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

[Morat20]

Yes, it's much worse than shooting him repeatedly.

But much faster. Which is the sort of Renegade action I like. "We all know how this is gonna end, so let's just cut to it".

[Sjofn]

Yeah exactly. We all know it's going to end in a fight, let's just get it over with. Those are the renegade options I'll always take, 'cause even my Paragon Shepards don't have time for this crap.

[Ceryse]

Yeah exactly. We all know it's going to end in a fight, let's just get it over with. Those are the renegade options I'll always take, 'cause even my Paragon Shepards don't have time for this crap.

Like pushing an Eclipse merc through a window in ME2.

I can never get through that mission without doing that renegade option. Its just too damn tempting... and its someone I'm going to kill anyways!

[Sjofn]

See, I never take that one. I don't find it particularly tempting. Plus if I have Garrus with me, I get rewarded by him commenting that I am probably the only person in the world who would let that merc go. 

[Lantyssa]

And he's right.

[Nayr]

One(or two) things ME3 was missing. Shiala and Gianna Parasini.

Sure you get an email+war asset from Shiala, but Gianna is never seen or mentioned in the game. And in ME2, both characters were implied to be interested in Shepard.

Shiala and Feros would have made a good side mission, see the colony and what happened after the Thorian and ExoGeni.

As for Gianna, I think she should have been an alternative to C-Sec's Officer Noles after the Cerberus coup. She did say she wanted to be a cop(but being a corporate internal affairs agent is less grisly). Instead of Noles approaching Shepard about the Batarian diplomatic codes that Balak was using to commit terrorism on the citadel, it be Gianna(now a part of C-Sec because it's safer from the Reapers than Noveria is).

And if Shepard was unattached, there be an option to pursue a NPC romance like with Kelly Chambers(except without the writers forgetting she is there later on.)

[Morat20]

Having just finished this...

WTF is with the end battle? Eight million goddamn banshees? Sure, "war readiness" gets me different options when I read Glowing Blue Baby Jesus, but can't "war assets" get me fewer fucking banshees to fight? Oh hey, here's a single-shot rocket launcher.

The one time in the ENTIRE game I actually found and had the need for a heavy weapon, and I get a single shot rocket launcher. And 83 million Banshees and Marauders.

You know what having a ton of war assets should have gotten me? Ground troops to kill those suckers off. I mean, one or two, sure. But wolf-packs of Brutes followed by Banshees out the ass?

Crap end fight.

Also, from now on? Control or Destroy only. They're such shit choices I think they'll fit either paragon or renegade, so it's  not like it matters.

[Lantyssa]

Tee hee.

The ending of ME3 strikes again.

[Nayr]

Having just finished this...

WTF is with the end battle? Eight million goddamn banshees? Sure, "war readiness" gets me different options when I read Glowing Blue Baby Jesus, but can't "war assets" get me fewer fucking banshees to fight? Oh hey, here's a single-shot rocket launcher.

The one time in the ENTIRE game I actually found and had the need for a heavy weapon, and I get a single shot rocket launcher. And 83 million Banshees and Marauders.

You know what having a ton of war assets should have gotten me? Ground troops to kill those suckers off. I mean, one or two, sure. But wolf-packs of Brutes followed by Banshees out the ass?

Crap end fight.

Also, from now on? Control or Destroy only. They're such shit choices I think they'll fit either paragon or renegade, so it's  not like it matters.

Hackett said from the very beginning that the War Assets would only affect the chances of successfully delivering and protecting the Crucible.

I quote: "Assuming it ever is, we pull all of our resources. Think of it as a giant armada for delivering the Crucible where the Reapers are weakest. The stronger you can make that armada, the better the chances of punching through." There's even an alternate scene of the Reapers attacking the Crucible while it is docked if your assets are low.

If you expected anything more from it, it's your fault because you were told right from the beginning what would happen.

[Tannhauser]

You're right of course.  We had three shitty endings to choose from.

[Nayr]

You're right of course.  We had three shitty endings to choose from.

You had three options to choose from, which each led to an ending. They weren't the ending itself. Which is the biggest misunderstanding by player.

