I guess I'm not surprised that Holkins and Kuchera are going out of their way to mislead people about this game, given the extensive history of business dealings between Penny Arcade and Bioware.
I am surprised at how blatant they're being about it. Talking about how it's like people are playing different games because of the choices they made in ME1 and ME2 is absolutely ludicrous given how minimal and superficial the effects of your previous choices are in this game.
Not mentioning the reduced dialogue options ONCE either on the blog or in the official review is just incredible. So is Kuchera's attempt to blame fans for their reactions to the ending, or Tycho's claim that it's somehow impossible to write a satisfying conclusion to a video game (but not a novel or a film....riiiight). What kind of coverage glosses over anything negative about the game and fabricates positive qualities? It's like reading a particularly dishonest press release. It's like advertising.
It might not be because that's what he really thinks? I agree with his statements. I'm in the minority, but like the critical reviews, I enjoyed the ride to get there, no matter the issues with the ending.
And the dialog options are only reduced in the sense that they're now spread throughout the conversation, instead of being right there up front for you to (Investigate). The influence of the previous games is astounding. I have shoutouts from actions taken back in ME1, throw-away and not-throwaway dialog, people alive or dead showing up in various places...
I just cannot fathom the idea that your actions in previous games aren't reflected in this game. This is as much as my actions in a game have ever been reflected and it is amazing.
@BioEvilChris During the final run, just before the end, are the two squadmates with you killed? I understand if you can't answer.
@KenRaves I don't think we've revealed that yet. Sorry.
Sounds like DLC!
I'm gonna go with no, cause I had Ashley with me, and she got out of The Normandy where ever it is
I had Garrus with me and he was the one stepping out of the Normandy
Interesting...
Was the other person, besides Joker, Vega? Because he popped out after Ashley, but I definitely didn't have him with me. I wish he died...
Yeah in my ending had..
Joker, Liara (who I took with me), and Ash walked out.
In regards to that stupid tweet, like I said earlier about the ending..
If they do play off the last few ending segments as "Indoctrination" and completely retcon the ending with DLC, I'd be seriously disappointed. Mostly because it means, it was always planned to give us the "real" ending through another payment (I don't care if others do it, so don't bother bringing them up) or they caved to public pressure and changed their original vision for the ending... prob after realizing people would pay for it.
Both will get youtube'd and treated as glorified fanfic.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I am surprised at how blatant they're being about it. Talking about how it's like people are playing different games because of the choices they made in ME1 and ME2 is absolutely ludicrous given how minimal and superficial the effects of your previous choices are in this game.
Oh come the fuck on.
People are playing demonstrably different games here.
Example: I failed at doing Grissom academy because I didn't realize there was a timer on missions. I never met Jack... until the Cerberus base. Jack was one of the phantoms attacking me, she even says, "I will destroy you!" Let me tell you, shooting her in the face was a kick in the gut.
Another example: I brokered peace between Quarians and Geth. Some people didn't even have that option. Some sided with the Geth and watched a beloved teammate kill herself on Rannoch. Others choose the Quarians and watched the Geth be destroyed.
Another example: Conrad Verner actually turned out to be a war asset for me. Some people never even saw him in this game.
The list goes on.
Please take that shit somewhere where the silly goosery isn't going to get you laughed at. I'm sure BSN will welcome you with open arms.
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
the relays HAD to go. sovvy says from the beginning that their chief purpose is to guide organic development along a pre-determined path. fuck that shit, time to break free.
also, anyone who things the ending makes all your work count for nothing is on SPACE CRACK.
you have a chance to leave the galaxy in a more hopeful long-term position than it's EVER been in. you defeat the reapers, ending the cycle. depending on your choices you can solve some of the greatest interspecies conflicts of your era. so fucking what if the relays are gone - we need to determine our own path. and i can't think of a more hopeful ending than a galaxy, united - both organics and synthetics - to fight for survival and a common desire to rebel against the plans of the ancients.
as i've said before, this ending lets bioware take some frankly amazing steps with the mass effect universe going forward. i can't fucking wait.
It does invalidate your choices if you care more about the direct consequences of those choices and not some hypothetical future society that's at best marginally tied to the current setting. The defeat of the reapers and the ending of the cycle were to many people just a stepping stone towards finding out how their choices shape the galaxy afterwards, and they received nothing for it, making the choices pointless, since you can do whatever and get the same ending with a different color palette.
The destruction of the relays is not a bad thing, in fact it's a good thing for the setting to become more interesting, but the current endings address none of the expectation for a sizable portion of the player base at the moment.
the bolded above confirms that a sizable portion of the player base is silly geese, then. :P
i'm getting the feeling that if they had to choose between saving their friends and saving the galaxy, the reapers would get their harvest.
shepard says it over and over and over and over and OVER during the course of ME3: i'm prepared to die to save my friendssave the normandysave earth SAVE THE GALAXY AND DEFEAT THE REAPERS
Really? For many people the meat of the game is the characters and the plot choices and interactions. If you got the satisfaction from just fighting the reapers, good for you.
for me, the characters and plot choices and interactions are there to hammer home the gravity of the threat. what i love about the mass effect series is that they spend two entire games building up the universe to something you love immensely, then give you a slim chance to save it from being wiped out. that's great storytelling. but the two things have to go together - i'm not interested in the mundane adventures of a random turian during his middle career years, angling for a promotion that never comes. mass effect tells me i have a problem, and then makes me care about solving it.
tangentially: this is also why i have trouble getting into most fantasy games. they're great about presenting problems, but really bad at telling me why i should care. if they're good, they tell strong player characters why they should care, and i'll believe that.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
I am surprised at how blatant they're being about it. Talking about how it's like people are playing different games because of the choices they made in ME1 and ME2 is absolutely ludicrous given how minimal and superficial the effects of your previous choices are in this game.
I feel like you are being a little too cynical here, your choices do have consequences, just talking to my coworkers has the almost exact same effect that is shown in that comic. Two of my coworkers just outright let Tali die in #2, and IMPORTED that save into 3. Madness I tell you.
This is funny, because about an hour after I read the comic, I had one of those moments with one of my friends. She didn't import a character and we were talking about mission decisions (couple of early/mid game spoilers):
Grunt died while fighting the Ravagers, and Samara never showed up for the Ardat-Yaksi mission
I'm sure there's more disparity going on, but those two were the most glaring and recent ones I can recall.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I am surprised at how blatant they're being about it. Talking about how it's like people are playing different games because of the choices they made in ME1 and ME2 is absolutely ludicrous given how minimal and superficial the effects of your previous choices are in this game.
I feel like you are being a little too cynical here, your choices do have consequences, just talking to my coworkers has the almost exact same effect that is shown in that comic. Two of my coworkers just outright let Tali die in #2, and IMPORTED that save into 3. Madness I tell you.
