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

[Fabricated]

I'd say Mass Effect's ending was more fitting with 3 of Deus Ex 2's endings.

1- Synthesis (Merging with JCHELIOS or whatever and spreading your nanites everywhere so everyone becomes augmented and cured of the grey goo stuff, sounds good but implies creepily unified utopia)

2- Control (Pretty much any of the other factions, just pick your flavor of dystopian horror)

3- Destroy (Helping your former Omar friend kill literally EVERYONE so some single asshole doesn't get to decide who owns the world. This is also fitting with destroy because despite it being completely logical it's given a strong negative connotation/consequences)

What ME3 really needed was an equivalent to the Dance Party ending so we can just take that and pretend whatever we wanted happened.

[Tannhauser]

If it had ended with Shepard dying just before reaching the teleport beam and showing that the cycle continues and cannot be unbroken would have upset me in a good way.  I really thought while playing it that was going to happen.  London felt crazy and desperate and final and when I saw Ashley die in front of me as I staggered forward I felt such a rush of epic despair that I had failed the galaxy.

Then I magically appeared in heaven and choose a door on 'Lets Make A Deal'.  Feh.

[Nayr]

Wonder when Bioware is going to start talking about the new DLC. Evil Chris said mid February and we're almost there. Tomorrow is the 14th, which is precisely halfway through the month.

[rk47]

You can just write fanfics, bro. At this point, the DLC is basically lore fodder that changes nothing in the overall picture.
I for one felt glad they just kill this trilogy - maybe not how the execution was done, but it dragged on for too long.
ME2's plot had very little sense - and just proves people actually cared more about the companions more than the fate of the galaxy. "Do the side missions or your super elite commandos will not survive" is just a terrible selling point. Not to mention suffering the mini-games to get best endings. Thankfully the third game do away with it and makes me shoot faces online - a much more fun proposition than peeling space apples over and over again.

I was kinda hopeful they just focus on fleshing out the Reapers more in the finale, but nope. Nothing. Not even the encounter on Rannoch - just 'YOU CANT COMPREHEND SHIT, HUMAN' - the Crucible info-dump was one of the most hard-to-swallow sci-fi ending ever. I don't watch TV - but imagine if Dragon Age ended with a conversation between the Gray Warden and a sentient Darkspawn explaining they're just 'trying to help the universe by killing every single living race' - I'd feel disgusted as well.

As for the fanfic, maybe do a crossover with Ranma as Shepard's new companion and possible Love Interest. That'll spice up crew interaction.

[Stormwaltz]

Somebody dug up some of my cut dialogue from ME2 (I found it quoted on the BW forums - I don't believe I've mentioned it here before). This was said by a husk-ed Dr. Chandana at the end of the Derelict Reaper / Legion Acquisition level - the payoff for the audio logs about him was that he'd show up as a boss. He'd babble the history of that dead Reaper and talk about indoctrination, then provided a few hints of what I thought the Reapers and their motivations should be.

[Lantyssa]

That route for the Reaper's motivations would have been nice if incorporated into the series.

[Ratman_tf]

Shoulda woulda coulda.

If you ask me Bioware shoulda decided what the Reapers were and what they wanted to accomplish on the first day of writing. That way they could stay consistent and on-message throughout all three games.
It's pretty apparent that the thing they cooked up for the end of 3 was some last minute garbage.

[Ingmar]

Shoulda woulda coulda.

If you ask me Bioware shoulda decided what the Reapers were and what they wanted to accomplish on the first day of writing. That way they could stay consistent and on-message throughout all three games.
It's pretty apparent that the thing they cooked up for the end of 3 was some last minute garbage.

With an intact writing team through all 3 games they probably would have been consistent.

[Paelos]

Yeah it's almost impossible to retain any continuity with those switches. And as such, the story sucks.

It's why we're all hoping GRRM gets his shit together and finishes his DAMN BOOKS 

[Venkman]

1. Nobody ever said the game's actual ending would be affected at all by your choices during the game. Otherwise they'd need 100 different endings.

The whole series was about choices, and yet I'm to believe they never intended nor implied that the ending would be based on those choices beyond window dressing? Please.

2. A Deus Ex Machina plot device is when something appears out of thin air to solve your problems for you. The Catalyst doesn't do a damn thing except run it's mouth.

You play a largely normal character for the entire series, succeeding and failing as a fallible mortal rallying other fallible mortals to a cause. You've had a few brushes with divinity, but those are all with the big baddy and long extinct races. Nothing is fundamentally good or bad in the entire series and you navigate it through choices.

