Mass Effect 3 $$(ENDINGS SPOILERS)$$

[HotRod]

I am reading that people are expecting DLCs similar to what we got with the first two games. I don't think this is likely. EA's CEO is big on microtransactions, and microtranactions can only happen with multiplayer. I think EA is going to follow Activision's lead in that they will release more multiplayer maps and packs to go with these maps for the Mass Effect series. And, I think that if there are more games in the franchise, they will be more like CoD or Battlefield. I believe we are in the era where if you want to play the truly innovative and imaginative games you need to seek out the smaller video game developers.

As for Bioware, I think the writing is on the wall. Bioware is on a decline, and I don't think the people in charge are capable of pulling the company out of its tailspin.

Why you gotta be so negitive? Bioware made a mistake, that I can agree with. But it does seem at this point that they are atleast TRYING to solve it.

PAX gave me a little more hope even with the Extended Cut being promised to be more then a few little cutscenes. The fact they are taking their time making it and are in the process of bringing in the voice actors point to this. Will it solve all the problems? No. We still gotta live with the Starchild. But atleast if I know Garrus and Tali won't starve to death, or that not everyone on the Citadel is dead, or that the Galaxy has the ability to rebuild the relays, then maybe, just maybe, I can live with Star-Kid.

And your also wrong in regards to the other DLC I think. All signs point to a pretty even level of both SP and MP DLC. Hell, they pretty much screamed "WE'RE GONNA RETAKE OMEGA".

Has the evil that is EA currupted Bioware just a little? Sure, maybe a little. But that don't change the fact that they still managed to give us a GREAT game that up till the last little bit was on track to being the best ending to the best gaming trilogy ever made. They hit a road bump and veered off the road. But it does seem they are gonna get back in the car and atleast try and finish the race. Might not be first place, but it's something.

 

[Reverend]

Still on my third playthough and bugger me if Kaiden hasn't done it again. He's had not one, but two well written and satisfying conversations. One in the Normandy's crew quarters (hurray, he gets out of the lounge!) and another at the cafe on the Citadel. They even make fun of his uptight personality. I may actually be starting to li- gah! *chokes on words* lik- hrmm....not totally loath him. There, I said it!

Oh and I know this femShep is pure paragon, but bugger it my main Shepard already stayed loyal to Liara so I thought, "sod it, I'll do something differently" and so she went and jumped in the shower with Traynor.
While I appreciate that they didn't bugger about with "jealousy confrontations" this time around, I still got a bit of a tongue lashing from Liara (no, not the fun kind.) Yikes. Suddenly I'm thinking pissing off the most powerful information broker in the galaxy wasn't a very smart move. Her tone of voice alone had me thinking of commandos and being flayed alive with biotics...

Of course that's somewhat undermined by the pleasant day out we had on the citadel not five minutes later...

I am reading that people are expecting DLCs similar to what we got with the first two games. I don't think this is likely. EA's CEO is big on microtransactions, and microtranactions can only happen with multiplayer.

EA was happy enough to do standard DLC for ME2 and both Dragon Age games. I don't see why they wouldn't let that continue.

There's no reason they can't do both. Heck, that would probably be better for EA; I suspect that the sets of purchasers of each type of DLC will be generally disjoint.

Yeah, as much as they're clearly trying to push multiplayer, I don't think they're about to delude themselves into thinking that most of their most of their customers aren't interested in more single player content. Hell, the damn epilogue was essentially a ham fisted promise of exactly that. They even drop you back before the endgame so you can do that "one more story."

Well, at least one more anyway. I imagine only the sale figures of the first one will show the true extent of the damage to their customer base and determine if there is to be a second or third.

Somehow I *completely* missed Matriach Aethyta in my first playthrough, so I'm definitely looking forward to meeting the "father-in-law" on my current engineer FemShep that's romancing Liara.

You're not the only one - I manged to miss her too. With my FemShep who romanced Liara.

It is nice to have confirmation of everybody's theory from ME2, though.

Indeed. How all we need is to get Wrex and Aria in the same room.

Also, would you believe I managed to totally miss Conrad Verner in my first playthough? Well not totally, he just randomly appeared out of nowhere to jump in front of a bullet for me. Wasn't until my third playthough that I got the whole thing.

