You're correct. (Nor will "reaffirming" a relationship with Liara in the DLC.)
Mass Effect 3 $$(ENDINGS SPOILERS)$$
- Thread starter Reverend
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I've been toying with the idea of a FemShep who would romance Kaidan in ME1 right up until his death on Virmire; then romancing either Kelly or someone else in ME2 who would die on the Collector Base (getting liquified or suicide mission, depending on ultimate choice), or Thane who would live but of course die in ME3; then romancing someone else in ME3.
I think this is a pretty fair representation of most people's reaction. 
For anyone not familiar with 'Mess Perfect', it's a hilarious ongoing Mass Effect parody webcomic. The artist has already done ME1 and I think she's about two thirds of the way though ME2 so far.
In other news, I've completed my third playthough...and the ending makes even less sense than ever. Not that it matters, but this time around I picked green...whoopie.
On the positive side, I rather liked how the Traynor romance played out. In fact I rather liked Traynor even without the romance. Could have done with one or two personal (i.e. not work related) conversations with her, but then I could say that about just about every character, LI or not. I did think it was a bit odd that you don't get to speak to her from London. I mean you can call Cortez and every other LI still breathing, so why not Traynor?
Also, does anyone else think it's a bit odd that when you do whatever your favourite colour is that you get a sudden flash of Joker, Anderson (which is fine) and Liara, regardless of who you romanced? I didn't think anything of it the first time round since my main Shep was loyal to Liara all the way though. It just seemed...a bit out of place. A bug perhaps? or just more evidence of a time crunch on production?
For anyone not familiar with 'Mess Perfect', it's a hilarious ongoing Mass Effect parody webcomic. The artist has already done ME1 and I think she's about two thirds of the way though ME2 so far.
In other news, I've completed my third playthough...and the ending makes even less sense than ever. Not that it matters, but this time around I picked green...whoopie.
On the positive side, I rather liked how the Traynor romance played out. In fact I rather liked Traynor even without the romance. Could have done with one or two personal (i.e. not work related) conversations with her, but then I could say that about just about every character, LI or not. I did think it was a bit odd that you don't get to speak to her from London. I mean you can call Cortez and every other LI still breathing, so why not Traynor?
Also, does anyone else think it's a bit odd that when you do whatever your favourite colour is that you get a sudden flash of Joker, Anderson (which is fine) and Liara, regardless of who you romanced? I didn't think anything of it the first time round since my main Shep was loyal to Liara all the way though. It just seemed...a bit out of place. A bug perhaps? or just more evidence of a time crunch on production?
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SPOILER.
I just finished Mass Effect 3 and I don't understand what I was told about a crappy ending. I thought it was a good ending. I never got red, white or green choices at the end like I heard other people talk about.
I ended up talking to some little ghost kid who was the catalyst on the Citadel and he gave me two choices: Go to the red machine and destroy the Reapers and all synthetics, however humanity may end up making synthetics that may end up killing them or go to the blue machine and become one with the Reapers and end up controlling them.
I chose red and my female Shepard limped over to the red machine and shot it until it blew up. When it blew it sent out a ball of energy that pretty much destroyed all the reapers and what looked like all life on earth and all the relays. Joker was flying his butt off to get away, but the Normandy gets sucked into the energy release.
The scene then cut to a crashed Normandy on a jungle planet and the camera focuses on the door and the door opens then it cuts to the credits so you never see who or what is coming out the door.
After skipping the credits there was a scene with a man and young kid walking through a snowy landscape on a planet that has two other planets in the sky and the man is telling the kid about "The Shephard" and her heroics that happened "a long time ago" and the kid wonders if he someday will be able to venture out to the stars and the man tells him he will one day and will meet unusual cultures.
Then the screen goes black and I go to the main menu.
I thought it was a great ending and a friend of mine told me the ending he got and it was nothing like what he got.
I just finished Mass Effect 3 and I don't understand what I was told about a crappy ending. I thought it was a good ending. I never got red, white or green choices at the end like I heard other people talk about.
I ended up talking to some little ghost kid who was the catalyst on the Citadel and he gave me two choices: Go to the red machine and destroy the Reapers and all synthetics, however humanity may end up making synthetics that may end up killing them or go to the blue machine and become one with the Reapers and end up controlling them.
I chose red and my female Shepard limped over to the red machine and shot it until it blew up. When it blew it sent out a ball of energy that pretty much destroyed all the reapers and what looked like all life on earth and all the relays. Joker was flying his butt off to get away, but the Normandy gets sucked into the energy release.
