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Mass Effect 3 *SPOILERS THREAD* • Page 3

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  • redcrayon 13 Mar 2012 12:30:54 4,340 posts
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    I can see why they thought a short ending was more dramatic, but maybe they could have had the aftermath stuff running as text during the credits.

    To be honest, that would be more important to me than seeing Shepherd live/die, or even the relays blowing up.

    I just wanted to see what effect my decisions had on the fleets, who lived and who died, but it was all just made irrelevant and dumped me out of the game without answering any of my questions. Not only that, the stuff it did show was bizarre, with no explanation of what the Normandy was trying to do, or how the squad got back on board. Having the same ending sections (relays explode, normandy crashes) for each choice just make it seem even more arbitrary.

    And yes, the Quarians and Turians can't eat human food, so they all starve. And Wrex never gets to go home and see his kids that we fought for so long for him to be able to have. I just thought that my decisions regarding the Genophage and the Geth would have more impact, but really they meant nothing at all.

    Edited by redcrayon at 12:31:53 13-03-2012
  • StackMonkey 13 Mar 2012 12:38:03 120 posts
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    @redcrayon

    Absolutely,the entire series was built around the concept of your decisions having impact, which up until the ending they did in all honesty. Then thrown away in that last scene,strange indeed.

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  • redcrayon 13 Mar 2012 13:02:53 4,340 posts
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    It's utterly bizarre, the game itself, the desperate atmosphere, everything about it up to the last 10 minutes was just amazing.

    I loved the risk/reward of the reapers hunting you while you scanned planets, the alien noise they make as the enter the system was a good shout too. Normally I don't like shooters, but the sheer variety of opponents, powers, ammo and weapon types just made it fantastic.

    The cut scenes were good, the one with Garrus where you both go up to the top of the citadel to shoot at cans with sniper rifles was just brilliant, subtle character development. He goes from being full of doubt and thoughts of revenge at the start of ME2 to chilling out and becoming comfortable with everything he's achieved in helping the Turians and you kill reapers, and the dialogue

    Garrus- 'there used to be lots of regulations saying you couldn't come up here'
    Shephard- 'did they relax them or something?'
    Garrus- 'No. Now I just don't give a damn.'

    while cheesy, was just perfectly suitable for the grizzled, scarred old ex-C-sec cop that he is. It said more about friendship between characters meaning something than a hundred JRPG teens ever could.

    Having seen characters like him and Liara grow over the games, it's moments like that that made me want to see what happened to them at the end, regardless of what happened to Shephard.

    Damn it for being an RPG that made me give a crap about some of the characters! ;-)
  • MattyB2007 13 Mar 2012 13:05:53 2,642 posts
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    Is it ever stated how long it takes to get somewhere without the relays? I do think it's reasonable to say they could get back home in a few years ala how long it took the reapers to get wherever after the Arrival DLC.

    I also think all the options allow for shep to come back. 2 of them are effectively him ascending and the other he technically lives and being a bit of a Stargate fan, one of the characters in that ascends but can give himself a human body again if so wished. Wishful thinking maybe and highly unlikely but I can live in hope!

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  • StackMonkey 13 Mar 2012 13:22:28 120 posts
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    @redcrayon

    "I am Garrus Vakarian and this is my favourite spot on the citidel"

    Brilliant :) It's the small touches like that, the in-jokes, that really make it great.

    Is those touches that's endeared me to the series, likewise regardless of what happens to Shepard, It's nice to know what happened to the rest.

    I read lot's of Sci-fi, I can only think of a few authors that can draw me into their books the way that mass effect did, Alistair Reynolds, Neal Asher, etc

    Peter F Hamilton, Nights Dawn Trilogy is the one closest to the ME stories, I'm sure it influenced it in some way.

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  • redcrayon 13 Mar 2012 13:32:44 4,340 posts
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    Yeah, humour counts for a lot- it certainly made Garrus feel more human than most of the human cast, especially his banter with Tali and Shephard.