 

[TheGodBen]

I'm glad it wasn't an ending where everything worked out perfectly, I'm glad there were negative ramifications (stranded aliens, etc? Yup, sacrifices had to be made, they all knew that going in), but there's still that bit of hope when Joker crashed.

The problem with the endings isn't that they weren't happy, that's a strawman that has been thrown around for weeks and it's tiresome. Personally, I wanted my Shep to die, from the moment I killed Mordin in order to sabotage the genophage cure I wanted this guy to sacrifice himself in a final redemptive act.

My main problems with the endings are these...

1) I didn't believe a single thing the star child said, but I wasn't allowed to say so. They took away the dialogue wheel at the most important point in the game and just expected me to accept that the solutions presented by the self-confessed creator of the Reapers were the only valid ones. I don't want to commit genocide by picking the destroy option, I don't want to enforce slavery by picking the destroy option, and I certainly don't want to violate the rights of every single thing living being in the galaxy by picking the synthesis option. And I also don't want to destroy the mass relays no matter what I choose. If the catalyst is powerful enough to produce space magic that can spread across the entire galaxy then surely it must be able to create a switch somewhere that will turn off the Reapers and do nothing else.

2) It's thematically inconsistent with the rest of the series. All three games have been about uniting the galaxy, bringing disparate peoples together to work towards a common goal. This game even goes so far as to say that one of the greatest assets this cycle has over all those that came before is its diversity, that no one race dominates. Yet the ending which is portrayed as the best, synthesis, the one which is hardest to achieve and the one that is claimed will bring lasting peace, shits all over the concept of diversity by forcing everything to be uniform. The people that wrote the ending of the game appear not to have paid attention to what the rest of the games are about.

3) The destruction of the mass relays makes most of your choices in this and the previous games utterly pointless. Cured the genophage? Doesn't matter, the Krogan are stranded on Tuchanka. The Quarians finally regained their homeworld? Doesn't matter, their fleet is stuck on the other side of the galaxy. United all major races of the galaxy? Doesn't matter, it will be centuries before they reach one another again, galactic civilization is essentially destroyed. That's not a bittersweet ending, that's fucking devastating.

Somehow I *completely* missed Matriach Aethyta in my first playthrough, so I'm definitely looking forward to meeting the "father-in-law" on my current engineer FemShep that's romancing Liara.

You're not the only one - I manged to miss her too. With my FemShep who romanced Liara.

Yeah, happened to me too, I don't know how I missed her. I finally met her during my second playthrough, that was more fitting considering that femShep was in a relationship with Liara.

 

[Reverend]

^I think it's understandable that people missed her. I mean for some inexplicable reason they changed her appearance so she just looks like some random Asari. I missed her old face. it had more characters. Speaking of which, a lot of returning characters looked decidedly...off. Bailey, Conrad, even Udina.

 

[TheGodBen]

Yeah, a couple of the characters looked different, which is weird as the game is running the same engine as ME2. As for Aethyha, her name should have shown up on the map like some of the other characters.

For those that don't watch sfdebris' reviews, he did a joke about ME3's ending in his latest video, around the 10 minute mark.

 

[ATimson]

Also, would you believe I managed to totally miss Conrad Verner in my first playthough? Well not totally, he just randomly appeared out of nowhere to jump in front of a bullet for me. Wasn't until my third playthough that I got the whole thing.

Same here. Well, the "missed it" bit. I only did a second playthrough long enough to get the level 10 weapons achievement; it's going to be a long time before I play ME3 again, I think.

(Probably after mapping out what I need to get done in ME1/ME2 to get the max readiness.)

 

[Reverend]

^ I got that by accident just playing the multiplayer.

While I understand your not wanting to play ME3 for a while at least, I have to say (as evidenced by my being on my 3rd playthrough) as much as I disliked how the game ends, I haven't let that effect my enjoyment of the rest of the game. It's still a lot of fun and I keep finding things I missed the first time around.

As far as I'm concerned, the game ends when Anderson and the Illusive Man die. I just make-up my own ending after that.

 

[throwback]

Here is an article on the aborted first person shooter for the Mass Effect franchise:

http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/3/15/2873973/mass-effect-team-assault-fps

Here is the CEO of EA speaking about microtransactions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR6-u8OIJTE

I may be viewed negatively, but my posting is based on what I have read and heard on the internet as demonstrated above.

There is no evidence that there will be a "Retake Omega" dlc. Fans have speculated that there will be one, and video game journalists have written about their speculation. For now, it's speculation.

