Mass Effect 3

[LeadHead]

Here's my thing, I'd have no problem with the endings if they were part of a larger group if endings. Every once and awhile I like to do a "disaster" playthrough of ME2, where a lot of the team doesn't make it to give the game a different flavor. The endings of Mass Effect 3 were pretty much all for a "disaster" playthrough. There were missing pieces to the puzzle. Anyway, not to stay on that for too long, but with the idea of doing some of the after party things post ending, I can say something I haven't said since my first Mass Effect 3 playthrough: I'm looking forward to playing the ending. This is yet another reason why the dlc was so amazing.

 

[Angel4576]

Indeed. I have no problem with the endings other than that there's no balance. For my renegade playthrough, it's great. Spoilt for choice. Paragon-wise, it's deeply unsatisfying. They're just poor choices. Sacrifice is fine, but it's what goes alongside it that I don't like - Control, synthesis and destroy all have their problems.

And of course, the lack of a "win" ending just grates.

The endings are just too heavily biased towards depressing.

 

[LeadHead]

^ Precisely. So the destroy ending combined with the party dlc afterward and just not trusting what the starbrat told you about the destroy option can give a somewhat happy ending.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Another couple of scenes I enjoyed

Spoiler: Extra

The attempt to break Grunt out of hospital and all that follows.
Playing fetch with a frying pan - and Shep going head over heels.
Traynor's habit of borrowing Sheps shower/hot-tub
Beating Jacob at the arcades (You couldn't just give me one?)
The Normandy scene at the end
Joker after the comment that Shep would dance with EDI (It didn't help that Shep just stands there, arms folded and generally looking not amused

I like the Lancer, but it feels too overpowered. I replayed London with that and everything was going down easily

Lancer's a bit of a toughguy, but not nearly as much as the Harrier. Even on Insanity, I can take out a Banshee in, like, twenty seconds with a Harrier.

Lancer's a really good weapon for the biotic classes IMO. It's light enough and powerful enough to be your only weapon so you can pull off an insane number of charge-nova combinations, flying all over the battlefield like a can of ultra-condensed whupass. The Harrier is sort of this way too, but the extra weight and small capacity can potentially leave you screwed if you suddenly run into, like, four Ravagers in a row and then a Banshee shows up and you can't soften it up fast enough to kill it with a charge.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

For a game proclaiming that your choices mattered, and that you were able to shape your character over 5/6 years and 3 games, to come to the end and be presented with three shades of grey did not sit terribly well with me. I didn't particularly want a happy ending, until I realized that I couldn't have one, under any circumstances. For a game of ME's ilk and nature, all outcomes should have been possible on a sliding scale, and the decisions you made during the trilogy, during PE, and on the Citadel at the end all should all have factored into the outcome.

Casey told us prior to the game's release that we wouldn't be given an A, B, C ending - no, instead we got the red, blue, green ending. Yay!

I guess the easiest way is just to play Shepard as renegade. In that scenario you can't lose;

Control - Yes! Got myself control of the mighty Reaper war fleet, right let's take the armada to the nearest system so that they can pay homage.....or die.

Synthesis - Kerching - Space Hitler Shepard gets to create the new Master-race by space-raping all life in the galaxy via space magic.

Destroy - Win! <but there's a possibility that you might have to commit genocide against the Geth, and kill one of your own squad>

Refuse - Everyone dies. That'll teach them all for not believing Shepard until it was too late.

OTOH, Paragon Shepard is screwed.

I really don't see why they didn't just expand upon the high EMS destroy ending and show Shepard clearly surviving. Those who want a more upbeat ending can have one. Those that don't care, well just pick whichever one you want, there's plenty of misery to go around.

The reason is that BW know that Shepard surviving in one scenario is going to lead people to pick that scenario over their own pet ending - synthesis. Only trouble is, destroy is by far and away the most popular choice anyway, with synthesis being the least popular.

You and a lot of people missed one very important thing about Me3: the running theme through the entire story, in every mission -- even the Omega DLC, in fact -- is the redemption of heroes through self-sacrifice. Mordin (and possibly Bakara too) gets himself killed to cure the genophage (or doesn't, and agrees to screw over the Krogan for now). Legion sacrifices himself to give the Geth all intelligence (and maybe Tali kills herself if things end badly).