This is funny, because about an hour after I read the comic, I had one of those moments with one of my friends. She didn't import a character and we were talking about mission decisions (couple of early/mid game spoilers):
Grunt died while fighting the Ravagers, and Samara never showed up for the Ardat-Yaksi mission
I'm sure there's more disparity going on, but those two were the most glaring and recent ones I can recall.
Another example
In one of these threads, someone said they fought a Morinth banshee at the Ardat Yakshi camp.
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
AI is a crapshoot? Really? After several instances of Synthetics being sympathetic and harmonious races, they make the ending entirely depend on it? When I heard "Organics create Synthetics, Synthetics will then kill off Organics, so we made the cycle so that Synthetics only MOSTLY kill off Organics to turn them into Synthetics" my mouth dropped open. In the cases of EDI and the Geth, Shepard even specifically states that they are life, regardless of their composition or origins. But the Catalyst is all like, "Nope, Synthetic=evil."
Why the hell didn't the Catalyst just make it so that periodically, the Reapers emerge to destroy all Synthetic life, since they seem to be what it considers as the problem?
I guess Synthesis is the best ending, what is the romance partner's suffering compared to everyone getting cool techno-organic bodies? The Control ending is a close second, with Destruction a very distant last.
In the end, though, I immediately thought "Really? You're just going to rip off the 3 endings from Deus Ex by slapping on a coat of paint and calling it over?
i can think of a quite a few worse endings than the ones we're given.
i'm pretty happy that the endings we GET deliver on the two vital points: eliminating the reaper threat, and setting the galaxy on a new path forward. everything beyond that is gravy, and if bioware didn't want to put too much sugar in their gravy, i'm ok with it.
I mean this in the nicest possible way, but it feels like you played a completely different game franchise to me.
Like, you basically just said "it's a good thing we killed the boss at the end of the game".
Which is like, inconsequential because it's such an obvious thing. One way or another the Reapers were always going down. It's what happens around that central issue which is what makes it good or not.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
I am surprised at how blatant they're being about it. Talking about how it's like people are playing different games because of the choices they made in ME1 and ME2 is absolutely ludicrous given how minimal and superficial the effects of your previous choices are in this game.
I feel like you are being a little too cynical here, your choices do have consequences, just talking to my coworkers has the almost exact same effect that is shown in that comic. Two of my coworkers just outright let Tali die in #2, and IMPORTED that save into 3. Madness I tell you.
This is funny, because about an hour after I read the comic, I had one of those moments with one of my friends. She didn't import a character and we were talking about mission decisions (couple of early/mid game spoilers):
Grunt died while fighting the Ravagers, and Samara never showed up for the Ardat-Yaksi mission
I'm sure there's more disparity going on, but those two were the most glaring and recent ones I can recall.
Another example
In one of these threads, someone said they fought a Morinth reaper at the Ardat Yakshi camp.
Having Wrex alive or not, and having Maelon's data or not determines if you're able to convince Mordin to back off on the genophage cure.
You mean to tell me previous actions don't matter?
What the fuck is this obsession over using the word bittersweet?
Ending stuff:
Bittersour, more like it. Many moments in the game were genuinely bittersweet, such as the deaths of Mordin, Legion and Thane, but the ending has nothing sweet about it. The galaxy is fucked, damn near all the civilizations are going to collapse/go extinct, and none of your choices mattered in the end.
Also, how come many people are so opposed to there being a genuinely happy ending? At least one that gets as happy as can be considering the circumstances. Is it some sort of new thing about being edgy or something, that happened some years back with comics? It should be an option. Playing through the game in a certain way should enable the player to reach a happy, if a little generic ending, while also providing proper grimdark depression fuel sort of ending for those playing particularly spectacular failsheps. Add those two endings and the choice to get closure on your choices, and the ending of the game would be fixed. Wouldn't even have to do anything to the current endings, leaving them as they are for the people who like them now.
Providing choice for the ending would make it so much better. For the people who don't see this as necessary, well... They can just opt out from fulfilling the requirements to those endings. Nobody loses.
I am. I generally believe that giving a
everyone is happy and everything worked out perfectly ending even if optional would completely under-mind the game.
It isn't about being edgy, it's about creating a compelling narrative. While I think the ending after TIM was half-assed, I think an ending where everything was sunshine and roses afterwards would be equally as heavy-handed and half-assed.
What is currently in the game is in no way, shape or form compelling. At least not to many people. I'm not saying everything needs to roll back in a happy ending as if though the reapers never existed. I'm saying it should be happy as far as possible under the circumstances, as opposed to the current "Welp, we might've technically won, but everything and everyone is more or less fucked". Providing an ending with a positive air, and actual hope of recovery wouldn't undermine the game in any way whatsoever, since for many people it was exactly what they were fighting for.
Providing a choice in the ending isn't taking anything away from anyone else, and like I said there's no reason an utterly grimdark shitfest couldn't be included for the people who'd prefer that sort of an ending(and I would make at least one playthrough that way), as well as retaining the current pseudo-profound endings for those who liked them. The responses that usually involve claims about a positive(i.e. as positive as possible in the currently messed up galaxy, not some magical "everything turned out just hunky dory"-ending) endings "cheapening" or "undermining" the experience just read to me as "Fuck you I got mine". I received no satisfaction from the ending, and if someone else did, great, good for them. Why shouldn't other people get that as well though?
I mean, these kinds of endings were shit when they happened in Evangelion and Deus Ex:HR, no reason they'd be better when stuck to a Bioware game. They're just inherently dissatisfying to many people, and they're nowhere near as intellectual as they pretend to be.
You know its funny that you criticize the use of the "bittersweet" term then throw out "Fuck you I got mine." to undermine the opinions of people who liked the ending which is pretty much just as much of a buzzword.
And I will disagree.
Throwing in an ending that completely disregards everything else you've been building up is taking away from the experience, imo.
I agree that the ending as it isn't as good as it could be. But not because of how "grimdark" the scene is, moreso because the last 5 minutes don't make any sense. If anything, the reason I appreciate the ending in spite of how badly the last few minutes were bangled is because of how it comes together. And I think that all these people rewriting the ending so everything magically works out in the end are simply trading one nonsensical conclusion for another. Which, while it may make you happier, is just as bad.
These games are about "choice" true, but they'll also about telling a good story. The thing about that is that to be able to tell a good tale you can't always give people want they want. Believe me, I love happy endings and if Shepard and his crew sailed off into the sunshine on more wacky adventures a part of me would be ecstatic. That being said another part of me would be annoyed.
I agree that player deserves closure and that the game doesn't give you enough of that. But I believe that thematically nothing was wrong with the ending. Closure isn't always about making the viewer/player feel good about themselves. There are more human emotions than happiness and being made to experience one of the others is not in itself a bad thing.
