Mass Effect 3!

LostProvidence said:
I love ME2, too, don't get me wrong, but I think ME3 was better in pretty much everyway (though I liked the atmosphere of Omega a lot). Bioware just keeps outdoing themselves with every sequel.
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I LOVED OMEGA! Hopefully there will be a ME3 DLC where you take back Omega with Aria T´Lok!
 
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LostProvidence said:
I love ME2, too, don't get me wrong, but I think ME3 was better in pretty much everyway (though I liked the atmosphere of Omega a lot). Bioware just keeps outdoing themselves with every sequel.
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To each their own, I felt ME2 was the better experience though. I liked how they brought back team mate banter for ME3 and made npc's recognize each other (I always thoght it was strange how you could march garrus up to wrex in me2 and he wouldn't so much as say "Vakarian.") but other than that, when it came to narrative and the sheer amount of stuff to do ME2, I feel, was better in every way. I particularly liked how many nice set peices we had, like the proving for grunt, the skyscraper battle or anything involving Miranda's ass. And even though a lot of new characters and settings were introduced, you got to know them all pretty well thanks to the quality of the narrative. ME3's ending was so bad to me that it retroactively made the other games that much worse. To the point i don't even want to play my alts anymore.

I mean what does it matter that the Krogan (for example) will be active in galactic politics again if the galactic community no longer exists? If everyone is stranded by themselves or worse yet if their home systems were destroyed? What do any of the krogan related choices matter then? "Oh maybe they'll be a threat to the universe", stranded on their rock? Let's not forget that the shroud was supposed to be the only thing keeping temperatures on Tuchanka livable and it was DESTROYED.

That ending man... that ending. It could not have been the product of a healthy mind with ample time on it's hands.

 
Indoctrination theory or not, Bioware made a massive marketing mistake by shipping the game with a half-assed ending. I'll be happy if the proposed dlc ending addon remains faithful to the game and is sensible at the very least, indoctrination or no, but there will still be pissed fans regardless.

I don't know, I feel even more attached and yet detached with ME3 as compared to ME2. The main arcs are just so epic and engrossing, I'm not sure if spoilers are allowed but I'll just say the endings to each "chapters" consist of some of the most emotionally intense choices and cutscenes I've seen in any game. Yet the rest of the sidequests feel like they're just there so that you can shoot things and earn points. And then there're those "explore this system and find XXX artifact/fleet/technology" quests in Citadel. There's barely any relation to the plot at all.

Graphics-wise, of course ME3 steals the show (I can't help but look around in the missions at Earth and Menae, the views were simply breathtaking), and the OST and gameplay are better than ever, though I wish the ME2-only characters in ME3 had more significant roles to play. Three of them are integral to the main plot, but the rest suddenly, coincidentally, just materialize at the most obscure reaches of the galaxy you travel to. C'mon, it takes light a 100000 years to get from a system to another, yet you somehow happen to bump into your chums at every turn of your journey. Jacob, is that you?! Fuck yeah!.... wait, how did you end up here too?

Absurdity aside, I don't particularly have a problem with that, but after aiding them they just become numerical additions to your collective war chest and nothing more. If they are fated to be your partners in crime to the very end, at least I want to see them actually fighting the final battle alongside each other. Better yet, have at least 1 ME2 character in your team. I don't want my glorious suicide squad who I took painstaking measures to keep alive to simply dissipate after having completed our epic mission against the collectors.

Whew, if you've come this far, thanks for reading this wall of text that might as well have been a review. Anyway, I would rate ME3 at the same level as ME2 if not for the closure which just fizzles out. Here's hoping that that ending DLC arrives soon!
 
Whatever you do... don't shoot the kid. I know you want to, because it's customary. But don't. They know you hate the kid and they will punish you for slighting their ridiculous egos. Welcome to having to sit though 30 minutes of unskippable cinematics and conversations again.
 
lmao those endings were "better" to say the least but it still kinda... left a foul taste in my mouth xD. I think they dropped the ball really and it still hard to "fix" those endings when it already happened but they at least tried. However, the refusal ending was basically bioware saying "f u" everyone died LOL.
 
Just watched the endings.

New endings don't really offer anything new. You see your crew escape and then each has the same slideshow with different effects and narration depending on the endings you chose.

Control: Shepard, now the new Catalyst, gives a speech about how he/she will essentially be the new babysitter of the universe. Slideshow depicts random characters and a tribute to the fallen
Synthesis: EDI gives a little speech and the people depicted in the slideshow have green eyes.
Destroy: Admiral Hackett gives a generic speech about making your own choices, etc. etc.

