Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread [Spoiler tag free, beware]

[Rokal]

Here's the major problem. Having a vast number of decisions doesn't matter if they are all inconsequential. A consequence has to be the result of some previous occurance, but if all the previous occurances arrive at the same result, your vast amount of choices essentially aren't choices.

Why does this matter if the game frames the story with your choices in mind? For example, I killed the Rachni Queen in ME1. I knew with the Rachni/Reaper Queen in ME3 that I was being shown content that everyone else was also seeing regardless of what decisions they made, but the game still respected my choices. When Wrex first tells you about the mission, you and your companions acknowledge that it shouldn't be possible because you killed the last Rachni Queen. The dialogue during the mission and with the new queen also acknowledged it. Instead of investigating the corruption of the species I saved, my Shepard was investigating whether a species I thought I eliminated was back to cause more trouble.

Like we've discussed a bunch of times already, Bioware stories are about the illusion of choice rather than true choices. ME3 maintains the illusion pretty well until the very end. It does a pretty excellent job pulling all those decisions from two previous games into the third, all things considered.

[Job601]

Like we've discussed a bunch of times already, Bioware stories are about the illusion of choice rather than true choices. ME3 maintains the illusion pretty well until the very end. It does a pretty excellent job pulling all those decisions from two previous games into the third, all things considered.

I guess what I would add to this conversation is that this isn't just a matter of limited resources.  It's not true that players want true choices, but have to make do with the illusion of choice because it would be too hard to add more meaningful decisions.  Meaningful choices in (long) games are frustrating more then they are fun, like a choose-your-own adventure book where you can't hold your fingers in the pages to go back when you want to.   Bioware probably wouldn't give  more meaningful choices in their games if they could.

[Kail]

It's not true that players want true choices, but have to make do with the illusion of choice because it would be too hard to add more meaningful decisions.

[citation needed]

[eldaec]

Bioware stories are about the illusion of choice rather than true choices.

The problem is, in everything after DAO, EA have been phoning this shit in - they hardly even make an effort to disguise it now.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Then don't add ravagers as an enemy?  It's not fucking rocket science and plenty of games have afforded choices that affect gameplay.  You can't tell me that this game, with the amount of money behind it really couldn't go the extra mile to make choice more than window dressing.

This is how choices in ME play out:

"Would you like green curtains or red ones on the normandy?"
Choice A.
"Red ones please"
"Very good sir"
Red curtains appear.

Choice B. 
"Green ones now, bitch"
"So sorry, but after they arrived the Solarian delegation ordered us not to touch them so we got you red ones"
Red curtains appear.

[Velorath]

That's not really at all accurate, but I'm sure you thought it sounded funny when you were typing it.

[Sjofn]

Bioware stories are about the illusion of choice rather than true choices.

The problem is, in everything after DAO, EA have been phoning this shit in - they hardly even make an effort to disguise it now.

I'm sorry, I loved DA:O. I loved it a lot. But the choices in that game were no more meaningful than the ones in the Mass Effect series. And frankly, it felt to me like they went through a lot of effort to try to at least respect the choices you made in ME 1&2 (until the end, of course).


A throw away line by the Prothean sort of amused me ... apparently the Protheans thought THEY had wiped out the rachni. I had saved the queen, so her being around wasn't a big deal, but it did make me think "huh, so there might be more queens out there after all."

[Lakov_Sanite]

That's not really at all accurate, but I'm sure you thought it sounded funny when you were typing it.

Kind of describes all your posts about the game so far, yeah.

[Simond]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/03/12/how-bioware-could-find-redemption-using-mass-effect-3/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/03/13/why-fan-service-is-good-business/

Somewhere, a high-up EA executive is getting his PA to put an email together to Bioware management telling them they'd better have an answer to why Forbes is calling them out for pushing a franchise-destroying ending.

[Velorath]

That's not really at all accurate, but I'm sure you thought it sounded funny when you were typing it.

Kind of describes all your posts about the game so far, yeah.