    Loved this exchange from ME2, roughly quoted from memory-

    Shephard- 'I hate fighting through this area'
    Garrus- 'Some areas are fun to fight through'
    Shephard' 'which ones?'
    Garus- 'Hospitals. And antique stores. But only if they're classy.'

    It's just deadpan, riffs on the fact that he's fought through far too many corridors, and really good writing.

    Why was that level of characterisation and motivation not available for the spacechild thing? It's reason to destroy us all wasn't anywhere near as good as Saren, and as it only appeared as a human child thing as a cheap tug at the emotions, didn't have the creeping menace and 'we're here to absorb you all' imposing alien power of Sovereign or Harbinger. It's a complete change in tone for just the last ten minutes.

    Edited by redcrayon at 13:39:10 13-03-2012
  • redcrayon 13 Mar 2012 13:36:57 4,340 posts
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    MattyB2007 wrote:
    Is it ever stated how long it takes to get somewhere without the relays? I do think it's reasonable to say they could get back home in a few years ala how long it took the reapers to get wherever after the Arrival DLC.
    yeah, true enough, good point. But that's not really the issue I have with the ending, it's the lack of resolution for characters other than Shephard, when the series went a long way to get you invested in their motivations, which thus makes your decisions a bit pointless when you can't see the results.

    A 15-minute montage at the end, or after the credits, for people who care about that stuff after 100 hours of games would have been nice.
  • marmaduke 13 Mar 2012 13:38:07 3 posts
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    Great game, dreadful ending. Posted the gist of this elsewhere, but in summary:

    They didn't need to explain the Reapers at all- they'd more or less already done that. Reapers turn up every 50,000 years and harvest everyone in order to reproduce. That's what they do. They're evil. I'm fine with that.

    So why does The Architect from The Matrix turn up and tell you that he built Agent Smith because organic creatures just can't get on with synthetic creatures? Firstly, this is a totally unnecessary layer to the story. Secondly, this generates more questions that it answers. Thirdly, why isn't Harbinger telling me this? That would be far cooler. And lastly, what are you talking about?

    I've got the Geth and the Quarians to get along, and it's even been explicitly stated earlier in the game that the Geth aren't inherently violent. EDI seems perfectly nice now too- she's even got a boyfriend! In fact, the only machines that I've met that I haven't got on with are the Reapers. And you built them. Perhaps you've just had a bad experience?

    But there's no way of saying this, or anything else. Half the game has been about talking to people and persuading them of things, so why can't you do it here? It's wildly incongruous. Shepard just has to accept the bullshit and limp very, very slowly towards an ending, all of which involve the destruction of the mass relays. And if you've played Arrival, you'll know that destroying a mass relay also destroys everything in the solar system in which they're housed.

    So pretty much everyone dies anyway.

    But! If you've got the military strength (4000 - 5000), the 'destroy synthetics' ending features Shepard in the rubble, alive, back on earth, and wearing her armour again. So was it all a dream?

    If it was, that's officially the laziest trope of all time. But it also means that they might change the ending with some DLC. And if they do that, they'll probably charge for it.

    GG indeed.
    Is it ever stated how long it takes to get somewhere without the relays? I do think it's reasonable to say they could get back home in a few years ala how long it took the reapers to get wherever after the Arrival DLC.
    I think I saw someone say it was about 12 light years a day, which isn't too bad. Sadly, everyone's dead, so they're not going to be able to make the trip.

    Edited by marmaduke at 13:42:04 13-03-2012
  • redcrayon 13 Mar 2012 13:42:12 4,340 posts
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    marmaduke wrote:
    In fact, the only machines that I've met that I haven't got on with are the Reapers. And you built them.
    This should have been a viable response to the space-child-god-AI thing, even if only to point out how simplistic it's reasoning is.