As mentioned in the above video, Battlefield is a franchise of EA. This game's dlc includes only multiplayer maps The weapons and vehicles introduced with these dlcs can only be played in the multiplayer.

I see this already happening with Mass Effect. The first major DLC is a Multiplayer Package called Resurgence. This package introduces weapons that can only be played in multiplayer.

An important consideration is that for the player to get the best ending, with Shepard living, they need to play multiplayer (if you don't an IPod). There aren't enough war assets in single player. I have seen no evidence that this is going to change.

As for the direction of Bioware, my opinion is not based on a vacuum. It is based on seeing how other developers have handled a similar situation, and how they treat their fan base. It is even based on what James Cameron has done for his film Titanic. He changed a scene in the film to be more accurate after being challenged for its inaccuracy, and, when shown the proof, admitted he was wrong and fixed the error.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...james-cameron/2012/04/03/gIQAZyZItS_blog.html

I have no negative feelings towards EA. I like their Dead Space franchise, and have played both games many times. There have been mistakes in this franchise, but I can overlook them.

I voted on the Consumerist poll for the worst company. I voted for Bank of America. EA may have been a terrible company for consumers; however, their behavior is not outside the norm for most large corporations nowadays. They are in this business to make profits and to please their shareholders. I feel their thinking is that even though the consumers may not be happy, they may have few options to shop elsewhere as EA and other video game corporations own a sizable number of game developers and consumers will except and adapt to the situation.

My anger towards Bioware is that their project director and lead writer seem to be hiding behind artistic integrity to justify a game that was flawed and rushed. One of the criteria for artistic integrity in my opinion is the capacity to admit mea culpa. I would have respected Bioware if they admitted they misstep and weren't changing the ending because this is their vision. In the PR statement announcing the Extended End DLC, the tone was in my opinion was condescending (this DLC is an attempt to explain our vision to an ignorant and vocal minority who can't or won't understand).

I felt they should have fight harder for their franchise, and for their company's reputation. In the end, I felt they no longer cared for their product. The fans cared more for their product, and were brutally criticized for their devotion. As for the release date, I agree with what Jon Landau, producer of the film "Avatar 2", said in a recent interview:

Movies make release dates; release dates don't make movies (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/mov...eaters-avatar-2-sequel-showtimes-delayed.html)

Frankly, I am disgusted by this mess. It seems to me that nowadays we can't have a civil discussion. I feel that too many discussions end up as polarizing brawls, and that we have camps forming up on both sides who have individuals who are committed to waging war on the other camp. Was it necessary to label critics of the ending as entitled whiny brats? I don't think it was.

For myself, I feel I did what I had to do. I am supporting a smaller game developer by buying their product. I used the proceeds from selling my copy of Mass Effect 3 towards an advanced deposit on this game.

 

[ATimson]

^ I got that by accident just playing the multiplayer.

I got it on purpose via the multiplayer. I mean, sure, i could use multi to get the 4000/5000 endings, but I still want to work out what the best feasible endgame will be once EA shuts down the servers in 2014.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

1) I didn't believe a single thing the star child said, but I wasn't allowed to say so. They took away the dialogue wheel at the most important point in the game and just expected me to accept that the solutions presented by the self-confessed creator of the Reapers were the only valid ones. I don't want to commit genocide by picking the destroy option, I don't want to enforce slavery by picking the destroy option, and I certainly don't want to violate the rights of every single thing living being in the galaxy by picking the synthesis option. And I also don't want to destroy the mass relays no matter what I choose. If the catalyst is powerful enough to produce space magic that can spread across the entire galaxy then surely it must be able to create a switch somewhere that will turn off the Reapers and do nothing else.

2) It's thematically inconsistent with the rest of the series. All three games have been about uniting the galaxy, bringing disparate peoples together to work towards a common goal. This game even goes so far as to say that one of the greatest assets this cycle has over all those that came before is its diversity, that no one race dominates. Yet the ending which is portrayed as the best, synthesis, the one which is hardest to achieve and the one that is claimed will bring lasting peace, shits all over the concept of diversity by forcing everything to be uniform. The people that wrote the ending of the game appear not to have paid attention to what the rest of the games are about.