You could have used any number of real examples of how the game deals with choice (assuming you've actually played the game).  Instead you made up a situation where the choice is something completely superficial which is then immediately completely invalidated by the game.  I think even a lot of the series harshest critics will tell you that's not how things work.  By all means though tell me I'm wrong when I'm one of the few people here who actually played the game.

[Rokal]

DA:O was just as much about smoke and mirrors for your decisions as ME3 (aside from the DA:O ending, which was non-playable and pretty specific to your actions much to the detriment of EA's sequel planning). You'd only really notice that your story was the same sequence of events as everyone else's if you replayed the game or asked around. The only recent Bioware game that completely failed to sell the illusion, imo, was DA2.

[Sjofn]

Even DA2 had the illusion, it just broke down MUCH faster if you replayed it. DA:O and the Mass Effects, even if you flipped the same plot switches, the "why" you did it or how you got there was at least slightly different.

For example, my paragon MANSHEP let the Council eat it. His reason was the middle "we need to focus on Sovereign, sorry Council" rather than the renegade "Fuck the council!" choice. His ME2 citadel is the same as the renegade's ultimately, but WHY he did it was different, and even though that's basically window dressing, it helps shape my idea of who my MANSHEP is.

[Jeff Kelly]

The tendency of this game to take away control from you just to keep you from doing something that they don't want/would break their story is annoying me more and more because it happens so frequently.

Also the reasons why I can't have nice things keep getting more and more ridiculous.

So somehow that "ripped from Final Fantasy" guy with the sword manages to get a gunship to a temple on a planet that has been besieged by Reapers for days and that I could only reach by the sacrifice of dozens of Asari. He also somehow knows about an artifact the Asari managed to keep secret for millenia and that not even the Shadow Broker knows about. Oh and he managed to break through code protected shield and had the ability to raise the barrier again after he got through.

He also conveniently shows up at the exact right minute and can somehow order an airstrike that conveniently destroys just enough of the building to keep you from catching him.

Well, after a pointless fight that gives you the impression you could actually affect something in this game for a change, of course.

If it weren't for the powers that be intervening by giving me a cut scene when I just want to shoot things that guy would be dead three times over before he could even utter a single word.

Seriously does anybody proofread that ridiculous shit?

There are a shitload of reapers on the fucking planet for god's sake. At least have the decency to have me get shot at by one of them thereby levelling the temple instead of the suspension of disbelief shattering miracle gunship from the heavens.

The next time I get to watch a friggin cutscene instead of the game actually letting me, well, play it I'll probably throw a tantrum.

If I wanted to watch a a film I'd go to the movies.

[Sjofn]

The next time I get to watch a friggin cutscene instead of the game actually letting me, well, play it I'll probably throw a tantrum.

Already appears to have happened. 

[Velorath]

Also, a lot of that gets explained later.

[Jeff Kelly]

Hah, you ain't seen nothing yet  

[Abelian75]

I think the smoke and mirrors actually worked fantastically.  I was raving excitedly about how well the game made your past actions feel like they mattered to my non-gamer friend, and I feel like the series, and particular this entry, did this better than any series I've ever played.  It really felt like a story tailored for me, and I'm incredibly impressed with how well they pulled this off given that the content path is obviously largely identical throughout the games no matter what you choose.  I think it was a fantastically written game.

Except for the ending, which is probably the most suddenly and dramatically bad narrative I've seen in any form.

[Medic975]

What I want to know is how in the hell do they make a game that was amazing, in my opinion, in damn near every moment up until you ride that beam into metaphysical garbage at the very end. I mean how in the hell did a room full of Bioware people and execs take a look at that final scene and go. "Yes! This is the way to wrap it all up!"

I wish they had ended it with the scene where Hackett calls Shepard

[Medic975]

I think the smoke and mirrors actually worked fantastically.  I was raving excitedly about how well the game made your past actions feel like they mattered to my non-gamer friend, and I feel like the series, and particular this entry, did this better than any series I've ever played.  It really felt like a story tailored for me, and I'm incredibly impressed with how well they pulled this off given that the content path is obviously largely identical throughout the games no matter what you choose.  I think it was a fantastically written game.

Except for the ending, which is probably the most suddenly and dramatically bad narrative I've seen in any form.

