[Megathread] Mass Effect 3

[May90]

Just finished the trilogy, what, the 7th time probably. I don't care what other people think, but I consider this ending to be the best in any video game to date. Pretty much, the only ending I've seen which doesn't end in an "ultimate boss" battle followed by a happy end. And the scale of the ending is impressive: not just, as usual, "Beat the bad guys and save yourself", here the scale is the entire galactic life.

People who are looking for plot holes are wasting their time, IMO. You can find plot holes in any game, some of them crucial (in Mass Effect 2, for example, on the Collector ship, it didn't make much sense for the Collectors to go after Shepard and ignore the Normandy - they could've destroyed it right after the ship was powered). The difference is, some people focus on plot holes, while other people enjoy their games.

Now - to the new Dragon Age! Just need to finish the 2nd game once again, since the last time I played it was quite a while ago and I forgot some of the stuff that happened there.

[Drakiru]

Speaking of the new Dragon age, Maybe they could use something like the Dragon Age Keep for the next Mass Effect.
A website to edit world history would be nice.

edit: well history of the galaxy in this case

[Deleted]

Just finished the trilogy, what, the 7th time probably. I don't care what other people think, but I consider this ending to be the best in any video game to date. Pretty much, the only ending I've seen which doesn't end in an "ultimate boss" battle followed by a happy end. And the scale of the ending is impressive: not just, as usual, "Beat the bad guys and save yourself", here the scale is the entire galactic life.

People who are looking for plot holes are wasting their time, IMO. You can find plot holes in any game, some of them crucial (in Mass Effect 2, for example, on the Collector ship, it didn't make much sense for the Collectors to go after Shepard and ignore the Normandy - they could've destroyed it right after the ship was powered). The difference is, some people focus on plot holes, while other people enjoy their games.

You enjoyed Priority:Earth as well?

[Rukh]

Speaking of the new Dragon age, Maybe they could use something like the Dragon Age Keep for the next Mass Effect.
A website to edit world history would be nice.

edit: well history of the galaxy in this case

I think they need to do that with whatever the space ship is. They did some of that in ME2 and 3, but they need to do it to the level of the DA keep. Finding new crew on distant worlds, high tech one of a kind prototype upgrades that give you new facilities like weapon fabrication, different heat shielding that lets you access new areas, all that sort of thing.

[Drakiru]

I think they need to do that with whatever the space ship is. They did some of that in ME2 and 3, but they need to do it to the level of the DA keep. Finding new crew on distant worlds, high tech one of a kind prototype upgrades that give you new facilities like weapon fabrication, different heat shielding that lets you access new areas, all that sort of thing.

While that would be nice, I was talking about this: https://dragonagekeep.com
It allows you to edit the events that happened during DA:Origins and DA2. That means you don't actually need to have played the previous games.

[May90]

You enjoyed Priority:Earth as well?

Yes, I did. Why?

[Rukh]

While that would be nice, I was talking about this: https://dragonagekeep.com
It allows you to edit the events that happened during DA:Origins and DA2. That means you don't actually need to have played the previous games.

Oh I just use a trainer to set the previous games events if I don't feel like doing an entire playthrough again.

[Aberrict]

While that would be nice, I was talking about this: https://dragonagekeep.com
It allows you to edit the events that happened during DA:Origins and DA2. That means you don't actually need to have played the previous games.

If choices from Mass Effect 1-3 do have an effect on the next one then they will certainly add this feature. After all they can't transfer saves between the Xbox 360 and Xbone for Dragon Age.

[Deleted]

If choices from Mass Effect 1-3 do have an effect on the next one then they will certainly add this feature. After all they can't transfer saves between the Xbox 360 and Xbone for Dragon Age.

They better call it Citadel Records or something.

[Nerraw]

Oh I just use a trainer to set the previous games events if I don't feel like doing an entire playthrough again.

A trainer called Traynor.

[SatelliteMind]

This is my favorite ME game so far; hopefully 4 can outdo it!

[Suribear]

You enjoyed Priority:Earth as well?