Based on choices and war assets, those three options could spin SEVEN different ways. From total destruction of the galaxy to a utopia.


The success of the Citadel DLC(people saying "this should have been the ending") just proves that the bulk of players didn't want a story conclusion or any consequences of their actions(which Mass Effect has always been about. Virmire and the Suicide Mission proved that the core theme of Mass Effect was victory through sacrifice, though players sidestep Virmire by rationalizing away the impact of the choices - like "Ashley is a racist bitch and deserves to die" or "Ashley is my romance, so bye bye Kaidan", and forget the impact of the Suicide mission by metagaming as hard as can be to get everyone out alive by exploiting what is probably a glitch in the game). They just wanted fanservice. They wanted a comedic life story of Shepard and his bros full of bars and partying. They didn't want any struggles or hard choices, even though the entire trilogy is full of them.

It's like they're thinking "I did so much hard crap in Mass Effect 1 & 2 that I'm entitled to fun easy ride in Mass Effect 3 with nothing I wont like."

They accuse Bioware of forgetting what Mass Effect is about, but it's the other way around. The players forgot what Mass Effect is about.

/rant

[Morat20]

And defense of a game that goes "The players are wrong, en masse" is, by default, wrong. It's like inventing a car no one will buy and blaming humanity as a whole for not buying your car.

No. You just made a car no one liked. You're not a super genius or artist who made a car the masses can't understand. You built a car no one liked.

Anyways, yeah, I know Hackett and all that -- I just found the boss battles, by and large, annoying not fun. Fighting Reapers on foot was annoying. Fighting the wave of Banshees and brutes was annoying. It wasn't fun. I didn't get nearly as irritated by the fights in ME2 -- in fact, the only ones in ME1 that were half that annoying was the battle on Therum -- if you went there first, the fight could be...annoyingly hard.

(I found on later playthroughs, not so much. But the ME2 boss fights were often frantic and difficult, but...not so...mindless. And sure, mindless hordes define Reapers. Still. I dunno what I'd have done differently, but there'd have been something).

I got the extended cut endings, and I played through Leviathan, so the whole thing wasn't quite so head-scratchy. They aren't the endings I'd have chosen if I'd been plotting the story, but meh.

My frothing rage is directed at the end fight because it was work not fun, and the stupid green glowy circuit crap, because it was the stupidest possible way to handle synthesis. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

It's weird that Control and Destroy are about equal in my mind -- destroy means I kill off all the Geth, but the Reapers are over and done. The end. Control means I can save the synthetics and banish the Reapers, but what if being super-Reaper AI overlord goes to my head? I'd be a threat to everything I saved.

That's actually a tough choice.

[Venkman]

Holy crap, this is like a mobius thread. Fourth recursion of page 12 so far I think  . I love that we all finish games at different times.

The success of the Citadel DLC(people saying "this should have been the ending") just proves that the bulk of players didn't want a story conclusion or any consequences of their actions(which Mass Effect has always been about.

Ok, so I don't speak for the bulk of players any more than anyone, but I don't think that's it.

Personally, Citadel was two games. The real one and sort of the filler content that followed. Both had a lot of value as a pre-endgame DLC though, but not for what you're describing.

Citadel was a good DLC because it made great exposition around your entire crew. Leviathan kinda did in a dim way, and established an interesting war asset I think they could have done more for. Omega had the same result and was a good experience, but completely missed the target by not featuring any of the relationships you had cultivated with your crew.

Citadel didn't have that real impact on the longterm narrative that the others did, but made up for it by heavily focusing on getting the band back together with some great use of existing locales in new and interesting ways.

This DLC doesn't retroactively affect what players thought they were getting with ME3 a year ago, and certainly doesn't change the perceptions about the original ending as being subpar.

Instead, it reminded us of what we really loved about ME2, the gallows humor, the strong personalities, the twisted actions of Cerberus-style organizations, and a galaxy of peoples sometimes doing bad to do good and vice versa.