Remove the ending and this has been the greatest game I've ever played. They did such a great job of building up to the moment. Making me feel the urgency of the situation and how much was at stake. I'm frankly bewildered how they could do so well on the rest of the game and choke in the last minutes.

[Ratman_tf]

The Mass Effect series is the most epic troll in the history of game development? 

[Ratman_tf]

Oh, and dis-

http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/

[Surlyboi]

Quote from: Jeff Kelly on Today at 12:28:06 pm
Look, nobody planned an "End Game DLC" and put in this ending to mislead gamers.

If this ever came out the public relations fallout would be epic, this would have serious repercussions on sales prospects of all current and future Bioware titles and most titles by other EA-backed studios. It would probably kill EA (it will affect their stock prices) and most certainly will kill Bioware if they ever did it.

You say that like EA has any credibility left to begin with.

[Sjofn]

The Mass Effect series is the most epic troll in the history of game development? 

If trolling really was their goal, they did an absolutely magnificent job! In fact, I almost wish it were true. 

[LK]

Also, it's not like there aren't any sacrifices anyway during the course of the story.


e: Interesting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=booBmcFw_Lk
Looks like this is the original version of the "Anderson & Shepard" scene, which sounds like it was supposed to be placed after the climax. Wonder what the original ending was going to be?

That's what I took the dreams to mean throughout the game. Shepard's hope of settling down with a family and having a kid going up in flames. I did suspect for a time that the dreams were signs of indoctrination though.

[Velorath]

Oh, and dis-

http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/

I agree with about 80% of that.

[Ratman_tf]

Oh, and dis-

http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/

I agree with about 80% of that.

Pie chart please.

[Ingmar]

Well, I finally finished. The ending was indeed retarded, but it was a fantastic game up until literally the last 10 minutes or so (I do have a couple quibbles with how the opening was handled I guess but those are minor). Then it goes so completely off the rails that I have to believe somehow all the good writers who made the entire rest of the game were somehow overruled by someone with a Vision.

I mostly loved the game, I'll just stop my next playthrough with Anderson and Shepard looking down at Earth, explosions all around them. That would have been a good ending if it had stopped right there (and a really nicely done scene I think). So, I can't agree with the people who are saying it is a terrible game really. My money doesn't feel wasted to me, and I'll get a good amount more entertainment out of the multiplayer too. But man that was a shitty ending.

The two things I find most baffling about the ending:

1) Why would they want to totally blow up their setting when it has so much more potential for other games/stories? Specifically talking about the relays thing; not being able to travel willy-nilly all over the place as needed just seems like it shuts down storytelling/location options. You can't show all the consequences of ME1-3 in ME4 if you can't travel around to everywhere to see it.

2) It's just a totally drastic tone change from everything the series had been about up to that point. Suddenly we take a hard turn from hard-nosed action hero time into transhuman wankery bullshit. Seriously, if there's one "intellectual" movement that is more retarded than objectivism, transhumanism is it. Which fatbeard running things is into that nonsense, and why would they possibly think we want anything like that at all?

EDIT:

PS My Shepard LIVED. Somehow, apparently he fell down to somewhere with concrete in it in the process. Also that whole Joker flying away people teleporting to the Normandy and crashlanding thing is just incomprehensible. Like I said, I'm stopping once TIM is dead next time.

[Velorath]

Oh, and dis-

http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/

I agree with about 80% of that.

Pie chart please.

I agree with 5, 4, and 2 completely.  For reason #3 I disagree that the "Inferred Holocaust" stuff is a bad place to go story-wise.  I also disagree with the concluding statement of #1 "Ultimately, it’s BioWare’s call, but it couldn’t hurt for them to very carefully listen to what that community is saying, and seriously consider working on some calibrations.".  I think any changes made to the ending at this point would be akin to slapping some fan fiction in to just appease people.  It's never going to be the "real" ending.  The real ending is the one Bioware chose to release the game with.  I'd love to hear them explain their thought process on why they ended things the way they did and why it's contradictory to things that Casey Hudson had said back in January when the game was pretty much done but for me it's just another story with a good build-up that kinda face-planted at the end (Sopranos, the last season or so of Battlestar Galactica, etc...)

