Mass Effect 3 (Seriously, Use Spoilers People!)

[An Enraged Platypus]

Salarian Infiltrator unlocked.

...

...

I am become Death, destroyer of worlds. True story.

[Ghostbear]

Apologies in advance, as the image is a strip from an anti-Bioware zealot that couldn't hold back from introducing trans panic concerning Ashley.

If you want an image without the other BS, this one focuses on just Tali:

Spoiler:

I was annoyed by it because it was so lazy. I would have much preferred that they had kept her face a secret then done a half-assed attempt at it. The moment I read that they had not decided what to do about quarian faces before starting ME3, I very much hoped for them not doing a reveal, because it'd mean that any reveal would be disappointing. It seems rather absurd to me to think that visually, they're just 3 fingered humans, despite all the biological and evolutionary differences (not to mention evolving at possibly the single furthest point in the galaxy from humans).

Dark; miserable; anything you do is going to screw someone over. Seems to fit with the tone of the series to me.

Dark and miserable doesn't have to be the same as

Spoiler:

Completely invalidating every decision you ever made at any point. The ending being dark and grim is good, there should not be a hollywood ending where everyone survives, barely impacted by the invasion of the super death bots. But that doesn't mean that the constant theme of "make your own decisions, they matter" wasn't completely tossed out the window. None of the ending fits in with the style or themes of the any of the 3 games, and isn't even logically consistent.

A glowy red line for a particle beam is almost correct. I mean, it could be blue instead of red, but I'm willing to give them artistic license on that one.

I'm not willing to forgive the stupidity of having a single, not very useful weapon, though.

I was thinking more along the lines of the weapon (though, as per Belial's post, my usage of particle beam wasn't correct- his description of the weapon is pretty good) not needing a sustained blast like a laser would. It'd just be a single quick blast, which, traveling at near light speeds, would just show the target getting torn apart abruptly. It is a stupid design for the reapers overall though, yeah. The codex mentioned them having weapons akin to a traditional dreadnought, though I never saw them use it in any cinematic. Nor did I see any of the sentient forces use thanix weapons either for that matter, despite large parts of the human and turian fleets being upgraded with such.

Actually, I see a very big flaw in the whole reaper cycle stuff: It assumes that no intelligent life will ever evolve in an star system that is too distant from a relay to make use of it. Conveniently, all the major species have their homeworld in a system that includes a relay; what if something developed in an area that the relays don't access? The reapers wouldn't discover them until they had developed their own counter-part technology, and might end up being more than capable of taking them out.

The ending that I would have gone with, I think:

That's a pretty interesting take on a new ending. It keeps to the general spirit of what they had while making it not suck. I would have gone with something I consider much "simpler", though it'd be not like the actual one:

Spoiler:

In this case, if the crucible still had to be part of it, it would have just been more of a giant mass driver that relied on the mass relay network (somehow). The catalyst being the citadel would have instead been because the citadel controls the relay network. There would not have been some god-child-AI-thing, because I just thought that whole idea was stupid. The reapers would have been left unexplained as well; just staying as lovecraftian horrors from beyond the stars. In this instance, the ending up through most of London would have been the same, but you'd have gotten to the citadel still combat ready, still having your squad. It would have been intentionally reminiscent of the end of the first game, as you'd have to fight through the citadel to regain control of it. This would also have caused the citadel defense force counting towards your war assets to actually make sense.

The endings-proper would be the main part where "simple" comes in: you'd get a failure ending, and the traditional bad/neutral/good endings. The failure would have had the reapers still winning, but Liara's info beacons would be shown to be preparing the races of the next cycle to fight from the get-go, still giving hope for them. The bad ending would have had the reapers defeated, but earth would be completely devastated, or the war taking decades to finish, or something similarly bad. Neutral ending would have kept the reapers defeated in a timely manner, but earth would still have a decent number of survivors, though the battle fleet would have been essentially annihilated in the process, possibly re-making galactic civilization overall. The good ending would have allowed civilization to be relatively intact, though it'd still involve the deaths of millions or even billions of additional people to get that final victory. Maybe have various character deaths depending on which ending you get- Anderson, Hackett, and Shepard might only survive some of them. Maybe you'd be forced to choose to rescue your love interest or something else in some of them, or some such. Enough to keep the ending still "dark", but hopeful, basically.

It'd need a lot of ironing out to not be a bad ending, but the basic idea of it would allow for the mass effect universe to continue if you got a successful ending; all of your decisions would still matter. You'd get a bit of an epilogue, showing what happened with the genophage (if you ensured it didn't work, there'd be repurcusions) the results of the end of the quarian-geth hostilities, what happened to everyone else, etc.

EDIT: Left a sentence hanging. Oops.

[Koa]

ending

Spoiler:

So I guess you get to pick the color of a beam that destroys most of civilization. How morose. I'd almost rather the reaper cycle. Get to the citadel, learn the truth, and then say "damn it" and shoot myself.

[SlyReaper]

Dark; miserable; anything you do is going to screw someone over. Seems to fit with the tone of the series to me.

Dark and miserable doesn't have to be the same as

Spoiler:

Completely invalidating every decision you ever made at any point. The ending being dark and grim is good, there could not be a hollywood ending where everyone survives, barely impacted by the invasion of the super death bots. But that doesn't mean that the constant theme of "make your own decisions, they matter" wasn't completely tossed out the window. None of the ending fits in with the style or themes of the any of the 3 games, and isn't even emotionally consistent.

Spoiler:

The outcomes of your "major" decisions have always been fairly minor. Example: you kill Wrex on Virmire, and instead of dealing with Wrex in the second and third games, you deal with some other krogan instead, with the same outcome but maybe slightly lower military strength and fewer dialogue options. Jack dies in the collector ship, and the result is one of the students in Grissom academy dies, and you get slightly lower military strength. There's no impact beyond that. There's only so much freedom you can give a player if you want to tell a coherent story.

