This unlock stuff is beginning to get to me. 2 pistol unlocks (1 new, 1 upgrade) all week, no +capacity upgrades and no Asari Adept either, yet I have an assortment of almost maxed out assault rifles and a few sniper rifles of various levels.
The guys talking about decoy are right. It's so good. Just had a match where nobody had a friggin clue and was dieing to banshees and brutes all the damn time. Decoy saved our asses so many times. Loving Salarian engi now.
Banshee
- No weak points (aim for the belly, as it's fattest - most likely to hit it)
Brute
- Takes reduced damage in the right arm
- Takes greatly reduced damage in the claw
- Armour Plates absorb damage until breaking (best to aim for exposed flesh, probably base of the neck?)
- No other weak points
Geth Prime
- Currently has a head volume (but it's a bug)
Atlas
- Some types of weapons will do increased damage to the cockpit (this is a bug)
- Destroy any of the following to do a small damage spike (shoulder flanges, groin plate, knee plates)
Banshee
- No weak points (aim for the belly, as it's fattest - most likely to hit it)
Brute
- Takes reduced damage in the right arm
- Takes greatly reduced damage in the claw
- Armour Plates absorb damage until breaking (best to aim for exposed flesh, probably base of the neck?)
- No other weak points
Geth Prime
- Currently has a head volume (but it's a bug)
Atlas
- Some types of weapons will do increased damage to the cockpit (this is a bug)
- Destroy any of the following to do a small damage spike (shoulder flanges, groin plate, knee plates)
Hm, one of the loading screen tips tells you to aim for the Atlas' canopy, so apparently that is its weakspot?
Haven't tested it yet.
Going out soon, but tomorrow afternoon (Europe time) I'm up for tons of Silver matches. I want that special pack, damn it!
I've actually listened to that Reave sound effect so much now that I just tune it out, heh. I unlocked the Quarian Engineer last night, which seems pretty good. I like the idea of the little turret thing, though it seems pretty ineffective. The cryo ammo upgrade is good I guess? for 'Holding the Line!' etc. Not sure what to take for its final upgrade though - the rockets sound nice, but since it breaks after two shots I wonder if the flamethrower might not be better for chucking it into a group of bad guys. Any opinions on that one?
Man I love the Quarian Engineer and her turret. Though admittedly I usually stick to Bronze matches.
But there have been a few times when a banshee and a couple of brutes where coming up the path, and the turret held their attention and took them down with fire (fire is the final upgrade I took). It was a thing of beauty. I actually promoted engineer at 20 because I wanted to respec. Not sure whether rocket is better because I haven't tried it.
I went Shield, Armour Piercing and Rocket Launcher for my turret. It does still die if focus fired but it can be placed out of harms way and fire rockets across a whole map. I tend to throw it somewhere high up so it can rocket-snipe things. It does try and shoot its rockets through walls though which is both handy for finding enemies and annoying.
Banshee
- No weak points (aim for the belly, as it's fattest - most likely to hit it)
Brute
- Takes reduced damage in the right arm
- Takes greatly reduced damage in the claw
- Armour Plates absorb damage until breaking (best to aim for exposed flesh, probably base of the neck?)
- No other weak points
Geth Prime
- Currently has a head volume (but it's a bug)
Atlas
- Some types of weapons will do increased damage to the cockpit (this is a bug)
- Destroy any of the following to do a small damage spike (shoulder flanges, groin plate, knee plates)
Hm, one of the loading screen tips tells you to aim for the Atlas' canopy, so apparently that is it's weakspot?
Haven't tested it yet.
Going out soon, but tomorrow afternoon (Europe time) I'm up for tons of Silver matches. I want that special pack, damn it!
The loading tip about hitting the Atlas canopy is intended for singleplayer. It works right now, but as the dev said, it's a bug. The canopy shouldn't be a weak point in multiplayer, and I assume BW intend to fix it.
The Atlas canopy thing refers to single player, where doing a bunch of damage to the canopy after the shields are down can shatter it and you can shoot the pilot and hijack. Doesn't work in MP, so once the bug that some weapons do extra damage to canopy is fixed, the only weak spots will be those blow-away points. After those are gone you might as well aim for the canopy anyway, since you might get extra until fixed and it's a big target besides.
I've actually listened to that Reave sound effect so much now that I just tune it out, heh. I unlocked the Quarian Engineer last night, which seems pretty good. I like the idea of the little turret thing, though it seems pretty ineffective. The cryo ammo upgrade is good I guess? for 'Holding the Line!' etc. Not sure what to take for its final upgrade though - the rockets sound nice, but since it breaks after two shots I wonder if the flamethrower might not be better for chucking it into a group of bad guys. Any opinions on that one?
Man I love the Quarian Engineer and her turret. Though admittedly I usually stick to Bronze matches.
But there have been a few times when a banshee and a couple of brutes where coming up the path, and the turret held their attention and took them down with fire (fire is the final upgrade I took). It was a thing of beauty. I actually promoted engineer at 20 because I wanted to respec. Not sure whether rocket is better because I haven't tried it.
I went Shield, Armour Piercing and Rocket Launcher for my turret. It does still die if focus fired but it can be placed out of harms way and fire rockets across a whole map. I tend to throw it somewhere high up so it can rocket-snipe things. It does try and shoot its rockets through walls though which is both handy for finding enemies and annoying.
Oooh, Rocket Sniping, that sounds nice.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Anyone else have issues purchasing bioware points? No matter what I do, I cannot get a transaction to go through.
Where are you trying to purchase points from?
I know of two ways:
Origin Site (UK link) has 800 for £6.99 or 1600 for £14.99 (it makes no sense why more is more expensive) and you can't pay with PayPal.