The scene then cut to a crashed Normandy on a jungle planet and the camera focuses on the door and the door opens then it cuts to the credits so you never see who or what is coming out the door.
After skipping the credits there was a scene with a man and young kid walking through a snowy landscape on a planet that has two other planets in the sky and the man is telling the kid about "The Shephard" and her heroics that happened "a long time ago" and the kid wonders if he someday will be able to venture out to the stars and the man tells him he will one day and will meet unusual cultures.
Then the screen goes black and I go to the main menu.
I thought it was a great ending and a friend of mine told me the ending he got and it was nothing like what he got.
You didn't receive the third option (red, blue, and green - no white) because your Effective Military Strength was not high enough. That's also why you didn't see anyone exit the Normandy after it crashed; no one survived. And, yes, you did kill all life on Earth due to that low EMS rating.
Mate, save for a few *minor* details, ALL the endings are essentially identical. Observe:-
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPelM2hwhJA[/yt]
Yeah, I take the view that the "it will kill the geth" bit was BS on the star child's part. So in my imaginary ending, the reapers die while EDI and the Geth live. I justify this view on the basis that the version presented in game it horrendously contrived.
I've started questioning that due to a tweet (I can't provide a link because I didn't keep it) from CM Jessica Merizan to another user - that EDI can walk out of the Normandy at the end on the Destroy ending because her technology was Reaper based rather than the body having been built with actual Reaper tech.
Naturally, that leads to wondering if the geth - with their new Reaper code - can be considered simply Reaper based, rather than Reaper tech, or if that new code means they will be targeted by the Crucible energy just like the Reapers themselves would be.
You really don't need to go into so much detail about what happened in your ending, all endings are functionally identical. We all saw the same cutscene for the most part no matter what choices we made throughout the trilogy.
No offence, but I think you're the first person on this forum to achieve the worst possible ending in their first playthrough.
I'm sorry to say that your friend is a liar, because (once again) all endings are near-identical.
There are huge problems with the ending. You may not have noticed them, and that's fine. You may have noticed them and decided they don't matter, and that's fine too. But the problems are there, there are a lot of them, and it doesn't take much digging at all to find them. Here's my big three issues with the ending if you're interesting in reading them.
Now that you mention it, you're right.
You don't have to hear about the synthesis nonsense, the Normandy running away from the shockwave makes sense, no crew members that were with you on Earth magically appear on a jungle planet with Joker, and there's no need for closure because everyone you cared about is dead. What's more, with a low EMS you get this awesome snippet during the fleet battle. More throught and effort seems to have gone into the worst ending than the space-magic synthesis solution which is supposedly the best.
This has nothing to do with the ending, but I can't be arsed to muck about with spoiler tags in the main ME3 thread, so I'll ask this here.
It's been bothering me for a while now, but exactly how much control did the reapers have over Cerberus and when? I mean it couldn't have been total right from the off because they wouldn't have been allowed to get as far as they did in Sanctuary, right? But on the other hand, what did the raid on Sur'kesh or the planetary defence cannons & turian bomb on Tuchanka have to do with their goals?
It just bothers me that they make a point to have Shepard ask a dying Cerberus trooper why they're there but it's never really addressed later. TIM even says in the recordings on Cronos station that Shepard's campaign has been a good distraction for the reapers, giving them the time they needed to develop their own indoctrination tech. If that's the case then why try to cripple the Krogan war machine?
Indeed, why even try to overthrow the council? What would that gain them? It's not like the other races would obey a Cerberus regime. It would make more sense in the coup attempt happened *after* sanctuary as at that point TIM would know the citadel is the catalyst AND they'd have a reliable indoctrination system with which to deal with the population.
Did the reapers co-opt a portion of Cerberus's forces without TIM knowing? Or did they have enough control over him to order those attacks without realising it wasn't his idea?
It's been bothering me for a while now, but exactly how much control did the reapers have over Cerberus and when? I mean it couldn't have been total right from the off because they wouldn't have been allowed to get as far as they did in Sanctuary, right? But on the other hand, what did the raid on Sur'kesh or the planetary defence cannons & turian bomb on Tuchanka have to do with their goals?
It just bothers me that they make a point to have Shepard ask a dying Cerberus trooper why they're there but it's never really addressed later. TIM even says in the recordings on Cronos station that Shepard's campaign has been a good distraction for the reapers, giving them the time they needed to develop their own indoctrination tech. If that's the case then why try to cripple the Krogan war machine?
Indeed, why even try to overthrow the council? What would that gain them? It's not like the other races would obey a Cerberus regime. It would make more sense in the coup attempt happened *after* sanctuary as at that point TIM would know the citadel is the catalyst AND they'd have a reliable indoctrination system with which to deal with the population.