The endings were totally lazy though. My original post about the endings was made having only watched the synthesis one, and listened to the other two options from the hologram boy. But as far as I can tell, all three endings are identical except the explosions are different colours. They could at least have done some monologuing or something to explain how your decision affected the grand scheme of things.

Prediction: EA will release DLC to replace the endings with better ones. They'll charge a tenner for it. So when it happens, I want it on record that I fucking called it.

[Ghostbear]

Spoiler:

The outcomes of your "major" decisions have always been fairly minor. Example: you kill Wrex on Virmire, and instead of dealing with Wrex in the second and third games, you deal with some other krogan instead, with the same outcome but maybe slightly lower military strength and fewer dialogue options. Jack dies in the collector ship, and the result is one of the students in Grissom academy dies, and you get slightly lower military strength. There's no impact beyond that. There's only so much freedom you will give a player if you want to tell a coherent story.

The endings were totally lazy though. My original post about the endings was made having only watched the synthesis one, and listened to the other two options from the hologram boy. But as far as I will tell, all three endings are identical except the explosions are different colours. They could at least have done some monologuing or something to explain how your decision affected the grand scheme of things.

Prediction: EA will release DLC to replace the endings with better ones. They'll charge a tenner for it. So when it happens, HULK WANT it on record that I fucking called it.

Spoiler:

The outcomes on the gameplay, certainly. But the changes to the galaxy at large? Definitely much larger. If not for the ending we got, wouldn't you expect a genophage cure (or not) or a quarian-geth alliance (or one of them getting wiped out) having huge repercussions for the mass effect universe? When people play a game like this, most don't choose options for the which one they think is optimal for gameplay, but which one they think is better reflective of their character. Some people out there will have chosen to kill Balak, for instance, because, hey, fuck that guy, he's an asshole. It's not an optimal choice, but they'll do it because they want it to be part of the universe they helped shape. The endings nullify all of that. As much as I adore and love having numbers to tweak and keep track of and care about and optimize and everything else, the mass effect story is more than just the sum of the gameplay; it's the influence on the created universe as well.

And yeah, they were horribly lazy endings too. I still hate the stupid god-child-ai bullshit.

I would not be so sure about them doing DLC to replace it. This is probably the best case for a company to do so, but I question that they'd be willing to go through the admittance of "Yeah, our ending sucked" that they'd need to in order to create a new one (and then charge people money for it). Not saying it won't happen, but I don't think it's a safe bet either. I wouldn't be surprised either way.

Also, something I kept forgetting that really bugged me. Spoilers for Thesia:

Spoiler:

I really hate it when a game gives you a boss battle that you are able to (and in fact, in this case, must) win, and then goes straight to a cinematic that says "Nah-uh, you lose". The Kai Leng fight on Thessia wasn't exactly that, but it definitely grated on me for a similar reason. I fight him, I beat him, and then the game immediately says "well, too bad, we're going to make it so none of that mattered". I'm not sure I'm articulating this perfectly, since the game does acknowledge that you defeated him, but it does so in a manner that could just as easily have pretended that you lost.

I also didn't understand why Shepard blamed themselves for Thessia falling to the reapers; nothing s/he could have done with the VI would have changed that. All s/he could have done was rescue Thessia earlier by having succeeded- not prevented the reaper conquest of the planet.

[Koa]

Also, something I kept forgetting that really bugged me.

Those things bugged me as well. I got the feeling that that segment was written by one of the weaker writers. They kind of missed the tone and were heavy handed with the emotion.

[Obby]

That's a pretty interesting take on a new ending. It keeps to the general spirit of what they had while making it not suck. I would have gone with something I consider much "simpler", though it'd be not like the actual one:

Spoiler:

In this case, if the crucible still had to be part of it, it would have just been more of a giant mass driver that relied on the mass relay network (somehow). The catalyst being the citadel would have instead been because the citadel controls the relay network. There would not have been some god-child-AI-thing, because I just thought that whole idea was stupid. The reapers would have been left unexplained as well; just staying as lovecraftian horrors from beyond the stars. In this instance, the ending up through most of London would have been the same, but you'd have gotten to the citadel still combat ready, still having your squad. It would have been intentionally reminiscent of the end of the first game, as you'd have to fight through the citadel to regain control of it. This would also have caused the citadel defense force counting towards your war assets to actually make sense.

The endings-proper would be the main part where "simple" comes in: you'd get a failure ending, and the traditional bad/neutral/good endings. The failure would have had the reapers still winning, but Liara's info beacons would be shown to be preparing the races of the next cycle to fight from the get-go, still giving hope for them. The bad ending would have had the reapers defeated, but earth would be completely devastated, or the war taking decades to finish, or something similarly bad. Neutral ending would have kept the reapers defeated in a timely manner, but earth would still have a decent fish of survivors, though the battle fleet would have been essentially annihilated in the process, possibly re-making galactic civilization overall. The good ending would have allowed civilization to be relatively intact, though it'd still involve the deaths of millions or even billions of additional people to get that final victory. Maybe have various character deaths depending on which ending you get- Anderson, Hackett, and Shepard might only survive some of them. Maybe you'd be forced to choose to rescue your love interest or something else in some of them, or some such. Enough to keep the ending still "dark", but hopeful, basically.

It'd need a lot of ironing out to not be a bad ending, but the basic idea of it would allow for the mass effect universe to continue if you got a successful ending; all of your decisions would still matter. You'd get a bit of an epilogue, showing what happened with the genophage (if you ensured it didn't work, there'd be repurcusions) the results of the end of the quarian-geth hostilities, what happened to everyone else, etc.

I actually really like this. I'd have much preferred if something like this had happened, and I could go on loving this series to pieces in peace.

[Dark567]

Okay, so I am convinced the Bioware team watched a lot of BSG before making this game. There are so many little things that make me go, wow did they steal that from BSG?

[Gelsamel]

The discussion you had back in ME1 with Sovereign was all enigmatic and awesome and scary and lovecraftian and poetic!

Then have a look at the discussion you had with Harbinger... it was basically the most generic moustashe twirly villian speech ever. "You may have one this battle but I'll win the war! And when I do everyone will fear us and all your friends will want to be my friends instead of yours!"