Buuuut, if you go to any BiowareDLCpage and choose to buy a piece of DLC which you don't already own it takes you to a checkout page with an 'Add Points' button. Here you can buy 1600 for £12.38, 1200 for £6.19, 800 for £6.19 (???), 560 for £4.33 or 400 for £3.10 and use PayPal to do it (total is VAT/GST inclusive where applicable!). Once you have confirmed the purchase on the PayPal screen and returned to your DLC purchase checkout, cancel out of it and you're done
Wouldn't advise trying this if you DO have enough points to purchase the piece of DLC as it might go through with no confirmation.
I noticed in a Lobby that my nametag thing had two big [X] marks on it. I'm guessing that's due to leaving a game early due to real life stuff, and one time when I was outside the Extraction Zone at the end of the mission. Any idea on what these are and if they disappear over time or If I have to do something about it.
Anyway, I'm over this whole ending business, maybe it could have been better implemented but thematically it makes sense. My desktop is EDI and Joker emerging from the Normandy, dealwithit.jpg.
Yeah, I ran through the critical missions of all three games yesterday, and ME is still one of the best bits of interactive entertainment on the market. I would actually reccomend you play the climax missions of all three games in one sitting (Citadel, Suicide, Earth), it's pretty amazing to see.
Edit: Guuuuuys, I want to kill Reapers. Come out and plaaaay.
I noticed in a Lobby that my nametag thing had two big [X] marks on it. I'm guessing that's due to leaving a game early due to real life stuff, and one time when I was outside the Extraction Zone at the end of the mission. Any idea on what these are and if they disappear over time or If I have to do something about it.
That means two people voted to kick you. You don't see a third because it automatically kicks you.
I noticed in a Lobby that my nametag thing had two big [X] marks on it. I'm guessing that's due to leaving a game early due to real life stuff, and one time when I was outside the Extraction Zone at the end of the mission. Any idea on what these are and if they disappear over time or If I have to do something about it.
People are voting to kick you.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Here's one thing Casey said about the ending that hint's they're already changing their mind.
Remember when they said ME3 ABSOLUTELY FINALLY ends the story of Commander Shepard?
This is not the last you’ll hear of Commander Shepard.
That is a 180 from previous statement.
So can we relax a little about the endings? It's clear they're not gonna leave the ME universe like it is.
I'm pretty sure nothing he says at this point means anything, it's just grist for the 'keep fans interested/engaged/not-blowing-up-the-forum' mill
What they have said is that ME3 concludes Shepards story and that they don't want to make more content past that point for ME3. After ME3's ending you go back to a specific point in the game before the endgame starts, so you're free to roam the galaxy after the fact. To me this was an obvious "when we release future DLC this is where you can play it from" checkpoint. So when they say that "this is not the last you'll hear of Commander Shepard" they might just mean that we'll be getting new standard DLC missions to play
Anyone else have issues purchasing bioware points? No matter what I do, I cannot get a transaction to go through.
Where are you trying to purchase points from?
I know of two ways:
Origin Site (UK link) has 800 for £6.99 or 1600 for £14.99 (it makes no sense why more is more expensive) and you can't pay with PayPal.
Buuuut, if you go to any BiowareDLCpage and choose to buy a piece of DLC which you don't already own it takes you to a checkout page with an 'Add Points' button. Here you can buy 1600 for £12.38, 1200 for £6.19, 800 for £6.19 (???), 560 for £4.33 or 400 for £3.10 and use PayPal to do it (total is VAT/GST inclusive where applicable!). Once you have confirmed the purchase on the PayPal screen and returned to your DLC purchase checkout, cancel out of it and you're done
Wouldn't advise trying this if you DO have enough points to purchase the piece of DLC as it might go through with no confirmation.
Edit: More DLC page links
From the bioware page, I log in, go to my profile and hit "Add Bioware Points". I can get all the way to inputting my payment method, but it always fails no matter what method of payment I use. I've tried both my mastercards, a visa, and paypal. I've also tried using a proxy back to the US (all my addresses are US, but I'm in Germany with the military). No luck.
I get this error "An error occurred while processing your request. If you canceled your purchase at the third party payment website, this error is expected. Code: NU2010"
Iceman.USAF on
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Here's one thing Casey said about the ending that hint's they're already changing their mind.
Remember when they said ME3 ABSOLUTELY FINALLY ends the story of Commander Shepard?
This is not the last you’ll hear of Commander Shepard.
That is a 180 from previous statement.
So can we relax a little about the endings? It's clear they're not gonna leave the ME universe like it is.
I'm pretty sure nothing he says at this point means anything, it's just grist for the 'keep fans interested/engaged/not-blowing-up-the-forum' mill
What they have said is that ME3 concludes Shepards story and that they don't want to make more content past that point for ME3. After ME3's ending you go back to a specific point in the game before the endgame starts, so you're free to roam the galaxy after the fact. To me this was an obvious "when we release future DLC this is where you can play it from" checkpoint. So when they say that "this is not the last you'll hear of Commander Shepard" they might as well just mean that we'll be new DLC missions to play
Except that in Casey's post, he needed a bunch of paragraphs to say "BUY OUR DLC" while you took one and managed to be clearer in intent at the same time (IMO, the intent is obviously what you say it is - not that they have confirmed fixing the ending in any manner).
Anyone else have issues purchasing bioware points? No matter what I do, I cannot get a transaction to go through.
Where are you trying to purchase points from?
I know of two ways:
Origin Site (UK link) has 800 for £6.99 or 1600 for £14.99 (it makes no sense why more is more expensive) and you can't pay with PayPal.