In the end, Shepard can either make the ultimate sacrifice to save everyone and make the world a better place (like Mordin, Kaiden/Ashley, Legion, Nyreen, etc) or he can screw over everyone and accomplish his mission and restore the status quo. That's really the choice you have: be a live soldier who accomplishes a mission or a dead martyr who changes the world.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Okay I'm not trying to get into anything but, this is something I never get. Why exactly is it a good thing that something you probably wouldn't use nor be forced to use that other people might want to use is not included in a game?

I mean I could see being annoyed if its something your forced to use but not if you can just ignore it.

I think it's largely a matter of perspective. If you're looking at Mass Effect purely as a game, it makes total sense to have several different endings, even lots and lots of endings, each of them very distinct in tone and intention. You play, and like in a game of chess, wherever the pieces end up is what the ending looks like, in a way.

That's not my perspective at all, in fact, I find it very unsatisfying, but it's perfectly valid and it's undoubtedly the prevalent point of view among gamers. In fact, that gamers may seen video games as games sounds like a tautology.

It is, however, self evident, that besides being a game, Mass Effect is also a narrative. It tells the story of Commander Shepard and his merry men fighting the threat of the Reapers. If you see Mass Effect as a narrative - a narrative that you can influence, a narrative with interactive gunfight - then it has to have proper characters, it has to have a proper tone, it has to have proper themes, it has to have a proper structure and it has to have a proper ending. In a narrative of any kind, the ending is where you make your point, it's where you wrap things up, it's where you state: "ok, this is what's important, this is what it was all about." The ending is what makes the difference between a comedy and a tragedy, it's the ultimate authorial statement.

If there is no ending, if all you have is, basically, a series of options, then you have no real narrative, then nothing is substantial, nothing has meaning, and instead of a story, you end up with a series of loosely connected events, which is what, for me, would have been deeply unsatisfying.

And you don't have to take my word for it, Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 both have proper endings, with lots of small variations, yes, but proper endings nonetheless without any wild tangents and variants and with a very deliberate authorial tone. I don't remember anyone complaining about that.

tl,dr: If ME3 is a game, the ending is not important and it could be anything the players want. If ME3 is a narrative, then the ending is important and offering too many options would be detrimental.

 

[Angel4576]

You and a lot of people missed one very important thing about Me3: the running theme through the entire story, in every mission -- even the Omega DLC, in fact -- is the redemption of heroes through self-sacrifice. Mordin (and possibly Bakara too) gets himself killed to cure the genophage (or doesn't, and agrees to screw over the Krogan for now). Legion sacrifices himself to give the Geth all intelligence (and maybe Tali kills herself if things end badly).

In the end, Shepard can either make the ultimate sacrifice to save everyone and make the world a better place (like Mordin, Kaiden/Ashley, Legion, Nyreen, etc) or he can screw over everyone and accomplish his mission and restore the status quo. That's really the choice you have: be a live soldier who accomplishes a mission or a dead martyr who changes the world.

Not missed, just recognition that it's one of a few competing themes. Sacrifice has always been a central theme throughout the series, it was only in ME3 that this became self-sacrifice. Of course the other great theme in the series is 'finding another way' - in fact this plays directly into the final choice - the Catalyst's solution won't work anymore by its own admission. It needs Shepard to shape the next solution, a better solution, to find another way of resolving its synthetics/organics problem.

This is where the choices idea falls down.

Shepard just accepts the Catalyst's options. Why can't Shepard argue that another way could be to retain the status quo, without the Reapers? Peace on Rannoch, if you've brokered it, puts a torpedo into the side of the Catalyst's argument that the chaos and destruction caused by organics and synthetics can't be resolved without their intervention.

Instead, you're press-ganged into going down the route of accepting the validity of the need for a 'solution'.

Personally, I'd rather have had the opportunity to argue the basis of the central premise of the 'problem', than being forced to buy into the logic of an intelligence that subscribes to the theory that the best way to preserve organic life from synthetics is to build some ultra-powerful synthetics that can then convert all organic life into synthetics.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

And you don't have to take my word for it, Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 both have proper endings, with lots of small variations,

Really I wouldn't consider Mass Effect 2 letting you kill off pretty much everyone a small variation.

Not to mention Mass effect letting you kill the council and have humanity take control of the galaxy is kind of a major thing.

And I don't get how allowing a player greater influence on the narrative of the game means there is no narrative. Last I checked the big thing about Mass Effect was letting your choices affect the story, at least until Mass Effect 3 came along and forced you into extremely limited choices.