Oh yes and the secret 4th ending

Rejection: You are now given dialogue options to say "fuck you" to the Catalyst's logic. If you select the new refusal dialogue, the Catalyst says in a demonic voice "SO BE IT!" and leaves. The cycle continues and the Reapers wipe out all life in the universe while you can do nothing but watch as you die. Liara leaves a message behind and in the end a new female Stargazer says that with the help of that they were victorious in the new cycle.

You also get this ending by shooting the Catalyst, proving that BioWare is obviously pissed at people for bitching about the endings and making them do more work.

In short, this series and its ending is still shitty, just slightly not at shitty as before.
 
Not everyone will accept the extended endings, even more so since so many have already invested into the idea of the indoctrination theory. They aren't spectacular in any sense of the word. But at least they provide closure and are coherent, most importantly. Joker and the Normandy suddenly fleeing from a RGB-color explosion in the midst of battle was a huge WTF, thank god it's addressed.
 
I'm actually kinda glad it wasn't the indoctrination theory, that whole idea kinda left a sour taste in my mouth.
 
I'd say the extended endings are about 50% better. They're not all the way where I would have liked them but there's some improvement. I'm just gonna run down my thoughts on the good and bad in no organized fashion.

What's better? We get a peek at the future with the citadel repaired and positioned above earth with London apparently the new capitol of the universe. It's nice to see that the damage can and will be repaired and that the galaxy that we unified will remain unified. It's also nice to see that everyone isn't stranded in orbit above the earth, starving to death. Those are good things. How everyone manages to get home from the rendezvous point when the relays are destroyed and apparently zip around the universe at will still is a mystery that annoys me, but that is a minor quibble. I'm just happy to see that the galactic community remains a community. Speaking of the rendezvous point, in the least Joker has a reason for leaving the battle however contrived.

I also like that the slides shown before Shepard's choice unfold reflect the player's decisions a little better. Destroying the Reapers shows me Anderson, my deceased friend who's will was being carried out, EDI who would die thanks to the action, and Miranda who was my character's love interest. Much better than the old bottled slides from before. I used to wonder "Why would Liara flash before my character's eyes and not his love interest?" Seemed a middle finger to the ME2 characters.

I have mixed emotions on a lot of other things. I liked that they made some attempt to justify why my teammates are suddenly back on the Normandy. In my case my best bud Garrus got some heartfelt extra dialogue and wanted to say good bye about as much as I did. But if the Normandy can just slip in and out right under Harbinger's nose why don't they just take me to the beam? It seems like they could probably get me there in one piece. If anything I have to wonder why they don't help with Harbinger? The Normandy has to have more firepower and maneuverability than anything left in Hammer.

I wish the Mass effect 2 characters got more dialogue. I get to see slides of the ME2 characters, but they don't tell me a lot. Miranda staring at a sunrise is no kind of epilogue, it tells me nothing. Sure it's nice to know they're alive but I want to know what happens to them. For that matter if you choose the destroy option and have the ridiculous amount of war resources and readiness required to ensure Shepard's survival you still get NO information on what becomes of Shepard. In every other ending it's clear what happened to Shepard, he's died. The control ending paints a clear picture of what's become of him. All you're left with if he lives is half a breath and a hundred questions, the same as before. And what happened to everyone on the citadel? Would it have been too much to commit to an epilogue? I guess it's impossible to actually give me answers or a fulfilling sense of victory. Speaking of both, why not a slideshow that gives me some specifics on what happened to the people and places I'd come to know in the course of the series? It's not like bioware hasn't done this sort of thing before.


The endings were fleshed out a little more, but for me there's still nothing but mystery. Bioware will probably hide behind the old "you can't please everyone" line, but that's no comfort for me. They didn't even try for me. And what's more as little as the slides give us for mass effect 2 characters, there's still nothing about what becomes of the Mass Effect 3 characters. Other than the fact they're all still hanging out on the same ship together, about to put my name on the Normandy memorial when they make an ambiguous face and look up to the sky.

There's no showdown with Harbinger still, and while I appreciate the extra explanations and learning the Catalyst's origins as an AI gone mad his logic is still retarded. There's no telling him his logic is flawed or that his solutions are unnecessary as organics and AI's have already made peace (provided that you know, you made peace). I do kind of appreciate that you can lose now, but losing because you pass on the bullshit options provided to you leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth. While Shepard seems to have grown a spine and gotten a little more clever he still doesn't ask the first question that pops into my mind. The whole things stinks of lazy, bad writing and a hamhanded forced exercise in Hegelian Dialectics. Just what are those? Allow Caesar of Fallout New Vegas to explain it to you in this video. Strap in and prepare for a LOL when the magic word hits you.

Destruction vs Control- Synthesis.
Organics vs Synthetics- Synthesis.

I can't reject the mediation because that breaks the formula. I am therefore forced to commit to the process ONLY and for the SOLE purpose of creating a sublation. In this case, the form of the universe Bioware wishes to use for it's next game, which by funneling my outcomes and denying me specifics looks a bit like everyone else's.