Buuuut, if you go to any BiowareDLCpage and choose to buy a piece of DLC which you don't already own it takes you to a checkout page with an 'Add Points' button. Here you can buy 1600 for £12.38, 1200 for £6.19, 800 for £6.19 (???), 560 for £4.33 or 400 for £3.10 and use PayPal to do it (total is VAT/GST inclusive where applicable!). Once you have confirmed the purchase on the PayPal screen and returned to your DLC purchase checkout, cancel out of it and you're done
Wouldn't advise trying this if you DO have enough points to purchase the piece of DLC as it might go through with no confirmation.
Edit: More DLC page links
From the bioware page, I log in, go to my profile and hit "Add Bioware Points". I can get all the way to inputting my payment method, but it always fails no matter what method of payment I use. I've tried both my mastercards, a visa, and paypal. I've also tried using a proxy back to the US (all my addresses are US, but I'm in Germany with the military). No luck.
Never noticed that Add Points button before, that's much easier than messing with DLC Maybe try Origin? If you search for '800' it should find the 800 Bioware Points item, searching for Bioware or Points or combinations doesn't return a result for me which is odd.
Whether it's DLC or ME4, I think it's pretty clear they know they messed up at least.
It's irrelevant if Bioware (as a whole) does and I think I now understand Juc's points (from a couple threads back) better. If they actually do something about the torrid state of the ending will rely entirely on if Casey Hudson admits he got it wrong. Given the sheer PR speak in what he wrote, I am going to predict the answer will be "no". Do you get the impression from that post - notably where he spends an entire paragraph just to assert how wonderful the game is - that he thinks anything is "Messed up".
Because technically speaking, the ending has accomplished precisely what he set out for it to do (Citing Mass Effect 3: Final Hours description of the ending and its iterations as proof). I am actually convinced the ending is not going to change. I'm equally convinced I'm going to have my fun with the multiplayer until I've had enough of it, then shelve the game and go onto other things.
And distinctly not "Buy their DLC" while I'm at it.
I just finished it yesterday. I liked the ending. I liked it a lot.
The execution wasn't flawless (they needed a convo wheel where the only three options were for him to repeat each option, because I beat it at 3 am... and they just needed to pull that Normandy cut, I think it was only there as an attempted bone for the demographic that is currently unhappy, and good grief, was it not sufficient. Giving them a glimpse of the crew wasn't enough. Especially when they sort of ham-fisted it in there for a demographic that wasn't going to be happy and therefore revoking all suspension of disbelief.)
They didn't need to explain exactly who the catalyst was. It didn't really matter. That it was controlling the cycle is all that really mattered, because the cycle was really the only thing that mattered to Shepard et al.
There was really no reason to treat what the catalyst was saying with suspicion. Shepard was done, the catalyst had no need to achieve by trickery what it couldn't achieve by force. Nor had the reapers really been opposed to explaining their motives, they just didn't really think they could.
Overall, I think it made enough sense to not actively pick holes in it. You can pick holes in ANY work of fiction. They call it the suspension of disbelief for a reason. The work isn't Truth. The work is something with a semblance of truth. Now, if that semblance of truth results in cognitive dissonance... well, expect them to react just like when you tell someone that their favorite childhood cartoon really wasn't actually that good from a fairly objective standpoint. It might be a rather accurate statement... but brace for a category 5 radioactive shitstorm.
The big idea seemed to sort of boil down to something that has the truthiness of what you might call Entropic Life Death of the Universe. Evolutionary forces are not progressive (that part is actual text book definition), in essence being chaotic. From that chaos comes order, i.e. the "created". The created has a point, a purpose, and above all, it is progressive force. The conclusion seems to be that the progressive force will eventually become self progressive and overwhelm the non-progressive force. From chaos comes order. Eventually that ordered force will reach its final state and you will have "life death", similar to how "heat death" is not the absence of heat, but the absence of variation in heat.
For whatever reason, the Catalyst considers this outcome to be "bad", a problem in need of fixing. Maybe for reasons similar to why people consider a vibrant ecosystem "better" than one choked out by a single species. Hence the Reaper Cycle. With the Reapers being what Shepard et al. considers to be "bad". The Reapers are an ordered force that resets the chaos. From order comes chaos, i.e the elimination of progressive forces that arise from chaotic forces and will eventually eliminate the chaotic forces. Hence the Reapers constantly jabbering about bringing salvation. The Reapers also seed technology in the universe to provide an ordered structure to guide organic life down a "safe" path for as long as possible.
The ending is that when Shepard reaches the citadel, the catalyst says "humn... this makes me think the currently implemented solution could use some re-factoring". The reasoning of the catalyst doesn't really matter, because the catalyst flat out agrees with Shepard's goal. The goal being to stop the Reaper Cycle. Shepard thinks it is "bad", and the catalyst thinks it isn't a workable solution anymore.
The paragon option is the paragon option. Unity, co-existence, and dropping the hammer on anyone who threatens it. Shepard takes control of the Reapers and re-purposes them to become the shepherd of life. To use the reapers to prevent the "Entropic Life Death of the Universe" by shepherding it. It is almost like they planned it all the way from the character select screen of the first game (or at least makes you think they did).
The synthesis option is the 1+1=3 solution. Change the givens to alter everything. It doesn't explain how it prevents the "Entropic Life Death of the Universe", but it such a radical change as to let one find that it has enough semblance of truth to suspend disbelief.
The renegade option is the renegade option. Looking out for number one in the present. This option locks in the "Entropic Life Death of the Universe", it just kicks the can down the road to be a problem for someone else.
I liked it. It was a classic high ideas science fiction ending where the idea took center stage. Science fiction is about the implications of ideas, and not blue babies and laser swords.
Now, if you didn't want a science fiction story with a science fiction ending... I bet you are fucking pissed beyond all recognition. Well, maybe only fucking pissed beyond all recognition if you are a little bit too invested, so maybe simply feeling disappointed.