[Rokal]

1) Why would they want to totally blow up their setting when it has so much more potential for other games/stories? Specifically talking about the relays thing; not being able to travel willy-nilly all over the place as needed just seems like it shuts down storytelling/location options. You can't show all the consequences of ME1-3 in ME4 if you can't travel around to everywhere to see it.

Pretty easy, the next ME will be set far into the future. Mass-relay-like technology has finally been invented, and you're going out and seeing how the galaxy has changed after x hundred/thousand years.

[Sjofn]

I agree with 5, 4, and 2 completely.  For reason #3 I disagree that the "Inferred Holocaust" stuff is a bad place to go story-wise.  I also disagree with the concluding statement of #1 "Ultimately, it’s BioWare’s call, but it couldn’t hurt for them to very carefully listen to what that community is saying, and seriously consider working on some calibrations.".  I think any changes made to the ending at this point would be akin to slapping some fan fiction in to just appease people.  It's never going to be the "real" ending.  The real ending is the one Bioware chose to release the game with.  I'd love to hear them explain their thought process on why they ended things the way they did and why it's contradictory to things that Casey Hudson had said back in January when the game was pretty much done but for me it's just another story with a good build-up that kinda face-planted at the end (Sopranos, the last season or so of Battlestar Galactica, etc...)

The implied doom of virtually everyone you've been fighting for is a bad place to go storywise because you have invested three games worth of time into this fucking thing, and you're not just fighting for some shitty scrap of survival. You're fighting so all your friends have at least some HOPE of getting their happy-ever-after, or at least not-totally-depressing-ever-after. You don't get that, though. No matter what you do, no matter what choices you made, everyone you love and care about, and all those faceless people you were fighting for, are totally fucked over. And YOU had to pull the trigger on it to boot.

They didn't even have the decency to be coherent about it.

EDIT: Basically it's a bad place to go for THIS series. It doesn't fit the overall hopeful tone the other two games (and most of ME3) presented. A left turn into bleaksville just doesn't jibe well.

[jakonovski]

The whole Mass Effect franchise needs a good post mortem, what with half the writers changing and such.

[Velorath]

I agree with 5, 4, and 2 completely.  For reason #3 I disagree that the "Inferred Holocaust" stuff is a bad place to go story-wise.  I also disagree with the concluding statement of #1 "Ultimately, it’s BioWare’s call, but it couldn’t hurt for them to very carefully listen to what that community is saying, and seriously consider working on some calibrations.".  I think any changes made to the ending at this point would be akin to slapping some fan fiction in to just appease people.  It's never going to be the "real" ending.  The real ending is the one Bioware chose to release the game with.  I'd love to hear them explain their thought process on why they ended things the way they did and why it's contradictory to things that Casey Hudson had said back in January when the game was pretty much done but for me it's just another story with a good build-up that kinda face-planted at the end (Sopranos, the last season or so of Battlestar Galactica, etc...)

The implied doom of virtually everyone you've been fighting for is a bad place to go storywise because you have invested three games worth of time into this fucking thing, and you're not just fighting for some shitty scrap of survival. You're fighting so all your friends have at least some HOPE of getting their happy-ever-after, or at least not-totally-depressing-ever-after. You don't get that, though. No matter what you do, no matter what choices you made, everyone you love and care about, and all those faceless people you were fighting for, are totally fucked over. And YOU had to pull the trigger on it to boot.

They didn't even have the decency to be coherent about it.

This is just something we disagree on.  I'm ok with investing time into something with an utterly depressing ending.  I loved Children of Men for instance which is a horribly depressing movie with the tiniest shard of hope at the end.  With ME I'm ultimately ok with sacrificing everything, because the Reapers would have harvested or killed everybody.  And then 50,000 years later, they would have done it to the next group, and then again to the group after that.

I think to an extent it's disingenuous to tell a story where you're chronicling a war of this scope to try to end it on some positive note.  The glimmer of hope here is that at some point some of these races might eventually manage to claw their way back up, or maybe some new races might also.

