238 replies to this topic

[Fin]

so, what's the status of maelon's genophage research? how did you deal with the geth heretics? who died in mass effect 1?

Edited by fluttershep, 20 April 2012 - 09:51 AM.

[Nevermind]

Took a copy just in case. Rewrote the Heretics in my main "canon" but have a save file that is exactly the same up until that point, where instead I killed them (that save hasn't progressed past Legion's Loyalty mission, so I'd have to finish the game before importing it). Kaidan died, cos I was tappin' Ashley. Sorry, Kaidan.

[Fin]

ahh... pretty much the same as finn shepard's decision-making. except i lost legion and miranda at the suicide mission. and chawkas.

i was in the middle of an me2+3 game where i kept the opposite people alive to see how that would affect me3, but i kinda lost steam halfway through me3, after

Spoiler

cerberus and udina's attempted coup. it was a struggle to get through the early missions, but the tuchanka ones picked up my enthusiasm. alas, raiden nightwing kai leng cutscene boy's main advantage in a fight is his ability to bore me to tears. cerberus and the reapers suck so much in me3. i should really get back to it. i'm curious to see how the geth stuff plays out with the real legion. and no tali.

Edited by fluttershep, 20 April 2012 - 10:24 AM.

[DarkJuno]

Take this with GIGANTIC DUMPTRUCK LOADS OF SAND, buuuuut....

ME3's Plot changed.

I still mostly think this is just random BS made up by a bitter person who had a review copy of the game and hated the ending, but that almost sounds better then what we got.

[Fin]

i heard about that before. not too bothered about that ending either, tbh. as one person put it, 'Something something Dark Energy, something something harvesting species to solve the problem, something something humanity is special, something something genocide or destruction of universe something something.'

honestly, as silly as the final boss of me2 was, i really liked the explanation behind it. i would have preferred had they left the reaper motivation at that, and let everything about their origins remain a mystery.

[Selena]

Actually, it's pretty legit. ME2 was building up to that original ending with all the references to dark energy (Tali's mission) and the unique genetic structure of humanity (Mordin's loyalty mission). Even starting from the first mission on Freedom's Progress. Harbinger also had a ton of dialogue commenting on how only the human members of your crew are useful, while the aliens are to be discarded for various genetic reasons. "Your worlds will be our laboratories."

And, of course, dark energy and human diversity are never mentioned again in ME3. Sudden shift in plot focus indicates that there's truth to the rumor. Karpyshyn commented on it about a week after release and said that it had been on the drawing board, but didn't go into more detail than that.


I thought the dark energy scenario was pretty silly, too, but I don't know which I would have preferred. It would all come down to execution. I stick with the head-canon I made up for the Reapers.

[Fin]

I stick with the head-canon I made up for the Reapers.

tell me moar.

[Nevermind]

Holy shit, disc swapping. o___o

[DarkJuno]

Disc swapping....? Man, it's been a long time since I've had to do that. o_o

The ME's came on multiple discs?

[Nevermind]

For XBox, yeah. I installed both discs and hoped just having one in there would kickstart it into playing but nope, need specific disc for specific content.

They could possibly be signature coded to circumvent duplicating discs. I had the same problem with Mass Effect 2 as well, though much less disc swapping was required there. From reading online, in ME3 you swap discs for the main storyline after Sur'Kesh or Tuchanka (one of those) and disc two has the side missions, so doing side missions before those priorities requires a swap to disc two and then back to disc one to continue the main campaign. Up until that particular priority mission, of course where you swap discs anyway.

I think it is also due to multiplayer taking up most of one disc.

[Selena]

Yeah, I don't know what was up with the ME3 discs. I think it's right that most of the side quests are on disc 2 and the main quest is on disc 1, but there are times when it seems really random. And it felt like it was more at the beginning. In the latter half of the game, it felt like I barely touched the second disc, despite having lots of side quests to finish.

[Nevermind]

I have a habit of doing side/N7 missions as soon as I come across them before continuing on, especially since some of them are timed, like Grissom Academy. I've done half a dozen swaps at least now and I've only just extracted Victus.

Someone wrote a mini-guide for it.

http://forums.xbox.c...54.aspx#1162454

Edited by Lazurukeel, 24 April 2012 - 10:25 PM.

[Selena]

More evidence of content being cut/unfinished, though, as always, take it with a grain of salt. Well, you can take the script with a grain of salt. It's a little hard to deny the existence of recorded dialogue, though. According to this, it looks like were supposed to get a Suicide Mission-style finale. Except, instead of assigning characters to certain roles, you assign war assets. Your ME2 squad - or at least some of them - were supposed to make actual appearances rather than show up on that hologram thing. They would lead their designated teams into battle.