    Seeing as the poor bloody Geth get abused again and again by the old machines, it's not as if you can say that there is an inherent, unavoidable conflict between synthetic and biological either- without the bloody reapers controlling them, we get along fine, it only took one guy 45 mins to sort the whole problem out by going 'hey, guys, everybody back off, stop this tit-for-tat destruction'. Which is the only way any stalemate, no matter the factions involved, can be resolved peacefully. Cerberus, and the Turian/Krogan war etc, are responsible for the death of far more organics than the Geth ever were.

    Edited by redcrayon at 13:47:49 13-03-2012
  • StackMonkey 13 Mar 2012 13:44:33 120 posts
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    Don't know?

    that's what's so strange, all that build up, all the planning the great VO work etc, just pissed away.

    In uniting the Geth and Quarians, you finally disprove the notion that synthetics and organics can't get along.

    I think everyone was hoping for at least an ending like the B5 Shadow war, where Shepard tells the Reapers to get the hell out of the galaxy after kicking their arse with the largest unified fleet ever assembled :)

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  • redcrayon 13 Mar 2012 13:52:45 4,340 posts
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    I would have been happy for Shephard, and whoever you chose to accompany him, to die fighting Harbinger, trying to buy time for another squad member of your choice to get into the light and get the citadel open.

    Reapers die.

    The end.

    why it needed to have 3 arbitrary choices, represented by anderson, TIM and Saren respectively, rather than a logical end to a huge military campaign is beyond me. it's almost like the writers aspired to suddenly make it about existential angst right at the end.

    If you took a vote amongst the races present, asking whether they wanted to all join and become the ultimate life form, Shephard to lead the Reapers, or whether they just wanted every bloody reaper dead, I'm sure they'd choose the latter!
  • StackMonkey 13 Mar 2012 14:22:02 120 posts
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    Hitler Plays Mass Effect 3

    LOL

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  • shamblemonkee 13 Mar 2012 15:20:47 13,508 posts
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    The start of the Battle for Earth really did remind me of B5s Shadow War it was bloody awesome.

    I do wish that one day a company would invest the time and resource to produce a story on this scale but with a branching story rather than an interwoven one. I wished that my renegade actions would let me take a different course rather than bringing me to the same point in a different way.

    It frustrated me also that Renegade was handled so poorly.. it should have been that renegade actions were bloodier ways of achieving the same result - the aria merc aspect was an example of a decent way to implement renegade actions but on the whole renegade just meant f*cking yourself over.
  • StackMonkey 13 Mar 2012 15:46:04 120 posts
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    The closest I can think in gaming terms is Skyrim,Fallout etc, real sandbox games.

    Eve online is the only thing I have ever played that's close to a full universe that's completely player driven and even that isn't perfect.

    Even going back to KOTOR, renegade/dark side never really works, the stories are too constrained, last game I played that was great to be a bad ass was Tie Fighter :-).

    Paragon = Shepard gets bad guy to shoot himself
    Renegade = Shepard shoots bad guy

    That's what a lot boils down to, there are some shocking revelations for going full retard, but as you say your just screwing yourself, by playing full on renegade, but all bioware games have had that issue.

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  • shamblemonkee 13 Mar 2012 15:57:20 13,508 posts
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    One thing i really did like was the missions that timed out, no longer can you pootle around as if the galaxy isn't at risk. Full marks for that.... those poor kids at the Grissom Academy, if i'd known it was the stuff Jack was on about in me2 before hand i might have gone :-o

    but again there's a minus to that, Jack randomly showed up in the later stages as an enemy?! she appeared, was dead in 2 seconds and then Liara pipes up, "was that Jack?" i hadn't even noticed before tshe mentioned so frantic was the fighting.



    I really, really enjoyed the series but it's been disheartening to see the focus and promise slowly discarded. ME3 as a speactacle has some stunning scenes andworked hard to continue to make you invest in the characters, full marks there. I think i'm just going to pretend it ended at the start of retaking earth battle and make up my own ending from there :D

    Edited by shamblemonkee at 16:00:39 13-03-2012
  • StackMonkey 13 Mar 2012 16:15:28 120 posts
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    Too true, I missed the Elcor rescue mission, that's a stunning scene with the Elcor ambassador, due to the time constraints, completely missed Thane too. Will start again I think.