Then Starchild shows up to pull a Zeroeth Law with you becoming Giskard, thus making irrelevant all that preceded it.

It is very easy in retrospect to create a convincing rational for this, one where Shepard was always The Chosen One and where all his successes derive from a divinity that only becomes apparent through the Crucible at the end. But this was not adequately conveyed through the series. It was bolted on at the end.

If their goal was Zeroeth Law all along, it'd have been much better if your choices culminated in a metacognitive moment when these choices occured to you, skewed by the personality you had developed over the three games, but not removing the choice altogether.

As it is though, nothing except Readiness (which itself was entirely gameable through multiplayer) contributed to the decisions you could make. And after it just resulted in way too clean and contrived wrapups of individual arcs through a few minutes of cut scenes.

3. The devs said they intended for the whole of Mass Effect 3 to be an ending, a "goodbye".

If that was truly their intent and not just a post-apology retcon to spin development realities, I'd agree.

4. The battle with Sovereign hammered in the fact that a conventional victory was impossible. It took a combined fleet of the Citadel races and the Alliance to bring one Reaper, and that was after Shepard killed SovSaren and made it a sitting duck with no shields and no counterattacking. Taking down a million other giant dreadnoughts just like it, even by gathering every warship in the galaxy, is not enough to match their firepower and defenses.

Here again, if that was actually conveyed in a meaningful way, I'd be with you. But instead, they created the MacGuffin which was then hamfistedly reshaped into the Zeroeth Law enabling device poorly delivered through a Starchild narrative at odds with the entire history of that cycle as conveyed throughout the series.

My issue isn't really with the plot. I've read far worse in my time. My issue is entirely with the telling and how it didn't culminate in a way the series had been rolling. Just for business reasons alone they shouldn't have tried to have an "ending". But since they made that decision, they should have ensured adequate resources to deliver an ending that worked for the choices the players had made.

I'm man enough to admit when I'm neckbearding something. This is not one of those times.

[Khaldun]

You have to make the players' choices matter. If you're going with the "logically, the players' choices can't matter", that could be OK, if that was the entire point of a game narrative, an interface, etc.--if you were just doing what frail organics do in the face of a hopelessly big and structural event, ok, but that's a different story than Mass Effect chose to put into motion, and very different from 7/8 of ME3 in particular. People who are like, "Well, what did you expect, you're up against something vastly bigger than the conventional narrative of heroic action" are making a great point--about a different story and a different game than the one the rest of us were playing. The mismatch here of endgame to action cannot be rescued with an "Existential Philosophy Patch"--it ends up reading instead like "We don't have the faintest fucking idea how to end this, sorry."

[Nayr]

Somebody dug up some of my cut dialogue from ME2 (I found it quoted on the BW forums - I don't believe I've mentioned it here before). This was said by a husk-ed Dr. Chandana at the end of the Derelict Reaper / Legion Acquisition level - the payoff for the audio logs about him was that he'd show up as a boss. He'd babble the history of that dead Reaper and talk about indoctrination, then provided a few hints of what I thought the Reapers and their motivations should be.

That sounds kinda creepy.

Imshai? Was that supposed to be the original race who created the Reapers, or the race that the Derelict Reaper was created from?

Also since the topic of Reaper origins/names has just come up. What was with the whole Nazara thing with Sovereign? Was that the name of the race it was created from? Or some kind of reference to the fact that the Reapers think of themselves as perfect?(Nazara in hindu means "Beautiful view") Seems a little odd to introduce a new name for Sovereign in passing that just came out of nowhere. And the mention that "Sovereign" was named by Saren is inaccurate according to Karpyshyn's Revelation novel, where Saren learned that the ship's name was Sovereign from Shu Qian's notes in the epilogue.

[Sjofn]

Or that was Legion's assumption. It's like playing a game of telephone!

[Stormwaltz]

Imshai and Nazara were intended to be the names of the races those particular Reapers were made from. (Nazara is also an inside joke - for a while during development, the Reapers were called the Nazari. MS Geopolitics flagged it for being too close to "Nazi," which was entirely fair since the word was in fact created by adding extra letters to "Nazi.")

No-Prize: Legion would not have been aware that Saren got the name from Qian's notes.

[Margalis]

The ending of ME3 is a literal Deus Ex Machina. It's that bad.

Not only do none of your choices matter at that point but taken just by itself it doesn't make much sense. Why would you trust this Star Child guy? You've spent the whole series fighting evil robots then some creepy ghost robot kid appears out of nowhere and you take everything he says at face value? What?