Did the reapers co-opt a portion of Cerberus's forces without TIM knowing? Or did they have enough control over him to order those attacks without realising it wasn't his idea?
Of all the games, ME3 is the one that makes the least amount of sense, and that's even if you exclude the ending. Cerberus and their newfound superpower status one of the more baffling elements. When did TIM build an army? If he had that much resources why bother building the Normandy and resurrecting Shephard? It began to bug me to come across Cerberus at every single turn. And the coup attempt at the Citadel was the last straw.
TIM has been indoctrinated since before Cerberus was founded (per the comic miniseries with him, I forget the name).
I'd have to break out Final Hours again and check, but I thought the Citadel attack originally was later in the game. I guess Casey & Mac (again) didn't think things through enough when they brought it forward.
Yeah I know TIM was exposed to reaper tech in the 'Evolution' comics that took place right after Shanxi, but the indoctrination couldn't have been total. It would have had to have been gradual and only really taking full hold of him right at the end when he couldn't activate the crucible at achieve his plan.
It wouldn't surprise me to learn that certain things got shuffled about without much regard to plot logic, but there's still plenty that makes little sense no matter where you put it.
I wonder if at one point the structure of the game was much more like ME1 in that you could choose which order to do the main missions. It bothers me that I have to play over half the game before I get to see Tali or Ash/Kaiden again. It's not like there's a logical reason why the turian/salarian/krogan plot must be resolved before the quarian/geth one, is there?
The only reason I can think as to why they kept things so linear is that it cut down on the amount of extra dialogue they'd have to write and record. Mostly anything Tali, Ash or Kaiden might have to say on the earlier missions.
It wouldn't surprise me to learn that certain things got shuffled about without much regard to plot logic, but there's still plenty that makes little sense no matter where you put it.
I wonder if at one point the structure of the game was much more like ME1 in that you could choose which order to do the main missions. It bothers me that I have to play over half the game before I get to see Tali or Ash/Kaiden again. It's not like there's a logical reason why the turian/salarian/krogan plot must be resolved before the quarian/geth one, is there?
The only reason I can think as to why they kept things so linear is that it cut down on the amount of extra dialogue they'd have to write and record. Mostly anything Tali, Ash or Kaiden might have to say on the earlier missions.
If you waited to rescue the turians, the reapers would finish exterminating them before you could rescue the primarch...
You could say the same thing about why Mass Effect 2 is so linear, and they did record all that dialogue, at least for Legion.
It was probably a deliberate design chose to do the same thing this time.
In theory, sure, but there's no real sense of the passage of time during these games. In ME1, the *only* thing that's affected by choosing to do certain missions later than others is a few (very funny) lines of dialogue from Liara if you leave her till last. Doesn't make any difference if you leave Feros or Noveria till last, Benezia still arrives a few days (?) ahead of you regardless and the Zhu's Hope colonists are no worse off for waiting longer for rescue than if you turned up right after leaving the Citadel.
In ME2 you at least have some leeway in that you can recruit your first four (?) team mates before Horizon automatically kicks in and again later with the collector ship. But in ME3, there's only one linear path to follow, the only choice you have is to *not* do certain side missions at all because they expire at certain points. Which, lets be honest isn't much of a choice at all.
You could say the same thing about why Mass Effect 2 is so linear, and they did record all that dialogue, at least for Legion.
Which is exactly what made me wonder. Did someone look at the volume of cut content and tally up how much money they wasted on it? Was the decision made early on to restrict narrative freedom and choice in the name of budget control?
And you know, I would have been OK with it had there been an perceivable passage of time. Nothing as restricting as a calender, or a day counter, but just a mention in dialogue at certain points to indicate how long you've been at this so far. As it stands I can't tell if the fight in London takes place a few weeks, months or a full year after fleeing Earth.
Another oddity about Cerberus was their determination to kill Shephard? Um, why? I gave their 'man' the damn collector base and was with him all along with his quest to make humans the all conquering race. And for no reason at all he wants me dead!
That's gratitude for you...
A. Chronology
I know from the Alliance News Network that the war began in September and lasted into October. As the ANN is not being updated, I don't know if the war ends in October or continues past October.
In the game itself, I know that when I talk with Joker after the mission on Thessia that Tiptree was attacked two weeks ago.