    Actually there is one game I think of that does have a real good/bad mechanic, and that's Alpha Protocol a real gem of an RPG.

    It's definately been a great series apart from the last 15 minutes of ME3,
    That opening sequence of ME1 never gets old, it's stunning.

    ME3 just felt contrived and rushed when you compare it to the first two, not really a fitting end to a great trilogy.

    It felt like being rickrolled at the end, in fact i'd rather have Rick Astley singing at the top of the citadel than the current ending :-)

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  • hiddenranbir 13 Mar 2012 17:39:43 5,479 posts
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    Also another issue, all the war assets we build up...no -real- meaning to them for DA FINAL BATTLE.

    What use was it having Geth fleets or Quarian ones? or both? What impact did Krogan ground forces really have? What meaning behind some dude worth 25 points was there in the scheme of it all? I loved the metagame idea but it actually did nothing, really, did it?



    Also why was Normandy travelling through a relay? It should have been in the middle of a great big bloody space battle!


    Blah blah, stuff. fsadg. We've still got multiplayer. Last Stand gameplay, up for it?
  • Raz76 13 Mar 2012 18:09:09 69 posts
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    Sovereign: "There is a realm of existance so far beyond your own that you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign".

    Shepard: "Well, you exist to wipe out technologically advanced races every 50,000 years so machines don't wipe out organic life forever".

    Sovereign: "Oh."
  • crispyduckman 13 Mar 2012 18:17:19 1,824 posts
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    Wow, there's really a lot of hate on the ending. For me, this highlights an interesting difference between games and literature and an issue that narrative focused games have to consider.

    It seems like a lot of gamers who beat every mission and complete every task what to achieve the "best" possible outcome in narrative terms, where they rescue everyone and get to see the results of everything and loose ends tied up (I'm over simplifying to make a point here). On the other hand, literature rarely does that and doesn't have the same pressure to do so. So frequently heroes die and endings are left open for the reader to ponder.

    For me, the same issue arose in Heavy Rain in a different way. I essentially beat the game but was disappointed because I got the cheesy ending where everyone survived and lived happily ever after.

    Personally, I wouldn't have liked an ending to ME3 where I was told what actually happening to all the characters afterwards. I like knowing that there was a possibility that some or all of the team survived and I can just ponder on what the future for them will be like.

    On another note, yes, the story is full of holes. But, seriously, when is sci-fi like this ever not full of holes? It's just a pill you have to swallow and not think about too much. For example, what is meant by "synthetic" and if everything synthetic is destroyed does that include toasters and all man-made chemical compounds? Yeah, it's bollocks but no more bollocks than Marty McFly getting his parents back together to prevent being erased from existence in Back to the Future. Much like that trilogy, I enjoyed Mass Effect for the epic ride that it absolutely is.

    It's not a perfect game and I might not even give it 10/10 like EG but, in the context of my experience with ME1 and ME2, ME3 is just about my favorite video game of all time.

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  • Lamb 13 Mar 2012 18:52:10 363 posts
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    Controlling the reapers is the best way to go. Especially as you could use all that tech to do whatever you wanted to do. Clone yourself in a new organic/synthetic form, rebuild the relays, and keep the reapers as the policemen of the galaxy. Also give Joker back his legs and retire with the alien girls to a bikini island. :D
  • redcrayon 13 Mar 2012 18:52:52 4,340 posts
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    It's not that there wasn't a happy ending, it was that there was no closure.

    Not many sci-fi books end with 'he took the red pill. The end.'

    Interesting point about expectations of games vs books though- what do you think of the point that people's decisions play no effect in the ending, something that of course isn't relevant to books, but a fairly blatant failing in a role-playing game?
  • Raz76 13 Mar 2012 19:11:49 69 posts
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    "Yeah, it's bollocks but no more bollocks than Marty McFly getting his parents back together to prevent being erased from existence in Back to the Future."
    That's not a good analogy, Back to the Future is actually really well put together, everything that is presented in the first half has pay off in the second half, even small details.