[Nayr]

Anyways, yeah, I know Hackett and all that -- I just found the boss battles, by and large, annoying not fun. Fighting Reapers on foot was annoying. Fighting the wave of Banshees and brutes was annoying. It wasn't fun. I didn't get nearly as irritated by the fights in ME2 -- in fact, the only ones in ME1 that were half that annoying was the battle on Therum -- if you went there first, the fight could be...annoyingly hard.

(I found on later playthroughs, not so much. But the ME2 boss fights were often frantic and difficult, but...not so...mindless. And sure, mindless hordes define Reapers. Still. I dunno what I'd have done differently, but there'd have been something).

I got the extended cut endings, and I played through Leviathan, so the whole thing wasn't quite so head-scratchy. They aren't the endings I'd have chosen if I'd been plotting the story, but meh.

My frothing rage is directed at the end fight because it was work not fun, and the supid green glowy circuit crap, because it was the stupidest possible way to handle synthesis. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

It's weird that Control and Destroy are about equal in my mind -- destroy means I kill off all the Geth, but the Reapers are over and done. The end. Control means I can save the synthetics and banish the Reapers, but what if being super-Reaper AI overlord goes to my head? I'd be a threat to everything I saved.

That's actually a tough choice.

I laugh at the a player claiming a game is too hard when you can choose difficulty setting right at the beginning, and can alter it at any point in the game.

If Banshees and Brutes are too hard, turn the game down a few notches. Or just use a powerful weapon(Widow/Paladin/etc) and make headshots.

For battling the Reaper on Tuchanka, you can just ignore the Brutes and focus on getting to the hammers.

For battling the Reaper on Rannoch. When you see the laser headed your way, jump to the side. The targeting laser doesn't reset if you stop to dodge. So it'll pick up right where you left off.

For battling the Reaper on Earth. That's just like a multiplayer match. You kill waves of enemies, then on the final step, you survive until an invisible counter reaches zero, then you run to the tank and launch the missiles.

[Reg]

Jesus Nayr, I'm starting to wish that you and Simond were locked away somewhere in a death match at this point.

[Nayr]

Jesus Nayr, I'm starting to wish that you and Simond were locked away somewhere in a death match at this point.

I'd win. I fight like a Krogan, think like a Salarian, I'm as misleading as an Asari, and I'm as ruthless and merciless as a Turian. :p

[Goreschach]

How about we lock him away with Sinij instead?

[Morat20]

What part of "Not fun" translated out to "too hard"?

Are you one of those guys that equates "fun" with "stabbing myself in the crotch"? I'm not a masochist, so that doesn't work for me.

If I thought it was "too hard" I'd have said "too hard" instead of "not fun". It wasn't fun. It wouldn't have been fun if I'd turned the difficulty down to easy, either. It would have still been a sucky-ass fight, like all the reaper fights.

Don't get me wrong -- summong Kalros to kill the Reaper was a hoot and a half. The dodging beams of death? Shit mechanic. End of story. It's just an annoyance. It adds nothing but irritation. It could be a beam of fucking ponies and unicorns and magic shield restoring power and it'd STILL be unfun.

In fact, the closest it got to fun was when I managed to kill a Banshee using the red beam of death. That was kind of amusing. It also wasn't purposeful, but hey, you take what you can get.

Anyways, again -- not fun. Not "too hard" -- not fun. Dodging a million Banshees was simply a massive ass annoyance.

[rk47]

Ending sucks, man. 

[Reg]

No, no! You're just playing it all wrong!

[Stormwaltz]

Bring back precasting b1y0+ch, and I'll see you in Shadowbane.

[rk47]

Seems like Morat wants a mako for the finale.

[Sjofn]

My frothing rage is directed at the end fight because it was work not fun, and the stupid green glowy circuit crap, because it was the stupidest possible way to handle synthesis. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

It's weird that Control and Destroy are about equal in my mind -- destroy means I kill off all the Geth, but the Reapers are over and done. The end. Control means I can save the synthetics and banish the Reapers, but what if being super-Reaper AI overlord goes to my head? I'd be a threat to everything I saved.

That's actually a tough choice.