Why wouldn't you say "uh...who the fuck are you?"

That is why the stupid indoctrination theory caught on even though it made no sense. You should be inherently suspicious of the Star Child and the way the ending plays out.  It makes more sense for the Star Child to be an evil trick unless you take it at face value that the Star Child is a cypher for the authors.

[Ratman_tf]

[Nayr]

Imshai and Nazara were intended to be the names of the races those particular Reapers were made from. (Nazara is also an inside joke - for a while during development, the Reapers were called the Nazari. MS Geopolitics flagged it for being too close to "Nazi," which was entirely fair since the word was in fact created by adding extra letters to "Nazi.")

No-Prize: Legion would not have been aware that Saren got the name from Qian's notes.

Interesting. And fair enough on the Qian thing. I personally think "Reaper" is a better name than a made up name. It's creepier, given the mythological beings with the name. And it's also literal, considering the fact that they harvest.

Next question(sorry if I'm getting on your nerves): Was Harbinger always meant to be the first Reaper, or was that something that was added in after ME2/you left? His appearance was definitely unique in ME2 - he was one "finger" fewer than the other Capital class Reapers(When the reapers are active, they always looked more like giant floating arms to me than mechanical cuttlefish. Maybe I just played too much Smash Bros as a kid), and he had the six lights that resemble the eyes on the Leviathan creatures in the ME3 DLC.

[Ingmar]

This weekend's challenge is Tribute - earn 50k points using Zaeed's weapons, and you get his picture on the title associated with it. 

[Sjofn]

I felt like an idiot for not picking up who the tribute was FOR until after finishing the achievement. 

[Stormwaltz]

Next question(sorry if I'm getting on your nerves): Was Harbinger always meant to be the first Reaper, or was that something that was added in after ME2/you left? His appearance was definitely unique in ME2 - he was one "finger" fewer than the other Capital class Reapers(When the reapers are active, they always looked more like giant floating arms to me than mechanical cuttlefish. Maybe I just played too much Smash Bros as a kid), and he had the six lights that resemble the eyes on the Leviathan creatures in the ME3 DLC.

I don't recall any discussion of Harbinger being the "first Reaper," though it may have occurred when I wasn't in the room. Harbinger was Sovereign's emergency backup plan and the Reaper left on night-shift guard duty.

Bear in mind that the Leviathan critters are a post-me, ME3-era addition to the lore. When I was there, the operating theory was that every individual Reaper contained the transapience-uploaded consciousnesses of an entire organic species, and every Reaper would look like the species it originated from - thus the humanoid form of the Reaper at the end of ME2. That got lost on the way, due to a combination of art costs to design/build umpteen unique Reapers, and a desire to maintain a consistent and recognizable design among them. There hadn't yet been any discussion of where the "first" Reaper came from, just a lot of debate about what their ultimate goal was.

[rk47]

"Last chance to romance your companions DLC pack" 1600 bioware points.
Your prayers are answered talimancers. 

[Nayr]

Sad, only ME3 saves I haven't deleted are a Liara romance and a Garrus romance. Seeing others will require consecutive 150 hour play throughs. Or skipping ME1 and using Genesis(Genesis 2 for ME3 needs to be ported to PS3 and 360.)

Next question(sorry if I'm getting on your nerves): Was Harbinger always meant to be the first Reaper, or was that something that was added in after ME2/you left? His appearance was definitely unique in ME2 - he was one "finger" fewer than the other Capital class Reapers(When the reapers are active, they always looked more like giant floating arms to me than mechanical cuttlefish. Maybe I just played too much Smash Bros as a kid), and he had the six lights that resemble the eyes on the Leviathan creatures in the ME3 DLC.

I don't recall any discussion of Harbinger being the "first Reaper," though it may have occurred when I wasn't in the room. Harbinger was Sovereign's emergency backup plan and the Reaper left on night-shift guard duty.

Bear in mind that the Leviathan critters are a post-me, ME3-era addition to the lore. When I was there, the operating theory was that every individual Reaper contained the transapience-uploaded consciousnesses of an entire organic species, and every Reaper would look like the species it originated from - thus the humanoid form of the Reaper at the end of ME2. That got lost on the way, due to a combination of art costs to design/build umpteen unique Reapers, and a desire to maintain a consistent and recognizable design among them. There hadn't yet been any discussion of where the "first" Reaper came from, just a lot of debate about what their ultimate goal was.

Yeah I imagine having 20,000+ unique designs would be a bit much. Tho I heard somewhere that the shape of the harvested race was only supposed to be the core of the Reaper. And that ME2 was supposed to show the stages of Reaper development. From terminator fetus to cuttlefish. But since I don't know where that originated, it doesn't mean much.