Al things considered, I didn't have much issue with the extended cut endings either. I wouldn't call them the best game endings ever but I do think no matter what Bioware did they were facing an uphill battle with the segment of gamers who tend to be vocal on online forums.

[Deleted]

Al things considered, I didn't have much issue with the extended cut endings either. I wouldn't call them the best game endings ever but I do think no matter what Bioware did they were facing an uphill battle with the segment of gamers who tend to be vocal on online forums.

After the EC,the last 10 minutes were just fine,and I wasn't talking about them. Priority:Earth still remained a shitty mission with a completely broken story,from start to finish,even after the EC was released. In fact,the only thing EC did for the actual "battle" for Earth was to create even more plot holes.

I do think no matter what Bioware did they were facing an uphill battle with the segment of gamers who tend to be vocal on online forums.

If Bioware gave Priority:Earth a proper remake it deserved,I'm sure the majority of complains regarding the ending would stop. Sure,there were always people who complained about the "last 10 minutes that ruined ME3",even after the EC (which I can totally understand),but overall gamers were relatively satisfied with the last 10-15 minutes after the EC.

[Deleted]

but overall gamers were relatively satisfied with the last 10-15 minutes after the EC.

It was a shoddy ending, but it worked.
BioWare doesn't exactly write good stories. They are generic as fuck with a bunch of threads connecting the plot and the many holes as well as good characters.
Honestly, the characters are the only thing i would say BioWare does well.

[Dhrizzle]

It was a shoddy ending, but it worked.
BioWare doesn't exactly write good stories. They are generic as fuck with a bunch of threads connecting the plot and the many holes as well as good characters.
Honestly, the characters are the only thing i would say BioWare does well.

I think with Mass Effect they did a really good job of bringing across some hard sci-fi and cosmic horror concepts without sacrificing the comic-book aesthetics that work well in visual media. They also had dozens (or hundreds) of little stories put across by background characters in a few lines of dialogue. I also liked the frequent nods towards classic sci-fi books, gave me something to geek out about.

[Valeron]

It was a shoddy ending, but it worked.
BioWare doesn't exactly write good stories. They are generic as fuck with a bunch of threads connecting the plot and the many holes as well as good characters.
Honestly, the characters are the only thing i would say BioWare does well.

Characters and dialogue in general is what BioWare does well. Their stories are good enough I feel, at least for video games anyway.

[May90]

This is my favorite ME game so far; hopefully 4 can outdo it!

We might be in minority, but I fully support you. IMO, ME3>>ME2>>ME1. I loved countless party banters during missions, the epic scale of events, music, combat system (the best in ME trilogy, IMO), and especially - the DLCs; Citadel DLC was just insanely good. I hope DAI proves to be as good.

After the EC,the last 10 minutes were just fine,and I wasn't talking about them. Priority:Earth still remained a shitty mission with a completely broken story,from start to finish,even after the EC was released. In fact,the only thing EC did for the actual "battle" for Earth was to create even more plot holes.

I must be the only one who reads these claims and doesn't understand what people are talking about. It's like they intentionally search thoroughly for plot holes (which you can find in any game, movie or book) just to bash the game even more.

BioWare doesn't exactly write good stories. They are generic as fuck with a bunch of threads connecting the plot and the many holes as well as good characters.
Honestly, the characters are the only thing i would say BioWare does well.

Well, that's their playground: not amazing stories like, say, Neverwinter Nights 2: MotB, but, rather, memorable characters and side stories. Bioware's main plot has always been, pretty much, like this: "Defeat the ultimate evil at all costs by visiting a few quest hubs and doing parts of the story". There are several exceptions, like Neverwinter Nights: SoU and HotU, but then those games weren't exactly typical for Bioware, more like an experiment that, overall, succeeded but was discontinued since, apparently, some fans weren't fond of it.

That said, IMO, the Reapers are, so far, the best villain faction in the gaming history. I haven't seen any other villain faction that would literally terrify me by just thinking of what horror they can inflict on their victims. There were really scary factions like, say, Tleilaxu from Dune series, or really powerful villains like Mephistopheles from Neverwinter Nights - but never such an ultimate enemy fighting which seems so hopeless. Mind control, protein processing factories, turning organics into monsters via very painful process, overall size and numbers - this is, pretty much, an ultimate enemy, and I have a hard time trying to come up with something more terrifying.