    The problem with the ending is that it is stupid. Machines build machines to preserve organic life, because otherwise machines will inevetably destroy organic life. It is completely nonsensical. And it is inconsistant with the rest of the game and the rest of the series. Think about the Krogan-Salarian storyline and the Geth-Quarian storyline, and then consider how the ending completely contradicts the moral of these.

    The ending simply feels tacked on. It has the feel of something someone threw together at the last second.

    People will move on though, this is just a feeling of frustration after five years with the series to have it end like this,
  • crispyduckman 13 Mar 2012 19:31:15 1,824 posts
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    @redcrayon You're right in that your decisions don't affect the ending (apart from the obvious 1 in 3 decision). Bioware actually told us that would be the case before the game was out. They do affect the journey though and how events generally play out through the course of the 3 games. Considering that the narrative is, in my opinion, stronger than the ultra ridged (and considerably shorter) Uncharted trilogy, that alone is a pretty amazing achievement.

    PSN & XBL - crispyduckman

  • LionheartDJH 13 Mar 2012 19:35:15 18,731 posts
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    StackMonkey wrote:
    The thing that saddens me is that the ending was a kick in the teeth with the relays destroyed.
    Aye it is a bit crap that it happens in the other endings. I thought it was one of the major drawbacks of the Destroy one, races not being able to move across the galaxy, effectively setting things back for thousands of years, kinda like the Tracer Tong ending in Deus Ex, which made me not want to choose that option. Chose Synthesis and but the relays were destroyed anyway. Can't really paint it as a drawback for just one option when it happens in all of them.

    A wise man told me don't argue with fools
    Cause people from a distance can't tell who is who

  • crispyduckman 13 Mar 2012 19:48:19 1,824 posts
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    @Raz76 Yeah, my point was that BTTF is a brilliant story and superbly put together but it still has holes. We choose to ignore those holes because it's a well crafted masterpiece and the holes are largely irrelevant to the experience. I'm wondering why we're not doing the same with ME.

    I absolutely agree that none of the three endings make any sense but, to some degree, I think that's the nature of this type of sci-fi and they each work reasonably well in that context.

    PSN & XBL - crispyduckman

  • Raz76 13 Mar 2012 19:53:13 69 posts
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    @CD You can only ignore so much. Also we tend to overlook things if the rules are clealy laid out in the beginning of the fiction.

    To have space kid waltz in from stage left in the eleventh hour and put you into a choice situation that is at odds with the established story and disregarding of pretty much all you have done up to that point is simply going too far.
  • Lamb 13 Mar 2012 19:53:18 363 posts
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    Why is it stupid moving your conscious to a machine? In a way you are already doing it just by looking at a screen. Shepard has just ascended to a new form and you can use your imagination to consider the rest of the bits and piece if you choose or wait for the inevitable ME4, Reaper Galaxy Offsite Backup. :D

    Of course Stargate did a better job with acension.
  • crispyduckman 13 Mar 2012 19:56:12 1,824 posts
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    LionheartDJH wrote:
    StackMonkey wrote:
    The thing that saddens me is that the ending was a kick in the teeth with the relays destroyed.
    Aye it is a bit crap that it happens in the other endings. I thought it was one of the major drawbacks of the Destroy one, races not being able to move across the galaxy, effectively setting things back for thousands of years, kinda like the Tracer Tong ending in Deus Ex, which made me not want to choose that option. Chose Synthesis and but the relays were destroyed anyway. Can't really paint it as a drawback for just one option when it happens in all of them.
    I think story-wise they wanted to engender that sense of sadness but it also sticks with the "science-ish" part of science-fiction where civilisations, even as we know them, must eventually collapse and new civilisations are rebuilt.

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