Mass Effect 3 $$(ENDINGS SPOILERS)$$

[6079SmithW]

With regards to Diana Allers, she is in this game because Jessica Chobot is her voice actor. Chobot hosts some IGN shows and is popular with the male geeks because she A) is attractive, B) is a gamer girl, and C) licked a psp. They made the character for fanwank and good publicity. Since she is an IGN employee this pretty much guaranteed that they would give ME3 a positive review. That's my take on the situation

 

[throwback]

In the videos I put links in for on my last post, the video blogger says that he can get a feel from a game. He can feel if a game is made with passion and care, or if it isn't. He believes that Mass Effect 2 was made with passion and care. He doesn't say the same for Mass Effect 3. He states that he predicted to his friends that Mass Effect 3 would indicate the direction that Bioware would go once Electronic Arts was able to influence the company. He feels that the old Bioware is gone, and that even if the new Bioware rises to good or moderate results that they will never be able to rise to the standards set by the old Bioware. He feels sad that this is the case, but what can you do?

As for Diana Allers, she is seen speaking with Samantha Taylor and Ensign Copeland (sic). In the latter, the player can either side with the Ensign or her in an argument about the freedom of press in wartime. As there are no news reports in this game, unlike Mass Effect 2, she is a source of information for what is happening on Earth and in the galaxy.

Some have speculated that IGN has a backroom deal with EA/Bioware since one of their employees had a role in Mass Effect 3, and this may partially explain some of the vitriol that IGN has spewed at the end's detractors.

 

[Reverend]

Just finished my second playthrough. My feelings on the ending haven't really changed, it still makes very little sense. I did notice something else that contradicts what the "Indoctrinated Theory" people have been saying. There ARE trees near the beam before Harbinger blasts Shepard. You can clearly see them in the pre-charge cutscene with Anderson all throughout the charge itself. I think they're right about the catalyst's voice though. I had headphones on and there was a difference between the left and right channels that could have been Hale and Meer respectively. Speaking of Meer, while he's definitely upped his game this time around, Hale's is IMO, still the superior performance. This is especially evident in the last conversations with TIM, Anderson & the Catalyst. Meer just makes Shepard sound tired, while Hale makes her sound exhausted, in agony, desperate yet strong and even somehow managed to convey the impression they she's trying not to move too much for fear of her guts spilling out. I think it's the vulnerability that really sells it.

Bit of an odd thing happened in London that I can only assume is a glitch; Garrus wasn't in the forward encampment, so I didn't get to the final conversation with him which was a bit of a let down.

So, now for my third playthrough! Anyone have an opinion on a good bonus power for a sentinel? This one was dumb enough to save Kaiden in ME1, so I'll not have access to his powers until after the coup attempt.

 

[Camren]

The ending has completely baffled me. I don't even know what to make of it. It was a great build-up to it, then the ghost kid appeared and it all started to go downhill from there. Totally bizarre ending. I'm more bemused than angry, though. I'm sure it all makes sense to the writer(s) of the game but as a merely humble player, I think it's a ridiculous way to end the trilogy.

 

[throwback]

The ending for me wasn't the only baffling thing in the game. During the attempted coup of the Citadel by Cerberus, Kai Leng lands on Shepard's aircar. Why did she attempt to shoot Kai Leng through a police cruiser's windshield? Why didn't she simply flip the car upside down and send Kai Leng into the reservoir?

 

[Skywalker]

The ending for me wasn't the only baffling thing in the game. During the attempted coup of the Citadel by Cerberus, Kai Leng lands on Shepard's aircar. Why did she attempt to shoot Kai Leng through a police cruiser's windshield? Why didn't she simply flip the car upside down and send Kai Leng into the reservoir?

Speaking of which, why didn't my Vanguard Shepard use his biotics to throw Kai Leng off of the car?

There can be only one reasonable answer: space magic.

 

[throwback]

I was thinking about this scenario today. Wouldn't it be great if the designers had included a dialog wheel where I or you could chose the action we wanted to perform? For instance, a paragon choice would be to splash Kai Leng, whereas a renegade choice would be something more drastic and bloody. This was one instance out of many in the game where I felt the designers inserted themselves into the game and removed choice from the player.

 

[The Doctor]

The ending for me wasn't the only baffling thing in the game. During the attempted coup of the Citadel by Cerberus, Kai Leng lands on Shepard's aircar. Why did she attempt to shoot Kai Leng through a police cruiser's windshield? Why didn't she simply flip the car upside down and send Kai Leng into the reservoir?

Speaking of which, why didn't my Vanguard Shepard use his biotics to throw Kai Leng off of the car?

There can be only one reasonable answer: space magic.

That was my complaint as well. My adept would have singularity'd his ass and then warp-detonated him. I barely use my gun at all during ME3 thanks to the stupid-fast power cool-down I get by not carrying a sniper rifle or shotgun.

 

[Evil Twin]

That was my complaint as well. My adept would have singularity'd his ass and then warp-detonated him. I barely use my gun at all during ME3 thanks to the stupid-fast power cool-down I get by not carrying a sniper rifle or shotgun.