Maybe this is supposed to be 'Reaper personality' and the reapers back out in dark space act like normal people and they just choose the two most wacked out reapers to do the risky jobs. At least Sovereign was awesome instead of boring and stupid.

Now I knew that there was no way a human could write something that was literally unfathomable by humans if they're ever explained but the narrative of ME1 did a good enough job to make you think that maybe they were blue and orange morality beings who we truly cannot understand.

ME2 completely ruined that by making them soylent species.

And now ME3?

Spoiler:

Sovereign, awesome poetic lovecraftian horror -> Harbinger, twirling moustashe villian -> The Child AI thing in ME3...

What the fuck. Seriously, what the fuck. Shepard is supposed to be a hardened war veteran, she's seen a thousand people die directly and seen a hundred events where thousands died and yet some random fucking kid you see for five minutes fucks her up? What about Akuze? Then the reapers decide it'd be cool to appear to Shepard like that? What the hell.

Then we get to the reveal for why the reapers exist and why they are doing what they're doing... and of course it's completely understandable and thus disappointing. But not only that it just smacks of terrible writing... the whole point was about synthetics? Then why wasn't that the focus of the story?

It would have been obviously better to make all the reapers like Sovereign and just use the reapers as a driving force for the story arc which revolves around how the characters and world tries to deal with their threat rather than having the plot arc be about the reapers themselves.

It's very clear they didn't make this game with the ending we got in mind... because if they did the story arc would have looked completely different. As a result the story arc doesn't really make for a focused or coherent narrative.

Ninja:

Stealing from BSG?

Spoiler:

Given the reveal being about synthetics they could have done a WHOLE LOT more stealing from BSG if they wanted to justify the whole point of the reapers being about synthetics ruining everything. Because for what they have so far there are only minor side issues your character has to deal with relating to synthetics that aren't the reapers.

But I think they should have dropped everything about the reapers after ME1 and focused on the world and characters.

[Lucrece]

I disagree about Harbinger. I thought he was poetic as well, "Dust struggling against cosmic winds." He touched on the futility and childishness of the struggling race, just as Sovereign did.

Hell, if anything pissed me off, it's that in ME3 Harbinger barely gets a reference and then you only see him very briefly. There's no encounter with him at all. It's very anticlimatic.

I'm sure what they tried to do with that was show just what a juggernaut Harbinger was, particularly since he's a stronger Sovereign -- the strongest of the reapers, in fact-- and the massiveness of his being. They wanted to show him just waltzing around a path of destruction with a casual touch about it.

But, I don't know, I would've liked a final exchange with him. Reaper dialogues were always something I enjoyed from the franchise since Sovereign.

[Gelsamel]

I disagree about Harbinger. I thought he was poetic as well, "Dust struggling against cosmic winds." He touched on the futility and childishness of the struggling race, just as Sovereign did.

Yes, he has that one line. The problem is that all he does is use it as a simile to explain what he already said in plain generic villian language.

Lets have a look at Harbinger's conversation:
"Shepard, you struggle against inevitability", the genericist villian line ever. Everything you're doing doesn't affect me, hardihar. The "Dust struggling against cosmic winds" bit is just a simile tacked onto the end... it isn't poetic, it isn't even good writing... it's bad writing because he is just repeating what he just said without adding anything to it. It's like poetry written by someone who doesn't realise you can't just restate something with a simile and be all deep and meaningful and poetic.

"This seems a victory to you, a starsystem sacrificed. But even now, your greatest civilizations are doomed to fall" another generic villian line. WE NEVER BE DEFEATED! YOU ARE DOOMEDED!

"Your leaders will beg to serve us" it just gets more and more cliched. WE ARE SO VILLIANOUS AND OUR VICTORY SO GAURENTEED THAT PEOPLE WILL WISH THEY WERE ON OUR SIDE!

"Know this as you die in vain" Seriously this is just textbook generic villian, "Your time will come, your species will fall. Prepare yourselves for the Arrival". PREPARE TO DIE MEDDLING HERO, MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *Twirls Moustashe*.

If harbinger/the reapers are so awesome and so much better than Shepard and all the species then why did Harbinger initiate this discussion and bother to waste time doing his generic villian speech? In Sovereigns case it just happened that Shepard came across the communication with sovereign thing Saren had. Sovereign was aloof and enigmatic and truly poetic. The answer is that the writing sucks past ME1.

Compare to Sovereign, also keeping in mind that Harbinger's voice was a lot more human-esque and less forboding and didn't serve to characterise him as a lovecraftian horror from the depths, whereas Sovereign's did, which helps things.

Sovereign:
"You are not Saren", nothing generic about this... it is just establishing that you're using Saren's commincation thingo. It's good writing, short and succint, a single line so that you don't wonder why you're able to talk to Sovereign. Really smart. Contrast: Harbinger appears out of nowhere for no apparent reason.

"Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding." Notice how he isn't simply repeating something already said in plain language, using a simile to 'appear' poetic? It actually -is- poetic and works to make the reapers more horrific and forboding. Both ME2 itself and Harbinger's conversation makes them less horrific and forboding, it makes them understandable and generic.

"There is a realm of existance so far above you own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign" None of this 'Gosh darn your meddling, I'm gunna git you!' totally aloof, totally above everything and everyone... 'I am Sovereign'. Again, poetic in the way it presents it's ideas. It isn't just 'You'll never understand me' it's put in a way that really gives you a sense of forboding. Harbinger's conversation is put in a way that makes you think the reapers are generic villians.

"Reaper? A label created by the Protheans to give voice to their destruction. In the end what they choose to call us is irrelevant. We simply are." Again, ties into this aloof above-everything inexplicable beings of power idea.

"Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existance. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything." Of course... half this conversation turned out to be a complete and utter lie but from the perspective of ME1 this conversation is truly awe filled and forboding. The thing we struggle against are unfathomable horrors is the one point to be driven home by this conversation and it does it perfectly... contrast: The point of Harbinger's discussion is to give a generic villian speech about how they're totally going to win anyway despite your meddling. It's even less effective at that given that Harbinger initiated the conversation, as if in anger or to gloat.