Jack's Dialogue
Grunt's Dialogue
Jacob's Dialogue
Zaeed's Dialogue
Geth Prime Dialogue (and Femshep)


ME3 Outline (supposedly):

CUTSCENE:
A second Reaper fleet arrives in orbit of Earth. Harvesters start launching from the Reapers, and descend towards earth in a massive swarm.
Conversation:
Shepard / Hackett / Anderson decide to move quickly to organize a defense to hold off the Reapers in orbit from reaching the Citadel and to keep the Harvesters away from the London facility.
GUI:
Hammer resolution: summary of performance of the Hammer striketeam and casualty report.
Shield planning: assign strike teams for orbital and planetary operations to defend against the Reaper counterattack.

At this point, I'm mostly just sad about missed opportunities. It was all so close!

The bit about the "writer" leaking info is supposedly fake - claiming his account was hacked. Which seems reasonable, since it'd be dumb of him to go online and rant about the ending to anyone, even friends. Though that fan interview with him I posted a while back shares a couple opinions.

[Sir Deimos]

So I haven't read any of this thread just in case of errant spoilers, but I just started the suicide mission in ME 2 and am kinda freaking out.

[SteveT]

According to this, it looks like were supposed to get a Suicide Mission-style finale. Except, instead of assigning characters to certain roles, you assign war assets. Your ME2 squad - or at least some of them - were supposed to make actual appearances rather than show up on that hologram thing. They would lead their designated teams into battle.

That sounds so much better than what we got. Stupid missed opportunities.

[Nevermind]

So I walked into work this morning and

TALI-HO!!


Also available were Shepard, Thane, Mordin, Grunt, Miranda, Garrus, Legion.

I was tossing up between Tali and Legion and figured Tali would probably be more popular, so get her while I can. Comes with their preferred gun and some multiplayer DLC but yet to check that out.


I geeked out.

Hard.

*hnnngggghhhh*

[Egann]

Actually, my digging showed an interesting behind the stage cause for the ending's lackluster nature.

http://www.gameranx....versial-ending/

No other writer did, either, except for our lead. This was entirely the work of our lead and Casey himself, sitting in a room and going through draft after draft.
And honestly, it kind of shows.
Every other mission in the game had to be held up to the rest of the writing team, and the writing team then picked it apart and made suggestions and pointed out the parts that made no sense. This mission? Casey and our lead deciding that they didn't need to be peer-reviewe.d
And again, it shows.

(sic)
This has been a longstanding problem for video game writing. FF XIII had something similar happen, with an exec vetoing the writer's work until the deadline forced them to ship a horrible script; be glad ME didn't come out like that.

[Selena]

Yes, that's the post attributed to Weekes on Penny Arcade, but he has personally denied writing it, claiming that his account was hacked following the game's release. Possible it was still him, but it sounds like all the staff had a non-disclosure agreement at the time. Could have just been him in a moment of stupid while talking to his regular net friends.

I do think they knew that shit was going to hit the fan, though. Bioware forums had a "zero tolerance policy toward staff" rule put up just days before ME3's official release, which hadn't been there before.

[Nevermind]

So, I finished it and I really do not understand what was so upsetting about the ending. I might go so far as to say I enjoyed the choices put forward and the underlying tones (that I read, at least). They GAINAX'd it just enough for my tastes. Could have had a longer cinematic but that's about it. I would really like to know what happened to the others. My war rating is up around 4,000 so it won't take me much to get it up through multiplayer and go at the ending again. Certainly not adhering to the indoctrination theory myself, unless it is officially stated as such, or something.

I did have the fortune of playing all three games for the first time one straight after the other, so I got to enjoy one massive continuing story without breaks.

Epic. All the way through.

Shame people didn't like it.

Eat a quad, haters.




I will admit, as brilliant as the game was, I did find that parts of it felt lazy/rushed, even more so when taking into account what it could have contained. It was also very glitchy, especially when having conversations, where the sound would just fade out and I'd miss the end of a sentence - a sentence I had wanted to hear in its entirety! Another part was after Thessia, when Liara left the room and I engaged in conversation with Javik, I see her character model moving through walls in the background before coming to a halt and just standing there, half sticking out of the wall. My gripes are all about technical issues like that, which are rather small but it's supposed to be a AAA title and if the game hadn't come free with my new XBox, then I would have paid around $100 for what is essentially an unpolished (read: incomplete) product (again, AAA title here).