[Dhrizzle]

That said, IMO, the Reapers are, so far, the best villain faction in the gaming history. I haven't seen any other villain faction that would literally terrify me by just thinking of what horror they can inflict on their victims. There were really scary factions like, say, Tleilaxu from Dune series, or really powerful villains like Mephistopheles from Neverwinter Nights - but never such an ultimate enemy fighting which seems so hopeless. Mind control, protein processing factories, turning organics into monsters via very painful process, overall size and numbers - this is, pretty much, an ultimate enemy, and I have a hard time trying to come up with something more terrifying.

What scared me the most about Reapers was their lack of technological advancement. Call it head-cannon, but Mass Effect was clearly hardish sci-fi enough that the Reapers could (and should) have developed tech far in advance of simply bigger ships with better guns, harder shields and faster engines. They could have been sprinkling worlds with nano-dust or adpating the Mass Relays to indoctrinate any and all who pass through them. And what's with converting the sentient races to robo-zombies instead of just building robots (or blasting us with hyper-weaponry from the next star-system over)? It's like they were deliberately set up to fuck with us or (as I decided after getting to the end) to test us. It's like if we tried to take on a nest of ants using only remote-control ant-eaters and ants we'd captured and reanimated, instead of poison, fire and/or explosives.

When you say the Tleilaxu were scary, do you mean the sinister dwarfs from the earlier books of the Face-Dancer Collective in the latter? Because the originals were more amusingly incompetent than scary (barring their views on women's rights/source of axlotl tanks) but the perfected Face Dancers were chilling.

[May90]

What scared me the most about Reapers was their lack of technological advancement. Call it head-cannon, but Mass Effect was clearly hardish sci-fi enough that the Reapers could (and should) have developed tech far in advance of simply bigger ships with better guns, harder shields and faster engines. They could have been sprinkling worlds with nano-dust or adpating the Mass Relays to indoctrinate any and all who pass through them. And what's with converting the sentient races to robo-zombies instead of just building robots (or blasting us with hyper-weaponry from the next star-system over)? It's like they were deliberately set up to fuck with us or (as I decided after getting to the end) to test us. It's like if we tried to take on a nest of ants using only remote-control ant-eaters and ants we'd captured and reanimated, instead of poison, fire and/or explosives.

Well, what you say is true, and I myself wondered the same. I explain it by the fact that the only goal of the Catalyst was preserving life, and, since it found a working solution, it didn't care about refining it any more, it worked fine as it was. Surely, they could easily develop some virus that would be released on the Citadel and make everyone half-dead and ready for processing in a few months - but they didn't need it as their goals were satisfied already.

Also, I agree that there was more to it, the Reapers definitely experimented on us. Even Leviathan said this: "The whole galaxy became and experiment". They probably observed, assessed, tried to learn more about organics, their motives, their capabilities - they proved to be wrong after all, they underestimated organics, they didn't believe anyone would be able to build the Crucible and actually use it. So, it seems that Reapers weren't as clever and intelligent as it might seem. They were very powerful and advanced, but their understanding of the world in general was definitely lacking, and they probably weren't that good at science - they might have just used the resources Leviathans granted to them to build everything, but they had no idea how to improve it even further.

Anyway, the Reapers were absolutely terrifying, I can't think of anything fighting which would seem more hopeless.

When you say the Tleilaxu were scary, do you mean the sinister dwarfs from the earlier books of the Face-Dancer Collective in the latter? Because the originals were more amusingly incompetent than scary (barring their views on women's rights/source of axlotl tanks) but the perfected Face Dancers were chilling.

Actually, I was referring to the game Emperor: Battle for Dune, they were much scarier there than in the books, IMO. Able to shapeshift into anything, doing horrifying experiments on people, growing terrifying Worm Emperor... They didn't seem that powerful, compared to Reapers, but they definitely were of the kind of "disgusting aliens".

[Deleted]

I can't think of anything fighting which would seem more hopeless.

Entropic decay of the universe a la Dark Souls?