Still, they managed to crank out five reaper variants. Capitals(Sovereign,) Destroyers(smaller ones designed for ground battle,) transports(non-sapient Reapers used to transport husks/other mutated organics,) processors(another non-sapient version used for collecting and processing harvested material,) and of course, Harbinger, who is larger and more powerful than a standard Capital. But transports and processors are never seen in-game, sadly.

And I figured the Leviathan thing was after ME2. But logically speaking, somebody had to start the Reapers, even going with the original concept. And that doesn't seem too much different than how it ended up in Mass Effect 3. Way the Intelligence explained it in the end, the Reapers are a way of preserving organic races; genetics, knowledge, and technology all rolled up into the form of a Reaper. Reaper motive/big reveal seems to be the most dramatic change from how it looks on my point of view. And the Leviathan thing now. Though they didn't actually create the Reapers, they created the Intelligence. It turned on them and processed them with the aid of an army of drones(I suspect they became the Keepers personally,) which resulted in Harbinger's creation.

Though one reason to wonder about the Leviathan thing being intended was because the whole "Leviathan of Dis" thing started with that planet description for Jartar in ME1. Then an image of a Reaper showed up in Keiji's files in Kasumi: Stolen Memory, which was revealed in the follow up mission in ME3 to have been stolen from a Batarian research facility(according to ME1 description, the Batarians were the ones who covered up the LoD's existence,) and Balak confirmed that the Leviathan of Dis actually did exist, and it was a Reaper corpse that indoctrinated their government and left them wide open(which he blames Shepard for because he foiled his plot on X57.) And in the Leviathan DLC, the Leviathan of Dis was what started the chain of events that led to the Leviathan race and Reaper origins' discovery.

[Stormwaltz]

It's fascinating to hear how much was built off a toss-off bit of five-minute writing I did at the tail end of ME1. :)

I had a vague thought that the Leviathan might have represented a spaceborne race that opposed (and lost to) the Reapers - fully organic tech versus fully mechanized, something like the Voidhawks in Peter F. Hamiliton's Night's Dawn Trilogy. I never expected fans to become obsessed with it, which is certainly why BioWare later explored the thread.

[Nayr]

It's fascinating to hear how much was built off a toss-off bit of five-minute writing I did at the tail end of ME1. :)

I had a vague thought that the Leviathan might have represented a spaceborne race that opposed (and lost to) the Reapers - fully organic tech versus fully mechanized, something like the Voidhawks in Peter F. Hamiliton's Night's Dawn Trilogy. I never expected fans to become obsessed with it, which is certainly why BioWare later explored the thread.

The Intelligence and its motives also is vaguely similar to that Klencory planet description too. A being of light created to protect organics from synthetics. Well, until it went horribly, horribly wrong. :p

That whole "beings of light" thing mentioned in Klencory was actually debated on the BSN before the Extended Cut came out. Since the Intelligence/Catalyst appeared as such to Shepard and told him how the "created will always rebel against their creators" and the Reapers are there to stop it.

But then, Extended Cut revealed that it's just an AI(meaning what Shepard's seeing is just a holographic projection) that turned on its creators(ironic,) and the Leviathan DLC filled in the rest of the blanks. But still, there could always be an intended connection(the development team aren't very forthcoming, lol.) Who knows, maybe they intend Klencory to be the Leviathans' homeworld. They did bother to update the planet description in ME3 to add in that the volus billionaire doesn't look so crazy now with the Reapers out and about. Which shows that someone in the writing team was at least aware of its existence.

[Lantyssa]

I never expected fans to become obsessed with it, which is certainly why BioWare later explored the thread.

Fans become obsessed with the oddest things.  They also think a lot more thought went into design than actually did.  (Not that some cool musings don't happen in development.)

It's certainly fascinating though.  How's it feel to be an internet celebrity?

[Nayr]

Attention all Mass Effect 3 multiplayer players.

Mass Effect 3: Reckoning, the FINAL mulltiplayer expansion, is now now!!!!

Adding new character kits such as the Geth Juggernaut Soldier, The Cabal Vanguard(FEMALE Turian,) the Alliance Infiltration Unit(EDI lookalike,) the Krogan Warlord Sentinel(big hammer,) the Talon Vanguard, and a playable COLLECTOR(Yeah this one has me a little surprised as well.)

And adding new weapons such as the Geth Spitfire(a heavy weapon from ME3 SP,) and the M-7 Lancer(ME1 weapon with the classic overheat mechanic.)