As I said, I enjoyed the entire lot but I can only imagine what could have been if Mass Effect 3 had been created more as a "game" and less as a "profitable product".

Spoiler

But the music! Oh man, that piano tune in the end. Beautiful.

Edited by Lazurukeel, 29 April 2012 - 08:19 AM.

[SteveT]

If you want to understand why people don't like the ending, just wait a day, then summarize it. Out loud. I was initially ok with it, but mildly disappointed, but my rage only grew the more I thought and talked about it.

[Fin]

i didn't like the ending because it came completely out of left field and tried to stick an abstract 2001-style ending onto a conventional story. as one person put it, 'storytelling is all about setup and payoff.' the ending had very poor setup and i can't appreciate it solely based on what the writers were trying to accomplish with it.

[Selena]

It's not so much the themes, so much as it's the abrupt shift in genre, the abrupt disconnect from the established rules of the game 'verse, and the feeling of it being very forced. Mass Effect was, up until the end, pretty good about having rational explanations for just about everything - either in-game or in the codex. It's the old belief about you can do anything you want in fiction, so long as you follow your established "rules." Break those rules, however, and your viewers stop being able to suspend their disbelief.

A Gainax ending is good in a Gainax show, because it's all one cohesive package. I actually like trippy-mindfucks. David Lynch is one of my favorite directors. Xenogears is one of my favorite games, and it's less comprehensible than ME3. But it stuck with its themes and motifs the whole way through, so it works I think the ending is hated less for the themes, and more because the entire Earth stage and finale are proof that the game was rushed out the door. ME3 won't ever live up to its potential, and that's the real tragedy.

ME was pretty grounded right up until the end, and it's harder to excuse problems of common sense in the name of some sort of deep artistry at the last minute. Like:

- The London-Citadel beam. It doesn't seem to have a purpose aside from acting as a transporter, so the Reapers could just turn it off.
- The fact that they aren't just turning it off should generate some suspicion - nobody has any idea where it really goes.
- Shepard's got magnet boots and an environmentally sealed suit -- just dump him off on the Citadel's exterior and find a way inside.
- The Ilos Conduit is still located within the Citadel, just go to Ilos and use the Prothean relay -- it's the only relay the Reapers can't control!
- For that matter, ME1 established that the first thing the Reapers do in their invasion is shut down all the relays. Not now?
- Sovereign's role in ME1 rendered unnecessary by a Reaper AI being on board the Citadel at all times.
- In the final level, one Reaper destroyer is taken out using our Cain heavy weapon from ME2. To destroy a second Reaper destroyer, we're forced to do that giant wave battle with Banshees 'n shit until we can activate all those missile launcher trucks, and the whole army gets pummeled in the process. Just have somebody get another Cain!
- How the shit did the Illusive Man get his indoctrinated ass up to the controls?
- Shepard should probably question an AI of a machine race that's been slaughtering people and lying to them for millions of years.
- And so on.



Tuchanka mission? Gold. Rannoch? Awesome. Some of the sidequests were good, too. The rest of the game? Eeeeeeeeeh. Very much a rush job. Especially now that it sounds like a Suicide Mission approach had been planned for the Earth stage, even to the point of recording audio for it, and it just wasn't finished or cut out.

Mass Effect Trilogy: Director's Cut Edition coming 2015.

[Fin]

also, if the cain is so powerful you'd think it would have been able to one-shot the baby t-800 reaper from me2. also, maybe they should have considered mass producing them.

and if the reapers needed the citadel beam to harvest humans, what the hell were the doing during the story up to the endgame? was anderson's resistance really giving them that much trouble?

[Nevermind]

Well, I'm pretty much in disagreement with, you know...the internet but hell, I've thought about it Steve. Thought and thought and thought, as I do, and I still like it. In fact, the more I think about it, the more satisfied I become (apart from still wanting to know what happened to the others, of course).

It's not so much the themes, so much as it's the abrupt shift in genre, the abrupt disconnect from the established rules of the game 'verse, and the feeling of it being very forced. Mass Effect was, up until the end, pretty good about having rational explanations for just about everything - either in-game or in the codex. It's the old belief about you can do anything you want in fiction, so long as you follow your established "rules." Break those rules, however, and your viewers stop being able to suspend their disbelief.

A Gainax ending is good in a Gainax show, because it's all one cohesive package. I actually like trippy-mindfucks. David Lynch is one of my favorite directors. Xenogears is one of my favorite games, and it's less comprehensible than ME3. But it stuck with its themes and motifs the whole way through, so it works I think the ending is hated less for the themes, and more because the entire Earth stage and finale are proof that the game was rushed out the door. ME3 won't ever live up to its potential, and that's the real tragedy.