That being said. The reason that you see the term "bittersweet" used a lot by people is because of lot of people can see the optimism that comes with the ending. Where you see grimdark and edgy for the sake of being edgy, I see freedom and hope for the future.
For me, the bolded part is exactly what the current ending is.
And I don't mind a bleak ending, I love The Road and regularly consume all sorts of horribly depressing stuff. The problem is that the ending of the game feels like a switcheroo, where for the whole series you're led to believe that you're in a somewhat grounded(if unrealistic) sci-fi opera about overcoming overwhelming odds and choices and consequences and stuff. Then in the end the internal consistency of the setting(as far as physics and what's possible in the setting etc. goes) is thrown out of the window and substituted with some sort of a Deus Ex HR/ Evangelion reject ending and space magic. Personally, it felt extremely jarring, due to seemingly being taken from another work of fiction and just glued to the end of ME3. It was also in not in a good way surprising or interesting, as I've come across similar things in fiction several times, and adds nothing to the narrative for me.
The experience just felt like it was building up to a payoff, and instead you get nothing and they throw a few more questions at you instead. I can definitely see how many people are saying it's killed their interest in the franchise.
I guess that's a matter of prespective because...I honestly believe that...
You do beat the odds.
Think about it. You're the first sentient being in the history to stand a chance against a race of machines that have been doing what they've been doing for millions of years.
No one before you has stood and chance and the best they were able to do was leave behind clues for future generations.
Sure, your victory comes out a heavy cost, but for the first time in history you've given the galaxy a chance at a real future.
And honestly, I find that the fact that you sacrifice so much to do it to be great.
Just like the species before you who resigned themselves to their fate, you(the species that was actually victorious) gave up so much not only to win but to insure the future of those who come after you.
I think there is something wonderful in that. The idea of altruism and self-sacrifice to truly be giving yourself not so that you get something in return but so that those who come after you can be have chance. And I think in the end Shepard personified that very notion...and to give you an easy way out would have really diminished that.
Ah. My own view of the ending is somewhat screwed up by the fact that I don't view self-sacrifice as anything to aspire to, and given a chance I always avoid it in games. It's an almost repellent notion to me, so maybe that's why my opinion clashes so much with this ending. Giving the "easy" way out is something I tend to use in my main run just because I loathe the idea of going through all of the game just to die in the end. Might as well put a bullet to my head at the beginning. Went the same way with Dragon Age.
But that's sorta my point. different people appreciate different things, and what diminishes the story for you, doesn't matter to me at all, and what I appreciate in an ending might seem to you like cheapening the sacrifices made, whereas I perceive it as honoring them with continued existence as a direct result of everything that was sacrificed and some sort of notion of karmic reward.
I am surprised at how blatant they're being about it. Talking about how it's like people are playing different games because of the choices they made in ME1 and ME2 is absolutely ludicrous given how minimal and superficial the effects of your previous choices are in this game.
I feel like you are being a little too cynical here, your choices do have consequences, just talking to my coworkers has the almost exact same effect that is shown in that comic. Two of my coworkers just outright let Tali die in #2, and IMPORTED that save into 3. Madness I tell you.
This is funny, because about an hour after I read the comic, I had one of those moments with one of my friends. She didn't import a character and we were talking about mission decisions (couple of early/mid game spoilers):
Grunt died while fighting the Ravagers, and Samara never showed up for the Ardat-Yaksi mission
I'm sure there's more disparity going on, but those two were the most glaring and recent ones I can recall.
Another example
In one of these threads, someone said they fought a Morinth reaper at the Ardat Yakshi camp.
Oh crap, really! Damn, that's pretty awesome. Can anybody confirm if: (Mass Effect 2 side mission tie-in to ME3)
Charr (the love-poetry shouting Krogan) and his Asari girlfriend who get together because of your conversation...when you're on Tuchanka (I think), you find a recording and bring it to the Asari shopkeeper. If you don't convince the Asari to continue dating the Krogan, what happens with that recording? Does it just not happen or is it replaced with something else?
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
I am surprised at how blatant they're being about it. Talking about how it's like people are playing different games because of the choices they made in ME1 and ME2 is absolutely ludicrous given how minimal and superficial the effects of your previous choices are in this game.
I feel like you are being a little too cynical here, your choices do have consequences, just talking to my coworkers has the almost exact same effect that is shown in that comic. Two of my coworkers just outright let Tali die in #2, and IMPORTED that save into 3. Madness I tell you.
This is funny, because about an hour after I read the comic, I had one of those moments with one of my friends. She didn't import a character and we were talking about mission decisions (couple of early/mid game spoilers):
Grunt died while fighting the Ravagers, and Samara never showed up for the Ardat-Yaksi mission
I'm sure there's more disparity going on, but those two were the most glaring and recent ones I can recall.
Another example
In one of these threads, someone said they fought a Morinth reaper at the Ardat Yakshi camp.
Having Wrex alive or not, and having Maelon's data or not determines if you're able to convince Mordin to back off on the genophage cure.
You mean to tell me previous actions don't matter?
It doesn't really make any difference if the genophage is cured or not. War assets are completely fungible, and no matter what all the mass relays are destroyed. We don't get to see what happens to krogan society if Wrex and Bakara are there to guide them to a new place in the galaxy. That conflict no longer matters, there is no difference.
The part where Liara walks in and shows you she's keeping a black box that has the record of your life, the fight, and everything completely disappears at the end, the game completely forgets that the scene happened. The stargazer scene falls flat because it's all "legend" and happened so long ago, but that's the very reason why this box exists and why Liara created it: so that people could always remember what was and what happened and who you are.
I would fix this one scene by having it start off by showing the things you where able to accomplish in your play through, the recording ending, and THEN the kid asking if the stories are true about "the Shepard."
As for the choices with the crucible god kid, I don't know really what to think. I think the sole complaint would be that in my opinion, throughout ME2 and ME3 we're focused on how evil TIM is and how insane his idea of controlling the Reapers really is and yet that's the Paragon option. Before you even get on the elevator to make that choice, you just finished arguing with Anderson and TIM over this. Your decisions in ME2 and ME3 regarding the Geth, control is not the paragon option, but it's some how alright because now we're dealing with Reapers and it's alright only if you're the one controlling them?
Why? Why does the game decide in the final moments that, TIM's idea of controlling the reapers is the Paragon option? It felt like the argument I just had with Anderson and TIM, and since I went paragon, meant nothing because he was right.
I would consider sacrificing yourself to synthesize all of creation into the final and peaceful state of life's evolution the true paragon ending.
