(Unresolved Storyline from ME2 with some ME3 spoilers, including endgame spoilers)
We never find out what was happening to Haestrom's sun. Like at all. Why was the star aging so quickly? Was it just the Geth dreadnought? Completely forgotten, unless that is going to be a DLC mission.
What happened to all those people on the Citadel when it got ported to Earth? HOW did it get ported to earth?
Thems people got processed, I imagine.
As for HOW it got to Earth?
Reapers did it with space magic.
Yeah, but then you're just sitting here going; What the hell did I just prepare all of these Citadel jack weeds for if they all just get insta killed? I expected some kind of fight through the Citadel to the Superlaser control panel and you'd get assistance along the way based on the decisions you made.
Perhaps another ME3 playthrough where Shep is just a complete dick to everyone is the way to go. Genophage? Eff you. Does legion have a soul? Nope, now go toast me some bread. Taking all of you down with me in the reaper final battle.
I hadn't thought of this, but this is a BIG part of it for me-
You know, thats another BIG reason I'm disappointed. Look at the big finale in Mass Effect 2. All the upgrades, squad loyalty, we see how all of that effects the big battle. Here we don't see nearly as much involved in the finale. Our choices don't seem to hold as much weight there at the end. While in ME2 we chose who did what, saw the upgrades to the ship get us to the collector base safe/or not, here we just see the stupid 'war room' numbers go up and that's it.
You get that turret schematic to C-Sec - if you do, there would be a room with no turrets in it, since they got cleared out, and a C-Sec guy nodding his head as you guys fight past. Didnt get the schematics? Well, now you have a room full of turrets.
Or you get all that medigel to the hospital; that saves C-Sec lives while you're fighting through, giving some brief NPC assistance in a large battle a-la Jack's biotic kids. Didnt do the quest? No special NPCs.
Yeah and that's all missing here. Thinking back to the whole thing going through the omega relay and how well that was done, and how everything we did MATTERED just makes me even more pissed about this. The more I think about it, there were some GREAT scenes, and gameplay overall is better, but the game just felt like it was missing a lot of things that ME2 had going for it. I'd gladly trade the multiplayer for more of that sort of thing filling out the storyline. When I finished ME2 and saw the ending, know what I did? I started a new game plus, I was so crazy about the game and how things played out I went for another spin. This one, the ending and how it all plays out just has me going fuck it, it's not going to play out any differently, why bother.
"I will f**kin' beat you into the ground in front of your whole life that I don't get to have." -Nick Diaz
(Unresolved Storyline from ME2 with some ME3 spoilers, including endgame spoilers)
We never find out what was happening to Haestrom's sun. Like at all. Why was the star aging so quickly? Was it just the Geth dreadnought? Completely forgotten, unless that is going to be a DLC mission.
What happened to all those people on the Citadel when it got ported to Earth? HOW did it get ported to earth?
Thems people got processed, I imagine.
As for HOW it got to Earth?
Reapers did it with space magic.
Yeah, but then you're just sitting here going; What the hell did I just prepare all of these Citadel jack weeds for if they all just get insta killed? I expected some kind of fight through the Citadel to the Superlaser control panel and you'd get assistance along the way based on the decisions you made.
Perhaps another ME3 playthrough where Shep is just a complete dick to everyone is the way to go. Genophage? Eff you. Does legion have a soul? Nope, now go toast me some bread. Taking all of you down with me in the reaper final battle.
I hadn't thought of this, but this is a BIG part of it for me-
You know, thats another BIG reason I'm disappointed. Look at the big finale in Mass Effect 2. All the upgrades, squad loyalty, we see how all of that effects the big battle. Here we don't see nearly as much involved in the finale. Our choices don't seem to hold as much weight there at the end. While in ME2 we chose who did what, saw the upgrades to the ship get us to the collector base safe/or not, here we just see the stupid 'war room' numbers go up and that's it.
You get that turret schematic to C-Sec - if you do, there would be a room with no turrets in it, since they got cleared out, and a C-Sec guy nodding his head as you guys fight past. Didnt get the schematics? Well, now you have a room full of turrets.
Or you get all that medigel to the hospital; that saves C-Sec lives while you're fighting through, giving some brief NPC assistance in a large battle a-la Jack's biotic kids. Didnt do the quest? No special NPCs.
Yeah and that's all missing here. Thinking back to the whole thing going through the omega relay and how well that was done, and how everything we did MATTERED just makes me even more pissed about this. The more I think about it, there were some GREAT scenes, and gameplay overall is better, but the game just felt like it was missing a lot of things that ME2 had going for it. I'd gladly trade the multiplayer for more of that sort of thing filling out the storyline. When I finished ME2 and saw the ending, know what I did? I started a new game plus, I was so crazy about the game and how things played out I went for another spin. This one, the ending and how it all plays out just has me going fuck it, it's not going to play out any differently, why bother.
