Mass Effect 3 (SPOILERS)

I'm sorry for what I'm going to say, but...

Fuck!

Fuckfuckfuck!

But it was like a parade of saying goodbye to my favorites. So many died. Mordus, Thane, Miranda.... and Tali with all of the Quarrians.

*crying*

And then I destroyed the Reapers.

*crying*



That was a great game.

You can now look again. Profanities over.

That sums it up nicely. *still kind of weepy*

Although I really loved sticking it Lieutenant Bastard Kai Leng. (God I love Garrus. *sniff* Now who's going to be his bestie?)

I'm way behind you guys, just finished the Tuchanka missions. And God, Mordin... why of all things, a reprise?

I haven't played it, but the game looks amazing! Ancient alien reapers invading our realm, Yikes! I don't know whether to buy it for my X-box 360 or Ps3, but i will make a selection soon hopefully this weekend.

Zoombie said:

So, who picked what ending and why?

I picked the Singularity ending - where all life both synthetic and biological is merged.

It's the only way to REALLY escape the cycle and build something new.

Click to expand...

I didn't get to choose that ending. I could either destroy the reapers, or do an Illusive man on them and control them. We've all seen how that goes [ with Saren and Illusive Man ], so I chose to destroy them.

I didn't get the option to chose the singularity. It was either destroy the reapers or control the reapers.

Another point, I love the attention to detail: like the growing wall of pictures of missing people in the café-area of the holding docks, where the refugees live.

So...anybody started their second play through yet?

Zoombie said:

I think it's because you didn't get to bring the Geth and Quarian together.

Click to expand...

I'm hoping for that on my second play though. I'm taking it a lot easier, and doing a lot of the side quests as well.

That's a bit of a disappointment, actually. In earlier, the side-quests were sort of mini-levels, but here they're just 'fly to a planet, scan, drop a probe' and then you head back to the quest giver.

Actually, I thought my ending was bullshit. Pretty disappointing because I wanted my Shepherd to live. I chose to kill the Reapers.

I completed all but 4 side quests and didn't play any of the multiplayer. Which, as I learned at the end of the game, was to my detriment.

I don't do multiplayer and that's apparently the ONLY way to NOT get your "Readiness" rating cut in half...which is total bullshit. Thanks, EA, you fuckers.

So, basically, you have to have an overall Readiness Rating score of 8000 (because it gets cut in half to 4000) in order to get a good ending where your Shepherd and Anderson live.

That's ridiculous, in my opinion. And, for such an emotional roller coaster of a game that has some frame rate issues and bugs, it pisses me off just a bit, especially after it killed off 3 of my favorite characters (Mordin, Thane, and Legion).

Anyway, I'm gonna back it up and choose the singularity, I guess, just to see how that plays out.

I'll probably start another play through to see if it's possible to get my rating up high enough without multiplayer in order to get an ending I actually like.

Well, one good thing is that the "New Game +" sends you back to the point in the game before you attack Cerberus, so I guess I can go back and build up my "readiness" and try for a different ending.

I already went back and did the ending again, but chose the singularity this time.

Kind of cool, I guess. Differences between it and my other ending (destroy Reapers but Shep dies) is that when Joker steps out of the crashed Normandy, he has Illusive Man eyes and, rather than Ashley joining him, it's EDI (and then Ash steps out as the camera pulls back).

It reminded me of the end of BSG just because Tricia Helfer's character is at the end of both, on a new planet, with her lover, staring at the horizon of a new dawning of mankind.

Or...something like that.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who thought the ending sucked.

Large numbers of fans are taking to the internet to voice their displeasure (hatred) over the endings, which seem to be garnering the same type of response as the Star Wars prequels got.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/for...roblem-with-the-Mass-Effect-3-ending-spoilers

http://www.gamefront.com/player-starts-poll-asking-bioware-for-new-mass-effect-3-ending/

http://www.destructoid.com/mass-effect-3-fans-petition-bioware-to-change-the-ending-223615.phtml

I gotta agree with them. Honestly, after investing hundreds of hours into my all-time favorite game series, I'm pissed off that I couldn't get the ending I'd been fighting/playing for all these years. It was a bit illogical, made more so by the deus ex at the end. It offered little to no emotional or story closure. And, it left me feeling that none of my major decisions throughout the series really mattered all that much on the end game.

Why did the mass relays have to explode? That's dumb. If you choose to kill the reapers, why does it kill ALL synthetic life, like the Geth? Why is the Normandy jumping through the Mass Relay? Weren't they in the middle of a battle with the Reapers at Earth? Now, all of a sudden, they're jumping somewhere for some unexplained reason? Why does the energy that kills the Reapers (or creates the singularity) and passes harmlessly through the soldiers (and their gear) on Earth also curiously damage/destroy the Normandy? Wouldn't it also have pretty much destroyed all of the ships in Earth's atmosphere, too?

The answer to all of those questions seems to be "just because." For all the really great writing throughout the series, the ending(s) is some really weak, lazy shit. It tells me that the writing staff was reeeeally worse off without Drew Karpyshyn's creative/writing input. No matter how you slice it, every ending option is pretty bleak and leaves the galaxy in a depressing state where billions more people are likely to die.

It's still a great game but the ending(s) really tarnishes the entire series.