ME was pretty grounded right up until the end, and it's harder to excuse problems of common sense in the name of some sort of deep artistry at the last minute. Like:

- The London-Citadel beam. It doesn't seem to have a purpose aside from acting as a transporter, so the Reapers could just turn it off.
- The fact that they aren't just turning it off should generate some suspicion - nobody has any idea where it really goes.
- Shepard's got magnet boots and an environmentally sealed suit -- just dump him off on the Citadel's exterior and find a way inside.
- The Ilos Conduit is still located within the Citadel, just go to Ilos and use the Prothean relay -- it's the only relay the Reapers can't control!
- For that matter, ME1 established that the first thing the Reapers do in their invasion is shut down all the relays. Not now?
- Sovereign's role in ME1 rendered unnecessary by a Reaper AI being on board the Citadel at all times.
- In the final level, one Reaper destroyer is taken out using our Cain heavy weapon from ME2. To destroy a second Reaper destroyer, we're forced to do that giant wave battle with Banshees 'n shit until we can activate all those missile launcher trucks, and the whole army gets pummeled in the process. Just have somebody get another Cain!
- How the shit did the Illusive Man get his indoctrinated ass up to the controls?
- Shepard should probably question an AI of a machine race that's been slaughtering people and lying to them for millions of years.
- And so on.



Tuchanka mission? Gold. Rannoch? Awesome. Some of the sidequests were good, too. The rest of the game? Eeeeeeeeeh. Very much a rush job. Especially now that it sounds like a Suicide Mission approach had been planned for the Earth stage, even to the point of recording audio for it, and it just wasn't finished or cut out.

Mass Effect Trilogy: Director's Cut Edition coming 2015.

Mass Effect 1 never had a rational explanation for the Reapers from the word go. They were just there and they were coming and that's the end of that. Mass Effect 2 explored their indoctrination effects and nobody knew how they did it, even a Reaper corpse. They even made reference to a "sleeping god dreaming", indicative of the scientists' N.F.I. state. In Mass Effect 3 they put it down to nano-technology in the system. Problem solved. Still, the origins of such technology is neither explored nor understood until the very end, where we discover it's an even more advance AI, leading to the question of who created THAT?

The Codex also still stated that the Citadel and relays were Prothean-built and that Sovereign was a Geth ship. Don't trust the Codex too much, it's Council propaganda.

The Gainax in the ending isn't trippy mind-fuck at all. It's just the "ascension", "higher being" theme that they put forward. That was it.

As for the rest, well, hate me but I gotta say it: it's nitpicking. These are not "major plot holes" at all. "Reversing technology to use "thermal clips" rather than letting guns cool down" isn't even a huge plot hole. Conrad Verner is secretly a genius.

- The beam seemed to be established as such that one does not simply "turn it off" but who knows. Either way, that seems rather nitpicky and what else would you have them replace it with? Priority: On/Off Switch?
- They could have dropped him off right at the citadel, yeah. In the middle of a gigantic space battle. If he made it to the Citadel, how would he get in? It's never been closed before in the current cycle so they didn't think to add in a back door. It's tech that nobody knows anything about, they just accept it. It's also controlled by a billions-year-old AI who created the Reapers.
- The Ilos Conduit was a one way trip. It was a prototype and Vigil said they weren't even sure it would work. High chance that we are to assume it was destroyed.
- The Catalyst isn't Reaper AI, it is just a ridiculously advanced AI that created the Reapers as its logical/only answer to maintaining order. Sovereign would have been there to streamline the process by first indoctrinating then initiating.
- Giving everyone Cains is focusing purely on the story side of things and disregarding that it is still an interactive game. If everyone had a Cain, or if they were easily available, the game just got [img]http://forums.legendsalliance.com/public/ALOT.png[/img] more boring. Plus, London is all kinds of fucked up (Anderson was born there, you know) and this is the last push in which the Reapers appear to be winning, because nobody believed they existed until they arrived.
- How the shit does the Illusive Man do anything? I'll admit, he's something I've learned to just...go with, because he's always one step ahead, has infinite resources from somewhere and is always somewhere else that isn't the place you thought he'd be. Also, he went to the Citadel first and informed the Reapers before it moved/closed, causing it to move/close.
- Shepard did question the AI that has been slaughtering people for millions of years but what other choice did he have? Destroying the Reapers through all out war was not an option, making a god-like AI understand that people didn't want to die and didn't have to die was not on the table either, considering this AI had seen the same repetition of synthetics vs organics over countless cycles and had deemed this the only way to continue life in the universe (I have my own "Cycles in Cycles" theory on the AI). The Crucible was there to "hack" the AI and solve the Reaper problem in one way or another. Whether he trusted the "new" Catalyst or not, Shepard was still in a shitty situation and had to make a shitty choice to make things less shittier than they were.
- Pick it apart. Everyone is. I still can't find the problem with it and it still fits all the way back to ME1's "chaos vs order", "synthetics vs organics", "the nature of evolution", and "what classifies something as being alive" for me.

The reference to 2001 seemed very small to me. I found the entire series more akin to Asimov's fiction than anything else.

[SteveT]

Well, I'm pretty much in disagreement with, you know...the internet but hell, I've thought about it Steve. Thought and thought and thought, as I do, and I still like it. In fact, the more I think about it, the more satisfied I become (apart from still wanting to know what happened to the others, of course).

Well, fair enough. You clearly live in a happier world than I.

[Nevermind]

To be honest, after all the backlash, I was worried about being let down. Really glad I wasn't because I got crazy-hooked on this series crazy-fast.

I do wonder if it would be the same experience without that lovely music playing. I've yet to watch it muted.


I don't want to risk it just in case I ruin everything for myself and become....one of you guys.

Edited by Lazurukeel, 29 April 2012 - 09:46 PM.

[Fin]

i think it mainly just comes down to the introduction of new concepts right when the story should be resolving itself. that's just sloppy writing, and it's guaranteed to leave the majority of an audience unsatisfied. the reapers were unknowable during the first two games, but they were also a part of the mass effect story all the way through. reaper ambiguity doesn't justify the inclusion of a totally new ambiguous concept right at the ending, because such a concept is totally out of left field and feels cheap.

but hey, like steve i'm glad you found something to like in the ending.

edit: although just to clarify, my issue with the cain wasn't that i wanted access to a godly superweapon all the way through the game. i just don't think a standard weapon from the previous game should suddenly be powerful enough to one-shot a freaking reaper. they should not be that easy to kill.

Edited by fluttershep, 29 April 2012 - 09:57 PM.

[Nevermind]

Yeah, that's fair enough. Fleshing out that particular Reaper battle would have been better.

As far as introducing new concepts, I don't know. I still add The Catalyst into the "synthetics vs organics" category. It wasn't so much a new idea to me as it was the big reveal at the end. The reason why the Reapers were destroying cycle after cycle. It was simply revealed that it was the conclusion of an advanced AI after many years of observation and analysis. That didn't seem new to me.

[Fin]

the ai itself was totally out of left field though. i can agree that thematically it fits (though personally i think edi and the geth undermine that conclusion to the organic/synthethic conflict), and giving the reapers an origin isn't entirely unexpected. but the origin is given far too late into the story, and all it does is raise more questions, at a time when the story is meant to be dealing with previous questions.

Edited by fluttershep, 29 April 2012 - 10:15 PM.

[Selena]

Let's put it this way - I disliked ME2 at first, more than I initially hated ME3, but couldn't find much to complain about other than "where'd the plot go?" It later became the game I'm most likely to pick up and play. If I can pick out a whole raft of things that don't make sense in ME3, and a good chunk of it isn't necessarily related to the ending (retcons, etc.), then something's up. This was never a series that left much room for plot-related nitpicking until now. I might have liked ME3 more had I not taken the time to think about it. Because, in thinking about it, all I did was become more aware of the plot holes and retcons. It was all just very sloppy. Executive meddling and whatnot. Golden moments, though.

The Catalyst I'm not especially bothered about, though he's a big cliche. I'm bothered that I can't tell him to piss off. Though, since EDI can show up in the Destroy ending, that's pretty much proof that the Catalyst is a liar right there.

And yes, the music's good. Shame the OST felt the need to not include some of the better tracks, like when you're making the final choice. Hated the scene, liked the music.

Although I wonder how reactions are altered simply by the fan backlash nowadays. The complaints about the ending have basically outshined the game itself, so if you start playing this late after release, all you hear is "STFU WHINY FANS" or "WTF THIS SUCKS." And at that point you've already gotten annoyed by one or both of those camps. Meaning your reaction to the ending is either going to be "See? I told you that you guys were entitled brats," or "You guys actually like this ending? Are you idiots?"

In a way, the fact that the ending has overshadowed the game itself probably says a lot about how the whole game was handled.

(i still think it was dumb and you can't stop meeeeeeeee)