It's about the journey, not the destination!
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Just got to Thessia.
Shepard: 1
Kai Leng: 0
I mean he still got the artifact but I kicked his ass.
High galactic war effort: Shepard is sacrificed to destroy the reapers. The mass relays are destroyed, and peace is possible now. Shepard's allies gather for a memorial tribute a-la Master Chief and some exposition is shown about how the characters are going to live on (aka, Liara is shown years later explaining to this young Asari who her father was, Garrus retires to some beach and signs autographs all day, etc)
Medium Galactic war effort: Shepard is sacrificed to destroy the reapers. In the process though, most of the fleets and earth is destroyed. Peace was won, but at a high price. Due to the extensive losses, old conflicts seem to flare up again (such as the Krogan vs Turians / Salarians).
Low Galactic War effort: The reapers win, and instead of being able to activate the super weapon, Shepard pulls out Liara's time capsule and puts together more data for the next cycle to perhaps defeat the reapers and sends it through the mass relays through some kind of Citadel distribution system. The credits roll as a time capsule lands on the Yahg homeworld.
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ExtreaminatusGo forth and amplify,the Noise Marines are here!Registered Userregular
(Unresolved Storyline from ME2 with some ME3 spoilers, including endgame spoilers)
We never find out what was happening to Haestrom's sun. Like at all. Why was the star aging so quickly? Was it just the Geth dreadnought? Completely forgotten, unless that is going to be a DLC mission.
What happened to all those people on the Citadel when it got ported to Earth? HOW did it get ported to earth?
Thems people got processed, I imagine.
As for HOW it got to Earth?
Reapers did it with space magic.
Yeah, but then you're just sitting here going; What the hell did I just prepare all of these Citadel jack weeds for if they all just get insta killed? I expected some kind of fight through the Citadel to the Superlaser control panel and you'd get assistance along the way based on the decisions you made.
Perhaps another ME3 playthrough where Shep is just a complete dick to everyone is the way to go. Genophage? Eff you. Does legion have a soul? Nope, now go toast me some bread. Taking all of you down with me in the reaper final battle.
I hadn't thought of this, but this is a BIG part of it for me-
You know, thats another BIG reason I'm disappointed. Look at the big finale in Mass Effect 2. All the upgrades, squad loyalty, we see how all of that effects the big battle. Here we don't see nearly as much involved in the finale. Our choices don't seem to hold as much weight there at the end. While in ME2 we chose who did what, saw the upgrades to the ship get us to the collector base safe/or not, here we just see the stupid 'war room' numbers go up and that's it.
You get that turret schematic to C-Sec - if you do, there would be a room with no turrets in it, since they got cleared out, and a C-Sec guy nodding his head as you guys fight past. Didnt get the schematics? Well, now you have a room full of turrets.
Or you get all that medigel to the hospital; that saves C-Sec lives while you're fighting through, giving some brief NPC assistance in a large battle a-la Jack's biotic kids. Didnt do the quest? No special NPCs.
Yeah and that's all missing here. Thinking back to the whole thing going through the omega relay and how well that was done, and how everything we did MATTERED just makes me even more pissed about this. The more I think about it, there were some GREAT scenes, and gameplay overall is better, but the game just felt like it was missing a lot of things that ME2 had going for it. I'd gladly trade the multiplayer for more of that sort of thing filling out the storyline. When I finished ME2 and saw the ending, know what I did? I started a new game plus, I was so crazy about the game and how things played out I went for another spin. This one, the ending and how it all plays out just has me going fuck it, it's not going to play out any differently, why bother.
It's about the journey, not the destination!
I tried that journey rationale, and it still doesn't sit very well with me.
Yeah, the journey was really seven kinds of awesome, but the destination was a the Jersey Shore.
I mean, part of it was just having romanced Tali, seeing her react to it was great. I loved that she went the route of Ashley in late game ME1, becoming less idiotic (Tali about the Geth, Ashley about aliens).
And that whole Geth server...figuring out the origin story of Legion (or at least his platform) was great.
And then the Reaper! I almost wonder if they made that fight purposefully cryptic in terms of "dodge that laser, your laser holds a charge, etc", so that you would die over and over and feel enraged. I know that's how I felt.
And then the ending! I was agonizing over that choice, and a Google search just led me to some vague references to a "paragon speech option" which I assumed was persuasion. So I jumped right in, gave the Geth sentience, and then pulled a scene right out of Doctor Who, using the fact that I was who I was to call the shots. And it was fantastic. My heart was literally pounding. This game can't get any better.
Shepard forgot the relative nature of Relativity. Time slowed for him relative to the rest of the universe. To everyone else, Shepard's month long journey staring at a single light in the distance took 13 billion years -- the approximate age of the universe currently, though we guess for Shepard it's 26 billion years old now.