I wouldn't be opposed to there being a DLC "director's re-cut" where playing a New Game Plus had edited sections of the game with alternate takes applied. That would pretty much be the definition of additional content in my book. It wouldn't be fixing the game because it was "wrong", because the game wasn't "wrong". It was generally quite good. It would just be looking at some alternate possibilities.
That being said. I'm now going to re-play ME1-ME3, because I want to see it all over again from the context of the ending that I liked.
So, new poster here. I've been following this thread for a while and finally decided to post something.
Lots of ending spoilers and a wall of text ahead.
So, I finished the game two days after it came out. Even took a day off work just to focus on it. Overall, the game met and blew away most expectations I had. The character moments, which I've always thought were the strongest part of Mass Effect, were perfectly done. Mordin's and Thane's deaths were probably the two most impactful events I've ever experienced in a videogame. They were my two favorite characters after Garrus, but they went out kicking ass and just being everything one would expect from Mordin and Thane (I didn't shoot Mordin in the back unlike some other people with no heart).
There were a few things that bothered me plot-wise, particularly the whole existence of the Crucible. Bringing in a magical artifact in the last episode screams that you just couldn't come up with a better way to finish the story and that its existence was not actually planned, otherwise it would've been adequately foreshadowed. Then again, I think aside from the first Mass Effect, plot has never been this series's strong point; it's always been about the characters that inhabit its universe.
I got to Earth shortly before midnight on Wednesday. By that point, I knew the whole thing was almost over and decided to stay up and wrap it up. The individual chats with each character before the final assault are still one of my favorite moments in gaming. Then I got to the final stretch.
As seems to be the case with most people I've talked to about this, I didn't like the ending at all. I didn't hate it to the point of going to Bioware's forums demanding a change, but enough that I would be very happy if someone at Bioware said "Hmmm, considering how many people don't like the ending, it might actually make good business sense to release a new ending".
Aside from all the plotholes and flawed logic that permeated the whole final sequence, there were two particular things that really bugged me about it.
First, I thought they way they resolved the Illusive Man's arc was... amateurish, at best. It was obvious that he and Cerberus had never been part of the original vision of the Mass Effect universe, but they managed to pull off a very intersting character and made him fit in regardless (even if my suspension of disbelief was stretched to the max in reconciling ME2 Cerberus with ME1 Cerberus). Endind his arc with "duh, he was indoctrinated" feels like a cop-out. The writers just didn't know how to write a satisfying conclusion to his story. You don't introduce a major antagonist only to have him completely overriden by the default bad guy in the universe. It just feels like poor plotting.
Personally, I think he could've been taken in a much more interesting direction. Considering he and Cerberus had apparently figured out how to control the indoctrination process it would've been interesting if towards the conclusion you could've taken two paths: treat him as an ally to gain control over the reapers, avoiding a bloody war but giving too much power to a maniac; or exploit his connection to the reapers and his research on indoctrination to link him to the reapers and then take out their shields when you kill him (similar to what happened between Saren and Sovereign in ME1). Something like this would obviously need to be thought out much more thoroughly, but it would allow for a conclusion that doesn't depend on a magical Crucible, that had been foreshadowed in our first encounter with a reaper, and that doesn't discard the character in such a meaningless way.
The second thing that bugged me about it is a problem you often see with amateur writers when they try to be emotionally impactful: they kill everything. The problem with deaths in literature is that, if you don't balance them carefully, you end up removing the elements that ground your story and allow your audience to feel connected to the world you have created. The Mass Effect universe is interesting because of the characters that live in it; it is the presence of those characters that allows us to think of it as more than just an abstract concept and actually be emotionally involved with what happens in it.
Throughout this game, you, as both the character and the audience, end up losing an awful lot of what makes you care about the universe. In my particular case, I lost Mordin, Thane, Legion, Wrex (assuming the reaper beam to the face he takes in the ending killed him), Garrus, Liara, Anderson, and, finally, Shepard. Furthermore, with the destruction of the relays you also lose the mechanism that opens up the whole galaxy for exploration. By the time the game was over, what was left was something I just didn't care about anymore. I was still grieving for the characters that were lost, but the universe itself had lost its magic and, with that, my suspension of disbelief was broken. That's when I started noticing all the plotholes that many have covered before me. I'm not even getting into the fact that the ending does try to give the impression that your crew was stranded in whatever planet they landed on.
I've seen comments saying that an epilogue would've helped bring additional closure, but I honestly wouldn't have cared much for it. By the point an epilogue would've come up, there's nothing left for me to care about, so the only reaction I could've offered is "whatever". What ended up happening is a writer going completely over-the-top because killing important characters is dark, impactful, and meaningful, without having the experience to realize that such things need to be balanced in a very careful way. If you think about it, Mass Effect 3 killed off more main and secondary characters than George R. R. Martin has killed in five books, and he's infamous for it.
So, those are some of the reasons the ending just didn't work for me and that I thought I'd bring up. I apologize if I'm just beating a dead horse, but this seemed like a nice, civilized place to have this discussion.
Whether it's DLC or ME4, I think it's pretty clear they know they messed up at least.
It's irrelevant if Bioware (as a whole) does and I think I now understand Juc's points (from a couple threads back) better. If they actually do something about the torrid state of the ending will rely entirely on if Casey Hudson admits he got it wrong. Given the sheer PR speak in what he wrote, I am going to predict the answer will be "no". Do you get the impression from that post - notably where he spends an entire paragraph just to assert how wonderful the game is - that he thinks anything is "Messed up".