[Ingmar]

Appears to only be out on the XBox currently.

[Nayr]

Appears to only be out on the XBox currently.

I downloaded it from the PSN last night.

[Ingmar]

I didn't even remember that version existed. 

Point being, it wasn't out for the PC as of last night, unless Origin hid it somewhere odd.

[Nayr]

I didn't even remember that version existed. 

Point being, it wasn't out for the PC as of last night, unless Origin hid it somewhere odd.

There was a delay for PC. For it came out later than console versions.

[Nayr]

Well we've got five days till Citadel comes out.

Anybody got any ideas about what this conspiracy in the Citadel will be about?

Indoctrinated official? Collectors? Or maybe the Intelligence is screwing around with Shepard.


You know, ever since Leviathan came out in September, I've been questioning whether or not the Citadel is truly a Reaper construction.

1. The Citadel houses the AI that the Leviathans created. ME lore states that an AI isn't the same when its program is moved from one system to another. Meaning that it was likely constructed on the Citadel.

2. When the Leviathan tells Shepard the story about how the Reapers came to be, he credited the Intelligence for ordering the Reapers to construct the Mass Relays. But he said nothing about the Citadel. Which was odd, given that pretty much EVERY other time, the two were mentioned together.

3. People have been living on the Citadel for over two-thousand years. Not counting past civilizations like the Protheans, Inusannon(the race who were dominant in the cycle before the Protheans,) etc. Yet nobody becomes indoctrinated, which is the biggest risk of being around Reaper technology

4. Despite being housed in the Citadel, the Intelligence doesn't have total control over the systems(it seems to be shackled.) Otherwise Saren and Sovereign would have been completely unnecessary because it could just open the Citadel Relay itself.

So I'm thinking that BW is going to go the way of the Citadel being a Leviathan construction.

[Shrike]

Citadel? No clue. Was surprised we're even getting another SP DLC (pleasantly so, but still...).

Bioware has been pretty closed-mouth about the thing, sooooooo...no clue.

On the other hand, my Dr. Eva clone is tearing it up in MP, so I'm reasonably content. For now.

[Nayr]

Replaying Mass Effect 2, getting a character ready for ME3 Citadel.

Just did Thane's recruitment mission. The tension Jacob has towards him, and given the parallels between their loyalty missions, I think Jacob and Thane should have had a confrontation like Miranda+Jack and Tali+Legion that Shepard would have to break up.

That was an interesting mechanic in ME2, and probably could have been more widely used. I heard Mordin and Grunt had one, but got scrapped. And I think Garrus and Samara probably would have some things to debate as well(Garrus is all about taking out bad guys to protect good people, but Samara will kill anyone that gets in her way as her code permits. Something she openly admits.)

[goishen]

Bear in mind that the Leviathan critters are a post-me, ME3-era addition to the lore. When I was there, the operating theory was that every individual Reaper contained the transapience-uploaded consciousnesses of an entire organic species, and every Reaper would look like the species it originated from - thus the humanoid form of the Reaper at the end of ME2. That got lost on the way

Well, to be fair to the lore, that was EDI telling you that too.   As far as she could extrapolate, that was what she came up with.    Reaper based machines < actual reapers.   At least that's what I've told myself.

The only problem that I had with the endings is that they had been done before in ST:TNG.   ME3 was too EDI heavy and not enough about the actual Reapers.  I personally think that they blew their wad by making the reapers attack Earth at the very start.  But that only leaves them telling you how they created the story.   They took a piece of humanity, and splattered it onto a wall.   Turians?  Think cold war.   Quarians?  Think of Terminator.  Salarians?  Think of science for science's sake.   In other words, they painted themselves into a corner.  

Affect and effect.   Shepard did affect the universe, it just didn't have the same effect that it did on the characters as it did on you.

I dunno, but I would've made Jack a much more standout character in 2 & 3.  Especially 3.  I was so disappointed when she only came in as a non-supportive - fill in the gaps - role.  She was pure emotion.   Something that even Reapers can't deny.

[goishen]

Then Starchild shows up to pull a Zeroeth Law with you becoming Giskard, thus making irrelevant all that preceded it.

The choices you make affect the community of people surrounding you more than they affect you personally.   Agreed, they might affect you, but nowhere near what they do to the people around you.   That was the entire point of the story, or so I thought.

You've gotta be selfless to be a hero.  And by killing himself/herself is the ultimate act of selflessness.  I mean, call me a ME apologist, but I had almost no problems with the ending.