Not only did Shepard fail to stop the Reaper invasion, the insects managed wipe out all life in the galaxy and repeat the cycle approximately 260,000 more times. Time dilation grows exponentially. As the Normandy moved faster and as the ship neared (but never broke) the speed of light, time slowed and since all outside light coalesced into a single bright white point ahead of them, the crew of the Normandy couldn't tell what was happening outside the ship...
That fancy "Mass Effect" reactor in the Normandy's engine room uses element zero to reduce the ships mass to zero or close enough to travel at or near the speed of light. That helps get the Normandy from A to B, but the ship's still stuck in the solar system as traveling to any other endangered planet could take millennia. To get around this, ships use mass relays which propel them across the galaxy in seconds. Being a bit harder to explain away than traditional FTL drives, Bioware wisely chose to leave the mechanics behind these devices a mystery.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Oh man...that conversation between Shepard and Joker after you get off Thessia is so awesome.
Shepard forgot the relative nature of Relativity. Time slowed for him relative to the rest of the universe. To everyone else, Shepard's month long journey staring at a single light in the distance took 13 billion years -- the approximate age of the universe currently, though we guess for Shepard it's 26 billion years old now.
Not only did Shepard fail to stop the Reaper invasion, the insects managed wipe out all life in the galaxy and repeat the cycle approximately 260,000 more times. Time dilation grows exponentially. As the Normandy moved faster and as the ship neared (but never broke) the speed of light, time slowed and since all outside light coalesced into a single bright white point ahead of them, the crew of the Normandy couldn't tell what was happening outside the ship...
That fancy "Mass Effect" reactor in the Normandy's engine room uses element zero to reduce the ships mass to zero or close enough to travel at or near the speed of light. That helps get the Normandy from A to B, but the ship's still stuck in the solar system as traveling to any other endangered planet could take millennia. To get around this, ships use mass relays which propel them across the galaxy in seconds. Being a bit harder to explain away than traditional FTL drives, Bioware wisely chose to leave the mechanics behind these devices a mystery.
I have no idea where this is coming from, but in the game you fly between star systems in a matter of hours and the codex in the game quite clearly says
FTL drives are devices which allow ships to travel at FTL speeds through space. FTL drive cores work by exposing element zero to electric currents, creating mass effect fields. It reduces the mass of an object—such as a starship—to a point where accelerations faster than the speed of light are possible. With a mass effect drive, roughly a dozen light-years can be traversed in the course of a day's cruise.
Every single romance scene and half the cutscenes in the game take place while the normandy is zipping along at like 300 times the speed of light. The reapers flew tens of thousands of light years in a single year, because they are more advanced, but operate on the same principle as the drives of the biological races' ships
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TTODewbackPuts the drawl in ya'llI think I'm in HellRegistered Userregular
edited March 2012
Finished the game..
We get the Saren fight again..but without the fighting..just the choice to make him shoot himself again. Wow. Lazy motherfucking design. Also Buzz Aldrin, your cameo sucked. I had the quarians geth turians asari krogran salarians hanar drell and a massive alliance fleet (Only race I forgot was the elcor..My bad. didn't think it was going to be a planet scan), but it still took a few games of excruciatingly buggy fucking multiplayer to get that 'bonus' to the ending.
Over all, I like the game, but the multiplayer is buggy to the point its almost unplayable and the ending to singleplayer is rushed and half-assed.
Edit: Almost fucked that spoiler tag up. My bad.
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Bless your heart.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
No Crucible. Just a straight up fight between Reapers and a United Galaxy.
I wanted to see something along the lines of a Mass Effect 2 "check list" for success.
For instance, a ground assault, space assault, and inside-the reaper assault that fails or succeeds depending on your previous choices.
Would've been nice to see Reaper shields get taken down as a direct result of Geth and Quarian cooperation, Reaper ground forces get decimated as a result of Krogan and Rachni support, and space battles won or lost through the cooperative efforts of the Turians, the Alliance, Volus, Elcor, Hanar, Batarians, etc. Could've had some sort of doomsday Reaper-killing virus/bomb co-developed by Asari and Salarian scientists that had to be manually set up inside Harbinger by Shepard and his team as the climactic finale. Maybe Shepard has to stay behind to set off the bomb while everyone escapes a la Kaiden/Ashley.
With the main theme being that the resistance was finally successful because it was the first time ever, in hundreds of cycles, that the galaxy had actually stood united to stop the Reaper threat, with Shepard as the great unifier. Maybe that could even be the point of the Reapers. They emerge every 50,000 years as a manufactured threat to try and unify the galaxy against a common enemy Watchmen style.
That's how I pictured it going down in my head pre-release anyway.
I think the game could have ended earlier, right when
when Shepard and Anderson have presumably won, and are laying back and talking to each other, the crucible activates which causes a big explosion, cut to a funeral ceremony with all surviving crew, then the old guy (make it someone who was present at the funeral) telling the kid about shepard, and you see a Mass Relay half constructed in orbit (so you leave on a note of hope for the future).