I think the experience of dragon age II is responsible for Mass effect 3's ending more than anything else. Bioware had a direction they wanted to go in, but left the options too open in dragon age one and ended up upsetting a lot of people when their choices became invalidated in the sequel. So what did they do this time? Upset us now to pave the way for their sequel. I just hope somewhere in the details of that sequel I get the closure I wanted for the first story but I doubt it. There will probably never be a wedding or a medal ceremony or anything of the like. They'll probably jump the story a hundred years into the future and I'll never get to see my favorite characters happy for the sake of creating a cash cow. But if my Shepard lives, then damn it just let me know what happened to him afterwards. Since the vast majority of endings kill him off though, It seems unlikely I'll ever know.
 
You couldn't have worded it better. ME3 is what happens when a company makes money from a open ended world.

I think i'll just play ME3 for multiplayer and revisit the old games for my characters. (...sad that Javik is in 3, in that light.)
 
I'm likely settling for pittance, but I'm honestly happy with the endings, largely because because they actually make sense to me now. Many nagging little details concerning wtf everyone was doing were addressed, and the extra scenes just make the ending all the more coherent. A lack of actual variation and closure beyond explosion colours for the original endings was inexcusable, but I suppose it's better late than never.

To be honest, it's probably thanks to the fact that my dad and my brother have been the ones who invested into the game's story for me (I've only ever played multiplayer for anything longer than a few hour thanks to crippled gaming attention span) with youtube and wikis filling in the holes, that I can settle with these new endings so readily. =P
 
To be honest, watched the extended endings. I think they are great for a sort of clarification of what actually happens when you make your choice rather than the old endings where its "a whole new world" just with a different colour.

But its like ordering a sandwich where they offer more cheese but you dont like cheese. Kinda. I guess.
 
I think everyone should be appreciative of these new endings...shitty or not shiity or heck even may be slightly better atleasts it's better than them NOT doing anything at all...And would of left us in the dark even further. Now the best DLC that happen for me now would be if project soul did a remake of the story mode...better story mode! ha would be awesome.....
 
Seems like it might be risky to bring this all up again... but damnit, I really want to!

I just finished ME3, managing to avoid all significant spoilers except for "OMG the ending is terrible".

Can I ask... why did people hate the ending?

I did have the DLC ending already when I finished the game, and I thought it was fine, so I went online to see where the game would have stopped without the DLC...

...and it was no different?!?!?
The whole 3 choice decision thing on the spaceship was awesome. It was a brilliant way to end the trilogy. And the more I read about people hating on it, the more I think about it, and I am more and more convinved that it was an unbelievably clever and satisfying way to end the story. Why did people hate it?

A second thing... obviously everyone has their own story and will have different interpretations of it all... but why is Indoctrination proposed as a Theory? Were there only a tiny handful of people who thought they were being indoctrinated? I don't always get the meaning of stuff when I'm watching films etc., in fact a lot of the time I miss stuff, but I figured before the final choice that maybe the Star Kid Reaper was trying to indoctrinate me and I should not listen to what he says. There were an absolute abundance of clues that this was happening. And the fact that you still have to think about it to get it made it just mind-blowingly awesome.

So, yeah, I really don't get the massive backlash Bioware suffered as a consequence of the ending. For me it was one of the best endings ever. If anyone wants to explain why it was bad, please do.
 
Age_of_Truth said:
Seems like it might be risky to bring this all up again... but damnit, I really want to!

I just finished ME3, managing to avoid all significant spoilers except for "OMG the ending is terrible".

Can I ask... why did people hate the ending?

I did have the DLC ending already when I finished the game, and I thought it was fine, so I went online to see where the game would have stopped without the DLC...

...and it was no different?!?!?
The whole 3 choice decision thing on the spaceship was awesome. It was a brilliant way to end the trilogy. And the more I read about people hating on it, the more I think about it, and I am more and more convinved that it was an unbelievably clever and satisfying way to end the story. Why did people hate it?

A second thing... obviously everyone has their own story and will have different interpretations of it all... but why is Indoctrination proposed as a Theory? Were there only a tiny handful of people who thought they were being indoctrinated? I don't always get the meaning of stuff when I'm watching films etc., in fact a lot of the time I miss stuff, but I figured before the final choice that maybe the Star Kid Reaper was trying to indoctrinate me and I should not listen to what he says. There were an absolute abundance of clues that this was happening. And the fact that you still have to think about it to get it made it just mind-blowingly awesome.

So, yeah, I really don't get the massive backlash Bioware suffered as a consequence of the ending. For me it was one of the best endings ever. If anyone wants to explain why it was bad, please do.
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I honestly thought it was too much of a deus ex machina at first, but I finally embraced it and actually appreciate the ending now.
 
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