Because technically speaking, the ending has accomplished precisely what he set out for it to do (Citing Mass Effect 3: Final Hours description of the ending and its iterations as proof). I am actually convinced the ending is not going to change. I'm equally convinced I'm going to have my fun with the multiplayer until I've had enough of it, then shelve the game and go onto other things.
And distinctly not "Buy their DLC" while I'm at it.
Do you seriously think we'll get an admission of wrongness ONE WEEK after the game is out? Of course not. I'm looking more long term here. There is no burning need to fix the endings, but they'll likely happen anyway at some point.
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TIFunkaliciousKicking back inNebraskaRegistered Userregular
So, new poster here. I've been following this thread for a while and finally decided to post something.
Lots of ending spoilers and a wall of text ahead.
So, I finished the game two days after it came out. Even took a day off work just to focus on it. Overall, the game met and blew away most expectations I had. The character moments, which I've always thought were the strongest part of Mass Effect, were perfectly done. Mordin's and Thane's deaths were probably the two most impactful events I've ever experienced in a videogame. They were my two favorite characters after Garrus, but they went out kicking ass and just being everything one would expect from Mordin and Thane (I didn't shoot Mordin in the back unlike some other people with no heart).
There were a few things that bothered me plot-wise, particularly the whole existence of the Crucible. Bringing in a magical artifact in the last episode screams that you just couldn't come up with a better way to finish the story and that its existence was not actually planned, otherwise it would've been adequately foreshadowed. Then again, I think aside from the first Mass Effect, plot has never been this series's strong point; it's always been about the characters that inhabit its universe.
I got to Earth shortly before midnight on Wednesday. By that point, I knew the whole thing was almost over and decided to stay up and wrap it up. The individual chats with each character before the final assault are still one of my favorite moments in gaming. Then I got to the final stretch.
As seems to be the case with most people I've talked to about this, I didn't like the ending at all. I didn't hate it to the point of going to Bioware's forums demanding a change, but enough that I would be very happy if someone at Bioware said "Hmmm, considering how many people don't like the ending, it might actually make good business sense to release a new ending".
Aside from all the plotholes and flawed logic that permeated the whole final sequence, there were two particular things that really bugged me about it.
First, I thought they way they resolved the Illusive Man's arc was... amateurish, at best. It was obvious that he and Cerberus had never been part of the original vision of the Mass Effect universe, but they managed to pull off a very intersting character and made him fit in regardless (even if my suspension of disbelief was stretched to the max in reconciling ME2 Cerberus with ME1 Cerberus). Endind his arc with "duh, he was indoctrinated" feels like a cop-out. The writers just didn't know how to write a satisfying conclusion to his story. You don't introduce a major antagonist only to have him completely overriden by the default bad guy in the universe. It just feels like poor plotting.
Personally, I think he could've been taken in a much more interesting direction. Considering he and Cerberus had apparently figured out how to control the indoctrination process it would've been interesting if towards the conclusion you could've taken two paths: treat him as an ally to gain control over the reapers, avoiding a bloody war but giving too much power to a maniac; or exploit his connection to the reapers and his research on indoctrination to link him to the reapers and then take out their shields when you kill him (similar to what happened between Saren and Sovereign in ME1). Something like this would obviously need to be thought out much more thoroughly, but it would allow for a conclusion that doesn't depend on a magical Crucible, that had been foreshadowed in our first encounter with a reaper, and that doesn't discard the character in such a meaningless way.
The second thing that bugged me about it is a problem you often see with amateur writers when they try to be emotionally impactful: they kill everything. The problem with deaths in literature is that, if you don't balance them carefully, you end up removing the elements that ground your story and allow your audience to feel connected to the world you have created. The Mass Effect universe is interesting because of the characters that live in it; it is the presence of those characters that allows us to think of it as more than just an abstract concept and actually be emotionally involved with what happens in it.
Throughout this game, you, as both the character and the audience, end up losing an awful lot of what makes you care about the universe. In my particular case, I lost Mordin, Thane, Legion, Wrex (assuming the reaper beam to the face he takes in the ending killed him), Garrus, Liara, Anderson, and, finally, Shepard. Furthermore, with the destruction of the relays you also lose the mechanism that opens up the whole galaxy for exploration. By the time the game was over, what was left was something I just didn't care about anymore. I was still grieving for the characters that were lost, but the universe itself had lost its magic and, with that, my suspension of disbelief was broken. That's when I started noticing all the plotholes that many have covered before me. I'm not even getting into the fact that the ending does try to give the impression that your crew was stranded in whatever planet they landed on.
I've seen comments saying that an epilogue would've helped bring additional closure, but I honestly wouldn't have cared much for it. By the point an epilogue would've come up, there's nothing left for me to care about, so the only reaction I could've offered is "whatever". What ended up happening is a writer going completely over-the-top because killing important characters is dark, impactful, and meaningful, without having the experience to realize that such things need to be balanced in a very careful way. If you think about it, Mass Effect 3 killed off more main and secondary characters than George R. R. Martin has killed in five books, and he's infamous for it.
So, those are some of the reasons the ending just didn't work for me and that I thought I'd bring up. I apologize if I'm just beating a dead horse, but this seemed like a nice, civilized place to have this discussion.
I...lost far fewer characters than you
first time i've heard these complaints though, most people seem upset with the matrix reloaded ending sequence
I'm torn on whether or not I'd have liked a Fallout-style narrated epilogue.
As an example...
(Voice: Captain Bailey, no upgrades to the Citadel Defense Force) The Citadel was overrun by Reaper forces after being transferred to Earth. There were no survivors.
(You upgraded the CDF) Citadel Defense managed to barricade groups of survivors down on the Wards, and held on long enough to be rescued.
I took Garrus and Liara with me to the final mission and I'm assuming they're dead because of the whole "everyone died" radio chatter and that they didn't step out of the Normandy at the end. And Wrex during the final sequence seems to be in a building that is directly hit by a Reaper.