I dunno I'm not a writer, but the ending is star wars prequel level bad
No Crucible. Just a straight up fight between Reapers and a United Galaxy.
I wanted to see something along the lines of a Mass Effect 2 "check list" for success.
For instance, a ground assault, space assault, and inside-the reaper assault that fails or succeeds depending on your previous choices.
Would've been nice to see Reaper shields get taken down as a direct result of Geth and Quarian cooperation, Reaper ground forces get decimated as a result of Krogan and Rachni support, and space battles won or lost through the cooperative efforts of the Turians, the Alliance, Volus, Elcor, Hanar, Batarians, etc. Could've had some sort of doomsday Reaper-killing virus/bomb co-developed by Asari and Salarian scientists that had to be manually set up inside Harbinger by Shepard and his team as the climactic finale. Maybe Shepard has to stay behind to set off the bomb while everyone escapes a la Kaiden/Ashley.
With the main theme being that the resistance was successful because it was the first time ever, in hundreds of cycles, that the galaxy had actually united to stop the Reaper threat, with Shepard as the great unifier.
That's how I pictured it going down in my head pre-release anyway.
My expectation as well. Hell, most of my decisions in this series were for increasing the strength of the galaxy's forces.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't playing my ass off so I could get the chance to raise some little blue kids with Liara on a beach somewhere though.
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Shepard forgot the relative nature of Relativity. Time slowed for him relative to the rest of the universe. To everyone else, Shepard's month long journey staring at a single light in the distance took 13 billion years -- the approximate age of the universe currently, though we guess for Shepard it's 26 billion years old now.
Not only did Shepard fail to stop the Reaper invasion, the insects managed wipe out all life in the galaxy and repeat the cycle approximately 260,000 more times. Time dilation grows exponentially. As the Normandy moved faster and as the ship neared (but never broke) the speed of light, time slowed and since all outside light coalesced into a single bright white point ahead of them, the crew of the Normandy couldn't tell what was happening outside the ship...
That fancy "Mass Effect" reactor in the Normandy's engine room uses element zero to reduce the ships mass to zero or close enough to travel at or near the speed of light. That helps get the Normandy from A to B, but the ship's still stuck in the solar system as traveling to any other endangered planet could take millennia. To get around this, ships use mass relays which propel them across the galaxy in seconds. Being a bit harder to explain away than traditional FTL drives, Bioware wisely chose to leave the mechanics behind these devices a mystery.
I have no idea where this is coming from, but in the game you fly between star systems in a matter of hours and the codex in the game quite clearly says
FTL drives are devices which allow ships to travel at FTL speeds through space. FTL drive cores work by exposing element zero to electric currents, creating mass effect fields. It reduces the mass of an object—such as a starship—to a point where accelerations faster than the speed of light are possible. With a mass effect drive, roughly a dozen light-years can be traversed in the course of a day's cruise.
Every single romance scene and half the cutscenes in the game take place while the normandy is zipping along at like 300 times the speed of light. The reapers flew tens of thousands of light years in a single year, because they are more advanced, but operate on the same principle as the drives of the biological races' ships
Yeah, that 1up article fails to understand the universe so incredibly badly that it misses the entire premise of how any of the technology in the game works which is so vital that the GAME ITSELF is named after it. It's FTL travel. It's faster than light.
I'm glad 1up can pay its writers to write a dumb fluff piece though? I wonder if this is how little research they put into all of their articles.
Shepard forgot the relative nature of Relativity. Time slowed for him relative to the rest of the universe. To everyone else, Shepard's month long journey staring at a single light in the distance took 13 billion years -- the approximate age of the universe currently, though we guess for Shepard it's 26 billion years old now.
Not only did Shepard fail to stop the Reaper invasion, the insects managed wipe out all life in the galaxy and repeat the cycle approximately 260,000 more times. Time dilation grows exponentially. As the Normandy moved faster and as the ship neared (but never broke) the speed of light, time slowed and since all outside light coalesced into a single bright white point ahead of them, the crew of the Normandy couldn't tell what was happening outside the ship...
That fancy "Mass Effect" reactor in the Normandy's engine room uses element zero to reduce the ships mass to zero or close enough to travel at or near the speed of light. That helps get the Normandy from A to B, but the ship's still stuck in the solar system as traveling to any other endangered planet could take millennia. To get around this, ships use mass relays which propel them across the galaxy in seconds. Being a bit harder to explain away than traditional FTL drives, Bioware wisely chose to leave the mechanics behind these devices a mystery.
I have no idea where this is coming from, but in the game you fly between star systems in a matter of hours and the codex in the game quite clearly says
FTL drives are devices which allow ships to travel at FTL speeds through space. FTL drive cores work by exposing element zero to electric currents, creating mass effect fields. It reduces the mass of an object—such as a starship—to a point where accelerations faster than the speed of light are possible. With a mass effect drive, roughly a dozen light-years can be traversed in the course of a day's cruise.
