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So wait. If the Reapers had control over the Citadel for a while in order to wheel it on over to Earth, why didn't they do the Sovereign "shut down the relays and communications and cripple all resistance" thing that was supposed to be their whole MO in ME1.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:02
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CrushedB posted:So wait. I think the idea is The Reapers just rolled up and took over the Citidel while you were busy. I... don't know why they needed to do that when they had a secret base inside of the place where their leader was hanging out.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:04
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CrushedB posted:So wait.  This is one point where I actually have no loving idea, but I'm okay with it because unlike the last five minutes of the game at least it enabled something awesome.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:05
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You know I'm watching these Femshep videos in ME3 and while Jennifer Hale is a great actress, I think Mark Meer hulked out on actor juice and did a much better job.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:07
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I think it's kind of dumb in order to get the Illusive Man to kill himself you have to go ALL Paragon or ALL Renegade EVERY time you see him in ME2/3. That kind of rubbed me the wrong way. And I'm with everybody else. I'm just gonna ignore the endings and imagine the crucible destroyed all the reapers and there was a massive party and poo poo and everybody was cool. HOTLANTA MAN fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 02:07
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What difference does having a human council make to the story?
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Mar 10, 2012 02:08
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FRAZZLED JOHNSON posted:What difference does having a human council make to the story? you get roughly four Udina's
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Mar 10, 2012 02:09
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DerDestroyer posted:Basically the game was fine right up until the point Harbinger's laser swept over your face. Honestly at first I thought this was some weird dream sequence where Shepard envisions what failure would look like. Then the game didn't go "just kidding!" and as the last 15 minutes played out, my enjoyment declined steadily then fell off totally during the end cutscene. Other than that, this is probably my favorite game. The first two missions especially (Mars and Palaven) were extremely gripping and the music is phenomenal - really captured the feeling of galaxy-wide hopelessness. The Citadel was also really well done and immersive. And since I'm really emotionally invested into most of the characters, I was hit pretty hard at the ends of most of the major segments. I chose to continue my Liara romance and thought that was satisfying as well. The gift scene was really touching. How are the other romances? Playing as an Engineer on Hardcore was a breeze - used the Paladin exclusively with Garrus and Liara. I probably should have gone Insanity from the start.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:11
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Nelson Mandingo posted:You know I'm watching these Femshep videos in ME3 and while Jennifer Hale is a great actress, I think Mark Meer hulked out on actor juice and did a much better job. I can't compare since I haven't seen much of Femshep, but Meer definitely put in a great performance. As the game goes along and you can see the weight and pressure Shepard is under, the delivery matches. And the ending part talking to TIM and where you have a short conversation with Anderson while sitting on the Citadel before he dies was just great acting all around with every party.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:15
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Dominic White posted:Just beat the game - a little thought on the ending: Also the very last part after the credits holy poo poo. The voice actors and the dialogue were terrible. "When can I go to the stars?" "One day my sweet." Shepard became a pedophile. DoYouHasaRabbit fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 02:18
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Yeah the voice acting and the music are top notch. Loved the music on Mars.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:18
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FRAZZLED JOHNSON posted:What difference does having a human council make to the story? The same thing most of your other decisions have on the story.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:19
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Markkei posted:I chose to continue my Liara romance and thought that was satisfying as well. The gift scene was really touching. How are the other romances? I did the Tali romance and I liked it. Lots of extra moments added to some parts of the game, and really funny party banter on the first priority mission with her concerning it. The scene you mentions plays out regardless if you romance Liara and it's touching still, as is the last conversation with her where she shares her memories with you. Like I said, I'm really surprised how much I liked Liara in the game and will probably follow that romance on another playthrough.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:21
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DoYouHasaRabbit posted:What do you mean by this? I was playing Renegade Shepard through the whole game and at the end I took the right path because I figured that was worst thing I could do. Where does the whole green thing come from? I only saw blue on the left and red on the right. Huh - maybe you don't get that option unless you've made certain decisions? The Citadel explains that there's a third option, to change everything, and presents it as a middle road and results in a green wave rippling across the galaxy. You still die, as in the Blue/Paragon ending, but all life in the galaxy becomes part synthetic.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:21
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Dominic White posted:Huh - maybe you don't get that option unless you've made certain decisions? The Citadel explains that there's a third option, to change everything, and presents it as a middle road and results in a green wave rippling across the galaxy. You get the third option by having a higher EMS rating. If you don't get a certain level, you don't get that option.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:22
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Dominic White posted:Huh - maybe you don't get that option unless you've made certain decisions? The Citadel explains that there's a third option, to change everything, and presents it as a middle road and results in a green wave rippling across the galaxy.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:23
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Dominic White posted:Huh - maybe you don't get that option unless you've made certain decisions? The Citadel explains that there's a third option, to change everything, and presents it as a middle road and results in a green wave rippling across the galaxy. You still die, as in the Blue/Paragon ending, but all life in the galaxy becomes part synthetic. You have to have a high EMS level.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:24
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ImpAtom posted:You have to have a high EMS level.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:25
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So, I'm guessing more DLC down the road means it will be easier to get higher EMS without multiplayer. At least I hope so. Would be kinda funny if it suddenly became impossible to max out EMS because the MP died.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:29
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NOBEARD posted:So, I'm guessing more DLC down the road means it will be easier to get higher EMS without multiplayer. At least I hope so. Would be kinda funny if it suddenly became impossible to max out EMS because the MP died. I'm sure it'll be trivial to simply patch it up to 100% at all times. It's pretty much just a line of code or two.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:30
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TheSpiritFox posted:Given that you don't nova after every charge unless you really want to die or are playing on normal or something stupid like that, we need a much more complex flow chart. I just beat the game on insanity with my vanguard following that chart. With the bonuses and stuff you acquire throughout the game by the time the animation for nova is over charge is off cooldown. You can quite literally nonstop charge nova a giant pile of enemies to death.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:30
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DoYouHasaRabbit posted:With the EMS level wasn't that just going to other planets and scanning for stuff? I thought I did a lot, but apparently not enough, I gained almost everyone's allegiance in the game too. It helps if you have a high readiness percentage rating as well. VVVVVV: I know. I meant if he hadn't improved it. Brainamp fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 02:31
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Brainamp posted:It helps if you have a high readiness percentage rating as well. Your EMS is after factoring the readiness. So you can have assets totaling 6000, but if your readiness is 50%, your EMS is 3000.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:35
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Ugh..so I'm at the first area of the game before the priority mission on Surkesh and I'm trying to do the little citadel quests where you go to clusters and look for stuff. The problem is that a good chunk of them, like the shrike system, have reapers. Do I just have to wait until they leave or do I have to play keep away with the silly space bugs if I want my extra assets?
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Mar 10, 2012 02:36
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DoYouHasaRabbit posted:Also the very last part after the credits holy poo poo. The voice actors and the dialogue were terrible. "When can I go to the stars?" "One day my sweet." Shepard became a pedophile. That's Buzz Aldrin
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Mar 10, 2012 02:37
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Dolphin Fetus posted:Ugh..so I'm at the first area of the game before the priority mission on Surkesh and I'm trying to do the little citadel quests where you go to clusters and look for stuff. The problem is that a good chunk of them, like the shrike system, have reapers. Do I just have to wait until they leave or do I have to play keep away with the silly space bugs if I want my extra assets? Play keep away. Actually, it's better to just let them catch you, because you just immediately respawn there and all the assets are in the same place, so you can pick them up faster.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:37
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For the record, I managed to get high enough EMS to get that particular ending option without touching multiplayer at all. Giving it a little more thought: The Green ending (appropriately enough gained by filling the green bar) isn't nearly as emotionally driven as the Paragon and Renegade endings. It's more along the lines of 'I have SO much power now - I can do anything!' and doesn't really fit in thematically. Also, seriously - anyone who thinks that any ending that involves killing off the Geth and walking out unharmed is the Paragon ending, simply because the cutscene shows Anderson hasn't been paying attention through the story. Even Tali was ready to wipe out the Geth, because good people can make bad calls. Likewise, the Illusive Man is shown in the Paragon route to highlight that even bad people can have good intentions. Think back to the entire Genophage arc, with Mordin agreeing to use/continue his students research, even though it was gained through immoral means. Bioware aren't playing mind-games or suddenly trying to trick people. It's exactly the same kind of Paragon/Renegade choice you've made the whole game through
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Mar 10, 2012 02:37
