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

[Ratman_tf]

My time in SWTOR is just about done.  I think when I turn off the subscription for a reason I'll just put down "Lots of speculation from everyone at Bioware"

I wish you had posted that yesterday. 

[Ratman_tf]

Wrex Junior.

 

[Tannhauser]

Just finished it.  Bear with me if I repeat anything already mentioned, didn't want to read 16 pages.

Pros
-Great space opera with awesome cinematics.
-Guns and gear was good, loved the Falcon!
-Writing was generally good, with a few eye-rollers tossed in.
-I really felt the urgency of the situation; I only did 3 non-priority quests.

Cons
-The ending of course.  They went for Planescape: Torment and blew it.  Not the way to end Shepard's story.  I'm not going to storm the Bastille, but it did feel like all of Shepard's (Your) struggles were for nothing.  The price was too high. Highly disappointing.
-B5 called, they want their mythology back.  
-Game further dumbed down, polished almost to dullness.

I can only hope Bioware's latest stumbles are due to the malign influence of EA.  At any rate, Bioware now joins Blizzard and Firaxis in companies I no longer buy on Day One without heavy research.  

[Kageru]

A Good Review: http://calitreview.com/24673

Insightful review, as are some of the comments. This comment on gameplay seems to suggest negative outcomes from them wanting it cinematic, directed and simplified.

[Simond]

I can only hope Bioware's latest stumbles are due to the malign influence of EA.  At any rate, Bioware now joins Blizzard and Firaxis in companies I no longer buy on Day One without heavy research. 

I sincerely doubt the problem is EA, bearing in mind that they gave Bioware an extra four months of development time (letting them miss the holiday season, to boot) to finish the game.

The problem is within Bioware and, judging from what's been said about who wrote what, fairly easy to locate.

[Tannhauser]

I can only hope Bioware's latest stumbles are due to the malign influence of EA.  At any rate, Bioware now joins Blizzard and Firaxis in companies I no longer buy on Day One without heavy research. 

I sincerely doubt the problem is EA, bearing in mind that they gave Bioware an extra four months of development time (letting them miss the holiday season, to boot) to finish the game.

The problem is within Bioware and, judging from what's been said about who wrote what, fairly easy to locate.

Fair enough.  I haven't googled who wrote what but I'm sure others have.  I suspect the work of a DA2 writer!

[LK]

I can only hope Bioware's latest stumbles are due to the malign influence of EA.  At any rate, Bioware now joins Blizzard and Firaxis in companies I no longer buy on Day One without heavy research. 

I sincerely doubt the problem is EA, bearing in mind that they gave Bioware an extra four months of development time (letting them miss the holiday season, to boot) to finish the game.

The problem is within Bioware and, judging from what's been said about who wrote what, fairly easy to locate.

EA's influence is there but not on the ending. If someone's blaming EA, I would question whether it's because they still hold this image in their head of Bioware-Doing-No-Wrong.

[caladein]

Psst. Synthesis was Saren/Sovereign's masterplan from ME1. Congratulations on making everyone husks. 

I'd spoken with a friend before I posted actually and he said the same thing.  To use an analogy I wasn't able to use with him, if it had been an "LCL Goo" or heat death of the universe ending, I would have been just as fine with it for my purposes.

I'd have to do more reading to see if I agree with that interpretation (I don't after a brief review), but if anything that seems to make that one more meaningful.  Shepard and Saren don't seem too different at the end.  The reveal of the latter's machine nature is used to invoke horror but then at the beginning of the next game, there Shepard is, dead and alive, machine as much as man.  It's an interesting angle if you want to pursue that.

But more important than that was that at that point the defamiliarization loop closed and I think going off on science gobbledygook or having a lot of interrogative time with the child would have detracted from you/Shepard affirming the beliefs examined and cultivated through the series.

[Sir T]

You know thats kind of echoing my thoughts as well. It would have been a better ending to have Harbringer do his "Assuming control" act and Shepherd erupting into something like the Saren cyborg and the teams you have built through the game having to fight him. Messege; nobody can mess with Reaper tech, its too dangerous for anyone to control, even Shepherd. Then Shepherd wakes up enough after He/Harbringer is defeated to plug into the citidel and open up its super mass relay to let the combined fleet to poar into Earthspace. Whether the battle is won depends on what you did in the game.

yeah some would say it would suck to shoot at shepherd but hey it would be better than "The best form of life is a husk!" ending.

[Fabricated]

I guess this is one fan's interpretation of what would have made a good ending.

I know that ultra-happy endings kinda downplay the drama/sacrifices made by the characters but the "everyone gets shitfaced on the Normandy after beating the Reapers" ending would've been pretty fucking awesome.

[Ratman_tf]

I guess this is one fan's interpretation of what would have made a good ending.

