck you" from BioWare.

You know what? I *really* appreciate that they did that. It gives that earlier scene more resonance and it reinforces the idea that your choices have consequences.

I'm a little disappointed that they didn't re-insert the extended dialogue between Anderson & Shepard, but perhaps they felt it wasn't a good idea to tease the player with the possibility of a happy ending when in all but (maybe) one outcome, that would be impossible.

[Camren]

I had time to try out the control ending last night. There's no doubt that the ending has been improved considerably from the original but I'm still not completely thrilled with it.
Guess I can't complain too much, it was free content after all and there's no such thing as the perfect ending. Would have liked a DA:O style epilogue too.

[backstept]

I played the synth ending, and watched the others on the youtubes
I thought the added content was great. I don't agree with the complainers still calling it a turd. It's not a turd, it's an absolutely fantastic game, one of the absolute best of 2012 and a fitting end for Shepard's story.

[Reverend]

^As I have said before; if it wasn't a great game then it wouldn't matter if the ending was crap. It is, therefore it does. All the EC really did was fill in the insultingly massive plot holes and glaring omissions. More than anything, it's the best proof to date that the original ending was rushed out the door, not even close the being finished. The basic premise is still very contrived if not outright bonkers.

No matter which way you cut it, introducing the catalyst at the last minute and forcing and A, B or C (and now D) choice is still terrible storytelling. The fact remains that your choices still don't really matter in the end and the whole EMS system just serves to cheapen the experience.

Moving on: assuming they continue to make ME games beyond this point, it's pretty clear that (asuming it'll be set post ME3) they'll almost certainly have to pick one "canon" ending. Am I alone in thinking it'll be the high EMS destroy ending? I can't see either of the others being particularly viable for dramatic storytelling. I mean, what could threaten the Control or Synthesis galaxies with the Reapers still around to protect the peace?

Something else that occurs to me: am I correct in assuming that there's still one more mass relay left untouched by the crucible wave? That is, the one say out in Dark Space and connects directly to the Citadel. What if the Reapers left one of their own behind to guard it? There could still be a reaper out there, presumably now free from control.

[Sysyphyx]

Still haven't finished this piece of shit. Everytime l try l feel like l'm playing some sort of half-ass DLC for Mass Effect 2. I guess l should finish it, since l'm almost there, just to see what all the fuss is about.

[superdeluxe]

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I think control feels like the best option, but I definitely got a I-Robot feel from Shepard's 'rant'.

[Briquettes]

Reverend wrote:

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Something else that occurs to me: am I correct in assuming that there's still one more mass relay left untouched by the crucible wave? That is, the one say out in Dark Space and connects directly to the Citadel. What if the Reapers left one of their own behind to guard it? There could still be a reaper out there, presumably now free from control.

Someone already data mined the files in the EC patch and found what appears to be dialogue text for a future DLC. If it gets made, I think you'll like it.

Original thread on BSN is here: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/to...dex/12777408/1

The files allude to a pre-end game mission in which Shep & crew go to an asteroid inhabited by a reaper named Leviathan, who has broken free of his programming. Leviathan has been living there for a while and has indoctrinated a large group of people loyal to him and not the other reapers. It's also implied that Leviathan, not Harbinger, is the original reaper created by the Catalyst and is still pissed about being melted down and turned into a space monster. Leviathan can apparently join you in your fight against the other Reapers.

If this turns out to be true, I think it makes the destroy ending that much less palatable because it further implies that the reapers are only doing what they do because of the catalyst AI.

[Camren]

Briquettes wrote:

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Someone already data mined the files in the EC patch and found what appears to be dialogue text for a future DLC. If it gets made, I think you'll like it.

Original thread on BSN is here: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/to...dex/12777408/1

The files allude to a pre-end game mission in which Shep & crew go to an asteroid inhabited by a reaper named Leviathan, who has broken free of his programming. Leviathan has been living there for a while and has indoctrinated a large group of people loyal to him and not the other reapers. It's also implied that Leviathan, not Harbinger, is the original reaper created by the Catalyst and is still pissed about being melted down and turned into a space monster. Leviathan can apparently join you in your fight against the other Reapers.

If this turns out to be true, I think it makes the destroy ending that much less palatable because it further implies that the reapers are only doing what they do because of the catalyst AI.

That's actually pretty interesting (if true) and could be a great follow-up to the Bring Down the Sky DLC from ME1.

[PsychoPere]

If that's true, it's going to make the Starchild nonsense into even more bullshit.