Heh, I'm currently going through ME2 on an engineer, and it's my very first time doing Insanity mode, and I'm trying to it without ever firing my gun once unless it's absolutely needed (for instance you need to fire a bullet at the hanging deck plate to dislodge it on the wrecked freighter sidequest, incinerate doesn't work). Strictly using overload, incinerate, drone, and AI hacking/dominate to do all my killing. Just done Mordin and Garrus recruitment so far, Mordin's was a breeze, but Garrus got a little hairy since he kept dying on me, causing the mission to fail. But overall I'm enjoying it since everything's got shields and armor in Insanity and engineer's the best at stripping 'em!

 

[backstept]

I barely use my gun at all during ME3 thanks to the stupid-fast power cool-down I get by not carrying a sniper rifle or shotgun.

I went back for a ME2 playthrough to set up another ME3 run and that's one thing I really like about 3
as a soldier I rarely use all my guns and it's annoying to carry around 6 different guns in ME2 when I usually only use the assault rifle and heavy weapon

that said, sentinel is my favorite class to play. It seems to be the most balanced with both tech and biotics, and also the nice shield power, and if you pick a bonus ammo power it seems like the best class to play

 

[Reverend]

I think Sentinel is my favourite class too, at least it was for ME2 (it wasn't so good in ME1) but I've yet to come to grips with it in ME3. I miss the tech armour auto-detonating and I'm not a fan of the increased slowdowns. Even with an imported lv30 I'm struggling to keep up the pressure.

Solder and Infiltrator are joint second favourites for sheer domination of the battlefield while Vanguard is probably my least favourite class. I know it's popular with a lot of players but I have a hard time having playing as a vanguard. It might be because for some reason I'm useless with shotguns in ME2 & 3, or because charge and nova make things a little too easy.

Seriously, by the time I got to Rannoch on by second playthough, I hardly needed squadmates as I was charging and destroying everything except banshees and and geth primes in one go. Hell, remember that bit on Tuchanka when you have to activate the two maw hammers with half a dozen brutes running around? My first time through that was as a soldier and I died like three times before I figured out I had to just run for it and even then I only made it by the skin of my teeth. As a vanguard though I was able to kill every brute and practically stroll up the the hammers.

Adept and Engineer are somewhere in between. A hight level Adept in ME1 was *insane*, but they sort of nerfed it in ME2. On hardcore and above it was damn near unplayable.

As for Engineer...it was useful back when you'd spend three quarters of the game fighting Geth, but against non-synthetics it didn't really suit. Plus the combat drone was never terribly formidable. Of course with ME3 they've upped the power combos which is where the class really starts to shine. Cryo blast plus incinerate is just hilarious, especially if you upgrade them for larger a radius of effect.

 

[stonester1]

Just finished my third play through. And haven't yet cracked the solution for keeping both the Geth and the Quarians alive

 

[Reverend]

^I managed it both times. I think it requires you to have both a high enough reputation (paragon or renegade), completing both Tali & Legion's loyalty missions in ME2 and having saved the civilian fleet Admiral (I forget his name.)

I don't know if *all* of those conditions are required, but those are the commonalities between my two successful attempts,

 

[Mr Light]

I don't understand why people hate the ending so much. I finished the game last night and the ending was as good as I could expect. I don't know how different the endings are, but Shepherd sacrificed herself to deactivate the Reapers and win the day. It's a bit of a deus ex machina, but the entire game they were setting up Cerebus trying take control of the Reapers, so...

The only weird thing was we don't see the fates of the two squadmates I was with at the end. It showed the Normandy crashing and Joker and the comm lady coming out I believe.

Also, I guess I destroyed all the Mass Effect relays and nobody can do FTL travel anymore? Is that the point of the old man and the kid in the epilogue?

 

[Reverend]

^If you don't understand but what to, then I'd suggest reading the thread from the beginning. Short answer though: no, the endings are hardly different at all. The only really noticeable difference is the colour of the energy wave.

The not so short answer: the ending(s) render all decisions up until that point utterly meaningless and none of those decisions directly affect how you can choose to end the game. It doesn't matter if you are paragon or renegade, if you chose to save the rachni, sabotage the genophage or doom the quarians. It doesn't matter if you sacrificed friends or loved ones to make it to the end. None of it matters. So long as you have enough points, by whatever means, then you still get the same three options that plays the same damn near identical cut scenes. It was arbitrary and meaningless, it gave no sense of closure and was exactly what Bioware promised they wouldn't do.

...Plus of course there's the MASSIVE plot holes.

 

[Mr Light]

Oh yeah, I didn't get the "Green" option. Probably because I didn't have the online multiplayer. I think I got every single thing from the map, and my green readiness bar was like one tick short of being completely full.

 

[Reverend]

You can defiantly get the green ending without multiplayer. I intentionally left it alone during my first playthrough because I wanted a "pure" experience and I got all three options with the GR still at 50%. Still, after two playthoughs I doubt Bioware's claim that you can get the "ideal" ending (Shepard ambiguously survives) without MP. Neither of my Shepards so far got anywhere near 8000 total points, nevermind 10,000.