The green ending is so fucking duuuuuuuuuumb. I'll never pick control, because I don't trust (from an in-character perspective) what might happen with Shepard post-overlordening, but I think it's a legit choice and a decent solution to the problem. And destroy is the "I came here to kill Reapers, I am going to kill some motherfucking Reapers" choice, so even though killing off the Geth sucks (I admit killing EDI is slightly "sorry there" for me but not a big enough issue to ever give me pause) and feels a sort of "well gosh we can't let THIS be the Bestest Ending" tacked on penalty, it feels good to pick. Synthesis is just endless transhuman wankery in your face where everyone gets sunshine and lollipops and robo-puppies for an ending ... except for Shepard, who melts.

[Lantyssa]

I'd win. I fight like a Krogan, think like a Salarian, I'm as misleading as an Asari, and I'm as ruthless and merciless as a Turian. :p

I'd just turn the difficulty down to easy and stomp your arse.

[Jeff Kelly]

Mass Effect on Insanity is always a frustrating experience because it makes everything that's broken in that game (and there are quite a few things) so much more annoying.

Insanity shows you how weak the squad AI is, how broken some of the mechanics are and throws it all in your face. This coming from a person that has played all three games on hardcore and insanity.

I died a lot during the insanity runs but more often from a glitchy game mechanic than from real error.

Suddenly sticking to cover and die when I wanted to run somewhere, suddenly stand up because the cover I was walking behind was buggy. Squadmates just standing there getting shot, standing on top of the cover instead of behind and getting shot, squadmates completely ignoring my commands and getting killed. Powers that get blocked by terrain because the pathing broke and the game thinks the singularity should go through the cover.

Enemies that completely ignore their own safety and my squadmates (to be fair they are useless so I'd probably ignore them too) to bum rush me. Difficulty that is all over the place from "is this really insanity?" to "I curse all of Biowware's programmers and their first born sons up to the seventh generation".

Combine this with a lot of gauntlet-style fights where you need to reach certain points to stop waves and endless waves of enemies and you have a recipe for frustration.

Examples: The end fight on horizon, where the open terrain means your team dies a lot because they don't reposition when they are flanked and get happily shot dead while I'm rushed by a horde of husks with armor. The gauntlet to the colossus in Tali's recruitment mission that on insanity features two geth prime, an endless horde of geth recon drones and an endless horde of geth destroyers, geth troppers and sunlight so bright it kills your shields. The collector ship fight on the flying platforms, that features squadmates dying a lot while not knowing how cover works, (hint: when the scion makes that whooomp-whoomp-whoomp sound then it's not a dubstep party it means you duck), a lot of buggy terrain where simply moving behind cover makes you stand up and die and a suicidal harbinger that rushes and kills you.

Oh and the most broken mission of all, Tali's loyalty mission which is infinitely harder just because I have to bring Tali instead of someone useful. Miranda is better suited for that mission than a freaking quarian engineer with that puny toy drone that doesn't even work against shields. Oh and the anti shield power being the loyalty power just adds insult to injury.

Insanity is really enjoyable when you get the right missions that are difficult but you have the feeling you can handle them, More often then not though all you think is "Really Bioware? Are you fucking serious?".

[Morat20]

I think the AI mechanics boil down to something like "Wait for a break in the shooting, pop out and fire gun or technique" -- and they won't reposition without a break in the shooting either. I think selecting a power or forcing a target will make them immediately do it, but otherwise they default to huddling behind cover until everyone else is reloading.

Which means, sometimes, they don't ever do shit because it's continuous death beams at you. (Like pretty much the landing on Earth. My squaddies didn't do shit until I flared out a half-dozen enemies. THEN they suddenly started moving).

At least in ME1, the bitchier fights I could usually...preempt. Like those damn rocket drones on Luna? I just have everyone huddle in the entryway, and lure them down the hallway. Having someone with hack is a godsend. Trying to fight them in the room proper is suicide.

[Nayr]

I think the AI mechanics boil down to something like "Wait for a break in the shooting, pop out and fire gun or technique" -- and they won't reposition without a break in the shooting either. I think selecting a power or forcing a target will make them immediately do it, but otherwise they default to huddling behind cover until everyone else is reloading.