A ME3 producer responds...

http://www.psxextreme.com/ps3-news/10806.html

...on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/#!/GambleMike/status/177942797880541185

Heh. Seems the Hitler youtube meme can explain pretty much anything, because this about sums it all up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=b33tJx8iy0A

I agree. The endings just felt contrived.

Deus ex, was different. The options you chose, all were practical situations based on how you chose to play through the game, and all had realistic types of impacts on the game.

Here's how Dommo would have written the endings out.

1. The superweapon, is a fucking superweapon. It's not a magical fairy dust dispensor that somehow through the act of bullshido, turns people into cyborgs.
2. The choices you'd get would be as follows.
a. Destroy the Reapers, and only the Reapers. Ultimately depending on the nature of the relationship between the quarian and the geth/Jeff and EDI, it would dictate whether synthetic life would gradually merge with organic life, or if synthetics would replace organic life. Your actions (e.g. military readiness) would determine your survival, and the epilogue would be a bit more expansive in describing the post reaper galaxy. Basically it would either be a slow synthesis (that tali basically talks about in game if you unite the geth/quarians), or it would be Skynet.
b. Dominate the Reapers, and choose to become god-emperor dune style (either deciding to have a humanity dominated galaxy, or a more all inclusive one). Synthetic life would exist based on what YOU decided you wanted (e.g. you could force synthesis, exterminate organics, exterminate synthetics, etc.)
c. Dominate the Reapers, and choose to have them serve a different purpose (e.g. seeding other worlds for life, banishment, Citadel Fleet, etc.) that isn't the destruction of intelligent life. The domination of synthetic life would again be based on the choices you made regarding the synthetic life forms in game (slow synthesis/synthesis by choice, or skynet).
d. Dominate the reapers, and have everyone assimilated "Geth" style. This way no one truly dies, and advanced civilizations can be cleared out for new ones. In a sense this would allow for the mission of the reapers to continue, and would allow for the galaxy to continue being a dynamic place. The arrival of the reapers, would be less viewed as the wiping out of civilization and more of an "uplifting" to a higher state of being. Being reaped, would more or less involve being uploaded into a collective consciousness of all past life in the galaxy.

The deus ex was done horribly. So, this little ghost-kid-creator thing has apparently been the real enemy the entire time and, after hundreds of hours of gameplay, we don't find out until the last 5 minutes?

Stupid. Lazy. Poor writing...which is weird given how brilliant most of the rest of the series has had.

And, he gives us 3 options, all of which have apparently bad results, based on his notion that synthetic life always rebels to destroy its creators.

And...Shepherd doesn't call him on his bullshit, why?

Throughout the entire game, you've proven him wrong. You guide EDI along her path of growth to the point where she's pretty much evolved herself to be compassionate, caring, and be "alive." She, for lack of better terms, develops a soul.

You learn that the Geth never actually did "rebel" against the Quarians. The Quarians attacked first (which was given away in ME2) and the Geth have always wanted to just live in peace. Basically, the Quarians are dicks and the Geth (non-heretic) have been good all along. And, once Legion uploads himself into all Geth (right after he attains individuality), the Geth are even better off, now all individuals, and even show the Quarians some benevolence (I was able to broker peace between Quarians and Geth).

And, let's say you make decisions that don't do that. Say you play Renegade and convince EDI to be a "me first", survival-at-any-costs, heartless biotch and you kill the Geth. THAT could have also significantly affected the ending, had you been given the "persuade" option at the end.

I was thinking/hoping that these developments, which seemed to be a pretty significant theme in ME3, would somehow affect the ending. Hell, after hearing the little ghost-kid's speech, they damned well SHOULD have had an effect on the ending.

Shepherd, who has always been able to use his persuasion power to handle the big situations, SHOULD have been able to use it at this juncture and bring up the growth of EDI and the Geth to persuade the kid that it's been wrong this entire time, or at least wrong now. Of, if the Renegade path had been chosen, the option to dominate or destroy synthetics everywhere (thus, agreeing with the kid) could have been given.

Of course, I would be remiss if I failed to mention how stupidly illogical the deus ex ghost kid's entire reasoning is: So...he's convinced that synthetics will always rise up to destroy organic life, so to "prevent" this from happening, he sends synthetics to destroy most organic life.

Um...WTF? Following the same type of contradictory logic...if I drive my car long enough, I might eventually wreck it. So, I'm just gonna go ahead and wreck it to prevent myself from possibly wrecking it later.

Sigh...oh well. I'll stupidly, naively hope that Bioware has some upcoming DLC that will sate my extreme disappointment. Because it's gonna take me a while to get over how badly they totally "George Lucased" the series with this ending.

I liked them too. Resist the urge to make the endings happy ever afters! That's not really Mass Effect.

There's a conversation between Garrus and Shepard that goes along the line of:

Garrus: I hate being at the top. It's so much letting ten billion die here so that 20 billion can live there.

That's about it, and that's how I see the endings. Shepard let 10 billion die here, so that 20 billion could live there.

It's not that he (most likely) dies at the end that makes me hate the endings. It's that the ending doesn't follow the internal story logic set up across the series...or even what was set up in ME3. And, it negates pretty much all of the major decisions you ever made throughout the series, or at least relegates them to a level of negligible importance, considering that they don't really impact the outcome.

And, deus ex machinas are just lazy writing. Period.