I checked the wiki and as far as I can tell neither the points from what I missed or didn't make the "optimal" choice are enough to make up the difference. I still fall several hundred short.

 

[eastman23]

^I managed it both times. I think it requires you to have both a high enough reputation (paragon or renegade), completing both Tali & Legion's loyalty missions in ME2 and having saved the civilian fleet Admiral (I forget his name.)

I don't know if *all* of those conditions are required, but those are the commonalities between my two successful attempts,

Based on the Mass Effect Wiki, there's a number of factors which may or may not be involved (even they're not really sure at this point):

First, there are factors which seem to be purely pass/fail; missing even one of them flunks the Reputation check:

- Shepard must have at least four bars of Reputation.
- Tali and Legion must both be present.
- The player must have imported a save from Mass Effect 2.
- You must save Admiral Koris

Additionally, there are more factors which build up Shepard's trustworthiness to both parties; if Shepard has not done enough of them, s/he will not have the groundswell of goodwill and be unable to moderate a cease-fire. They are:

- Destroying or rewriting the heretic geth in Legion: A House Divided. In shipboard conversation, you can ask Legion about the repercussions of your decision, and it will mention either that the heretics were strongly in favor of allying with the "Old Machines," or that their absence made the consensus more difficult to achieve.
- Preventing Tali's exile in Tali: Treason. If you did not import a save, Tali will have been exiled and will not have be able to support Shepard with an Admiral's authority.
- Brokering a peace in the Tali/Legion loyalty argument. It is not currently known what Shepard's "canon" decision on the loyalty argument is (if any) if you did not import a save, nor if it impacts dialogue here.
- Completing Rannoch: Geth Fighter Squadrons. This may be a pass/fail factor, as players have reported being unable to access the compromise without it, despite having done much or all of the other activities. Legion references it during the conversation, asking the question that started the Morning War: "Does this unit have a soul?"

For my part, I did all of the above and rewrote the geth heretics. When Legion prompts you if it should upload code, you allow it. Then if you pass the reputation check (based on the above conditions it seems), you need to pick either the paragon option or the renegade option (I suppose, I've only picked paragon) to get the quarian fleet to cease firing for a moment. If Tali is with you and not exiled, she will invoke the admiral's authority. And if Koris is rescued, he will speak up too.

Rewriting or destroying the heretics affects the War Assets you receive as well, though the net effect is 0 if you manage to achieve peace. If you rewrote the heretics, each of the 3 quarian fleets have 50 points less (greater causalities on their part) and the geth fleet has an extra 150 points (greater resources). If you destroyed the heretics, the geth fleet has 150 points less (greater causalities for them), but the quarian fleets each have 50 points extra (advantage against smaller geth fleet).

Of all the missions in the game, I think Rannoch and Tuchanka are the most rewarding and most fitting of the spirit of having your decisions in previous games matter. Kudos to Bioware for them. (Not so much for the ending though.)

 

[TheGodBen]

...Plus of course there's the MASSIVE plot holes.

And let's not forget that at the moment when you most need it, Bioware pretty much removed the dialogue wheel so that you couldn't ask questions, all to leave the ending open to speculation. Here I am in front of the self-professed creator of the Reapers and I'm just supposed to believe it and it's options? What if I want to tell it that it's full of crap, that I don't accept its reasoning, and that its "solutions" are all horrifying? I can't, because at the moment of truth my Shepard becomes completely passive, and that's infuriating.

Oh yeah, I didn't get the "Green" option. Probably because I didn't have the online multiplayer. I think I got every single thing from the map, and my green readiness bar was like one tick short of being completely full.

Here, this will save you the time needed to replay it:

[yt]v=rPelM2hwhJA[/yt]

Still, after two playthoughs I doubt Bioware's claim that you can get the "ideal" ending (Shepard ambiguously survives) without MP. Neither of my Shepards so far got anywhere near 8000 total points, nevermind 10,000.

Someone crunched the numbers and you can't. You need 4000 points for Shep to "survive" and the maximum you can make in SP is something like 3700.

 

[eastman23]

...Plus of course there's the MASSIVE plot holes.

And let's not forget that at the moment when you most need it, Bioware pretty much removed the dialogue wheel so that you couldn't ask questions, all to leave the ending open to speculation. Here I am in front of the self-professed creator of the Reapers and I'm just supposed to believe it and it's options? What if I want to tell it that its full of crap, that I don't accept it's reasoning and that its "solutions" are all horrifying? I can't, because at the moment of truth my Shepard becomes completely passive, and that's infuriating.

Yep, it would have been really nice to have a dialogue option or interrupt to tell him about the EDI/Joker pairing or the geth/quarian peace (assuming you managed to achieve those outcomes) and that his "cycle" is based on a false premise.

On a somewhat related note, did anyone notice that when it presents the options to you, it's not actually Shepard in those little movies? For the destroy option, it appears to be Anderson firing at the conduit and for the control option, it looks like the Illusive Man. Oddly, nothing is shown for synthesis. I wonder if that is supposed to leave another subtle hint that the end is not what it appears to be.

Assuming, of course, that the indoctrination theory is correct and that the current "ending" is not Bioware's version of a "valentine to the fans".