To be fair, in a real life gunfight I wouldn't jump out of cover and start firing when other people are shooting at me. It's a good way to get killed. The AI is being smart in those instances.

And there are other methods you can use to get around that mechanic. Flanking them, grenades, or using singularities or drones to shoo them out of cover and right into your line of fire.

What I do is exploit the mechanic. I usually carry a powerful gun like the Mattock(which I can button mash) or the Cerberus Harrier(which has a lot of kick) with Armor Piercing or Disruptor armmo(depending on what I'm fighting). I go silent for a minute until the enemy comes up to shoot, then I pop out and shoot him first. Adrenaline Rush helps it too.

[Jeff Kelly]

Well I ddidn't expect the squad AI to be perfect but it just makes so many small mistakes. I'd even agree if one of you said "AI is bad so just control them manually" if that would work reliably.

If you aren't careful with your markers the AI will stand on top of cover to get LOS or won't engage the enemy at all since the AI has no line of sight from where it sits. Sometimes they simply ignore your orders completely and do whatever the fact they want. Sometimes they don't catch up to you after a fight ends and you wonder just where the hell your guys went. I even lost squadmates when I failed to notice them not coming and they stayed on the wrong side of a automatically closing door or other level gate. Sometimes they get so stuck on terrain that they can't move at all.

There also seems to be a pretty big difference in the quality of the AI for each team member. Some team mates are simply more stupid than others and die more often. Miranda for example is usually the one still standing even after hard fights like on the collector vessel. Garrus has long range weapons like sniper rifle and assault rifle yet favors an "up close and personal" combat style that get's him killed a lot and Tali or Mordin simply run around the battlefield like confused chickens until a compassionate enemy puts them out of their misery. Zaeed is simply surviving anything don't know how he does it.

Playing the collector ship (the platform battle is arguably one of the hardest fights in the game) with me as Adept, Miranda and Thane felt like cheating. Three people with heavy warp means instakill for harbinger and makes the Praetorian fight ridiculously easy. I needed close to 30 tries though to just survive the first room of the Tali loyalty mission where you get zerg rushed by Geth Hunters with no regard for personal safety (or personal space for that matter).

The fights are simply not balanced enough for the errors in the squad AI to not matter. Especially when you need three people to stay on top of the respawn and to reach the waypoints that trigger the respawn to stop (like Thane's recruitment mission, Tali's recruitment mission, the faulty production line N7 mission or the way to the bridge of the ALerai in Tali's loyalty mission).

I get where Morat is coming from because none of this matters if the fight you just replayed for the 50th time is at least fun and/or challenging in the right way. The fight at the the end of Priority: Earth at the rocket launcher however just plays like the extraction round of a gold multiplayer match against the Reapers after all of your squadmates have left. (In fact a lot of the ME3 fights feel that way).

This is not exactly something I'd label as 'fun' either. Especially if you compare it to fights like against the geth colossus on Haestrom in ME2 which is ridiculously hard but also feels challenging and fun even if you attempt it for the 50th time.

If you like being frustrated beyond belief however and if you like replaying missions 1000 times, including all of the things that irritate you even more, like unskippable cut scenes before the fight that get retriggered after each reload then I'd suggest the N7 side mission in ME2 where you have to protect the wounded Quarian from the Varren or the "abandoned mine full of husks" one.

Those two are simply ridiculous in a "what Bastard did those?" kind of way.

[Nayr]

You know one of the few things that do bug me about ME3?

Haestrom and it's sun.

I know the whole Dark Energy thing and the Reapers being this giant think-tank of assimilated race created to solve it was dropped, but come on, the Quarians hyped Haestrom's sun up in ME2 and in ME3 they even first meet with Shepard in that very same star system, but nothing is said about it. Not so much as a "we figured out the problem and we don't have to worry about it after all" from Tali.

A more creative thing to do would be to incorporate it into the Quarian storyline somehow. Like maybe the true Geth really were responsible and they were developing some weapon of their own to battle the Reapers, and the deteriorating star was a side effect. Then if you side with the Geth or broker peace, you get it as a war asset.