3) The destruction of the mass relays makes most of your choices in this and the previous games utterly pointless. Cured the genophage? Doesn't matter, the Krogan are stranded on Tuchanka. The Quarians finally regained their homeworld? Doesn't matter, their fleet is stuck on the other side of the galaxy. United all major races of the galaxy? Doesn't matter, it will be centuries before they reach one another again, galactic civilization is essentially destroyed. That's not a bittersweet ending, that's fucking devastating.

For real, thanks for narrowing down for me the issues people may have had! That was easier than trying to read all of the pages .

My point of view on what you're saying:

1) This makes sense, but at the same time, we don't know how all of this works. Maybe the reapers were created to not have the failsafe you're asking for? We can only take the child's word on it. Heck, maybe there's a bit more of an agenda from him and he just needed an organic to go through with what the kid ultimately needed. But it worked for me.
2) I thought the theme of coming together was fulfilled by the armada making the final assault at earth. At that point, that idea was tied up perfectly from there. And ultimately, it all worked, it bought Shepard the time he needed to get things done. Without them, they wouldn't have succeeded in any way, shape or form. So the theme was still quite strong, I though.
3) I dunno about pointless, if you cured the genophage, for example, you did the right thing and that, in itself, should count for something. It's like real life. You can still do the right thing, despite things not working out in the end. Do I not offer a sandwich to the homeless man knowing it's for nothing, he probably won't survive long enough for it to matter? You make choices at the time that you think are best. But we never know if they'll ultimately matter. We just hope for the best. It worked PERFECTLY as far as I'm concerned.
(Also, in game, curing the genophage got the Krogan on your side, again, which built up your army, bought Shep the time he needed to finish off the reapers. So it wasn't for nothing.)

 

[Reverend]

^ I got that by accident just playing the multiplayer.

I got it on purpose via the multiplayer. I mean, sure, i could use multi to get the 4000/5000 endings, but I still want to work out what the best feasible endgame will be once EA shuts down the servers in 2014.

You know for all my initial scepticism, I actually enjoy the multiplayer. I didn't touch it during my first playthough because I wanted a "pure" experience. Of course that was before I found out that 1) despite Bioware's claims, it's not possible to get the "optimal" ending and 2) it makes no bloody difference anyway.

Speaking of the achievements, I think I got most of them just on my initial SP game. I'm especially proud that I managed to get the "mailslot" and heavy melee ones with my soldier femshep. I think right now the only ones I haven't got yet are the two insanity achievements and it'll be a while before I attempt that. I'll probably do it as a NG+ with either my sentinel or my adept.

Oh, speaking of which I had a hilarious silver MP match this morning with an all adept team. Luckily it was just against Cerberus and two of us were Asari, otherwise I doubt we'd have gotten away with it. Bloody hell though, the last two rounds were nothing but constant rolling biotic detonations all over the sodding place!

 

[ATimson]

You know for all my initial scepticism, I actually enjoy the multiplayer.

It's fun for what it is, but it's rare for me to go "oh, I want to go play MP". I'll play with friends, but I don't usually play with randoms. *shrug*

Speaking of the achievements, I think I got most of them just on my initial SP game. I'm especially proud that I managed to get the "mailslot" and heavy melee ones with my soldier femshep. I think right now the only ones I haven't got yet are the two insanity achievements and it'll be a while before I attempt that. I'll probably do it as a NG+ with either my sentinel or my adept.

I was the other way around - my soldier FemShep didn't get the mail slot (though she did get the heavy melee), but I got insanity with her the first time through. I kept dying when trying to snipe on Insanity - I think I lowered the difficulty down to casual when I went back to get that (and Hijacker).

At this point, I'm all done with the achievements. I'm sure my method for the 5,000 kills one isn't what Bioware intended (there's several spots in the opening level with infinite spawns; set the difficulty to the lowest, bring in a ME2 character as an engineer, and let the turret do all the work while you read a book), but it's done!

 

[Reverend]

You know for all my initial scepticism, I actually enjoy the multiplayer.

It's fun for what it is, but it's rare for me to go "oh, I want to go play MP". I'll play with friends, but I don't usually play with randoms. *shrug*

Well I don't have any friends on Origin as I only just installed the thing last month (and only use it for ME3) so I'm rather forced to play with random people.

I'm an old had at TF2 and L4D so it's not so bad. You always expect a little hit and miss in the kind of team you end up in and for the most part people have been OK.