But maybe that's just me, :P
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
i can think of a quite a few worse endings than the ones we're given.
i'm pretty happy that the endings we GET deliver on the two vital points: eliminating the reaper threat, and setting the galaxy on a new path forward. everything beyond that is gravy, and if bioware didn't want to put too much sugar in their gravy, i'm ok with it.
I mean this in the nicest possible way, but it feels like you played a completely different game franchise to me.
Like, you basically just said "it's a good thing we killed the boss at the end of the game".
Which is like, inconsequential because it's such an obvious thing. One way or another the Reapers were always going down. It's what happens around that central issue which is what makes it good or not.
It's not that simple.
Re: endings
One of the possible endings I was expecting was: We fail to stop the reapers, Liara does a Fling a Light Into the Future for the next group of organics to take up where we left off.
To me it was always possible - probable, even - that we wouldn't be able to defeat the reapers. I mean the odds against it are insane!
People are complaining about how grimdark the ending is. Dudes, I fear your ideas of grimdark and mine are very distant.
You're asking for a 'happy' ending to the series. We got it. If you wanted to see the sad ending, it's the one where we relay on future generations to do what we couldn't.
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
Before I waste a ton of time, is there any difference in the ending for completing new game+?
Depends on what your Galactic Readiness was.
6700+ with 100% readiness.
Ending:
I don't mind that there are 'bad ends' but oh lawd. I didn't like ANY of those choices. All of them left a bad taste in my mouth. If that was supposed to be "the point," fair play, but when I've built myself to be a Paragon of Paragons from day one in ME1, worked my butt off to save everyone I possibly can, put in way more effort than standard to make sure the Reaper battle goes my way, etc. etc., to learn that the choices - all those choices I made in all those games - didn't factor into the ultimate ending in any way other than numbers on my forces tab was unsatisfying. No matter what I chose, no matter how much I worked to get things just right, I have only those three bad choices to make.
I am surprised at how blatant they're being about it. Talking about how it's like people are playing different games because of the choices they made in ME1 and ME2 is absolutely ludicrous given how minimal and superficial the effects of your previous choices are in this game.
I feel like you are being a little too cynical here, your choices do have consequences, just talking to my coworkers has the almost exact same effect that is shown in that comic. Two of my coworkers just outright let Tali die in #2, and IMPORTED that save into 3. Madness I tell you.
This is funny, because about an hour after I read the comic, I had one of those moments with one of my friends. She didn't import a character and we were talking about mission decisions (couple of early/mid game spoilers):
Grunt died while fighting the Ravagers, and Samara never showed up for the Ardat-Yaksi mission
I'm sure there's more disparity going on, but those two were the most glaring and recent ones I can recall.
Another example
In one of these threads, someone said they fought a Morinth reaper at the Ardat Yakshi camp.
Having Wrex alive or not, and having Maelon's data or not determines if you're able to convince Mordin to back off on the genophage cure.
You mean to tell me previous actions don't matter?
It doesn't really make any difference if the genophage is cured or not. War assets are completely fungible, and no matter what all the mass relays are destroyed. We don't get to see what happens to krogan society if Wrex and Bakara are there to guide them to a new place in the galaxy. That conflict no longer matters, there is no difference.
War assets are fungible, but now that you know the outcome, you're going to go shoot Mordin in the back every time if you're importing a "perfect" ME1->ME2 save? Really?
i can think of a quite a few worse endings than the ones we're given.
i'm pretty happy that the endings we GET deliver on the two vital points: eliminating the reaper threat, and setting the galaxy on a new path forward. everything beyond that is gravy, and if bioware didn't want to put too much sugar in their gravy, i'm ok with it.
I mean this in the nicest possible way, but it feels like you played a completely different game franchise to me.
Like, you basically just said "it's a good thing we killed the boss at the end of the game".
Which is like, inconsequential because it's such an obvious thing. One way or another the Reapers were always going down. It's what happens around that central issue which is what makes it good or not.
i explained in greater detail a few posts up from yours.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
i can think of a quite a few worse endings than the ones we're given.
i'm pretty happy that the endings we GET deliver on the two vital points: eliminating the reaper threat, and setting the galaxy on a new path forward. everything beyond that is gravy, and if bioware didn't want to put too much sugar in their gravy, i'm ok with it.
I mean this in the nicest possible way, but it feels like you played a completely different game franchise to me.
Like, you basically just said "it's a good thing we killed the boss at the end of the game".
Which is like, inconsequential because it's such an obvious thing. One way or another the Reapers were always going down. It's what happens around that central issue which is what makes it good or not.
It's not that simple.
Re: endings
One of the possible endings I was expecting was: We fail to stop the reapers, Liara does a Fling a Light Into the Future for the next group of organics to take up where we left off.
To me it was always possible - probable, even - that we wouldn't be able to defeat the reapers. I mean the odds against it are insane!
People are complaining about how grimdark the ending is. Dudes, I fear your ideas of grimdark and mine are very distant.
You're asking for a 'happy' ending to the series. We got it. If you wanted to see the sad ending, it's the one where we relay on future generations to do what we couldn't.
Seriously.
Honestly, that would have been an awesome ending if your assets weren't high enough.
the relays HAD to go. sovvy says from the beginning that their chief purpose is to guide organic development along a pre-determined path. fuck that shit, time to break free.
also, anyone who things the ending makes all your work count for nothing is on SPACE CRACK.
you have a chance to leave the galaxy in a more hopeful long-term position than it's EVER been in. you defeat the reapers, ending the cycle. depending on your choices you can solve some of the greatest interspecies conflicts of your era. so fucking what if the relays are gone - we need to determine our own path. and i can't think of a more hopeful ending than a galaxy, united - both organics and synthetics - to fight for survival and a common desire to rebel against the plans of the ancients.
as i've said before, this ending lets bioware take some frankly amazing steps with the mass effect universe going forward. i can't fucking wait.
It does invalidate your choices if you care more about the direct consequences of those choices and not some hypothetical future society that's at best marginally tied to the current setting. The defeat of the reapers and the ending of the cycle were to many people just a stepping stone towards finding out how their choices shape the galaxy afterwards, and they received nothing for it, making the choices pointless, since you can do whatever and get the same ending with a different color palette.
The destruction of the relays is not a bad thing, in fact it's a good thing for the setting to become more interesting, but the current endings address none of the expectation for a sizable portion of the player base at the moment.
the bolded above confirms that a sizable portion of the player base is silly geese, then. :P
i'm getting the feeling that if they had to choose between saving their friends and saving the galaxy, the reapers would get their harvest.
shepard says it over and over and over and over and OVER during the course of ME3: i'm prepared to die to save my friendssave the normandysave earth SAVE THE GALAXY AND DEFEAT THE REAPERS
Really? For many people the meat of the game is the characters and the plot choices and interactions. If you got the satisfaction from just fighting the reapers, good for you.
for me, the characters and plot choices and interactions are there to hammer home the gravity of the threat. what i love about the mass effect series is that they spend two entire games building up the universe to something you love immensely, then give you a slim chance to save it from being wiped out. that's great storytelling. but the two things have to go together - i'm not interested in the mundane adventures of a random turian during his middle career years, angling for a promotion that never comes. mass effect tells me i have a problem, and then makes me care about solving it.
tangentially: this is also why i have trouble getting into most fantasy games. they're great about presenting problems, but really bad at telling me why i should care. if they're good, they tell strong player characters why they should care, and i'll believe that.