Another acceptable way, they could shelf the idea for the next trilogy. After facing the Reapers and seeing how much damage they could do, any future enemy is going to get a "I beat the Reapers! Compared to them, you're a pussy" response from players. So having a problem that's arguably more dire(the imminent destruction of the entire universe from the Big Rip phenomenon) than the Reapers will keep things interesting.  And the next player character's mission in life could be to convince the inhabitants of the galaxy to quit polluting the universe with ungodly amounts of dark energy before they kill us all and looks for alternatives(that the Reapers kept us from doing).

Edit:

A couple of other things that irk me, but aren't irksome enough to inspire a big rant. Until now.

1. How going to the Terminus systems is suddenly okay. In ME1, they were shit scared that going there would start a war. Yet after ME1, the Alliance has colonies there(Fehl Prime in the Hourglass Nebula), has outreach programs to the non-alliance human colones(Horizon), and Council Spectres are allowed in(Shepard can get a personal audience with Aria, the de facto queen of Omega, the unofficial capital of the terminus systems, whenever he pleases.) and are allowed authority(Tela Vasir in Lair of the Shadow Broker was barking orders at the cops on Illium and they obeyed. Illium may be an asari colony, but it's a part of the Terminus). Not to mention the fact that in the very beginning of ME2, the Normandy was investigating in the Terminus Systems only a couple of months after the battle at the Citadel, when the Normandy had to sneak into the Terminus systems to get to Ilos because they weren't allowed to go there. And there's no explanation for any of it.

2. Thermal clips. I mean seriously! That has to be the worst fucking upgrade to weapons ever. Yeah not having to wait for an overheated gun to cool is nice, but once you run out of clips you're screwed. It's literally going from guns with unlimited ammunition back to limited ammunition. With the right mods, a gun would never have too cooldown. Even Conrad Verner saw how dumb that was.(I guess it takes a stalker who is a Xenoscience specialist with a dissertation on Dark Energy integration to figure that out).

3. The fact that they turned Ashley from a realistic looking person into a barbie. Some probably appreciate that she looks like a latin supermodel now, but in ME1 Ash struck me as the no-nonsense type, not the one who bothers globbing on makeup, tanning, getting breast implants, and styling her hair, and buying a skirt with thigh-high boots. They also messed with her proportions and now her face looks wider. And when they show her beside her sister, Sarah, they don't even look like at all like sisters.

4. Color changes. Alliance suddenly is labeled by the color blue(Ash and Kaidan with it). Kirrahe is gray skinned, when he was green in ME1.

5. EDI's holographic dildo-looking/vagina-mouthed body never appears once in ME3, despite there being a small period of time before she acquires the body of The Illusive Man's Eva Core sexbot.

6. Mordin has a different voice actor. The new guy does a decent job, but it's noticeable, especially when he sings and right in the beginning when he first talks(he sounds completely different there)

7. How the Reapers' shields are penetrable in ME3. In ME1, they couldn't touch Sovereign because of his kinetic barriers. But in ME3's cutscenes, it's like they're not there at all. Reapers take hits(though it doesn't damage them most of the times). Although in the codex entry, a turian general was able to bring down a dozen sovereign-class Reapers when they first hit Palaven by using a tactic where ships would do small FTL jumps and fire on the Reapers at point-blank range. It's an impressive tactic, but if the Reapers still had shields like Sovereign, it wouldn't work.

[Venkman]

I mostly agree. On #7 though, wasn't the Collector's gun tech from ME2 the thing that trained the alliance folks on how to get through the Reaper shields? The microjumps tactic works but like the assault on Omega in the ME3 DLC, you're gonna lose a lot of assets in that kind of brute force method.

[Maledict]

Regarding the Reaper shields, that's thanks to the development of the Thannix cannon by the Turians after the events of Mass Effect 1. They recovered a large part of Sovereigns main gun after the battle of the citedal and secretly retro-fitted it. In ME2 you can install it on the Normandy, and by ME3 all the major powers have been sticking it on as many ships as possible. That's why they can now damage reapers - because everyone is using weapons based on their technology.