Aside from those, I don't think you can save Mordin (unless Wrex is dead), Thane, Legion, or Anderson.
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TIFunkaliciousKicking back inNebraskaRegistered Userregular
I'm torn on whether or not I'd have liked a Fallout-style narrated epilogue.
As an example...
(Voice: Captain Bailey, no upgrades to the Citadel Defense Force) The Citadel was overrun by Reaper forces after being transferred to Earth. There were no survivors.
(You upgraded the CDF) Citadel Defense managed to barricade groups of survivors down on the Wards, and held on long enough to be rescued.
It's everything I wanted. A game like Fallout NV that was less personal to me than ME has more closure with regards to the various companions and factions? c'mon
I took Garrus and Liara with me to the final mission and I'm assuming they're dead because of the whole "everyone died" radio chatter and that they didn't step out of the Normandy at the end. And Wrex during the final sequence seems to be in a building that is directly hit by a Reaper.
Aside from those, I don't think you can save Mordin (unless Wrex is dead), Thane, Legion, or Anderson.
Ending
I had Garrus and Liara with me for the final push, and Garrus stepped out of the Normandy at the end. I'm pretty sure they just put your love interest there no matter what.
Also, in lower asset endings, you actually see your squad get killed.
So as unexplained as it is, if you don't see them killed, you can assume they weren't killed.
For me, seeing Garrus step off that ship pissed me off. Because I thought we were dying together so Garrus would never have to be alone again. Now he's stuck on a non-dextro planet where he'll starve to death. At least, that was my first thought; now I just assume that the planet in question is within FTL speeds and they'll get picked up in short order so Garrus doesn't starve.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I'm torn on whether or not I'd have liked a Fallout-style narrated epilogue.
As an example...
(Voice: Captain Bailey, no upgrades to the Citadel Defense Force) The Citadel was overrun by Reaper forces after being transferred to Earth. There were no survivors.
(You upgraded the CDF) Citadel Defense managed to barricade groups of survivors down on the Wards, and held on long enough to be rescued.
I think I would have loved to see that in this game. Just to tie everything up.
Posts
SanderJK on origin, throw me an invite.
The guys talking about decoy are right. It's so good. Just had a match where nobody had a friggin clue and was dieing to banshees and brutes all the damn time. Decoy saved our asses so many times. Loving Salarian engi now.
For anyone wondering where this came from, it's from a thread on the official forums. The info comes from a developer. Scroll to about halfway down for the source: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/343/index/10048855/2
Hm, one of the loading screen tips tells you to aim for the Atlas' canopy, so apparently that is its weakspot?
Haven't tested it yet.
Going out soon, but tomorrow afternoon (Europe time) I'm up for tons of Silver matches. I want that special pack, damn it!
I went Shield, Armour Piercing and Rocket Launcher for my turret. It does still die if focus fired but it can be placed out of harms way and fire rockets across a whole map. I tend to throw it somewhere high up so it can rocket-snipe things. It does try and shoot its rockets through walls though which is both handy for finding enemies and annoying.
The loading tip about hitting the Atlas canopy is intended for singleplayer. It works right now, but as the dev said, it's a bug. The canopy shouldn't be a weak point in multiplayer, and I assume BW intend to fix it.
Oooh, Rocket Sniping, that sounds nice.
Remember when they said ME3 ABSOLUTELY FINALLY ends the story of Commander Shepard?
That is a 180 from previous statement.
So can we relax a little about the endings? It's clear they're not gonna leave the ME universe like it is.
Anyway, I'm over this whole ending business, maybe it could have been better implemented but thematically it makes sense.
Where are you trying to purchase points from?
I know of two ways:
Origin Site (UK link) has 800 for £6.99 or 1600 for £14.99 (it makes no sense why more is more expensive) and you can't pay with PayPal.
Buuuut, if you go to any Bioware DLC page and choose to buy a piece of DLC which you don't already own it takes you to a checkout page with an 'Add Points' button. Here you can buy 1600 for £12.38, 1200 for £6.19, 800 for £6.19 (???), 560 for £4.33 or 400 for £3.10 and use PayPal to do it (total is VAT/GST inclusive where applicable!). Once you have confirmed the purchase on the PayPal screen and returned to your DLC purchase checkout, cancel out of it and you're done
Wouldn't advise trying this if you DO have enough points to purchase the piece of DLC as it might go through with no confirmation.
Edit: More DLC page links
I noticed in a Lobby that my nametag thing had two big [X] marks on it. I'm guessing that's due to leaving a game early due to real life stuff, and one time when I was outside the Extraction Zone at the end of the mission. Any idea on what these are and if they disappear over time or If I have to do something about it.
I'm pretty sure nothing he says at this point means anything, it's just grist for the 'keep fans interested/engaged/not-blowing-up-the-forum' mill
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Yeah, I ran through the critical missions of all three games yesterday, and ME is still one of the best bits of interactive entertainment on the market. I would actually reccomend you play the climax missions of all three games in one sitting (Citadel, Suicide, Earth), it's pretty amazing to see.
Edit: Guuuuuys, I want to kill Reapers. Come out and plaaaay.
That means two people voted to kick you. You don't see a third because it automatically kicks you.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
What they have said is that ME3 concludes Shepards story and that they don't want to make more content past that point for ME3. After ME3's ending you go back to a specific point in the game before the endgame starts, so you're free to roam the galaxy after the fact. To me this was an obvious "when we release future DLC this is where you can play it from" checkpoint. So when they say that "this is not the last you'll hear of Commander Shepard" they might just mean that we'll be getting new standard DLC missions to play
Anyway, I just want to punch more Reapers.