I know that ultra-happy endings kinda downplay the drama/sacrifices made by the characters but the "everyone gets shitfaced on the Normandy after beating the Reapers" ending would've been pretty fucking awesome.

It's why I like the ending of ROTJ. (Yub Yub!) They just went ahead and had a happy ending. No starchildren or monoliths or artsy goddamn fartsy meditations on the nature of the ending. The Wicked Witch was dead, and everyone had a party. The End.

And it even had the bittersweet with Luke and his father.

[Ingmar]

Thing that messes me up: everyone on the Citadel is presumed to have been killed when it was moved. Aria's likely dead, Bailey's likely dead. That's the strong indicator, at least.

Even if Shepard was indoctrinated -- then what? It's presumed the Crucible didn't help and that the Reapers won the battle for Earth. The galaxy map at the end was completely dominated. Cycle repeats itself.

The "series of endings" is like saying that a television series has a "series of endings", which each episode being an "ending". I guess we could start saying "The Finale Sucks!"

There's no particular reason to believe Aria was still on the Citadel; I'd bet that one of the planned DLCs is helping her take back Omega.

[Sjofn]

Which, of course, no one will go to any more once its relay is gone SORRY ARIA MY BAD

[Fordel]

Did you break Aria's rule?

[Sir Fodder]

I do think the ending is excellent if only for all the consternation heh.

I sort of wanted to get ragey about the ending but I had a strange feeling, there were too many hints of something subtle going on. Especially the parts where the kid who died in the shuttlecraft didn't seem to interact with or be recognized by others, and the meanings that can be supposed from that. The vent he was in didn't really seem to have an exit, yet he somehow winds up on the pad, a long distance away through hostile territory, totally unscathed, he gets up on the shuttle (barely) even though there are others who could clearly help, plus some other odd things in that vein, etc. So I did a search and found someone's astute observations and theories that corroborated my intuitions, now I think the ending was really great in a way, lots of little easy to miss subtle details in there, just not nearly fleshed out or explicit enough. The kid never existed physically but was used by the Reapers as a mental construct to attempt to indoctrinate Shepard. Also, most of the shortcomings I felt while playing could be remedied most excellently with a small addon explaining things in detail for the completists (even though it undoubtedly wouldn't silence most of the complaints, and would have to be set post-ending, going against what the dev said).

IMO there is one right course of action at the end, destroy the Reapers and Shepard lives, he is in a semi-delusional indoctrination state but still has some shreds of volition, the delusion becomes almost total after getting blasted by the Reaper, he comes out of the hallucination in the rubble at the very end taking a breath. Its not clear what else has happened vis the mass relays, earth, and the fleet at that point but its conceivable that everything is okay...  and yea, they do throw the paragon/renegade mechanics out the window at the very end.

[Ratman_tf]

I do think the ending is excellent if only for all the consternation heh.

I sort of wanted to get ragey about the ending but I had a strange feeling, there were too many hints of something subtle going on. Especially the parts where the kid who died in the shuttlecraft didn't seem to interact with or be recognized by others, and the meanings that can be supposed from that. The vent he was in didn't really seem to have an exit, yet he somehow winds up on the pad, a long distance away through hostile territory, totally unscathed, he gets up on the shuttle (barely) even though there are others who could clearly help, plus some other odd things in that vein, etc. So I did a search and found someone's astute observations and theories that corroborated my intuitions, now I think the ending was really great in a way, lots of little easy to miss subtle details in there, just not nearly fleshed out or explicit enough. The kid never existed physically but was used by the Reapers as a mental construct to attempt to indoctrinate Shepard. Also, most of the shortcomings I felt while playing could be remedied most excellently with a small addon explaining things in detail for the completists (even though it undoubtedly wouldn't silence most of the complaints, and would have to be set post-ending, going against what the dev said).

IMO there is one right course of action at the end, destroy the Reapers and Shepard lives, he is in a semi-delusional indoctrination state but still has some shreds of volition, the delusion becomes almost total after getting blasted by the Reaper, he comes out of the hallucination in the rubble at the very end taking a breath. Its not clear what else has happened vis the mass relays, earth, and the fleet at that point but its conceivable that everything is okay...  and yea, they do throw the paragon/renegade mechanics out the window at the very end.

I really don't think Bioware was that clever. I think the indoctrination theory is people scrutinizing the game to try and make sense of the shitty end. The 'subtle' clues could simply be errors and/or stuff not sufficiently thought out.

[kildorn]

I think beyond the little kid being a stupid theme overall (and the forest scenes being eye roll strain time), my main issue with the ending is that "We're here to save you from the synthetics!" theme makes no sense when you take into account that during ME1, 2 and 3.. the geth are fucking BFFs with the Reapers. What, were they going to purge the organics and THEN turn around and backstab the geth? After cranking their combat potential to 11 and seemingly decking out their fleet with advanced weaponry?