Ah. You see, the threat of Reapers brings the characters in the franchise together, and I grew to care about what happens to them due the the impending doom that we were working to prevent. Without them I wouldn't have given a shit about the reapers, and after dealing with the reapers the part of the game I cared about(the characters and the setting I've grown to love) seems to be completely disregarded, and I got no closure on them. Great, I beat the final boss or something, but the driving motivation of my run through the game was not addressed at all in the end. I mean, do you get what I'm saying here? The Reapers were more or less a part of the scenery, a reason for the adventures, not the goal and the point of everything. They were never THE motivation to play through the story.
I am surprised at how blatant they're being about it. Talking about how it's like people are playing different games because of the choices they made in ME1 and ME2 is absolutely ludicrous given how minimal and superficial the effects of your previous choices are in this game.
I feel like you are being a little too cynical here, your choices do have consequences, just talking to my coworkers has the almost exact same effect that is shown in that comic. Two of my coworkers just outright let Tali die in #2, and IMPORTED that save into 3. Madness I tell you.
This is funny, because about an hour after I read the comic, I had one of those moments with one of my friends. She didn't import a character and we were talking about mission decisions (couple of early/mid game spoilers):
Grunt died while fighting the Ravagers, and Samara never showed up for the Ardat-Yaksi mission
I'm sure there's more disparity going on, but those two were the most glaring and recent ones I can recall.
Another example
In one of these threads, someone said they fought a Morinth banshee at the Ardat Yakshi camp.
Who the hell picks Morinth over Samara? There isn't even anything to be gained for the switch, it's not like Morinth is more powerful. The evil bitch tried to kill you and if the evil fucker survives she'll just go on killing more innocent people, not to mention Samara's already oathbound to your mission.
Shepard and Anderson sit down and talk as they bleed out and watch the last battle in the Reaper War
is great.
Can't agree more. A slow fade to black there as the Crucible begins to warm up the shot would have been lovely, even. Buuuuuuut no.
ending:
And seriously, not 30 seconds ago I just convinced someone to shoot themselves in the face because you can't control nor compromise with the Reapers, as doing so makes you their slave. But NOW it's okay? NOW we can believe the evil space robosquids? That whole thing, that's just out the window? This may bug me more than any other bit, because it's BLOODY inconsistent.
AI is a crapshoot? Really? After several instances of Synthetics being sympathetic and harmonious races, they make the ending entirely depend on it? When I heard "Organics create Synthetics, Synthetics will then kill off Organics, so we made the cycle so that Synthetics only MOSTLY kill off Organics to turn them into Synthetics" my mouth dropped open. In the cases of EDI and the Geth, Shepard even specifically states that they are life, regardless of their composition or origins. But the Catalyst is all like, "Nope, Synthetic=evil."
Why the hell didn't the Catalyst just make it so that periodically, the Reapers emerge to destroy all Synthetic life, since they seem to be what it considers as the problem?
I guess Synthesis is the best ending, what is the romance partner's suffering compared to everyone getting cool techno-organic bodies? The Control ending is a close second, with Destruction a very distant last.
In the end, though, I immediately thought "Really? You're just going to rip off the 3 endings from Deus Ex by slapping on a coat of paint and calling it over?
Shep (and you) might disagree, but...
...it makes perfect sense that this thing that was designed to keep synthetics down can only do a few things.
1) Take control of the cycle
2) Abort the cycle
3) ...or, if you're good, force evolution to circumvent the cycle.
I didn't have any problems with the consistency of it.
You don't see a problem with "organic life will invariably create synthetic life which will then destroy all organic life...so to fix that, I'm going to make some synthetic life which will destroy all organic life every 50,000 years".
It's like going back in time to stop Stalin massacring the Russian populace...by massacring the Russian populace yourself.
Man I really do like the idea that that whole thing was actually Shepard getting indoctrinated to not destroy the Reapers, and instead the "destroy" ending really was only going to kill all the Reapers. If they'd played that idea out, it would've been amazing since it's something I've been wondering about since ME2 when we spent some amount of time on a dead Reaper with no apparent ill-effect even though it was indoctrinating everyone.
I am surprised at how blatant they're being about it. Talking about how it's like people are playing different games because of the choices they made in ME1 and ME2 is absolutely ludicrous given how minimal and superficial the effects of your previous choices are in this game.
I feel like you are being a little too cynical here, your choices do have consequences, just talking to my coworkers has the almost exact same effect that is shown in that comic. Two of my coworkers just outright let Tali die in #2, and IMPORTED that save into 3. Madness I tell you.
This is funny, because about an hour after I read the comic, I had one of those moments with one of my friends. She didn't import a character and we were talking about mission decisions (couple of early/mid game spoilers):
Grunt died while fighting the Ravagers, and Samara never showed up for the Ardat-Yaksi mission
I'm sure there's more disparity going on, but those two were the most glaring and recent ones I can recall.
Another example
In one of these threads, someone said they fought a Morinth reaper at the Ardat Yakshi camp.
Having Wrex alive or not, and having Maelon's data or not determines if you're able to convince Mordin to back off on the genophage cure.
You mean to tell me previous actions don't matter?
It doesn't really make any difference if the genophage is cured or not. War assets are completely fungible, and no matter what all the mass relays are destroyed. We don't get to see what happens to krogan society if Wrex and Bakara are there to guide them to a new place in the galaxy. That conflict no longer matters, there is no difference.
War assets are fungible, but now that you know the outcome, you're going to go shoot Mordin in the back every time if you're importing a "perfect" ME1->ME2 save? Really?
Of course not. Where did you get that? My point is, we don't get to see the krogans' new beginning at all. We don't see the difference between Wreav's likely betrayal of the victorious fleet and Wrex and Bakara's integration into the rest of the galaxy. It's all just ignored.
I realized the reason I have such a problem with a lack of epilogue in this game is actually twofold.
First of all, I do want to see how all the important folks are doing post-space magic happenings.
Secondly, given the degree to which space magic has an enormous effect on the universe, it would be nice to be given an idea what actual effects there were.
If the ending had been generic and simple and hadn't had such galaxy-changing effects, then I can understand the lack of a real epilogue because you understand the way the galactic community operates in general.