From the bioware page, I log in, go to my profile and hit "Add Bioware Points". I can get all the way to inputting my payment method, but it always fails no matter what method of payment I use. I've tried both my mastercards, a visa, and paypal. I've also tried using a proxy back to the US (all my addresses are US, but I'm in Germany with the military). No luck.
I get this error "An error occurred while processing your request. If you canceled your purchase at the third party payment website, this error is expected. Code: NU2010"
Except that in Casey's post, he needed a bunch of paragraphs to say "BUY OUR DLC" while you took one and managed to be clearer in intent at the same time (IMO, the intent is obviously what you say it is - not that they have confirmed fixing the ending in any manner).
"We will release DLC for ME3."
the rest of it is trying to incite MORE SPECULATION FROM EVERYONE
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Never noticed that Add Points button before, that's much easier than messing with DLC
Again, the endings aren't the end of the world. I just believe we will get some extra closure, eventually.
It's irrelevant if Bioware (as a whole) does and I think I now understand Juc's points (from a couple threads back) better. If they actually do something about the torrid state of the ending will rely entirely on if Casey Hudson admits he got it wrong. Given the sheer PR speak in what he wrote, I am going to predict the answer will be "no". Do you get the impression from that post - notably where he spends an entire paragraph just to assert how wonderful the game is - that he thinks anything is "Messed up".
Because technically speaking, the ending has accomplished precisely what he set out for it to do (Citing Mass Effect 3: Final Hours description of the ending and its iterations as proof). I am actually convinced the ending is not going to change. I'm equally convinced I'm going to have my fun with the multiplayer until I've had enough of it, then shelve the game and go onto other things.
And distinctly not "Buy their DLC" while I'm at it.
They didn't need to explain exactly who the catalyst was. It didn't really matter. That it was controlling the cycle is all that really mattered, because the cycle was really the only thing that mattered to Shepard et al.
There was really no reason to treat what the catalyst was saying with suspicion. Shepard was done, the catalyst had no need to achieve by trickery what it couldn't achieve by force. Nor had the reapers really been opposed to explaining their motives, they just didn't really think they could.
Overall, I think it made enough sense to not actively pick holes in it. You can pick holes in ANY work of fiction. They call it the suspension of disbelief for a reason. The work isn't Truth. The work is something with a semblance of truth. Now, if that semblance of truth results in cognitive dissonance... well, expect them to react just like when you tell someone that their favorite childhood cartoon really wasn't actually that good from a fairly objective standpoint. It might be a rather accurate statement... but brace for a category 5 radioactive shitstorm.
The big idea seemed to sort of boil down to something that has the truthiness of what you might call Entropic Life Death of the Universe. Evolutionary forces are not progressive (that part is actual text book definition), in essence being chaotic. From that chaos comes order, i.e. the "created". The created has a point, a purpose, and above all, it is progressive force. The conclusion seems to be that the progressive force will eventually become self progressive and overwhelm the non-progressive force. From chaos comes order. Eventually that ordered force will reach its final state and you will have "life death", similar to how "heat death" is not the absence of heat, but the absence of variation in heat.
For whatever reason, the Catalyst considers this outcome to be "bad", a problem in need of fixing. Maybe for reasons similar to why people consider a vibrant ecosystem "better" than one choked out by a single species. Hence the Reaper Cycle. With the Reapers being what Shepard et al. considers to be "bad". The Reapers are an ordered force that resets the chaos. From order comes chaos, i.e the elimination of progressive forces that arise from chaotic forces and will eventually eliminate the chaotic forces. Hence the Reapers constantly jabbering about bringing salvation. The Reapers also seed technology in the universe to provide an ordered structure to guide organic life down a "safe" path for as long as possible.
The ending is that when Shepard reaches the citadel, the catalyst says "humn... this makes me think the currently implemented solution could use some re-factoring". The reasoning of the catalyst doesn't really matter, because the catalyst flat out agrees with Shepard's goal. The goal being to stop the Reaper Cycle. Shepard thinks it is "bad", and the catalyst thinks it isn't a workable solution anymore.
The paragon option is the paragon option. Unity, co-existence, and dropping the hammer on anyone who threatens it. Shepard takes control of the Reapers and re-purposes them to become the shepherd of life. To use the reapers to prevent the "Entropic Life Death of the Universe" by shepherding it. It is almost like they planned it all the way from the character select screen of the first game (or at least makes you think they did).
The synthesis option is the 1+1=3 solution. Change the givens to alter everything. It doesn't explain how it prevents the "Entropic Life Death of the Universe", but it such a radical change as to let one find that it has enough semblance of truth to suspend disbelief.
The renegade option is the renegade option. Looking out for number one in the present. This option locks in the "Entropic Life Death of the Universe", it just kicks the can down the road to be a problem for someone else.
I liked it. It was a classic high ideas science fiction ending where the idea took center stage. Science fiction is about the implications of ideas, and not blue babies and laser swords.
Now, if you didn't want a science fiction story with a science fiction ending... I bet you are fucking pissed beyond all recognition. Well, maybe only fucking pissed beyond all recognition if you are a little bit too invested, so maybe simply feeling disappointed.
I wouldn't be opposed to there being a DLC "director's re-cut" where playing a New Game Plus had edited sections of the game with alternate takes applied. That would pretty much be the definition of additional content in my book. It wouldn't be fixing the game because it was "wrong", because the game wasn't "wrong". It was generally quite good. It would just be looking at some alternate possibilities.
That being said. I'm now going to re-play ME1-ME3, because I want to see it all over again from the context of the ending that I liked.
Lots of ending spoilers and a wall of text ahead.