It seems like the end was torn between "raar, saving civilization from Synthetics" and "raar, for younger civilizations to thrive the older ones must be culled". The overall game plot makes more sense with #2, but still has plot holes you could drive a reaper through.

And since they husk-ify the races as they cull them: where the fuck were the Elcor-Reapers?!?

[Sjofn]

no hanar husks no peace

[Ratman_tf]

And since they husk-ify the races as they cull them: where the fuck were the Elcor-Reapers?!?

"Meancingly: we are your salvation... through destruction."

[Xilren's Twin]

Finally finished and was highly pissed off, read this thread and became more disgusted.  To add clownshoes to the non-sensical endings, my first end game attempt had an even more WTF moment.  I was presented with two choices, destory all or take control of the reapers, with two ramps leading to lightly shaded red and blue options.  I zombie shuffled towards the 'blue' side only to realize when i got to the top of the ramp that was the control choice.  So i turned around to limp towards the other option and the game ended with the message "the cruicible was destroyed" - game over.

What the heck?  Who exactly was shooting at the citadel?  It was the reapers main base (for lack of a better term) that they used for command and control, and the alliance needed it for the super weapon, so who destroyed it?  And not only was that lame star child's explanation for why the reaper cycle existed at all idiotic, there was no reason for it to occur at all.  If the reapers wanted to stop people from getting up to the citadel, why wouldnt they just shut the damn beam off.  Or even after the conversation with the IM, while im quietly bleeding to death, why even bring me to the one place where i can take action to destroy anything at all.  The whole thing was just so freaking stupid, it was like most hollywood sci fi scripts.  Im quite positive a random sample of 5 mass effect fans from this board alone could have made a much better and more satisfying ending then that hackneyed peice of nonsense.

My other giant peeve was the whole Rannoch ending.  Even though i was playing my ME2 paragon save, with Tali as my love interest, and having completed all the loyalty missions and such in ME2, i still had no option for making peace between the Geth and the Quarians.  Why?  Especially considering apparenly there was a way to make that happen but I did not jump through the correct hoops.  So either i let the Geth upload reaper codes, kill most of the Quarians and let Tali KILL HERSELF by taking reverse swan dive of a cliff, or i tell Legion no, he tries to choke me like a bitch and Tali STABS him with a knife?!? to stop him, and the Geth are wiped out.  Considering that the Geth are software programs, there's no reason for them to need bodies at all, let alone a planet, so the whole premise for war was again, stupid.  Ptretty sure the geth station in ME2 was in the middle of space since, machines dont need food, air, gravity, or water....

Argh.  Such an enjoyable game series to end this badly.  Smells like a incredible lack of objectivity from Bioware and a rush job.  Hard to believe 10 bad minutes could even begin to undermine that many hours of enjoyment.  Good job guys.

[Jeff Kelly]

The rationale for the Rannoch end was that Legion had already made the Geth self aware but he needed to convince them about humans being kinda OK. It would take time though and if the overzealous Quarians attacked before that the Geth would retaliate out of self preservation and wipe them out.

So for both the Quarians and Geth to survive you need to convince both to basically take pause for a moment and wait. Otherwise you can only choose to let the Quarians attack and get wiped out or proactively destroy the Geth before they do that.

To get both you need 5 points out of the following choices:

2 Points: You destroyed the heretic geth in Mass Effect 2
2 Point: Restore Tali's reputation and prevent the Quarians from exiling her in Mass Effect 2
1 Points: Broker Peace between Tail and Legion in Mass Effect 2

1 Point: Complete "Rannoch: Admiral Koris"
1 Point Save Admiral Koris during "Rannoch: Admiral Koris"

You also need a high reputation score

If you kept the geth alive like I did you basically need everything else to get the third option.

[caladein]

Yeah, there's no reason to allow the peace ending if you don't let Legion upload the Reaper code.  The Geth have no reason to work for you when you denied them such a huge leap forward.

And if you burned enough bridges with the Quarians so they don't listen to reason (because you didn't promote/save the people that would, much like they did during the first war), well, fuck 'em.

[Ratman_tf]

Finally finished and was highly pissed off, read this thread and became more disgusted.  To add clownshoes to the non-sensical endings, my first end game attempt had an even more WTF moment.  I was presented with two choices, destory all or take control of the reapers, with two ramps leading to lightly shaded red and blue options.  I zombie shuffled towards the 'blue' side only to realize when i got to the top of the ramp that was the control choice.  So i turned around to limp towards the other option and the game ended with the message "the cruicible was destroyed" - game over.

Oh man,  I think you accidentally found the best ending. 

[Rokal]

Look at DA2. It sold more than DA out of the gate, but then sales *plumetted* after a week as word of mouth got round about how bad it was.