And Haestrom - I honestly think we ME fans hype this up too much. It was mentioned briefly in *one* side mission in one game, and that's it. I never thought anything of it to be honest, in the same way I didn't think the Leviathon of Dis would go anywhere, or the gas giants with the giant coffins floating in them, or the world that occasionally lights up when no-one is near. I think for someone who isn't reading every lore item and going everywhere (I.e. most gamers) making the storyline about the dark energy events at Haestrom would have been incredibly confusing to say the least - it just isn't foreshadowed enough.

[Nayr]

Yes yes, I know about the Thanix Cannon. But how many times do you see it used before the final battle? None. It only appears once in Mass Effect 3, when all the ships begin firing on the Reapers. And even then, only a tenth of the shots fired are thanix blasts. One Reaper is shown getting its tentacles blown off with standard gunfire.

There were no thanix cannons used during Rannoch either, despite Shepard scolding Raan for installing them on their civilian ships.

And, wrong. Haestrom was shown in one mission, and followed up in Tali's loyalty mission. It was played off as a major concern of the Quarians. And considering what was going to be ME3's ending reveal, it was.

[Maledict]

Talis' loyalty mission? The one with her boarding her fathers ship to put down the rampant Geth? How was that linked to Dark energy?

It also wasn't a major concern of the quarians at all. How many of them mentioned it in the fleet? the entire setting of that mission was "something odd is going on, might be worth checking it out " not "This is HUGE and needs sorting!". You don't send a squad of what, 20 quarians max into enemy space if its that important. It just wasn't that important in ME2 ultimately when you look at that game and how it featured. Its something we as gamers have really amped up beyond what it is - the game itself didn't.

Plus the dark energy thing never made any sense - if it was such a pressing concern, why was only Haestrom undergoing that change? Its hardly a major concern if after all this time one star in one system is collapsing early.

EDIT: you don't even have to recruit Tali in Me2 apparently so its an optional mission.

[Nayr]

Talis' loyalty mission? The one with her boarding her fathers ship to put down the rampant Geth? How was that linked to Dark energy?

It also wasn't a major concern of the quarians at all. How many of them mentioned it in the fleet? the entire setting of that mission was "something odd is going on, might be worth checking it out " not "This is HUGE and needs sorting!". You don't send a squad of what, 20 quarians max into enemy space if its that important. It just wasn't that important in ME2 ultimately when you look at that game and how it featured. Its something we as gamers have really amped up beyond what it is - the game itself didn't.

Plus the dark energy thing never made any sense - if it was such a pressing concern, why was only Haestrom undergoing that change? Its hardly a major concern if after all this time one star in one system is collapsing early.

EDIT: you don't even have to recruit Tali in Me2 apparently so its an optional mission.

You run into Kal'Reegar at Tali's trial if you remember. He'll give Tali an update about Haestrom's sun and you can do a Q&A about it.

Also the reason they sent Tali's squad in like that was because they were deep in Geth space, sending in larger numbers would have alerted the Geth even quicker than they did.

Haestrom was supposed to be the first to start showing the symptoms of the dark energy degeneration IIRC. 300 years back, it was normal. If they had stuck with the planned ending, I imagine more systems would have started showing the problem in Mass Effect 3.

And so what if it is optional? Damn near everything in Mass Effect is optional, but they still happen, just in different ways.(Like Arrival and Lair of the Shadow Broker) Ignoring the mission doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[Ratman_tf]

Regarding the Reaper shields, that's thanks to the development of the Thannix cannon by the Turians after the events of Mass Effect 1. They recovered a large part of Sovereigns main gun after the battle of the citedal and secretly retro-fitted it. In ME2 you can install it on the Normandy, and by ME3 all the major powers have been sticking it on as many ships as possible. That's why they can now damage reapers - because everyone is using weapons based on their technology.

Which brings up one of my science fiction pet peeves. "Get through their shields, and discover that the alien menace seem to build their space ships out of paper machie"