[Ingmar]

The problem I have with that is that ME - at least to me - is more a story about the characters in it, than it is about the plot excuse to have those character interactions with those characters. A big part of the reason the ending is so unsatisfying for me is the utter lack of any kind of sensible closure that we get for almost every character. I don't really give that much of a shit about the actual plot except as it informs the character interactions and gives me stuff to shoot at. The background plot has always been the weakest element even when it wasn't bogged down in transhuman bullshit.

In other words, it could have ended with "galaxy is in awful shape" and still managed to give you some positive closure on major NPCs, and I would guess that would satisfy a LOT of the complaints.

EDIT: I mean, it says something really bad about the game's ending that the only characters in it that get any kind of emotionally satisfying ending are the ones who die mid-game.

[Sjofn]

I agree with 5, 4, and 2 completely.  For reason #3 I disagree that the "Inferred Holocaust" stuff is a bad place to go story-wise.  I also disagree with the concluding statement of #1 "Ultimately, it’s BioWare’s call, but it couldn’t hurt for them to very carefully listen to what that community is saying, and seriously consider working on some calibrations.".  I think any changes made to the ending at this point would be akin to slapping some fan fiction in to just appease people.  It's never going to be the "real" ending.  The real ending is the one Bioware chose to release the game with.  I'd love to hear them explain their thought process on why they ended things the way they did and why it's contradictory to things that Casey Hudson had said back in January when the game was pretty much done but for me it's just another story with a good build-up that kinda face-planted at the end (Sopranos, the last season or so of Battlestar Galactica, etc...)

The implied doom of virtually everyone you've been fighting for is a bad place to go storywise because you have invested three games worth of time into this fucking thing, and you're not just fighting for some shitty scrap of survival. You're fighting so all your friends have at least some HOPE of getting their happy-ever-after, or at least not-totally-depressing-ever-after. You don't get that, though. No matter what you do, no matter what choices you made, everyone you love and care about, and all those faceless people you were fighting for, are totally fucked over. And YOU had to pull the trigger on it to boot.

They didn't even have the decency to be coherent about it.

This is just something we disagree on.  I'm ok with investing time into something with an utterly depressing ending.  I loved Children of Men for instance which is a horribly depressing movie with the tiniest shard of hope at the end.  With ME I'm ultimately ok with sacrificing everything, because the Reapers would have harvested or killed everybody.  And then 50,000 years later, they would have done it to the next group, and then again to the group after that.

I think to an extent it's disingenuous to tell a story where you're chronicling a war of this scope to try to end it on some positive note.  The glimmer of hope here is that at some point some of these races might eventually manage to claw their way back up, or maybe some new races might also.

I'm OK investing into something depressing as well, you know. I am one of the people who enjoyed DA2, for example, which is just basically the story of Hawke and how s/he fails at virtually everything. In DA:O, I often picked the ending where my warden dies, or my warden's boyfriend dumps her after the Landsmeet, or my Warden's boyfriend kills himself so she won't, etc. But those sad endings fit the tone of the game (the Dragon Ages have at least tried to be darker than the Mass Effects), and still managed to give you some vague sense of closure at the end. Yes, I think Dragon Age 2 gave me FAR more closure than ME3 did, and that ended on a fucking random "Hawke has DISAPPEARED just like the WARDEN. Tune in next time, when we'll probably be in Orlais!" But at least I'm not left wondering "What will Varric even eat in that new city? How did Fenris even GET on Isabela's ship?"

ME3's ending is depressing and still manages to not give you the smallest shred of closure about basically anyone you would give a shit about. I don't need a scene where Liara is skipping off into the sunset holding hands with Douche Prothean and singing a happy song, but Mass Effect has always been about hope, and how coming together and being bad ass will win the day. Essentially destroying the galaxy as everyone knows it, with absolutely no way to come close to fixing it within any of their lifetimes, simply doesn't fit.

[luckton]

Here, this is how you cope with the bad ending.

Spoilered for size and not to hide info, unlike some other people who've clearly either missed the warning or don't give a fuck  

Edit:  Also: