Mass Effect 3: Blue Oyster Cult Was Wrong

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JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Sup folks. After talking a long rear end time away from ME because of :argh:

THE ENDING :argh:

I finally decided to play through all 3 again, and also to pick up the Leviathan and Citadel DLC for 3 (but not Omega I'm not paying money for more Aria, good lord).

Some disjointed brief opinions:

ME1 is still the best story, adequate gameplay that both ME2 and then ME3 improved on. I found the Mako to be much more fun than I remembered :smug:

. I still think adding in heat sinks made no drat sense from a gameplay or story perspective. ME2's story is a nonsensical mess but it's fun and entertaining with a feel good ending so whatever. ME3's gameplay is goddamn fantastic and they make up for the heatsinks by just having ammo everywhere. also the Lancer from the Citadel DLC is loving cool.

ME3's story is still oppressively GRIMDARK with few exceptions, so the Citadel DLC was a very welcome exception. At first I found the tone irritating but after a little while I totally bought into the camp and loved it all the way through. Wish there was more stuff like that in the main game. The Leviathan DLC was decent as far as setting and tone but does little to ease the plot problems it attempts to, and seems to add more problems for the future.

ME3's ending still sucks and left me wanting something else, but at least the extended high EMS Destroy ending is pretty good.

I can't help but think that any future games will have to either completely ignore the stuff in ME3 (which would be weird) or choose a cannon ending.

E: also, with the death of the spoiler thread are spoilers okay here or should I keep the tags going?

JawKnee fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Feb 7, 2014

# ¿ Feb 7, 2014 06:36

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 13:38

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

That's my read on it too. Synthesis is the "And then everything was great forever the end" ending, kind of heads off conflict before it can start. Control is is similarly problematic, unless you want to make the shep-controlled killbots the enemies again.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2014 17:49

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Why bother, EDI and the weirdo ME3 real-boy Geth are acceptable losses.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2014 17:58

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

I'd say it's incredibly unlikely that they make a game without a human as the protagonist, and without humanity as a sizeable presence. Note that this somewhat rules out low EMS endings as well.

On another note, and since I'm too lazy to look it up, anyone know who wrote the Citadel DLC?

# ¿ Feb 7, 2014 19:43

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Torrannor posted:

Don't kid yourself, the only ones who are passionate enough to throw a fit if Bioware goes with one of the canon endings that they don't like are also some of the first to pre-order ME4 because "OH GOD NEW MASS EFFECT I CAN HARDLY WAIT!".

I've said it before: Taking back the destruction of the Mass Relays was the biggest mistake Bioware made with the new extended cut DLC. Humanity could have been forced to slow-fly to near star systems they did not bother to visit because they were too far away from the nearest Mass Relay, and you would basically have the kind of game you describe here. Play as one of the humans in the Terminus Systems, and you would be severed from the rest of humanity, exploring the near space.

But no, idiot fans threw a hissy fit and Bioware chickened out.

Bioware would almost certainly have come up with some other way to travel vast distances almost instantly and it would have been functionally identical.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2014 20:47

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

I don't give a poo poo about synthetics, and lol if you think the synthesis or control endings are the embodiment of choices having consequences.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2014 00:44

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Potential interesting conflicts in a galaxy of synthetic machine people who all have an intimate and shared understanding of eachother:

-

# ¿ Feb 8, 2014 01:07

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Bioware is just going to have ME4 be another shepard game with the real shep if you picked destroy and lived and a clone shep otherwise ala Citadel

# ¿ Feb 8, 2014 04:43

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

I'm fairly certain they say you've been locked up for 6 months in some side dialogue early in ME3

# ¿ Feb 8, 2014 15:09

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

abandon the grim outlook you need for the rest of the game, Citadel is campy as hell the whole way through and that makes it super fun

# ¿ Feb 11, 2014 19:40

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Vitamin P posted:

Does the Mass Effect series actually have any themes?

Not being facetious but I really can't think of any coherent themes, it's all just surface level these-are-things-that-happen.

Initially it seemed like one of the secondary themes to the games was humanities place in the universe. That's still somewhat present outside of the first game, but it seems like it took a back-seat. Really though, the whole idea was meant to capitalize on "THIS IS THE FUTURE LOOK AT THE ALIENS AND SWEET TECHNOLOGY"

# ¿ Feb 12, 2014 21:49

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

It seems like they were trying to impart the precariousness of Hammer squad's situation, which makes sense, but 1 wave of husks is, uh, underwhelming.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2014 08:34

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Police Automaton posted:

I started to get that feeling the first time when Tali wouldn't shut up about her emotionally distant admiral dad. To be fair though, this is an incredible available device to insert some drama into something.

You know who never talked about her parents? Liara. Because her race didn't make any sense. Even though her mom was literally in the first game. On the other hand, she always stroke me as one of those really overbearing chicks who'll ask if you're "really ok" and send you emotional songs on FB out of nowhere.

She talks about her mom in ME3 actually

# ¿ Feb 14, 2014 18:37

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

The second KotOR was far and away the more complex and interesting game in terms of plot. If LucasArts hadn't rushed Oblivion on development I'm sure it wouldn't have been as broken and incomplete as it was when shipped. They nailed difficult ethical situations, non-binary morality, and ideas of extremism perfectly.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2014 21:47

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Kibayasu posted:

I think having played 2-3 games with most of the more prominent characters helped with the quips coming from everywhere. A character I've know for 5 minutes (Hi Alistair from DA:O) throwing out sarcasm in every conversation is annoying but hearing it from a character I've spent a not insignificant amount of time listening and responding to dialogue with can be endearing. Brooks fell into this trap but at least she was overshadowed by everyone else.

It felt so goddamn satisfying to shoot Brooks in the back at the end of that DLC, goddamn

"Not at this range" :clint:

# ¿ Feb 15, 2014 04:43

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

The MSJ posted:

Alpha Protocol also mostly works because it is one game. I don't know if they can maintain it if your choices work across multiple games.

Sure they could, in the sense that it's just carrying over variables. That's not your point though, your point is that the size, scope, and length of content in one game at least doubles if you add another non-trivial section of content (like another game). However it's still possible, it just becomes very very complex and perhaps not worth the time needed to do it.

Whoever said earlier that AP was able to do it because of a relatively limited cast of interactive characters is making a good point - AP has a really nice choices/consequences system, but it also railroads you pretty hard with respect to what environments you can visit/revisit, and what you can do in a general sense in those environments (who can I talk to? What are the scope of my conversational options?)

# ¿ Feb 17, 2014 03:02

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Extra Smooth Balls posted:

Bioware are not good at hands.

I've been replaying DA:O and everyone has freakishly huge loving hands, it's real drat distracting.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2014 18:05

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

1st AD posted:

How does Citadel play if you killed EVERYONE and didn't get Javik? Like your only remaining party is Liara, Vega, and EDI? Like I imagine the story part is fine, but man that party at the end would get mighty empty.

Steve and Traynor are already invited too

E: So I guess just check out the party where you haven't invited anyone but them then

# ¿ Feb 18, 2014 21:35

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Xander77 posted:

Should I continue this, or am I just repeating the same stuff that's been rehashed in this and previous threads?

It's hella cathartic to see my own opinions vindicated again by mass-agreement

# ¿ Feb 25, 2014 19:04

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Xander77 posted:

I hope my space-hamster is ok, because I can't find it anywhere.

basement where Jack used to be

# ¿ Feb 25, 2014 21:21

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Nihilarian posted:

Good news: you can totally meet the shuttle pilot. Bad news: you can't romance him. His name is Steve.

I think you meant to say, his name is STEEEEEEVE!

# ¿ Feb 25, 2014 21:34

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

sexbot EDI is the #1 reason why I'm not torn up about killing her off with the Destroy ending

# ¿ Feb 26, 2014 01:53

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

what fuckin reset points machine?

(I used gibbed if I wanted changes)

# ¿ Feb 27, 2014 05:55

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Lycus posted:

In the med-bay. Missed that, did ya?

Oh hah. No, just forgot about it. Probably because I gave my shep robot eyes every time in gibbed and went ahead and reset my skill points there too.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2014 07:22

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

neither does Vanguard Shep, at least in spirit

# ¿ Feb 28, 2014 19:54

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

I was referring to the PC, pretty sure so was Emy

# ¿ Feb 28, 2014 22:22

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

skip Omega unless you really liked Aria in ME2, maybe skip Leviathan, definitely pick up Citadel.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 03:03

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Elysiume posted:

When Thane dies, he has you read a poem about a huntress and something something. My Shepard asked his son why it said "her" (or "she," I forget), and he said it's because it was a prayer for Shepard. How does that conversation go if you're playing a guy?

Seems pretty much the same. Might be different depending on whether you're a paragon or a renegade

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 04:00

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Tirranek posted:

For all of the hate the endings got, I think that the dumb parts and genuinely good (but sad) parts got conflated into this mass of hate. It was very telling to see how many people, who had claimed 'We'll hold the line until the ending is re-written COMPLETELY', flipped around after the Extended Cut, and then later at Citadel. For all the criticisms of plot holes and lame decisions, it seems that most of them were just mad they couldn't bone Tali anymore.

That may be. However I think it's more likely most people realized they weren't going to get anything else. But maybe I'm being too optimistic about the reasoning of the fanbase at large.

What parts of the ending did you think were good (but sad)? Because I thought everything from TIM's base onwards was a real clusterfuck.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 04:56

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Zoran posted:

Maybe, but the problems with the ending run far deeper than "I didn't get exactly what I wanted."

I didn't want Mordin to die. I didn't want Thane to die. But I was perfectly fine with them dying, because their deaths were well-written and made sense.

Neither of those two is the player-character. I think if the ending, however it was resolved, involved shepard awakening among the bodies of all his crew in a destroyed Normandy on a devastated Earth more people would have been happier with the ending than what was shipped.

With that said, my current position is that I unabashedly wanted an ending in which 'I' unambiguously survive, after decisively wiping out the reapers. I don't think this is entirely unreasonable given the precedent for such endings which was set by the previous 2 games.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 05:33

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Fag Boy Jim posted:

There really needed to be a scene where the Normandy touches down on Earth in front of a reaper because one of Shep's buddies is hurt.

Good lord that scene was a bad bit of shoe-horning.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 05:56

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

CPFortest posted:

Nah, Harbinger straight up lasers their asses.

That the low resources ending? I've only seen the extended cut ending twice, but I seem to remember the laser blowing up a truck and either the explosion or the truck itself ruining your party

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 06:00

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Fag Boy Jim posted:

Oh I don't doubt they knew exactly what they were doing- hence me calling it "cynical". This is going to be hard to articulate without sounding like one of those idiots talking about "artistic integrity", but the original ending doesn't have a shred of cynicism in it. There's no attempt to pander to the fanbase, or- god forbid- keep the franchise rolling.

I mean, it's bad, but still. I'll take poorly-executed sincerity every day over whatever the hell the EC is.

I don't know if I'd call a rush-job incomprehensible mess as 'sincere'

typically sincerity involves some threshold for effort.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 06:17

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Elysiume posted:

Man, the Reaper targeting mission on Rannoch is awful.

edit: Seriously this is loving awful.

stand still, it targets faster if you do :ssh:

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 07:10

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Tirranek posted:

I'll try and explain myself!

I thought that something the last missions did really, really well was to get across the feeling of everything coming to an end. Yes, I had serious combat fatigue by that point and didn't really care about the encounters, but the atmosphere was nailed. It was bleak, seemed hopeless and for maybe the first time in the series, you felt like you were really saying goodbye. Those interactions with your crew were perfect in tone, as far as I'm concerned.

The run to the beam was kind of crap, to be honest. Sure, you've been worn down to almost nothing, but it just felt like a really bad total war player ran out of ideas and went, 'gently caress it, run at the thing!' Saying goodbye to Anderson was a powerful moment. The music is perfect throughout, and the dialogue isn't nearly as poo poo as it could have been.

Then the Catalyst comes along. I think the biggest misstep was to make the final force in the game take the form of something most people couldn't care less about. There is zero connection to the child, no matter how much it's forced. It's supposed to be an image connected to Shepard's mind. If they'd twisted it so you're talking to your love interest, or even yourself, the image would have been far more relatable and that moment would have felt more surreal (and better imo) because of it.

The Catalyst's actual motivation isn't as stupid as many have said, in my opinion. I think the problem was it came off as stupid because it limited the idea to Organic vs Synthetic. The notion that life always strives to explore and create new things, means inevitably that it will make something dangerous. On a big enough scale, with enough time, it's possible that it could do something that would utterly gently caress itself. The need to control life's chaotic expansion, in space and ideas, would have been more of a sound (if still questionable) motivation. Dudez vs robotz was far too limited. That said, I thought the atmosphere was still fantastic. The sights, the sounds, it's like Shepard is in between life and death at that point, and his/her last thing is to affect this massive change, and no matter the choice, you feel it as ending things in one way or another.

Sorry for the wall. Please pick away! It's nice to talk about this game in group that won't just immediately say 'artistic integrity lolz, gently caress Bioware'

NOTE: spoilers ahead for the one or two people playing the game for the first time.

It's not my intention to pick away at what you've written from some kind of objective stance, your perspective is just as valid as mine. That said I will offer my own opinion; certainly some of the narratives you mentioned are heart-felt and well executed (being able to talk to your crew before the final push to the beam at the FOB, Anderson on the Citadel), but I didn't get the impression that we were really 'taking back Earth' as it were. When I first played through the earth missions I expected that there would be several ground-side objectives like with Tuchanka or Rannoch, to draw out the conflict a little. Maybe this would have stretched the idea of the fleets engaging the reapers for so long, but frankly if they're already fighting a horde of nigh-invincible god-machines I think we can just let that happen off-screen as it will. I agree that the run to the beam is a mis-step, but only in so much as having the citadel at earth at all is a mis-step. (How did it get there? Why did the reapers wait until now to attack it? How does the beam even work on an individual?). I disagree with your interpretation of the Catalyst - it remains nonsensical. Why not just wipe out suitably advanced technology if organic/synthetic relations are the problem? (There are some theoretical answers to this that mostly revolve around the reapers self-sustainability, but given that it's the catalyst that is controlling them rather than the reapers themselves acting, this is kind of silly.) Why not, if you're present in the citadel at any rate, keep the reapers around and govern life such that it develops more strictly along paths that do not engage in creating synthetics? The 'solution' of the catalyst (as presented by itself and the Leviathans) is the real problem - it is an unnecessary solution, not one that I (or, I think, any audience) can easily buy an artificial intelligence making. The atmosphere was, for the most part, decent - I agree. It ought to be foreboding and grim to some extent given the things that Earth has supposedly endured over the scope of the game.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 08:22

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

2house2fly posted:

the next game will probably be highly generic and actually bad (as opposed to Mass Effect 3 which is only bad to the most stupid and ignorant of fools) because Bioware have now realised the futility of casting such pearls as a perfect work of art before the swines who make up the bulk, so to speak, of their fanbase.

DA 3 will be the test I think. I'm encouraged by them delaying it by a year, presumably to make it better.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 16:14

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Clearly the ideal, you might say final solution to the inter-species problems in the ME universe is to homogenize everyone into the same pseudo-race.

Synthesis is such garbage.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 23:32

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Pattonesque posted:

Dragon Age 2 had a character use the term "Tranquil Solution" and it was p. squicky when he did

haha yeah I remember that. DA2 was a mess. The only thing I think they did right was the voice-acting, and maybe some of the character design when they weren't going for emo FF elves and poo poo.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 23:40

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Elysiume posted:

After the easiest bossfight ever, Kai Leng effortlessly beats my team in a cutscene. gently caress you, Bioware. What a garbage, horribly designed character. What a garbage, horribly designed mission.

If you're going to make a mission impossible to win, don't also make it stupidly easy and unstoppably snatch away victory in a goddamn cutscene.

lol yup

Like, they already know how to do this: waves of enemies in Arrival. But they couldn't be bothered.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2014 02:19

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 13:38

JawKnee: Mar 24, 2007; You'll take the ride to leave this town along that yellow line

Elysiume posted:

edit: Oh my god he sent me a loving snide email

hahahah

# ¿ Mar 2, 2014 02:24

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