My only really complaints are people who sit in the lobby holding everyone up while they spec their characters and people who play as infiltrators and think it's OK to just sit in one spot at snipe away. OK, fine, infiltrators are essencially a sniper class but I've seen some of these people sit there and do nothing while allies flatline and objectives are just right around the damn corner.

When I play as an infiltrator in MP I considering part of my job as a support class to revive fallen teamates and actively go after objectives. Having tactical cloak makes infiltrators the *most* mobile of all classes, save perhaps vanguards, and yet there's always one bugger who's only interested in sniping. And if they stand infront of everyone else's line of sight, so much the better!

Speaking of the achievements, I think I got most of them just on my initial SP game. I'm especially proud that I managed to get the "mailslot" and heavy melee ones with my soldier femshep. I think right now the only ones I haven't got yet are the two insanity achievements and it'll be a while before I attempt that. I'll probably do it as a NG+ with either my sentinel or my adept.

I was the other way around - my soldier FemShep didn't get the mail slot (though she did get the heavy melee), but I got insanity with her the first time through. I kept dying when trying to snipe on Insanity - I think I lowered the difficulty down to casual when I went back to get that (and Hijacker).

At this point, I'm all done with the achievements. I'm sure my method for the 5,000 kills one isn't what Bioware intended (there's several spots in the opening level with infinite spawns; set the difficulty to the lowest, bring in a ME2 character as an engineer, and let the turret do all the work while you read a book), but it's done!

Now see, I didn't specifically go achievement hunting like that. I just played and the achievements came to me naturally.

...Well, OK, I did make more of an effort with mail shot once I saw the counter kept popping up and I probably wouldn't have gone in for the melee kill quite so often without the pop-up either, but that's about it. The 5000 kills I just picked up along the way while playing SP and some MP.

For me, an insanity run is the culmination of the gaming experience. Once I've seen all the story there is to see, have played though each class and gotten a good handle on the mechanics I go and put it to the ultimate test. Mind you, I should probably think about knocking the difficulty up to hardcore as with a lv48 Sentinel makes some fights a little too easy.

Speaking of the difficulty settings, I was quite happy this time around to play on normal the whole time. On my first go on ME2 I had to up it to veteran because even as a soldier, it was way too easy at times. For ME3 I think they struck the right balance with the "new" normal difficulty. It feels somewhere between veteran and hardcore. While there's still lost of low level enemies with no shields, armour or barriers, they have enough mediums and heavies to make it a challenge.

Hell, on my first game (on normal remember) I must have died a dozen times on that last bit in London where you're being swarmed by Banshees and Brutes while dodging a fecking Reaper destroyer's main weapon. I'm dreading playing that on insanity!

 

[TheGodBen]

1) This makes sense, but at the same time, we don't know how all of this works. Maybe the reapers were created to not have the failsafe you're asking for? We can only take the child's word on it.

But we can only take his word on it because we're not allowed to question it. My Shepard doesn't just accept what he's told, especially by an enemy, there's no way he wouldn't ask questions, but because Bioware wanted "lots of speculation for everyone" they removed most of the dialogue they had written for that scene. I'm hoping the extended endings they're releasing will put that necessary material back in.

And at the end of the day, the Catalyst was the being whose original solution to the organic/synthetic problem was to build the Reapers. This thing clearly has a few screws loose and there's no reason to believe that its solutions are the only ones available.

2) I thought the theme of coming together was fulfilled by the armada making the final assault at earth. At that point, that idea was tied up perfectly from there. And ultimately, it all worked, it bought Shepard the time he needed to get things done. Without them, they wouldn't have succeeded in any way, shape or form. So the theme was still quite strong, I though.

I'm not talking about that stuff, the arrival of the fleet that you had assembled was a highlight of the series. It could have used some more cinematics to better reflect the forces you had actually assembled in the game, but otherwise it was fine, and up until the scene where Anderson dies the game was on course to have a pretty good ending.

I'm talking about the material with the catalyst and the last 10 minutes of the game. During that interaction, it's made very clear that the synthesis option is intended to be the best one open to the player, it's described as the next phase of the evolution of life, and the solution that will bring lasting peace. It's also the hardest option to unlock, you need a full EMS bar to get it. But it goes against one of the key themes of the games, the theme of diversity and how races coming together and working with one another can lead to great things. Javik even goes out of his way to point out how the differing mindsets of the different races in our cycle gives us an advantage over the Protheans because they chose to conquer and impose unity.