 

[ATimson]

Really I wouldn't consider Mass Effect 2 letting you kill off pretty much everyone a small variation.

Not to mention Mass effect letting you kill the council and have humanity take control of the galaxy is kind of a major thing.

In-universe, they're big. But in the narrative as presented, they don't make much of a difference. It doesn't matter who the Council is in ME3. It doesn't matter which squad members you let die in the last two games - they'll have a replacement. It doesn't matter if you killed the rachni - they're magically back.

There's no substantial difference in the flow of the narrative based on your choices in the first two games. Or indeed even during the third.

 

[Angel4576]

This reminds me, people often talk about what the strongest armour is in the game - clearly it's Udina's plot armour. The guy's impervious....well,

Spoiler: Udina

until the Citadel coup!

Re the narrative - comparing ME2 and ME3 is erroneous though. ME2 had to keep things fairly tight at the end so as to make things easier for canonization into ME3. ME3 is the end of Shepard's story, and as such is much freer from such restraints.

 

[ATimson]

On a completely different subject, I think I just remembered what I thought their missed chance in the Citadel DLC was. That, or you can tell me I missed it.

Spoiler: Citadel

Why didn't Shepard need to go through decontamination when boarding the Normandy, for old time's sake?

 

[Angel4576]

On a completely different subject, I think I just remembered what I thought their missed chance in the Citadel DLC was. That, or you can tell me I missed it.

Spoiler: Citadel

Why didn't Shepard need to go through decontamination when boarding the Normandy, for old time's sake?

No, I don't think you missed it.

Didn't mind going through during the main game as you could always eavesdrop on what the two guards were saying.

 

[Angel4576]

BW said that we could headcanon the end of the game. This is how mine went....

Win.

 

[LeadHead]

That would work better if he were in starbrat form, in this case it just makes the case against renegade interupts if children are within 100 yards.

 

[RyuRoots]

That would work better if he were in starbrat form, in this case it just makes the case against renegade interupts if children are within 100 yards.

You mean the case *for*. Even in the beginning of the game, I hated the little snot. FEEL SORRY FOR ME BECAUSE I AM A CHILD. YOU CAN TELL THIS IS TRAGIC BECAUSE SAD MUSIC IS PLAYING.

 

[Jeyl]

That would work better if he were in starbrat form, in this case it just makes the case against renegade interupts if children are within 100 yards.

You mean the case *for*. Even in the beginning of the game, I hated the little snot. FEEL SORRY FOR ME BECAUSE I AM A CHILD. YOU CAN TELL THIS IS TRAGIC BECAUSE SAD MUSIC IS PLAYING.

Freaking A. This kid was terrible right from the start because he defeats the very purpose as to what this game should have been about. The culmination of events that the entire series has been leading towards. Having Shepard's emotions focus primarily on this kid does the series a disservice because he's only unique to this installment. It's like if Return of the King introduced another character for Frodo to interact who dies thanks to Sauron and that becomes Frodo's motivation for wanting to finish his quest. You shouldn't do that when there are already plenty of reasons for Shepard to fight!

 

[Thestral]

I'll never understand that complaint. The kid was obviously a symbol for the straw that broke Shepard's emotional back, his/her feelings of helplessness about what's happening on Earth and to humans in general. All the guilt and the fear about humanity's fate crystallized into the form of one helpless (dead) kid that Shepard couldn't save - just like the planet that was falling when Shepard watched the kid die - in a way that nobody else we'd met before would fit.

 

[Reverend]

Yeah, as much as I dislike the endings, having the child at the beginning makes perfect sense. It's basically like that bit in 'Schindler's List' where he sees amidst the chaos in the streets, this one little girl in a bright red coat wandering through it all, untouched and unnoticed by anyone else...then later in the film the coat reappears on a pile of bodies.

 

[LeadHead]

Agreed, I felt it was very appropriate to see the human cost right away in the game. It was also a great branching off point for character development. A paragon could easily become much more renegade after that.

 

[ATimson]

Agreed, I felt it was very appropriate to see the human cost right away in the game. It was also a great branching off point for character development. A paragon could easily become much more renegade after that.

Whereas a renegade (or a pragmatic paragon) will be going "what the heck is this? My Shepard isn't haunted by these strange dreams. WTF, Bioware?"

Spoiler: ME3 ending

When you get to the end, you can write it off as the Star Child indoctrinating Shepard, but until then it just seems like it's breaking character.