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Markkei posted:Honestly at first I thought this was some weird dream sequence where Shepard envisions what failure would look like. Then the game didn't go "just kidding!" and as the last 15 minutes played out, my enjoyment declined steadily then fell off totally during the end cutscene. The Tali romance plot was pretty well done. My ME1 save was on Xbox and I didn't want to gently caress around, so I started new in ME2 and with your romance choices between Miranda and Tali, hoooo boy was Tali OBVIOUSLY the best choice to arc from 2 to 3. Like, pretty much as soon as you start the priority mission to the quarians, it builds a great plot that culminates in an epic Han and Leia-style moment. The dialog after you land on Rannoch is pretty touching, a rare instance of Bioware not making romance plots insufferably awkward. Well that whole mission in general was amazing. As a piece by itself, one of the best short stories in SF that I've ever experienced, and I have read/played an embarrassingly large amount of novel/game-length and short story SF. But what I really came here to complain about was the endings. Basically, I feel they completely ripped me off: the choices you make redefine the galaxy and I thought the options presented were fantastic. But I expected them to follow up on how you redefine the entire loving course of history. What you get is the Reapers turning off and some people stepping off the Normandy and maybe, if you exterminate all synthetics to save your skin, Shepard lives. No good it loving does him since your romance interest is halfway across the galaxy and you just blew up the mass relays. Have fun traveling at the speed of light or carrying on an LDR via quantum-entangler. But there just could have been so much more. If you control the Reapers, I want to see the society I create. It's like you uplifted the entire galaxy... again. You have a paradise of organics and synthetics living side-by-side and an omnipotent guiding Shepard (haha) to enforce peace, rebuild civilizations and take the galactic community into a golden age. And what about the synthesis option? It's a galaxy-loving-wide biotechnological singularity. They could have gone to insane places with that, a peaceful unity that transcends the current definition of organic and synthetic life. And what do we get? Leaves with little glowy circuits and Joker with glowy eyes. loving bullshit. All in all, it is just a huge waste of potential. I like the idea of save yourself at the expense of all synthetics and relay travel or sacrifice yourself to either bring about biotech singularity or to guide the galaxy into a golden age as a technological god, but it was all wasted. That said, the storytelling was overall excellent. Most of the missions were excellent examples of Bioware's ability to write compelling character study vignettes and the off-mission development of your relationships was spot on. There were some bad apples (generic fight Cerberus ones come to mind), but I would say most of the character-driven missions leveraged the material from ME1 and ME2 to create experiences that were on par with the best missions from ME2. There was too much busy work collecting war assets, but the key missions had far more substance than most of ME2's missions (not to say ME2's content wasn't of equally excellent quality) and I would call the game a solid win in terms of continuing the Mass Effect story. But in terms of concluding it, it failed miserably to capitalize on an emotionally engaging lead-in and surprisingly challenging final choice. Eejit fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 02:39
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Dolphin Fetus posted:Ugh..so I'm at the first area of the game before the priority mission on Surkesh and I'm trying to do the little citadel quests where you go to clusters and look for stuff. The problem is that a good chunk of them, like the shrike system, have reapers. Do I just have to wait until they leave or do I have to play keep away with the silly space bugs if I want my extra assets? When you go to a Reaper controlled system you won't be chased immediately. Only after scanning do you raise their awareness and they chase you. You can escape by leaving the system or taking a relay out. After you complete a mission you can go back and it resets their awareness. And so everyone knows, docking at the Citadel refuels the Normandy so if you don't wanna pay you can do that.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:39
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Dominic White posted:ending stuff See, what you're doing is logically analyzing something the writers didn't put so much thought into. I'm not saying you're wrong, and in fact I think your point is pretty drat well valid, but that's not what was intended according to In It For The Tank.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:40
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Dominic White posted:Huh - maybe you don't get that option unless you've made certain decisions? The Citadel explains that there's a third option, to change everything, and presents it as a middle road and results in a green wave rippling across the galaxy. You still die, as in the Blue/Paragon ending, but all life in the galaxy becomes part synthetic. In my opinion there is no paragon or renegade ending, I went through the entire series as paragon but in the end chose the destroy ending because it seemed the most appropriate thing for my Shepard, after having seen what happened to TIM and how he was under reaper control, and the synthesis ending being a giant "gently caress-you" to Shepard's belief in self-determination, since he's forcing a decision on trillions of creatures. At least the destroy ending sacrifices a small portion of the galaxy to give the rest of it free will regarding their future, without the threat of the reapers returning. Didn't know that Shepard survives that, but nice bonus I guess. And if one of the developers mentioned that their intention was to confuse players with the illusion of a paragon/renegade choice that didn't actually exist or was reversed, then arguing this point is moot.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:43
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Anybody know how to edit my Paragon score/decrease renegade? I think I got two points of renegade by buying those marines in Purgatory a drink with James and now I can't select the last loving paragon coversation for the illusive man! 