Known Timeline:
* Sept. 21, 2186 Article about Batarian Refuges
* Sept. 28, 2186 Article about the Primarch addressing the turian people on the need to prepare for war with the Reapers
* Oct. 5, 2186 Turian fleet defeated in the Mactare system
According to the twitter account,
* Earth was attacked before Sept, 28
* the Reapers attacked the asari before Oct. 5
B. Allusions to Novels and Comics
There is a trend I really dislike. This is where key characters and story arcs are introduced in comics and books, and if I don't have the means (financial or time) or access to these materials, as a player I am left confused as to who this person is or what the characters are referring to.
As an example, who is Paul Grayson? For a new player, who has not read the novels, this is a character that they don't know. He is briefly mentioned in video logs in Cronus Station and in an audio log by Henry Lawson on Horizon. The references to his character allude to events in the novels. There is no codex to explain this character, and no other character refers to him. I know about him because I have access to the Mass Effect wiki.
I feel this is poor storytelling. How hard would it be to flesh out this character in the game for a player who is new to the franchise? I shouldn't have to be choose between being ignorant or going to a website to find out about this character. Not everyone has access to the internet, or knows about the novels and comics.
I feel that the writing in the first game was stronger, and that the writers were cognizant that not every player would know the backstory as told in the novels and comics. For example, if Commander Shepard speaks with Anderson, the player is given the Cliff Notes version of what happened on Camala. If the player is interested, they can buy a novel which goes into greater detail on this event.
I know from the Alliance News Network that the war began in September and lasted into October. As the ANN is not being updated, I don't know if the war ends in October or continues past October.
In the game itself, I know that when I talk with Joker after the mission on Thessia that Tiptree was attacked two weeks ago.
Known Timeline:
* Sept. 21, 2186 Article about Batarian Refuges
* Sept. 28, 2186 Article about the Primarch addressing the turian people on the need to prepare for war with the Reapers
* Oct. 5, 2186 Turian fleet defeated in the Mactare system
According to the twitter account,
* Earth was attacked before Sept, 28
* the Reapers attacked the asari before Oct. 5
B. Allusions to Novels and Comics
There is a trend I really dislike. This is where key characters and story arcs are introduced in comics and books, and if I don't have the means (financial or time) or access to these materials, as a player I am left confused as to who this person is or what the characters are referring to.
As an example, who is Paul Grayson? For a new player, who has not read the novels, this is a character that they don't know. He is briefly mentioned in video logs in Cronus Station and in an audio log by Henry Lawson on Horizon. The references to his character allude to events in the novels. There is no codex to explain this character, and no other character refers to him. I know about him because I have access to the Mass Effect wiki.
I feel this is poor storytelling. How hard would it be to flesh out this character in the game for a player who is new to the franchise? I shouldn't have to be choose between being ignorant or going to a website to find out about this character. Not everyone has access to the internet, or knows about the novels and comics.
I feel that the writing in the first game was stronger, and that the writers were cognizant that not every player would know the backstory as told in the novels and comics. For example, if Commander Shepard speaks with Anderson, the player is given the Cliff Notes version of what happened on Camala. If the player is interested, they can buy a novel which goes into greater detail on this event.
You know, I had my own theory as to why Cerberus was against everyone in ME3 before the real game killed it faster than a Mass Relay jump across the street. Let me try and set this up.
In the four-issue Omega/Aria comic, Cerberus wanted the Omega station. Why, it wasn't explained. Could be that they wanted a more convenient way to access the Collector Base, but what if Shepard destroyed the Collector Base? Than I started thinking.
TIM's goal is indeed to fight the Reapers, but he also has a goal to ensure humanity's dominance of the galaxy. No second place, no seat on the council. He wants humanity in charge of everything in the whole galaxy. So, what better way to ensure that by giving humanity a way to survive the Reaper invasion? How? Where? The center of the galaxy. Thanks to Shepard destroying the collector base (or not), Cerberus now has access to that dangerous region of space. With it's massive black holes and only one relay to safely reach them (which they could destroy), they can outlast the invasion. And when the Reapers are done destroying all advanced forms of life and leave the galaxy, Cerberus' humanity will have 50,000 years to prepare for the next Reaper invasion. And any race that becomes advanced enough to use the relays will be subject to Cerberus' rule.
This would explain why Cerberus is fighting Shepard and the other races of the galaxy non-stop. They're trying to stop them from getting the upper hand on the Reapers. If Shepard and the rest of the galaxy can actually stop the Reapers, Cerberus knows that the chances for Humanity to be the dominant force in the galaxy will be gone.
This would have actually made TIM "intelligent" in his cold, calculating ways of achieving his goals, instead of being a blind, stupid puppet in the end. Remember how BioWare said they wanted his greatest ability to be his intelligence? Well, how can that be a factor if he's not even the one in charge?
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