Every single romance scene and half the cutscenes in the game take place while the normandy is zipping along at like 300 times the speed of light. The reapers flew tens of thousands of light years in a single year, because they are more advanced, but operate on the same principle as the drives of the biological races' ships
I think the Mass Relays went a long way towards helping people ignore the time dilation stuff, but I don't really care. I hope you're right!
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Good Lord, I'm not usually one to bash endings, but holy hell
What's really so bad about it, to me, is that 90% of what makes these games great is not it's combat or it's story, it's the characters and the way they interact with each other. All those great moments in the game that constantly remind you that you've fought with these people before and they reference your past together. That's what I really enjoyed about the game, ultimately, and for the game to not even tell you what happened to all these character you're invested in is just so damn annoying.
Couldn't they have at least given us a few lines of text to tell us what happened to everyone?
I wasn't expecting a triumphant ending, but it would have been nice.
Ok, so Shepard dies. Got it, it makes sense even if I don't like it.
Deus ex machina to end the game that takes into account literally nothing that happened beforehand. Shitty, but understandable given what we know about the power of reapers relative to the rest of the galaxy.
Absolutely no explanation of what happened after your decision? That's what makes it truly terrible.
Hell, I actually liked Dragon Age 2 and I hated this ending.
I don't really agree Guido, did you not catch the...
Fucking half hour goodbye you go through with each and every member of your surviving crew? What happens after is better left for fan-fiction. I don't need to see that. I needed to see Shepard's fate and what happened to the Reapers. I got both. Might not be enough for some but I got what I wanted.
Thanks to the people from the last thread for clearing up slightly buggy quests. Just set them aside. Partially a bad idea since slightly later story stuff seemed to have ...gotten rid of the quest people. But 2 very tiny side quests are unnecessary.
All of the bullet holes where Barla Von was lead me to believe he didn't survive the attack. I am assuming the hypothetically indoctrinated hanar didn't make it either.
Also, regarding one of the guests you can take with you:
The Diana Allders thing is a ...sort of neat addition. But ...what the hell? Why is her voice acting so terrible, I feel like copping Archer's " Nice read, Velma" every time she opens her mouth. Speaking of her mouth: she and crew members talk about how she's supposed to be pretty. But she has a face like a tarted-up softball. Covered in non-sensical makeup and it looks like it's gotten hit by a bat more than once.
But everyone else's voice acting so far has been pretty excellent. Suffering one outlier isn't difficult.
And speaking of voice acting, the funniest exchange so far:
On Sur'Kesh, if you bring Liara and Garrus, once the yahg start escaping and you catch a glimpse of one bashing things down (slightly paraphrased):
Shepard: There goes the next shadow broker.
Garrus: I think I heard him mumbling "T'Soni"...
Liara: Not funny.
But writing and random conversations overall have been pretty engaging. I'm not sure how well it will pass on a replay, but - as simple as the conversation trees can be sometimes - they do seem to take into account the rest of the conversation.
Yes, I can see why some people find them unfufilling. But I loved the fact it was basically a super-high level 'hard sci-fi' ending in that the issues of technological singularity and organic vs inorganic were brought flat out to the surface. The ending of Mass Effect 3 gave me a very Freespace 2 vibe. Not in any factual way or the events that happened, but rather the tone. Not one of gleeful celibrations but of somber reflection and more questions than answers. And guess what? Freespace 2 is a fucking classic.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 2012
Yeah. I will say one thing Allers VAing is so bad. Especially compared to the great job everyone else does. Main problem I have is that see pretty much keeps the same tone all the time. That being said extra content is extra content.
Also...Kai Leng is hilarious. He's like the #1 troll. Can't wait to kick his ass.
I don't really agree Guido, did you not catch the...
Fucking half hour goodbye you go through with each and every member of your surviving crew? What happens after is better left for fan-fiction. I don't need to see that. I needed to see Shepard's fate and what happened to the Reapers. I got both. Might not be enough for some but I got what I wanted.
Why couldn't they have at least told you who lived and died? EDI and Joker went to the planet and my ending and I don't know if that means they were the only ones who survived or if they were just the ones who got out of the ship first.
A postlogue with all the surviving characters would have been super awesome and might have redeemed the ending, ultimately.
Instead what I got was, Shepard is a part of the universe now and EDI and Joker are on a planet somewhere? And who the fuck knows about everyone else?
Yes, I can see why some people find them unfufilling. But I loved the fact it was basically a super-high level 'hard sci-fi' ending in that the issues of technological singularity and organic vs inorganic were brought flat out to the surface. The ending of Mass Effect 3 gave me a very Freespace 2 vibe. Not in any factual way or the events that happened, but rather the tone. Not one of gleeful celibrations but of somber reflection and more questions than answers. And guess what? Freespace 2 is a fucking classic.