But if you're going to change the entirety of the galaxy in such a fundamental kind of way, a little exposition seems like it should be necessary.
Were there really people out there who thought Shep
wouldn't have to do some huge self sacrifice? I mean basically the entire series and especially ME3 is HEAVILY foreshadowing this over and over[spoile]
the relays HAD to go. sovvy says from the beginning that their chief purpose is to guide organic development along a pre-determined path. fuck that shit, time to break free.
also, anyone who things the ending makes all your work count for nothing is on SPACE CRACK.
you have a chance to leave the galaxy in a more hopeful long-term position than it's EVER been in. you defeat the reapers, ending the cycle. depending on your choices you can solve some of the greatest interspecies conflicts of your era. so fucking what if the relays are gone - we need to determine our own path. and i can't think of a more hopeful ending than a galaxy, united - both organics and synthetics - to fight for survival and a common desire to rebel against the plans of the ancients.
as i've said before, this ending lets bioware take some frankly amazing steps with the mass effect universe going forward. i can't fucking wait.
It does invalidate your choices if you care more about the direct consequences of those choices and not some hypothetical future society that's at best marginally tied to the current setting. The defeat of the reapers and the ending of the cycle were to many people just a stepping stone towards finding out how their choices shape the galaxy afterwards, and they received nothing for it, making the choices pointless, since you can do whatever and get the same ending with a different color palette.
The destruction of the relays is not a bad thing, in fact it's a good thing for the setting to become more interesting, but the current endings address none of the expectation for a sizable portion of the player base at the moment.
the bolded above confirms that a sizable portion of the player base is silly geese, then. :P
i'm getting the feeling that if they had to choose between saving their friends and saving the galaxy, the reapers would get their harvest.
shepard says it over and over and over and over and OVER during the course of ME3: i'm prepared to die to save my friendssave the normandysave earth SAVE THE GALAXY AND DEFEAT THE REAPERS
Really? For many people the meat of the game is the characters and the plot choices and interactions. If you got the satisfaction from just fighting the reapers, good for you.
for me, the characters and plot choices and interactions are there to hammer home the gravity of the threat. what i love about the mass effect series is that they spend two entire games building up the universe to something you love immensely, then give you a slim chance to save it from being wiped out. that's great storytelling. but the two things have to go together - i'm not interested in the mundane adventures of a random turian during his middle career years, angling for a promotion that never comes. mass effect tells me i have a problem, and then makes me care about solving it.
tangentially: this is also why i have trouble getting into most fantasy games. they're great about presenting problems, but really bad at telling me why i should care. if they're good, they tell strong player characters why they should care, and i'll believe that.
Ah. You see, the threat of Reapers brings the characters in the franchise together, and I grew to care about what happens to them due the the impending doom that we were working to prevent. Without them I wouldn't have given a shit about the reapers, and after dealing with the reapers the part of the game I cared about(the characters and the setting I've grown to love) seems to be completely disregarded, and I got no closure on them. Great, I beat the final boss or something, but the driving motivation of my run through the game was not addressed at all in the end. I mean, do you get what I'm saying here? The Reapers were more or less a part of the scenery, a reason for the adventures, not the goal and the point of everything. They were never THE motivation to play through the story.
i think we're viewing different sides of the same coin here. it's just a matter of a difference in priorities.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Before I waste a ton of time, is there any difference in the ending for completing new game+?
Depends on what your Galactic Readiness was.
6700+ with 100% readiness.
Ending:
I don't mind that there are 'bad ends' but oh lawd. I didn't like ANY of those choices. All of them left a bad taste in my mouth. If that was supposed to be "the point," fair play, but when I've built myself to be a Paragon of Paragons from day one in ME1, worked my butt off to save everyone I possibly can, put in way more effort than standard to make sure the Reaper battle goes my way, etc. etc., to learn that the choices - all those choices I made in all those games - didn't factor into the ultimate ending in any way other than numbers on my forces tab was unsatisfying. No matter what I chose, no matter how much I worked to get things just right, I have only those three bad choices to make.
It just makes no sense to me how they worked things in the end:
A decent was 100% within the bounds of the current three. Shepard takes control of the reapers and they all promptly commit suicide. No destruction of all synthetics, no reapers flying off, no bullshit evolution that is clearly not needed if you convinced the Geth and Quarians to play nice. Reapers die, Shepard makes the ultimate sacrifice.
The real travesty is that they had three development cycles to figure this shit out and they couldn't even be bothered to give us an epilogue. Really? You had one for Dragon Age Origins, but you didn't think the end of a trilogy might need one?
The part where Liara walks in and shows you she's keeping a black box that has the record of your life, the fight, and everything completely disappears at the end, the game completely forgets that the scene happened. The stargazer scene falls flat because it's all "legend" and happened so long ago, but that's the very reason why this box exists and why Liara created it: so that people could always remember what was and what happened and who you are.
I would fix this one scene by having it start off by showing the things you where able to accomplish in your play through, the recording ending, and THEN the kid asking if the stories are true about "the Shepard."
As for the choices with the crucible god kid, I don't know really what to think. I think the sole complaint would be that in my opinion, throughout ME2 and ME3 we're focused on how evil TIM is and how insane his idea of controlling the Reapers really is and yet that's the Paragon option. Before you even get on the elevator to make that choice, you just finished arguing with Anderson and TIM over this. Your decisions in ME2 and ME3 regarding the Geth, control is not the paragon option, but it's some how alright because now we're dealing with Reapers and it's alright only if you're the one controlling them?
Why? Why does the game decide in the final moments that, TIM's idea of controlling the reapers is the Paragon option? It felt like the argument I just had with Anderson and TIM, and since I went paragon, meant nothing because he was right.
TIM was wrong, in my opinion, not only because he was indoctrinated, but because he was willing to risk the future of humanity that he MIGHT be able to control the Reapers. When the Catalyst tells you that you'll be able to take control of the Reapers, you have no more reason to doubt one option over another, so why not pick the one that keeps the Geth and EDI alive?
That was actually a completely ridiculous situation that feels like a bigger plot hole the more that I think about it.
So TIM does, in fact, feel 100% confident he will be able to control the Reapers with the Catalyst. And he was right if he had not indoctrinated himself for no apparent reason.
His own indoctrination hardware was used to:
1) Make his own soldiers stronger
2) Make his own soldiers into brain dead drones that could not resist external signals
So, uh, I would like a stronger explanation than, "We must do this! STRAIGHT INTO MY VEINS DOCTOR, NOW! So that my muscles will be stronger and my brain will be vulnerable to VPN!"