The synthesis ending ignores all that, it's the ultimate case of imposing unity at the sake of diversity. It suggest that the only way there can be peace is if all life is the same. It boggles my mind that the people that were involved in writing all three games somehow thought that that was the best ending possible.

3) I dunno about pointless, if you cured the genophage, for example, you did the right thing and that, in itself, should count for something.

But I didn't cure the genophage. Partly because I was enticed by the prospect of Salarian assistance, but largely because I was thinking beyond the Reaper invasion and worrying about what a new Krogan empire might look like. I trusted that Wrex had the best intentions in mind, but I didn't trust that he'd be able to keep all the Krogan in check. So I made a difficult decision, arguably the wrong one, but one with the best intentions in mind.

But none of that matters because the Krogan will never be a threat to galactic civilization anyway. I murdered two friends for no good reason. Yay, victorious and uplifting!

(Also, in game, curing the genophage got the Krogan on your side, again, which built up your army, bought Shep the time he needed to finish off the reapers. So it wasn't for nothing.)

But I got Krogan support for my army anyway. This is my point, no matter what decisions you and I made in the three games, we both ended up with almost exactly the same ending, except perhaps in a different colour.

 

[ATimson]

Now see, I didn't specifically go achievement hunting like that. I just played and the achievements came to me naturally.

...Well, OK, I did make more of an effort with mail shot once I saw the counter kept popping up and I probably wouldn't have gone in for the melee kill quite so often without the pop-up either, but that's about it.

Melee is about the only one I went out of the way for on my first playthrough; the rest were natural. I freely admit to hunting for the leftovers, though. Especially since I'm on 360 so the achievements mean something.

The 5000 kills I just picked up along the way while playing SP and some MP.

My one SP runthrough netted me about 900 kills. I wasn't patient enough to play through another 4.5 times.

For me, an insanity run is the culmination of the gaming experience. Once I've seen all the story there is to see, have played though each class and gotten a good handle on the mechanics I go and put it to the ultimate test. Mind you, I should probably think about knocking the difficulty up to hardcore as with a lv48 Sentinel makes some fights a little too easy.

Only 48? Was this a level 30 import from ME2? (I hit 59 by the end of the game, hence why I'm curious...)

Anyways, to me Insanity was just for the achievement. I don't really feel the need to "test" myself with the game; I'm more interested in playing for the storytelling than challenging myself with the mechanics. And I don't bother with the other classes - I guess it goes back to ME1, where I loved the regenerating health and thought "spellcasting" was just too tedious with the other classes.

Hell, on my first game (on normal remember) I must have died a dozen times on that last bit in London where you're being swarmed by Banshees and Brutes while dodging a fecking Reaper destroyer's main weapon. I'm dreading playing that on insanity!

Honestly, I think that I died less times than that! It was more challenging than the rest of the game, but as a whole I thought the Insanity difficulty ended up a lot easier than in ME2.

(The lack of Harbinger assuming direct control repeatedly probably helped... When I replayed ME1/2 right before 3 came out, IIRC I played through 1 on Insanity all the way through, but dropped 2 down to Veteran on Horizon.)

 

[Jax]

Just finished it and first of all can I just say the 2nd half of the game was AMAZING and this is one of the best trilogies ever made. I don't mind the ending as much as some people but I do think Bioware could of easily done better especially since the lack of relays mean the FRANCHISE is over .

I picked the control Reapers (blue though I thought I was killing em the game needs to label it better) option and I don't mind seeing Shepard die it seemed fitting for him to go out.

 

[TheGodBen]

I picked the control Reapers (blue though I thought I was killing em the game needs to label it better).

Same problem, I wanted to destroy them and ended up accidentally controlling them because the seemingly paragon action was a renegade one and vice versa. Only realised it later by watching Youtube clips, then went back and fixed my mistake. Same damn ending, only a different colour.

 

[Jax]

I picked the control Reapers (blue though I thought I was killing em the game needs to label it better).

Same problem, I wanted to destroy them and ended up accidentally controlling them because the seemingly paragon action was a renegade one and vice versa. Only realised it later by watching Youtube clips, then went back and fixed my mistake. Same damn ending, only a different colour.