In Freespace 2 you still won though.
Yes, it wasn't clear exactly what had happened, but it was outside your control entirely and the goal really was just survival - which you accomplished (although try surviving that last mission - I felt bad hearing the narration because I was trying to burn 6km to the node in under a minute).
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Yes, I can see why some people find them unfufilling. But I loved the fact it was basically a super-high level 'hard sci-fi' ending in that the issues of technological singularity and organic vs inorganic were brought flat out to the surface. The ending of Mass Effect 3 gave me a very Freespace 2 vibe. Not in any factual way or the events that happened, but rather the tone. Not one of gleeful celibrations but of somber reflection and more questions than answers. And guess what? Freespace 2 is a fucking classic.
In Freespace 2 you still won though.
Yes, it wasn't clear exactly what had happened, but it was outside your control entirely and the goal really was just survival - which you accomplished (although try surviving that last mission - I felt bad hearing the narration because I was trying to burn 6km to the node in under a minute).
...
You win in ME3 too last time I checked. Honestly...I'm a bit disappointed they didn't put a fail ending in. Just for the heck of it.
Faster-than-light speeds do not necessarily circumvent the time dilation from Einstein's Laws of Special Relativity. Not even taking the Mass Effect drives and relays into account, any time you land on a planet or a space station, you are on an object that is moving in a reference frame at high speeds away/toward all other observers. You'd get time dilation regardless of where you went compared to other observers, simply by landing on a planet or stopping in any solar system (especially if you remain in orbit around a planet or other moving object). Yes, this puts a monkey wrench into most Space Opera as we know it (unless it is limited to a handful of relatively close systems). But nearly all Space Opera are notorious for moving things forward at "the speed of plot", and you really can't have a Space Opera without waving your hand and dismissing concerns with "Space Magic".
Yes, I can see why some people find them unfufilling. But I loved the fact it was basically a super-high level 'hard sci-fi' ending in that the issues of technological singularity and organic vs inorganic were brought flat out to the surface. The ending of Mass Effect 3 gave me a very Freespace 2 vibe. Not in any factual way or the events that happened, but rather the tone. Not one of gleeful celibrations but of somber reflection and more questions than answers. And guess what? Freespace 2 is a fucking classic.
In Freespace 2 you still won though.
Yes, it wasn't clear exactly what had happened, but it was outside your control entirely and the goal really was just survival - which you accomplished (although try surviving that last mission - I felt bad hearing the narration because I was trying to burn 6km to the node in under a minute).
Bwahahaha. You only 'win' in Freespace 2 because the Shivans have goals so incomprehensible they can't be bothered to be distracted from blowing up Capella's sun. Your accomplishments in the game mean almost NOTHING. You lost. Everything you threw at the Shivans got wrecked. You barely nicked their finger nails, and the only thing keeping them from sending out an unstoppable force of Juggernaughts is because we are completely beneath them. You slam the door shut in their face and hide under your bed hoping, praying, they don't come back.
Mass Effect 3 is a goddamn V-Day from WWII in comparison.
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ExtreaminatusGo forth and amplify,the Noise Marines are here!Registered Userregular
Also, regarding one of the guests you can take with you:
The Diana Allders thing is a ...sort of neat addition. But ...what the hell? Why is her voice acting so terrible, I feel like copping Archer's " Nice read, Velma" every time she opens her mouth. Speaking of her mouth: she and crew members talk about how she's supposed to be pretty. But she has a face like a tarted-up softball. Covered in non-sensical makeup and it looks like it's gotten hit by a bat more than once.
Her voice actor is really excitable and very new (I think) to voice acting. As for her face, well, that's what genetics gave her (that's what her face looks like in the real world, too).
Shepard forgot the relative nature of Relativity. Time slowed for him relative to the rest of the universe. To everyone else, Shepard's month long journey staring at a single light in the distance took 13 billion years -- the approximate age of the universe currently, though we guess for Shepard it's 26 billion years old now.
Not only did Shepard fail to stop the Reaper invasion, the insects managed wipe out all life in the galaxy and repeat the cycle approximately 260,000 more times. Time dilation grows exponentially. As the Normandy moved faster and as the ship neared (but never broke) the speed of light, time slowed and since all outside light coalesced into a single bright white point ahead of them, the crew of the Normandy couldn't tell what was happening outside the ship...
That fancy "Mass Effect" reactor in the Normandy's engine room uses element zero to reduce the ships mass to zero or close enough to travel at or near the speed of light. That helps get the Normandy from A to B, but the ship's still stuck in the solar system as traveling to any other endangered planet could take millennia. To get around this, ships use mass relays which propel them across the galaxy in seconds. Being a bit harder to explain away than traditional FTL drives, Bioware wisely chose to leave the mechanics behind these devices a mystery.