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
Ah. You see, the threat of Reapers brings the characters in the franchise together, and I grew to care about what happens to them due the the impending doom that we were working to prevent. Without them I wouldn't have given a shit about the reapers, and after dealing with the reapers the part of the game I cared about(the characters and the setting I've grown to love) seems to be completely disregarded, and I got no closure on them. Great, I beat the final boss or something, but the driving motivation of my run through the game was not addressed at all in the end. I mean, do you get what I'm saying here? The Reapers were more or less a part of the scenery, a reason for the adventures, not the goal and the point of everything. They were never THE motivation to play through the story.
And if you do well enough...
...you see that they survive. And if you pick the right (literally, the one on the right) ending, Shep survives too.
I guess I don't understand what some folk were looking for as a coda.
Did you really want a slideshow?
Yes. That is exactly what I wanted. Given the subplots running literally since your first arrival on the Citadel in 1, I think a couple of minutes exploring how your actions affected the conflicts (all of them, including the major ones in 3, which do not qualify as closure by themselves to me) is completely warranted.
Before I waste a ton of time, is there any difference in the ending for completing new game+?
Depends on what your Galactic Readiness was.
6700+ with 100% readiness.
Ending:
I don't mind that there are 'bad ends' but oh lawd. I didn't like ANY of those choices. All of them left a bad taste in my mouth. If that was supposed to be "the point," fair play, but when I've built myself to be a Paragon of Paragons from day one in ME1, worked my butt off to save everyone I possibly can, put in way more effort than standard to make sure the Reaper battle goes my way, etc. etc., to learn that the choices - all those choices I made in all those games - didn't factor into the ultimate ending in any way other than numbers on my forces tab was unsatisfying. No matter what I chose, no matter how much I worked to get things just right, I have only those three bad choices to make.
Then probably not.
You hit the "best" threshold, which means there's an extra 5 second clip at the end of the "Destroy Synthetics" option.
As for what it is...
It's Shepard's body in rubble... which then takes a breath.
Man, if it didn't kill all Geth everywhere, that might be a reason to play through again.
I am surprised at how blatant they're being about it. Talking about how it's like people are playing different games because of the choices they made in ME1 and ME2 is absolutely ludicrous given how minimal and superficial the effects of your previous choices are in this game.
I feel like you are being a little too cynical here, your choices do have consequences, just talking to my coworkers has the almost exact same effect that is shown in that comic. Two of my coworkers just outright let Tali die in #2, and IMPORTED that save into 3. Madness I tell you.
This is funny, because about an hour after I read the comic, I had one of those moments with one of my friends. She didn't import a character and we were talking about mission decisions (couple of early/mid game spoilers):
Grunt died while fighting the Ravagers, and Samara never showed up for the Ardat-Yaksi mission
I'm sure there's more disparity going on, but those two were the most glaring and recent ones I can recall.
Another example
In one of these threads, someone said they fought a Morinth reaper at the Ardat Yakshi camp.
Having Wrex alive or not, and having Maelon's data or not determines if you're able to convince Mordin to back off on the genophage cure.
You mean to tell me previous actions don't matter?
It doesn't really make any difference if the genophage is cured or not. War assets are completely fungible, and no matter what all the mass relays are destroyed. We don't get to see what happens to krogan society if Wrex and Bakara are there to guide them to a new place in the galaxy. That conflict no longer matters, there is no difference.
War assets are fungible, but now that you know the outcome, you're going to go shoot Mordin in the back every time if you're importing a "perfect" ME1->ME2 save? Really?
Of course not. Where did you get that? My point is, we don't get to see the krogans' new beginning at all. We don't see the difference between Wreav's likely betrayal of the victorious fleet and Wrex and Bakara's integration into the rest of the galaxy. It's all just ignored.
"It doesn't really make any difference if the genophage is cured or not. War assets are completely fungible, and no matter what all the mass relays are destroyed." I'm hearing "decisions don't matter, so why do anything?" Maybe I'm reading too much into it.
It's left ambiguous, not ignored. I would have been fine with an ending where the Citadel does its explode-o-vision and then faded to black, but half the damn internet would still be up in arms about it.
Were there really people out there who thought Shep
wouldn't have to do some huge self sacrifice? I mean basically the entire series and especially ME3 is HEAVILY foreshadowing this over and over[spoile]
I think most people thought there was going to be some self-sacrifice involved on Shepard's part.
What people did not expect is for their decisions to have little to no impact on the ending because of a Deus EX Machina that you can't even argue with, or that there would be no epilogue for all the characters people have grown to like.
Ah. You see, the threat of Reapers brings the characters in the franchise together, and I grew to care about what happens to them due the the impending doom that we were working to prevent. Without them I wouldn't have given a shit about the reapers, and after dealing with the reapers the part of the game I cared about(the characters and the setting I've grown to love) seems to be completely disregarded, and I got no closure on them. Great, I beat the final boss or something, but the driving motivation of my run through the game was not addressed at all in the end. I mean, do you get what I'm saying here? The Reapers were more or less a part of the scenery, a reason for the adventures, not the goal and the point of everything. They were never THE motivation to play through the story.
And if you do well enough...
...you see that they survive. And if you pick the right (literally, the one on the right) ending, Shep survives too.
I guess I don't understand what some folk were looking for as a coda.
Did you really want a slideshow?
Not ideally, but even a slideshow would've been better than what we got. Significantly better.
And extrapolating from all that you learn from the dialogue and such, the ending doesn't really satisfy at any level. First of all, the crew landing on some bumfuck planet makes no sense, and this issue has been discussed already too much. It's just nonsensical.
The ending fails to address pretty much anything in a satisfactory manner.
no ending would have been a better ending than nonsensical space magic and galactic civilization is still fucked hooray
I'd have fucking loved no ending
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
You know my personal feelings, after really thinking about it. I wouldn't mind if that added a
epilogue. As long as they don't go too far into the future. Basically, start off at the beginning of these situations, while they're still developing.
That way you give closure to people who want to know what happens and the people who want the future to be ambiguous are happy to and can still contemplate their decisions.
i can think of a quite a few worse endings than the ones we're given.
i'm pretty happy that the endings we GET deliver on the two vital points: eliminating the reaper threat, and setting the galaxy on a new path forward. everything beyond that is gravy, and if bioware didn't want to put too much sugar in their gravy, i'm ok with it.
I mean this in the nicest possible way, but it feels like you played a completely different game franchise to me.
Like, you basically just said "it's a good thing we killed the boss at the end of the game".
Which is like, inconsequential because it's such an obvious thing. One way or another the Reapers were always going down. It's what happens around that central issue which is what makes it good or not.
It's not that simple.
Re: endings
One of the possible endings I was expecting was: We fail to stop the reapers, Liara does a Fling a Light Into the Future for the next group of organics to take up where we left off.
To me it was always possible - probable, even - that we wouldn't be able to defeat the reapers. I mean the odds against it are insane!
People are complaining about how grimdark the ending is. Dudes, I fear your ideas of grimdark and mine are very distant.