So, I finished the game two days after it came out. Even took a day off work just to focus on it. Overall, the game met and blew away most expectations I had. The character moments, which I've always thought were the strongest part of Mass Effect, were perfectly done. Mordin's and Thane's deaths were probably the two most impactful events I've ever experienced in a videogame. They were my two favorite characters after Garrus, but they went out kicking ass and just being everything one would expect from Mordin and Thane (I didn't shoot Mordin in the back unlike some other people with no heart).
There were a few things that bothered me plot-wise, particularly the whole existence of the Crucible. Bringing in a magical artifact in the last episode screams that you just couldn't come up with a better way to finish the story and that its existence was not actually planned, otherwise it would've been adequately foreshadowed. Then again, I think aside from the first Mass Effect, plot has never been this series's strong point; it's always been about the characters that inhabit its universe.
I got to Earth shortly before midnight on Wednesday. By that point, I knew the whole thing was almost over and decided to stay up and wrap it up. The individual chats with each character before the final assault are still one of my favorite moments in gaming. Then I got to the final stretch.
As seems to be the case with most people I've talked to about this, I didn't like the ending at all. I didn't hate it to the point of going to Bioware's forums demanding a change, but enough that I would be very happy if someone at Bioware said "Hmmm, considering how many people don't like the ending, it might actually make good business sense to release a new ending".
Aside from all the plotholes and flawed logic that permeated the whole final sequence, there were two particular things that really bugged me about it.
First, I thought they way they resolved the Illusive Man's arc was... amateurish, at best. It was obvious that he and Cerberus had never been part of the original vision of the Mass Effect universe, but they managed to pull off a very intersting character and made him fit in regardless (even if my suspension of disbelief was stretched to the max in reconciling ME2 Cerberus with ME1 Cerberus). Endind his arc with "duh, he was indoctrinated" feels like a cop-out. The writers just didn't know how to write a satisfying conclusion to his story. You don't introduce a major antagonist only to have him completely overriden by the default bad guy in the universe. It just feels like poor plotting.
Personally, I think he could've been taken in a much more interesting direction. Considering he and Cerberus had apparently figured out how to control the indoctrination process it would've been interesting if towards the conclusion you could've taken two paths: treat him as an ally to gain control over the reapers, avoiding a bloody war but giving too much power to a maniac; or exploit his connection to the reapers and his research on indoctrination to link him to the reapers and then take out their shields when you kill him (similar to what happened between Saren and Sovereign in ME1). Something like this would obviously need to be thought out much more thoroughly, but it would allow for a conclusion that doesn't depend on a magical Crucible, that had been foreshadowed in our first encounter with a reaper, and that doesn't discard the character in such a meaningless way.
The second thing that bugged me about it is a problem you often see with amateur writers when they try to be emotionally impactful: they kill everything. The problem with deaths in literature is that, if you don't balance them carefully, you end up removing the elements that ground your story and allow your audience to feel connected to the world you have created. The Mass Effect universe is interesting because of the characters that live in it; it is the presence of those characters that allows us to think of it as more than just an abstract concept and actually be emotionally involved with what happens in it.
Throughout this game, you, as both the character and the audience, end up losing an awful lot of what makes you care about the universe. In my particular case, I lost Mordin, Thane, Legion, Wrex (assuming the reaper beam to the face he takes in the ending killed him), Garrus, Liara, Anderson, and, finally, Shepard. Furthermore, with the destruction of the relays you also lose the mechanism that opens up the whole galaxy for exploration. By the time the game was over, what was left was something I just didn't care about anymore. I was still grieving for the characters that were lost, but the universe itself had lost its magic and, with that, my suspension of disbelief was broken. That's when I started noticing all the plotholes that many have covered before me. I'm not even getting into the fact that the ending does try to give the impression that your crew was stranded in whatever planet they landed on.
I've seen comments saying that an epilogue would've helped bring additional closure, but I honestly wouldn't have cared much for it. By the point an epilogue would've come up, there's nothing left for me to care about, so the only reaction I could've offered is "whatever". What ended up happening is a writer going completely over-the-top because killing important characters is dark, impactful, and meaningful, without having the experience to realize that such things need to be balanced in a very careful way. If you think about it, Mass Effect 3 killed off more main and secondary characters than George R. R. Martin has killed in five books, and he's infamous for it.
So, those are some of the reasons the ending just didn't work for me and that I thought I'd bring up. I apologize if I'm just beating a dead horse, but this seemed like a nice, civilized place to have this discussion.
Do you seriously think we'll get an admission of wrongness ONE WEEK after the game is out? Of course not. I'm looking more long term here. There is no burning need to fix the endings, but they'll likely happen anyway at some point.
first time i've heard these complaints though, most people seem upset with the matrix reloaded ending sequence
(Voice: Captain Bailey, no upgrades to the Citadel Defense Force) The Citadel was overrun by Reaper forces after being transferred to Earth. There were no survivors.
(You upgraded the CDF) Citadel Defense managed to barricade groups of survivors down on the Wards, and held on long enough to be rescued.
Aside from those, I don't think you can save Mordin (unless Wrex is dead), Thane, Legion, or Anderson.
Yes.
All brute kills count. It isn't difficulty specific.
Also...I wish people under lvl 12 really wouldn't attempt Silver unless they're familiar with it.
Ending
Also, in lower asset endings, you actually see your squad get killed.
So as unexplained as it is, if you don't see them killed, you can assume they weren't killed.
For me, seeing Garrus step off that ship pissed me off. Because I thought we were dying together so Garrus would never have to be alone again. Now he's stuck on a non-dextro planet where he'll starve to death. At least, that was my first thought; now I just assume that the planet in question is within FTL speeds and they'll get picked up in short order so Garrus doesn't starve.
I think I would have loved to see that in this game. Just to tie everything up.