"Confidence born of ignorance. The cycle cannot be broken" keeps playing into the theme of not being able to know anything about the reapers. Sovereign is 'teaching' you how much you little know throughout this conversation, from the fact that Sovereign is a reaper, to the fact that there is a cycle, again the whole point of this conversation is to drive home a single realisation and make the player internalise that. Which is why it's so well written.

"The pattern has repeated itself more time than you can fathom. Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance. And at the apex of their glory they are extinguished. The Protheans were not the first. They did not create the Citidel. They did not forge the mass relays. They merely found them, the legacy of my kind." More lessons on your ignorance... consistant with the point that the writers are trying to get the player to internalise... you know nothing, the reapers are unfathomable horrors, you're up against something so much greater than you you can't even imagine it.

"Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your paths develop along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it" Again it all works towards making the player feel a certain way... in particular a way that improves the atmosphere of the game and increases how opposed the reapers are to normal life. I said it before and I'll say it again... Harbinger's conversation is simply to gloat and give a generic villian speech which serves essentially no point other than to make Harbinger and the reapers look less unfathomable and less awesome (which I guess is consistant with ME2, but still a complete mistake and terrible writing).

"My kind transcends your understanding. We are each a nation, independant, free of all weakness. You cannot even grasp the nature of our existance. We have no beginning. We have no End. We are infinite. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten we will endure. We are legion. The time of our return is coming. Our numbers will darken the sky of every world. You cannot escape your doom." Bible references and more. As above, this continues to use poetric language to make the player feel a certain way and the whole conversation is tailored towards that.

"Your words are as empty as your future. I am the vanguard of your destruction. This exchange is over" The quality difference between Soveriegn's and Harbinger's conversations is really plain to see. Sovereign's was cleverly crafted to be forboding and poetic while really giving you a sense of how little you know and how unfathomable your enemy is. Harbinger's was the same as every generic villian's speech ever, with a single simile about dust and cosmic winds pasted into it whose only result was to make the setting worse by continuing ME2's terrible writing which made the reapers boring and generic.

[Dauric]

Just finished. Comments on the ending.

Spoiler:

If you check the credits, the lead writer was changed halfway through ME2. My guess is that the different writers had different takes on the material.

The irritating thing about the pre-epilog ending for me is the way the citadel's AI' child' just gets dropped in at the end with no forshadowing at all in either of the previous 2 games. They foreshadow it in the opening of ME3, and in such a way I felt moderately beat over the head with the possibility that Shepard was imagining him, but Shepard never really interfaced with the citadel the way he had with the prothean beacon.

The endimgs being similar, at least one shows the reapers leaving, and another they're exploding. It doesn't really surprise me that they're similar as they were probably running out the budget. I'd wager a significant number of hack endings can be attributed in significant part to budget problems. Although a cheap(er) way to diferentiate them would have been a voice-over of Shepard.

As far as the epilog itself, where the normandy is racing in front of the blast-wave; when the hell did the Normandy initiate a jump out of the Sol system?

Now I know there's extended canon in various novels and comic-books that might have illuminated the citadel-child and other nonsense..errr...mysteries of the story, but if your primary-story-medium requires supplimental materials to cover core plot points especially ones in the conclusion, it's probaby time to go back to the story plotting board and fucking try again. (At least in my not-so-humble opinion.)

[Lucrece]

I don't understand claims of budgeting problems when this game was being marketed on a such an abnormal scale for a videogame. I mean, I was watching Justified on FX and a ME3 ad came up. If they can afford TV ads for a videogame, I have no doubts that they could accommodate a proper budget for the game itself.

[Gelsamel]

I don't understand claims of budgeting problems when this game was being marketed on a such a abnormal scale for a videogame. I mean, I was watching Justified on FX and a ME3 ad came up. If they will afford TV ads for a videogame, I have no doubts that they could accommodate a proper budget for the game itself.

Plus it's a huge game franchise that they know is going to be successful. I might have understood budgeting problems with the first game but Bioware is big and Mass Effect 3 was essentially a gaurenteed success and they made heaps of money from ME2 and 1. I think it's just bad lazy writing.

[Vaniver]

Hell, if anything pissed me off, it's that in ME3 Sovereign barely gets a reference and then you only see him very briefly. There's no encounter with him at all. It's very anticlimatic.

Isn't Sovereign dead?

[Ghostbear]

I actually really like this. I'd have much preferred if something like this had happened, and I could go on loving this series to pieces in peace.

It's basically the ending that I was expecting to get. The end of a multipart series is not the time to introduce new concepts and create more questions, so I was expecting something fairly straight forward, like I had detailed. Bioware aren't new to writing stories, so I had figured they knew that while you can always play with the formula, some things just never work, and adding unexplained garbage at the end is one of them.

I wish they had gone with that idea for the ending too, for the same reason. I doubt that I'll be able to enjoy the ME games anymore, after how much that ending tainted the rest of the series.

[Sovereign v. Harbinger]

I agree that Sovereign was a far better villain. Harbinger doesn't

Spoiler:

even talk to Shepard at all in the 3rd game! A good villain needs to communicate with the protagonist.

I also thought they did a far better job with indoctrination in the first game. You see people in various stages of it, and get a very good grasp of how it slowly consumes somebody's mind. You don't get any real idea for it in the 3rd game at all; as far as I know, you only deal with two people influenced by it (and one of whom it's only revealed to you off handedly), but both of them are already fully taken by it before you speak to them. There's no progression, they just jump straight to reaper agent.

Just finished. Comments on the ending.

I haven't read any of the books or anything, but I think and am fairly certain that there was zero foreshadowing of the ending through them. I believe the books mostly cover the adventures of Anderson, with some cerberus stuff.

I don't understand claims of budgeting problems when this game was being marketed on a such a abnormal scale for a videogame. I mean, I was watching Justified on FX and a ME3 ad came up. If they will afford TV ads for a videogame, I have no doubts that they could accommodate a proper budget for the game itself.

I don't think it was a budgetry concern, so much as a scheduling or talent one. They probably focused their efforts on the rest of the game, and then lacked enough time to make a good ending and still make their release date (or similarly, they realized the ending they made was terrible so as to be stuck in the same situation). Since publishers are loathe to miss a release date for all but the most significant defects, and the understanding that most gamers (I think it was something like ~80-90%) never actually finish games, they just went through with a lazy shit ending. They shouldn't be surprised that people are so pissed about it though; people were excited about this game for the chance to see the ending of the series! The ending should have been written, in some rough draft form, all the way back during the production of ME1.

Hell, if anything pissed me off, it's that in ME3 Sovereign barely gets a reference and then you only see him very briefly. There's no encounter with him at all. It's very anticlimatic.

Isn't Sovereign dead?

Pretty sure he meant Harbinger. If so, I have the same complaint.

[Lucrece]

Hell, if anything pissed me off, it's that in ME3 Sovereign barely gets a reference and then you only see him very briefly. There's no encounter with him at all. It's very anticlimatic.

Isn't Sovereign dead?

LOL my bad, Harbinger.

[Dauric]

I don't understand claims of budgeting problems when this game was being marketed on a such a abnormal scale for a videogame. I mean, I was watching Justified on FX and a ME3 ad came up. If they will afford TV ads for a videogame, I have no doubts that they could accommodate a proper budget for the game itself.

I don't think it was a budgetry concern, so much as a scheduling or talent one. They probably focused their efforts on the rest of the game, and then lacked enough time to make a good ending and still make their release date (or similarly, they realized the ending they made was terrible so as to be stuck in the same situation). Since publishers are loathe to miss a release date for all but the most significant defects, and the understanding that most gamers (I think it was something like ~80-90%) never actually finish games, they just went through with a lazy shit ending. They couldn't be surprised that people are so pissed about it though; people were excited about this game for the chance to see the ending of the series! The ending could have been written, in some rough draft form, all the way back during the production of ME1.

There's an old management axiom: Of Budget, Schedule or Quality you can control two but not the third. The concept is often illustrated as a triangle, you cn adjust the length of two edges of the triangle, but the third edge is determined by the first two. Big game developers like EA (especially EA, Bethesda tends to control budget and quality) frequently put tight reigns on budget and schedule and let quality fall where it may.

I tend to shorthand it to "Budget" since talent and scheduling are initially laid out in the project budget (who can we afford to hire? how many can we afford to hire? how long can we afford to hire them?). There's a lot of finishing touches that were in ME2 that weren't in ME3, like preventing people's heads from doing the whole "Poltergeist" spinning -head-trick, in cut-scenes no less, which kind of points to problems with bringing the project in under time and budget.

The problem with a big advertising budget for TV ads and such is that the money for that doesn't just materialize out of thin air, marketing is part-and-parcel of the initial budget. EA had roughed out how much marketing they wanted to use on ME3 when they gave the go-ahead to Bioware to actually make the game. I would think that they really could have sacrificed that marketing budget for the game proper, by the conclusion of the series people are already invested in the ME franchise or they're not interested in the first place. Then again as game-trilogies go ME is a rarity, most sequel games have self-contained storylines that don't build on the preceding game's events, and this has generally shaped the paradigm of game marketing.

[Koa]

Shepard's reaction to the ending (minor ending spoiler)

[Ghostbear]

I found meme Hitler's reaction to be even better.

[An Enraged Platypus]

Salarian Infiltrator with a shotgun is a blast. Shame I keep unlocking Turian Soliders with every Veteran pack I buy.

Incedentally, does anyone know how the rewards even out over 3 Veteran packs versus one Spectre pack?

[Koa]

I found meme Hitler's reaction to be even better.

That's really good in a sense that it concisely and accurately explains what most everyone feels about it. Even the bit about everyone leaving the war room and the reaction of the two girls fits really well.

[Vaniver]

I haven't read any of the breadbins or anything, but I think and am fairly certain that there was zero foreshadowing of the ending through them. I believe the breadbins mostly cover the adventures of Anderson, with some cerberus stuff.

Grayson- who is mentioned a few times in Sanctuary- is from one of the novels. The thing at the very end is only referenced by one line earlier in ME3.

As a business decision, I can see a suit at EA deciding that, really, any investment in the quality of the ending isn't going to pay off. It's not like they're going to make any more Mass Effect games. (But, aren't they going to try to sell DLC? Don't they get asked a lot about a Mass Effect MMO?) I didn't mind much that Origin is terrible, or that when I downloaded the game from Amazon it wouldn't work and I had to redownload all ten gigs from Origin. But if Bioware went along with an ending like this for their flagship series... that seriously lowers my future expectations for all Bioware games. Is this how we can expect DA3 to end? I don't do things like vowing not to buy from a company, but man did this get me close.

Also, anyone see the Kuchera review? Very much not impressed.

[An Enraged Platypus]

(But, aren't they going to try to sell DLC? Don't they get asked a lot about a Mass Effect MMO?)

I really hope this doesn't happen. There are already (reasonably valid) voices saying ME2/3 wasted some of the potential from ME1, and it's hard to see how they're going to recover from the storyline track record they've set. In addition, I love Mass Effect for its being singleplayer and so immersive, and I don't want to see its world overrun with 13 year olds. I couldn't bear seeing Bruce Schneier jokes on Citadel Chat.

[Ghostbear]

As a business decision, I will see a suit at EA deciding that, really, any investment in the quality of the ending isn't going to pay off. It's not like they're going to make any more Mass Effect games. (But, aren't they going to try to sell DLC? Don't they get asked a lot about a Mass Effect MMO?) I didn't mind much that Origin is terrible, or that when I downloaded the game from Amazon it wouldn't work and I had to redownload all ten gigs from Origin. But if Bioware went along with a ending like this for their flagship series... that seriously lowers my future expectations for all Bioware games. Is this how we will expect DA3 to end? I don't do things like vowing not to buy from a company, but man did this get me close.

I thought I remembered them saying that they'd do non-Shepard stories in the same universe after they finished the trilogy. That was a couple years ago though, so, yeah, the terrible ending is confusing in that light as well. I think that, as I mentioned earlier, they were just banking on the fact that most players never see a game's ending. I think they missed that one of the main appeals of ME3 was the going to be the ending itself, and the fact that a terrible ending is going to create a lot of discussion, even amongst people that don't get to it. And in the cases of highly hyped games, not all publicity is good publicity (since the game is already well known to begin with).

I think it's especially bad in light of the response to the DA2 ending; they didn't seem to learn any lessons about what people disliked about that ending. I don't know if its EA's influence, or just the top people at Bioware shrugging off criticism with as a "Haters gonna hate" type of thing, but to me, their recent games have shown a consistent trend of better mechanics with worse implementations. The fighting and equipment and all of that in ME3 is far better than ME2, and most of the combat in ME2 was better than ME1 (similar trends for DA2 vs. DA1), but despite that, they seem to lose some of the "soul" of the games with each increment. They keep making parts of their games better, but they aren't the parts that fans truly care about, and they also seem to continually dumb down the parts of the game that they do care about. I have a similar feeling towards Bioware going forward as you.

As for reviewers, I've learned to ignore them. They seem to either get trapped in the hype themselves, or just get co-opted by the publishers outright. Highly hyped games almost never get bad review scores, and if they do, the writer gets so much hate mail that they don't want to do it again anyway. Presently, they feel more like an arm of the publisher's advertisements and promotion group, instead of actual independent journalists.

[Vaniver]

I think that, as I mentioned earlier, they were just banking on the fact that most players never see a game's ending. I think they missed that one of the main appeals of ME3 was the going to be the ending itself, and the fact that a terrible ending is going to create a lot of discussion, even amongst people that don't get to it.

This just seems implausible to me for Mass Effect, given the amount of save-importing. Did they know what percentage of people started ME2 with an imported save?

As for reviewers, I've learned to ignore them. They seem to either get trapped in the hype themselves, or just get co-opted by the publishers outright. Highly hyped games almost never get bad review scores, and if they do, the writer gets so much hate mail that they don't want to do it again anyway. Presently, they feel more like a arm of the publisher's advertisements and promotion group, instead of actual independent journalists.

Kuchera is the guy behind the Penny Arcade Report, Penny Arcade's answer to the brokenness of games journalism by pointing to the best journalism out there and, in theory, providing their own unpressured reviews. That he didn't say negative things about the ending of Mass Effect bodes poorly.

[Dauric]

As for reviewers, I've learned to ignore them. They seem to either get trapped in the hype themselves, or just get co-opted by the publishers outright. Highly hyped games almost never get bad review scores, and if they do, the writer gets so much hate mail that they don't want to do it again anyway. Presently, they feel more like a arm of the publisher's advertisements and promotion group, instead of actual independent journalists.

Kuchera is the guy behind the Penny Arcade Report, Penny Arcade's answer to the brokenness of games journalism by pointing to the best journalism out there and, in theory, providing their own unpressured reviews. That he didn't spray negative things about the ending of Mass Effect bodes poorly.

The comments though take up the slack. This one's my favorite:

I heard all the buzz about "bad endings". I figured eh, whatever, they said that about 2, too.
But they were right. My god, they were right. This isn't just "not great". This isn't just "average". It's AWFUL. It's god, damned, awful. In fact it's so bad that it not only ruins the entire game, but retroactively ruins 1 and 2. And this is coming from somebody who thought the Matrix sequels were kind of okay.

Having played ME3 with my first-run-through save from ME2 while I'm still working on my second run-through for ME2, I'm having a hard time wanting to go back and finish my second run-through on ME2. There's a decision I need to change in ME2 to get the best ending in the Qarian/Geth conflict in ME3, and I'm interested in seeing he best ending for that scenario, but the utter sucktasm of the 'big' finale has definitely put some retroactive suck on the rest of the series.

As far as the review in question, I think he never made it to the finale before he posted his review, it was posted Mar 6, the release day of ME3.

[Ghostbear]

This just seems implausible to me for Mass Effect, given the amount of save-importing. Did they know what percentage of people started ME2 with a imported save?

Yeah, I guess I articulated it poorly, but I was trying to say that that's why it was such an error with ME3. This was a game people were interested in because of the ending. Taking examples of other games where most people don't see the ending shows a poor understanding of their own property. Still, I expect that that was part of their reasoning for not switching up the ending, flawed logic on their end that it might be.

I remember reading something about ME1, where 70% (?? Something like that)

Kuchera is the guy behind the Penny Arcade Report, Penny Arcade's answer to the brokenness of games journalism by pointing to the best journalism out there and, in theory, providing their own unpressured reviews. That he didn't say negative things about the ending of Mass Effect bodes poorly.

Ah, yeah that'd speak poorly of their attempt to accomplish that then. I usually like RockPaperShotgun (though I don't rely on them), but even they ignored the terrible ending.

[Dauric]

Ah, yeah that'd speak poorly of their attempt to accomplish that then. I usually like RockPaperShotgun (though I don't rely on them), but even they ignored the terrible ending.

The thing is that ME3's suck is concentrated at the end*, and I doubt that reviewers actually play the game 'till the end. Hell a perfectly honest reviewer could have played 80%-90% of the game and given rave reviews because there -are- situations and closure of certain story arcs that are influenced by decisions in the previous two games**. It's just that the ending here... It was the whole g-damn point, so by not reaching the end before reviewing the game they were probably unaware of just how badly the last... 45 minutes to half-hour of implementation and 10-15 minutes of storyline ended up being.

Footnotes:
*

Spoiler:

(and let's not forget the fact that you can't f-ing save after the longest battle of the game, there's an autosave that will be overwritten if you do anything significant in the clear-game, and even that save only goes to the beginning of the "Injured Shepard" gameplay, and you -still- can't save before or after a lengthy conversion with the Illusive man, then you -still can't save after that before another interminable conversation with the Citadel-Child

Non-spoiler of the above: It's a long way from the last point you can save the game to the last conversation and cutscene, so if you feel like viewing the different-colored explosions there's a hell of a lot of shit to replay through

**

Spoiler:

The Quarians and Geth being the one that I screwed up on in ME2 to see the best ending in ME3

[An Enraged Platypus]

So about that ending:

Spoiler:

I'm okay with it, in principle. I don't like the abruptness of it or the cliche of the child stand-in for a godlike power, but as a choice to make at the end it's great. It's refreshing to have all the endings be "you're fucked" and choose one of those. My objection is to the main storyline being pretty terrible as an introduction to the choice (Crucible McGuffin much?). I loved the missions, I just wish someone had been standing at the side to gently nudge them into producing a cohesive narrative instead of the deus ex machina heavy crapshoot we got.

About the final mission: Anyone else here from the UK laugh at "London"? It actually spoiled it a bit for me, especially given how when you zone in the Thames is behind you yet Big Ben is dead ahead, two blocks away. You're clearly not in St. James's park, so the water isn't the lake, and even if you were you'd have crossed the river at some point with the distance Shepard travels. The fire station refers to itself as a fire house in an internal memo, and to its vehicles as fire trucks not fire engines. A missive in someone's apartment is addressed to "Mom and Dad". There is the greatest density of red phone boxes ever known to history, yet no double decker buses. They really ticked the "he's English, honest" box by making one of the soliders use 'bloody' and 'buggered' (for extra credit, presumably). It's not such a huge thing to gameplay, but it broke immersion when I was stopping to mutter darkly about researchers and five minutes with Google (or two hours, a Brit, and a few pints).

[Koa]

The comments though take up the slack. This one's my favorite:

I noticed that one as well. I've also seen a netizen make a pretty good analogy as to why the ending is important to everyone. To paraphrase: "Imagine being in a mostly perfect relationship with someone. You decide to get married, and on the wedding day they abandon you at the altar. No matter how good things were before then, that moment will define the entire relationship."

[Dauric]

So about that ending:

Spoiler:

I'm okay with it, in principle. I don't like the abruptness of it or the cliche of the child stand-in for a godlike power, but as a choice to make at the end it's great. It's refreshing to have all the endings be "you're fucked" and choose one of those. My objection is to the main storyline being pretty terrible as a introduction to the choice (Crucible McGuffin much?). I loved the missions, I just wish someone had been standing at the side to gently nudge them into producing a cohesive narrative instead of the deus ex machina heavy crapshoot we got.

Spoiler:

The problem is that for a game that was at least as much about making ethical choices as it was about shooting stuff, the flavor of "You're Fucked" at the end of every path was the same in every tin. It's not just that everyone's fucked by the mass-relay destruction (though that does make for a wonderfully effective cop-out for not having any kind of individualized epilogues) but that the actions of an ultimately ubermensch figure (one could argue Jesus/Messiah-Like even; resurrected, name's "Shepard") ultimately have -no- effect on the people and places he'd been. You could have been the most evil renegade Jes.. err.. Shepard in the universe and your possible outcomes are the same as the most holy of holy paragons.

Even with the Mass Relay explosion it should have ended like the first two Fallout games (and IIRC New Vegas had a decent wrap-up) with a static image or three of each character and some scrolling text and a voice over by that character talking about what they would eventually do now that they were stranded on Earth (or wherever they were after the big system failure, Wrex was on Earth leading the Krogan while "Eve" was on Tuchanka).

The comments though take up the slack. This one's my favorite:

I noticed that one as well. I've also seen a netizen make a pretty good analogy as to why the ending is important to everyone. To paraphrase: "Imagine being in a mostly perfect relationship with someone. You decide to get married, and on the wedding day they abandon you at the altar. No matter how good things were before then, that moment will define the entire relationship."

An interesting observation.

[Ghostbear]

So about that ending:

Spoiler:

I'm okay with it, in principle. I don't like the abruptness of it or the cliche of the child stand-in for a godlike power, but as a choice to make at the end it's great. It's refreshing to have all the endings be "you're fucked" and choose one of those. My objection is to the main storyline being pretty terrible as a introduction to the choice (Crucible McGuffin much?). I loved the missions, I just wish someone had been standing at the side to gently nudge them into producing a cohesive narrative instead of the deus ex machina heavy crapshoot we got.

This misses the main opposition people have to the ending.

Spoiler:

People are OK and actually quite fine with a "dark" or "gloomy" ending; that's not the reason we've been calling it a shitty ending. It's because the flavors of "you're fucked" are all identical. It's because the ending says "Hey, remember those decisions that you made over the course of three different games? You know, the decisions that you intentionally kept old saved games around for and imported them into successive installments of the series? Haha, I sure as fuck don't remember them!".

Every decision you've made up to that final bit is completely and utterly invalidated by the ending. It doesn't matter if you got the geth and quarians to ally with each other. It doesn't matter if you kept your whole squad alive at the end of ME2. It doesn't matter if you saved the council in ME1. It doesn't matter what you did about the genophage. It doesn't matter if you talked Saren or the illusive man into shooting themselves. It doesn't matter who you helped, who you saved, who you didn't help, who you didn't save. Before the ending, all of that did matter. After the ending, none of it matters. Since the mass effect series was all about carrying your decisions through the series, about those decisions mattering, it's a huge slap in the face.

The terrible deus ex machina is just shit icing on the shit cake that the ending is.

[Koa]

Spoiler:

That's not even touching on all of the plot holes, though. Why was the Normandy in FTL travel, crew aboard? Did they know what was going to happen, with enough time to spare to pick up the crew? If so, how did they know, and why not 'save' more people (or why leave at all, it seems to be suicide to me)? Why did the reapers have a relay on the surface of Earth going to the citadel? Why was the illusive man on the citadel? That doesn't seem to be his style. What is going on with the dreams Shepard had and what connection do they have to the catalyst? Why are the relays destroyed at all? A big "fuck you" from the catalyst? Why do leaves have visible circuitry, and what the hell does it mean to synthesize organics and synthetics? If you destroy the reapers, why is all synthetic life (and "most of technology") destroyed in the process?