You're asking for a 'happy' ending to the series. We got it. If you wanted to see the sad ending, it's the one where we relay on future generations to do what we couldn't.
That's what Shepard does for a living—the impossible. If she's awesome enough, she can convince a krogan to help destroy a cure to the genophage, make its developer kill himself, kill a Reaper, come back from the dead, bring everyone back alive from a suicide mission, broker peace between the turians and krogan by curing the genophage, do the same for the geth and quarians, but at the end, she just lays down and gives up when a holographic child gives her three choices that all suck? Fuck that shit.
Posts
It might not be because that's what he really thinks? I agree with his statements. I'm in the minority, but like the critical reviews, I enjoyed the ride to get there, no matter the issues with the ending.
And the dialog options are only reduced in the sense that they're now spread throughout the conversation, instead of being right there up front for you to (Investigate). The influence of the previous games is astounding. I have shoutouts from actions taken back in ME1, throw-away and not-throwaway dialog, people alive or dead showing up in various places...
I just cannot fathom the idea that your actions in previous games aren't reflected in this game. This is as much as my actions in a game have ever been reflected and it is amazing.
Yeah in my ending had..
In regards to that stupid tweet, like I said earlier about the ending..
Both will get youtube'd and treated as glorified fanfic.
Oh come the fuck on.
People are playing demonstrably different games here.
Another example: I brokered peace between Quarians and Geth. Some people didn't even have that option. Some sided with the Geth and watched a beloved teammate kill herself on Rannoch. Others choose the Quarians and watched the Geth be destroyed.
Another example: Conrad Verner actually turned out to be a war asset for me. Some people never even saw him in this game.
The list goes on.
Please take that shit somewhere where the silly goosery isn't going to get you laughed at. I'm sure BSN will welcome you with open arms.
tangentially: this is also why i have trouble getting into most fantasy games. they're great about presenting problems, but really bad at telling me why i should care. if they're good, they tell strong player characters why they should care, and i'll believe that.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
This is funny, because about an hour after I read the comic, I had one of those moments with one of my friends. She didn't import a character and we were talking about mission decisions (couple of early/mid game spoilers):
I'm sure there's more disparity going on, but those two were the most glaring and recent ones I can recall.
Another example
Why the hell didn't the Catalyst just make it so that periodically, the Reapers emerge to destroy all Synthetic life, since they seem to be what it considers as the problem?
I guess Synthesis is the best ending, what is the romance partner's suffering compared to everyone getting cool techno-organic bodies? The Control ending is a close second, with Destruction a very distant last.
In the end, though, I immediately thought "Really? You're just going to rip off the 3 endings from Deus Ex by slapping on a coat of paint and calling it over?
I mean this in the nicest possible way, but it feels like you played a completely different game franchise to me.
Which is like, inconsequential because it's such an obvious thing. One way or another the Reapers were always going down. It's what happens around that central issue which is what makes it good or not.
You mean to tell me previous actions don't matter?
But that's sorta my point. different people appreciate different things, and what diminishes the story for you, doesn't matter to me at all, and what I appreciate in an ending might seem to you like cheapening the sacrifices made, whereas I perceive it as honoring them with continued existence as a direct result of everything that was sacrificed and some sort of notion of karmic reward.
Oh crap, really! Damn, that's pretty awesome. Can anybody confirm if: (Mass Effect 2 side mission tie-in to ME3)
But maybe that's just me, :P
It's not that simple.
Re: endings
To me it was always possible - probable, even - that we wouldn't be able to defeat the reapers. I mean the odds against it are insane!
People are complaining about how grimdark the ending is. Dudes, I fear your ideas of grimdark and mine are very distant.
You're asking for a 'happy' ending to the series. We got it. If you wanted to see the sad ending, it's the one where we relay on future generations to do what we couldn't.
6700+ with 100% readiness.
Ending:
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Yes.
Friend who had not been following the story prior to that point looked over and was like, "Heh, that's pretty cool."
i explained in greater detail a few posts up from yours.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Seriously.
You failed, this cycle. Maybe next cycle...
And treat it as a failshep for import purposes.
Can't agree more. A slow fade to black there as the Crucible begins to warm up the shot would have been lovely, even. Buuuuuuut no.
ending:
It's like going back in time to stop Stalin massacring the Russian populace...by massacring the Russian populace yourself.
Man I really do like the idea that that whole thing was actually Shepard getting indoctrinated to not destroy the Reapers, and instead the "destroy" ending really was only going to kill all the Reapers. If they'd played that idea out, it would've been amazing since it's something I've been wondering about since ME2 when we spent some amount of time on a dead Reaper with no apparent ill-effect even though it was indoctrinating everyone.
First of all, I do want to see how all the important folks are doing post-space magic happenings.
Secondly, given the degree to which space magic has an enormous effect on the universe, it would be nice to be given an idea what actual effects there were.
If the ending had been generic and simple and hadn't had such galaxy-changing effects, then I can understand the lack of a real epilogue because you understand the way the galactic community operates in general.
But if you're going to change the entirety of the galaxy in such a fundamental kind of way, a little exposition seems like it should be necessary.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
It just makes no sense to me how they worked things in the end:
The real travesty is that they had three development cycles to figure this shit out and they couldn't even be bothered to give us an epilogue. Really? You had one for Dragon Age Origins, but you didn't think the end of a trilogy might need one?
That was actually a completely ridiculous situation that feels like a bigger plot hole the more that I think about it.
His own indoctrination hardware was used to:
1) Make his own soldiers stronger
2) Make his own soldiers into brain dead drones that could not resist external signals
So, uh, I would like a stronger explanation than, "We must do this! STRAIGHT INTO MY VEINS DOCTOR, NOW! So that my muscles will be stronger and my brain will be vulnerable to VPN!"
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
It's left ambiguous, not ignored. I would have been fine with an ending where the Citadel does its explode-o-vision and then faded to black, but half the damn internet would still be up in arms about it.
What people did not expect is for their decisions to have little to no impact on the ending because of a Deus EX Machina that you can't even argue with, or that there would be no epilogue for all the characters people have grown to like.
Im talking like a full on witcher 2 status sex scene
I was disappointed
And extrapolating from all that you learn from the dialogue and such, the ending doesn't really satisfy at any level. First of all, the crew landing on some bumfuck planet makes no sense, and this issue has been discussed already too much. It's just nonsensical.
The ending fails to address pretty much anything in a satisfactory manner.
that was expected
my problem wasn't that there wasn't closure
there was too much closure
no ending would have been a better ending than nonsensical space magic and galactic civilization is still fucked hooray
I'd have fucking loved no ending
That way you give closure to people who want to know what happens and the people who want the future to be ambiguous are happy to and can still contemplate their decisions.