"It's great but the ending sucked" seems to be the general consensus with ME3. That's not the type of word-of-mouth that's going to stop people from picking up the game. DA2 was a different situation, as the word of mouth was basically "it's a steaming pile of shit through-and-through." DA2 and ME3 are on completely different levels of badness.

Related news: they were apparently working on a DA2 expansion pack but announced today that it had been cancelled. Something about fans having mis-aligned expectations I'm sure  (in this case that the expansion would be also be garbage).

[Ingmar]

 

[Simond]

They should have just announced another DLC/expansion for DA:O instead. It did, after all, sell more than DA2.

[Tannhauser]

I see Bioware at the third stage of what I call the 'Four D's'

Denial-"The players can't be upset at the ending, our focus group of chemically blinded rhesus monkeys didn't throw their feces at it!"
Defense-"We stand fully by the ending, the players just don't get it. It ranks right up there with the endings of Lost and The Sopranos."
Defeat-"We're sorry some expected more and were disappointed.  Just, please, cut us some slack the EA Hunter-Killer Lawyerbots are roaming the cubicle aisles!  People are disappearing!"
DLC-"For only $10 dollars you can download what really happened at the end, which we totally were kidding about!"

[Paelos]

I see Bioware at the third stage of what I call the 'Four D's'

Denial-"The players can't be upset at the ending, our focus group of chemically blinded rhesus monkeys didn't throw their feces at it!"
Defense-"We stand fully by the ending, the players just don't get it. It ranks right up there with the endings of Lost and The Sopranos."
Defeat-"We're sorry some expected more and were disappointed.  Just, please, cut us some slack the EA Hunter-Killer Lawyerbots are roaming the cubicle aisles!  People are disappearing!"
DLC-"For only $10 dollars you can download what really happened at the end, which we totally were kidding about!"

There's a 5th D, in between Defeat and DLC. Disassociation - the people who caused the issue have been removed.

[Nightblade]

My other giant peeve was the whole Rannoch ending.  Even though i was playing my ME2 paragon save, with Tali as my love interest, and having completed all the loyalty missions and such in ME2, i still had no option for making peace between the Geth and the Quarians.  Why?  Especially considering apparenly there was a way to make that happen but I did not jump through the correct hoops.  So either i let the Geth upload reaper codes, kill most of the Quarians and let Tali KILL HERSELF by taking reverse swan dive of a cliff, or i tell Legion no, he tries to choke me like a bitch and Tali STABS him with a knife?!? to stop him, and the Geth are wiped out.  Considering that the Geth are software programs, there's no reason for them to need bodies at all, let alone a planet, so the whole premise for war was again, stupid.  Ptretty sure the geth station in ME2 was in the middle of space since, machines dont need food, air, gravity, or water....

Pretty much all of Rannoch was pretty terrible.

Lone reaper, capable of decimating an entire fleet can't shoot ONE MAN ON FOOT with his giant red death beam. 

[kildorn]

I liked Rannoch, I just found it a bit silly that there was a reaper there, chilling in what looked like a missile silo. Being completely fucking useless to the entire reaper invasion. It wasn't the fleet killing sort of reaper though, it appeared to be a destroyer (minireaper)

[Merusk]

Lone reaper, capable of decimating an entire fleet can't shoot ONE MAN ON FOOT with his giant red death beam. 

On fighter broke off from the main group.  He was so small he was avoiding their turbolasers.

[Miasma]

I liked Rannoch, I just found it a bit silly that there was a reaper there, chilling in what looked like a missile silo. Being completely fucking useless to the entire reaper invasion. It wasn't the fleet killing sort of reaper though, it appeared to be a destroyer (minireaper)

It was controlling the entire geth fleet and using them to destroy the Quarians.

[Ratman_tf]

Well, a big beam like that seems more suited to blasting starships and buildings, than zotting a teensy human on foot.

Why the Reaper didn't have any other weapons is something else though. Not even a couple of pulse lasers to strafe footsolders?

[Sjofn]

Look at DA2. It sold more than DA out of the gate, but then sales *plumetted* after a week as word of mouth got round about how bad it was.

"It's great but the ending sucked" seems to be the general consensus with ME3. That's not the type of word-of-mouth that's going to stop people from picking up the game. DA2 was a different situation, as the word of mouth was basically "it's a steaming pile of shit through-and-through." DA2 and ME3 are on completely different levels of badness.

Related news: they were apparently working on a DA2 expansion pack but announced today that it had been cancelled. Something about fans having mis-aligned expectations I'm sure  (in this case that the expansion would be also be garbage).

Fuck, I would've played the shit out of that. 

[Fabricated]

Good, DA2 was a fucking abomination that shit all over a potentially good new IP.