I have no idea where this is coming from, but in the game you fly between star systems in a matter of hours and the codex in the game quite clearly says
FTL drives are devices which allow ships to travel at FTL speeds through space. FTL drive cores work by exposing element zero to electric currents, creating mass effect fields. It reduces the mass of an object—such as a starship—to a point where accelerations faster than the speed of light are possible. With a mass effect drive, roughly a dozen light-years can be traversed in the course of a day's cruise.
Every single romance scene and half the cutscenes in the game take place while the normandy is zipping along at like 300 times the speed of light. The reapers flew tens of thousands of light years in a single year, because they are more advanced, but operate on the same principle as the drives of the biological races' ships
I think the Mass Relays went a long way towards helping people ignore the time dilation stuff, but I don't really care. I hope you're right!
There's no hoping about it
In the video games Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3 you travel without a mass relay all the time between (relatively) close star systems. This is a thing you do in the games. Off the top of my head without looking, Horizon isn't in the same star system as a Mass Relay and you have to travel there. Every single time you are using fuel up in the game it is because you are using the FTL.
Contesting this because it violates relativity in real life is ridiculous. You might as well be telling me that they don't have faster than light travel in star trek. According to the codex in all three Mass Effect games and at least 2 of the novels, starships travel quite quickly (quick nerd calculations put them at roughly four times as fast as ships from star trek), however unlike star trek the speed and distance a ship can travel are heavily related to how big the drive core is, how big the ship is, and how fast you want it to go.
Spoilers dependent on this:
Now, since all of their ships are built with Mass Relays in mind, much outfitting would need to be done if they wanted to use them to travel the thousands of light years around council space. It would take a few months or maybe years to reach say, Thessia from Earth, so they'd need a buttload of fuel. The quarian ships are actually ideal because they have lots of storage capacity, where as if the Normandy is any judge, a typical ship has a range of no where near that
Edit: In fact, if I remember my Mass Effect 1, it's illegal to open a mass relay to its partner, before a new relay can be opened, an expedition must be mounted to make sure that they won't open up the relay and find space hitler on the other side
Please tell me people aren't taking issue with the special relativity in a game with lasers that glow on the visible spectrum, goddamn energy shields, hacking that takes place via a minigame interface, etc.
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I love south american ground karate
"Hack it out."
Shepard: 1
Kai Leng: 0
I mean he still got the artifact but I kicked his ass.
Medium Galactic war effort: Shepard is sacrificed to destroy the reapers. In the process though, most of the fleets and earth is destroyed. Peace was won, but at a high price. Due to the extensive losses, old conflicts seem to flare up again (such as the Krogan vs Turians / Salarians).
Low Galactic War effort: The reapers win, and instead of being able to activate the super weapon, Shepard pulls out Liara's time capsule and puts together more data for the next cycle to perhaps defeat the reapers and sends it through the mass relays through some kind of Citadel distribution system. The credits roll as a time capsule lands on the Yahg homeworld.
Yeah, the journey was really seven kinds of awesome, but the destination was a the Jersey Shore.
Why?
Midgame ME3 spoilers
I mean, part of it was just having romanced Tali, seeing her react to it was great. I loved that she went the route of Ashley in late game ME1, becoming less idiotic (Tali about the Geth, Ashley about aliens).
And that whole Geth server...figuring out the origin story of Legion (or at least his platform) was great.
And then the Reaper! I almost wonder if they made that fight purposefully cryptic in terms of "dodge that laser, your laser holds a charge, etc", so that you would die over and over and feel enraged. I know that's how I felt.
And then the ending! I was agonizing over that choice, and a Google search just led me to some vague references to a "paragon speech option" which I assumed was persuasion. So I jumped right in, gave the Geth sentience, and then pulled a scene right out of Doctor Who, using the fact that I was who I was to call the shots. And it was fantastic. My heart was literally pounding. This game can't get any better.
I have no idea where this is coming from, but in the game you fly between star systems in a matter of hours and the codex in the game quite clearly says
Every single romance scene and half the cutscenes in the game take place while the normandy is zipping along at like 300 times the speed of light. The reapers flew tens of thousands of light years in a single year, because they are more advanced, but operate on the same principle as the drives of the biological races' ships
Edit: Almost fucked that spoiler tag up. My bad.
Edit: There we go.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Nope.
It's like being bender on futurama and they ask you to do something that isn't related to bending (or drinking/stealing)
I wanted to see something along the lines of a Mass Effect 2 "check list" for success.
For instance, a ground assault, space assault, and inside-the reaper assault that fails or succeeds depending on your previous choices.
Would've been nice to see Reaper shields get taken down as a direct result of Geth and Quarian cooperation, Reaper ground forces get decimated as a result of Krogan and Rachni support, and space battles won or lost through the cooperative efforts of the Turians, the Alliance, Volus, Elcor, Hanar, Batarians, etc. Could've had some sort of doomsday Reaper-killing virus/bomb co-developed by Asari and Salarian scientists that had to be manually set up inside Harbinger by Shepard and his team as the climactic finale. Maybe Shepard has to stay behind to set off the bomb while everyone escapes a la Kaiden/Ashley.