When I do my 2nd character my FemShep I will destory them BUT I refuse to ever use the 3rd choice because its stupid. If joining Organic/Synthetic life together would of solved the issue then why not do that in the first place instead of the Reapers? Also forcing DNA change on everyone seems VERY cruel for an ending + I refuse the idea that organic & synthetic life cannot live together.

 

[Reverend]

Melee is about the only one I went out of the way for on my first playthrough; the rest were natural. I freely admit to hunting for the leftovers, though. Especially since I'm on 360 so the achievements mean something.

Ah. I'm a PC gamer, so the challenge is the only thing achievements are good for. Even if there was an achievement for it, I'd still probably do an insanity run, just for fun.

My one SP runthrough netted me about 900 kills. I wasn't patient enough to play through another 4.5 times.

That sounds about the same as I managed. Didn't take long to get the rest in MP as needless to say you rack up a lot more kills in the average match than you ever could in a SP mission (not counting exploits.)

Only 48? Was this a level 30 import from ME2? (I hit 59 by the end of the game, hence why I'm curious...)

Yeah, all my ME2 imports are at Lv30. My sentinel playthough is still in progress (just finished the Cerberus scientists mission, about to do the Asari monastery one) hence only at lv48. I think on my first playthough my solder only got to lv58, but then I lost out on a load of XP from missing or loosing some sidequests due to bugs, not realising they were time sensitive and no spotting a certain creepy fan.
Not that it matters much as my that point the only powers not maxed out were the cryo & disruptor ammos.

No idea what level my renegade vanguard got up to by the end.

Anyways, to me Insanity was just for the achievement. I don't really feel the need to "test" myself with the game; I'm more interested in playing for the storytelling than challenging myself with the mechanics. And I don't bother with the other classes - I guess it goes back to ME1, where I loved the regenerating health and thought "spellcasting" was just too tedious with the other classes.

Like I said, I generally do it *after* I've experienced most of the story.

As for not bothering with other classes, I think you're depriving yourself of a lot of the variety that makes replays so engaging.

Sure, the classes weren't so well balanced in ME1 (a lv60 adept was insanely overpowered), but ME2 and especially ME3 really changed things up. Add to that all the new power combos in ME3 and they've all become very distinct and fun. Engineer used to be my least favourite, but with the addition of the cryoblast/incinerate combo it's become a lot more fun. They even managed to make AI hack useful again by merging it with the old sabotage ability.

Honestly, I think that I died less times than that! It was more challenging than the rest of the game, but as a whole I thought the Insanity difficulty ended up a lot easier than in ME2.

What I didn't realise was that all I had to do was dodge and stay alive. I was actively trying to kill everything, especially after I figured out how to use the beam to kill several banshees at once. It wasn't until after that I read on the wiki (while checking for upgrade & weapons locations) that the enemies were on infinite respawn.

In my defence though, I think the only time you're put in a similar situation was right back at the beginning where you're waiting for the Normandy to show up and that sequence is scripted to end as soon as you run out of thermal clips...plus it happens about 30-50 hours of gameplay prior.

Now that I think about it, what is it with ME tutorial levels training you in gameplay mechanics you'll never use again? Remember when you had to run around on Eden Prime defusing bombs? Or that bit on Lazarus station where you had to run through the fire or it wouldn't let you progress? Hell that room was a two-fer as I think it had the only functional elevator in the whole game (not counting cut-scenes and DLC.)

[cont...]

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

But it goes against one of the key themes of the games, the theme of diversity and how races coming together and working with one another can lead to great things.

I'd say it DID lead to great things. Everyone working together brought on the next phase of evolution, combining the best aspects of both organic and synthetic, yet still retaining the DNA of what made everyone unique (Joker is still human, Edi is still AI, Javik is still Prothean, they're just evolved now.)

Kind of reminds me of Stargate and the whole ascension thing.

What I didn't realise was that all I had to do was dodge and stay alive. I was actively trying to kill everything, especially after I figured out how to use the beam to kill several banshees at once. It wasn't until after that I read on the wiki (while checking for upgrade & weapons locations) that the enemies were on infinite respawn.

Are you kidding me? Haha, I played on Insanity (always play the most difficult first, then my next playthrough on an easier setting is my reward) and that part was crazy difficult! Well, now I know for next time, haha, no wonder it seemed so difficult! I think I played it the same way you did, only I stayed far away from the beam so I didn't even use THAT to my advantage! I'm such a dumb-head.