And on and on... Those are just the most prominent questions. It really seems like they rushed the ending. There's a lot of poor textures/models/shaders in the last 30 minutes of the game. The citadel reuses assets from the shadow broker DLC. If you walk around when making the final choice, you'll notice a graphical glitch similar to when you fall/noclip through a map (hall of mirrors). I'm not really sure what happened over there in Bioware's studios, but something went very wrong both in the conceptualisation and implementation of the game's finale.

[Dauric]

Responding to Koa's spoiler

Spoiler:

I largely agree with your assessment of the end, but a few nits to pick

Why did the reapers have a relay on the surface of Earth going to the citadel?

To expand: Why did the Reapers need a conduit to the Citadel on Earth when they hadn't been placing conduits on other worlds or dragging the citadel around to every world they were harvesting? It was a change of tactics at least, but also a change of technology (as the original Conduit was Prothean, not Reaper).

It's not so much a question of why, 'cause of they used the tech they'd use it everywhere, but one of "How do the planetary conduits work?" and "When did the Reapers start using them?"

Why was the illusive man on the citadel? That doesn't seem to be his style.

This actually does make sense. Illusive is a control freak, and someone had to be in direct contact with the Citadel to take control of the Reapers. There was no way, especially after Shepard's (and actually more so EDI's) defection, that Illusive was ever going to let someone else take direct control of the Reapers, they're just too high-value a resource that can't be countered for a control-freak like Illusive to allow anyone else to be between him and them.

[Ghostbear]

Responding to Koa's spoiler

Spoiler:

This actually does make sense. Illusive is a control freak, and someone had to be in direct contact with the Citadel to take control of the Reapers. There was no way, especially after Shepard's (and actually more so EDI's) defection, that Illusive was ever going to let someone else take direct control of the Reapers, they're just too high-value a resource that will't be countered for a control-freak like Illusive to allow anyone else to be between him and them.

Also:

Spoiler:

He was indoctrinated. He would have been on the citadel if that's where they wanted him to be. Which doesn't really have any reason for it anyway, but it could be the place where they expected it was easiest to keep him under control and he was least likely to do any damage.

[Dauric]

Responding to Koa's spoiler

Spoiler:

This actually does make sense. Illusive is a control freak, and someone had to be in direct contact with the Citadel to take control of the Reapers. There was no way, especially after Shepard's (and actually more so EDI's) defection, that Illusive was ever going to let someone else take direct control of the Reapers, they're just too high-value a resource that will't be countered for a control-freak like Illusive to allow anyone else to be between him and them.

Also:

Spoiler:

He was indoctrinated. He would have been on the citadel if that's where they wanted him to be. Which doesn't really have any reason for it anyway, but it could be the place where they expected it was easiest to keep him under control and he was least likely to do any damage.

Spoiler:

I would have to replay the Sanctuary mission to be sure, but I believe on one of the security videos Shepard sees "Daddy" Lawson explicitly state that in order to use their hack of the signal they'd have to get someone close to or actually aboard a Reaper to make it work.

[Ghostbear]

Spoiler:

I would have to replay the Sanctuary mission to be sure, but I believe one of the security videos Shepard sees Lawson explicitly states that in order to use their hack of the signal they'd have to get someone close to or actually aboard a Reaper to make it work.

Right, but:

Spoiler:

If he's indoctrinated, his motives don't really matter anymore. He'll be wherever the reapers want him to be, or where they think he has the least chance of fighting against the indoctrination. And he was shown to get indoctrinated during one of the videos at his base by his own decisions; getting some co-opted reaper implant or something.

[Dauric]

Spoiler:

I would have to replay the Sanctuary mission to be sure, but I believe one of the security videos Shepard sees Lawson explicitly states that in order to use their hack of the signal they'd have to get someone close to or actually aboard a Reaper to make it work.

Right, but:

Spoiler:

If he's indoctrinated, his motives don't really matter anymore. He'll be wherever the reapers want him to be, or where they think he has the least chance of fighting against the indoctrination. And he was shown to get indoctrinated during one of the videos at his base by his own decisions; getting some co-opted reaper implant or something.

No argument, but I don't see it as an "Either/ Or".

Spoiler:

There's an old adage about the most effective lies being wrapped in a veil of truth. Indoctrination relies as much on self-deception as it does on thought modification as demonstrated by both Saren and Illusive, in fact convincing both of them to shoot themselves in the end involves Shepard breaking through the self-deception that's stopping them from seeing that they have been modified. Illusive had every legitimate reason to want to be on the Citadel in person -and- the Reapers had him controlled.

[Koa]

Spoiler:

I guess I just found it far too contrived for Anderson and Shepard to make it through, with the illusive man there and waiting. I don't mind it on reflection, but it was one more pill to swallow.

A few other things: Harbinger talks as though we can't possibly understand what reapers are, and yet it's explained to us in a few minutes by the catalyst. Organic life is killed so that synthetic life doesn't kill organic life. Why does the catalyst even care? The way I see it, life is life, and organic life will always form naturally when given the right circumstances. If synthetics kill all organic life, fine. The universe is a big place. I don't see what forcing a species to "transcend" accomplishes. Better yet, why don't your reapers harvest synthetic life when it gets out of control? That makes a fuckload more sense to me. Not only is synthetic life more translatable to a reaper form, but there may be an instance when organics don't actually make a bloodthirsty synthetic life (i.e. geth).

Why can't I shoot this kid's head? Okay, I doubt my gun would harm his ethereal form, but seriously. The very existence of everything I've done in these games, uniting the galaxy and saving lives, is all at the mercy of this insane entity. An entity that I didn't know existed two minutes before it forces me to commit different flavours of mass genocide.