With the main theme being that the resistance was finally successful because it was the first time ever, in hundreds of cycles, that the galaxy had actually stood united to stop the Reaper threat, with Shepard as the great unifier. Maybe that could even be the point of the Reapers. They emerge every 50,000 years as a manufactured threat to try and unify the galaxy against a common enemy Watchmen style.
That's how I pictured it going down in my head pre-release anyway.
I dunno I'm not a writer, but the ending is star wars prequel level bad
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't playing my ass off so I could get the chance to raise some little blue kids with Liara on a beach somewhere though.
Yeah, that 1up article fails to understand the universe so incredibly badly that it misses the entire premise of how any of the technology in the game works which is so vital that the GAME ITSELF is named after it. It's FTL travel. It's faster than light.
I'm glad 1up can pay its writers to write a dumb fluff piece though? I wonder if this is how little research they put into all of their articles.
i killed more people with my skull than these guys did with guns
that poor level 2 soldier though. all he had was an avenger. worst gun ever
homeboy got outgunned by a cerberus trooper, multiple times. straight up mano y mano duels
i wonder how sad he was to see me krogan charge into a centurion and kill it in one hit and send its corpse careening across the map
Couldn't they have at least given us a few lines of text to tell us what happened to everyone?
I wasn't expecting a triumphant ending, but it would have been nice.
Ok, so Shepard dies. Got it, it makes sense even if I don't like it.
Deus ex machina to end the game that takes into account literally nothing that happened beforehand. Shitty, but understandable given what we know about the power of reapers relative to the rest of the galaxy.
Absolutely no explanation of what happened after your decision? That's what makes it truly terrible.
Hell, I actually liked Dragon Age 2 and I hated this ending.
I would pay anything to see that movie.
Also, regarding one of the guests you can take with you:
But everyone else's voice acting so far has been pretty excellent. Suffering one outlier isn't difficult.
And speaking of voice acting, the funniest exchange so far:
Shepard: There goes the next shadow broker.
Garrus: I think I heard him mumbling "T'Soni"...
Liara: Not funny.
But writing and random conversations overall have been pretty engaging. I'm not sure how well it will pass on a replay, but - as simple as the conversation trees can be sometimes - they do seem to take into account the rest of the conversation.
Because whoever said that if ME4 was announced and was a sequel, they'd go from hate to huge nerd-boner, is right on the fucking money.
ITT battered player syndrome.
Also...Kai Leng is hilarious. He's like the #1 troll. Can't wait to kick his ass.
A postlogue with all the surviving characters would have been super awesome and might have redeemed the ending, ultimately.
Instead what I got was, Shepard is a part of the universe now and EDI and Joker are on a planet somewhere? And who the fuck knows about everyone else?
In Freespace 2 you still won though.
Yes, it wasn't clear exactly what had happened, but it was outside your control entirely and the goal really was just survival - which you accomplished (although try surviving that last mission - I felt bad hearing the narration because I was trying to burn 6km to the node in under a minute).
...
Bwahahaha. You only 'win' in Freespace 2 because the Shivans have goals so incomprehensible they can't be bothered to be distracted from blowing up Capella's sun. Your accomplishments in the game mean almost NOTHING. You lost. Everything you threw at the Shivans got wrecked. You barely nicked their finger nails, and the only thing keeping them from sending out an unstoppable force of Juggernaughts is because we are completely beneath them. You slam the door shut in their face and hide under your bed hoping, praying, they don't come back.
Mass Effect 3 is a goddamn V-Day from WWII in comparison.
Her voice actor is really excitable and very new (I think) to voice acting. As for her face, well, that's what genetics gave her (that's what her face looks like in the real world, too).
There's no hoping about it
In the video games Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3 you travel without a mass relay all the time between (relatively) close star systems. This is a thing you do in the games. Off the top of my head without looking, Horizon isn't in the same star system as a Mass Relay and you have to travel there. Every single time you are using fuel up in the game it is because you are using the FTL.
Contesting this because it violates relativity in real life is ridiculous. You might as well be telling me that they don't have faster than light travel in star trek. According to the codex in all three Mass Effect games and at least 2 of the novels, starships travel quite quickly (quick nerd calculations put them at roughly four times as fast as ships from star trek), however unlike star trek the speed and distance a ship can travel are heavily related to how big the drive core is, how big the ship is, and how fast you want it to go.
Spoilers dependent on this:
Edit: In fact, if I remember my Mass Effect 1, it's illegal to open a mass relay to its partner, before a new relay can be opened, an expedition must be mounted to make sure that they won't open up the relay and find space hitler on the other side