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Mar 10, 2012 02:44
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One more question, when you start NG+ do your renegade/paragon points reset too?
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Mar 10, 2012 02:46
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The Aberrant posted:Anybody know how to edit my Paragon score/decrease renegade? I think I got two points of renegade by buying those marines in Purgatory a drink with James and now I can't select the last loving paragon coversation for the illusive man! I don't think that's the problem to be able to do that, you need to have done the paragon choice in every conversation with TIM throughout the game, are you sure you did that? 10% of my bar was renegade and I managed to do it fine.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:49
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Why DO you get renegade points for buying the marines drinks? I remember doing that and I didn't understand what was wrong about that.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:50
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I haven't finished this yet, but I don't really give a poo poo if the ending is Shepard cracking open a reaper to find a giant PRANKAPPLE inside. The resolutions of all the individual characters' plot threads and massive over arching storylines is worth the price of admission for me. I also feel like this game gives you the direct opportunity to completely gently caress OVER any character you don't like. Let's see, I could let Tali fling herself off a loving cliff in despair, Samara shoot herself in the head instead of spending thirty seconds working out a solution, and let Mordin get shot in the loving back and drag himself across a room only to fail. I am not a monster so I haven't done any of those things, but geez, it's only one step removed from putting them all in THE SIMS and building one square walls around them.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:51
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Ham posted:In my opinion there is no paragon or renegade ending, I went through the entire series as paragon but in the end chose the destroy ending because it seemed the most appropriate thing for my Shepard, after having seen what happened to TIM and how he was under reaper control, and the synthesis ending being a giant "gently caress-you" to Shepard's belief in self-determination, since he's forcing a decision on trillions of creatures. At least the destroy ending sacrifices a small portion of the galaxy to give the rest of it free will regarding their future, without the threat of the reapers returning. Didn't know that Shepard survives that, but nice bonus I guess. And if one of the developers mentioned that their intention was to confuse players with the illusion of a paragon/renegade choice that didn't actually exist or was reversed, then arguing this point is moot. So the Citadel-Reaper kid says the cycles exist to prevent conflict between organics and synthetics. All three options are supposed to resolve this: destroy synthetics, control synthetics or join synthetics and organics. But guess what, I just peacefully resolved the situation with the geth and WE CAN loving LIVE IN PEACE TOGETHER, NOW TURN OFF YOUR loving REAPERS. Honestly, it was a ridiculously stupid point of conflict. The proof that organics and synthetics could coexist was central to the plot, it got an entire loving mission with the whole re-taking Rannoch story. It is like that never happened. The end choices are interesting to specifically resolve the Reapers, but as a way to resolve the organic-synthetic conflict, it basically invalidates the best part of the game. Honestly, with the geth cohabitating the suits of the quarians, the synthesis ending they chose seems redundant. The synthesis ending as a biotechnological singularity would make sense as it is the ultimate bond between man and machine. I feel like the paragon ending was appropriate because it was basic self-sacrifice for the good of the galaxy. I understood the option to give genuine control of the reapers to Shepard. The renegade ending was basically saving your skin at the expense of mass relay travel and all synthetic life. I knew, going into the mission, that I was willing to sacrifice Shepard before destroying on the of the races. Choosing to kill the geth along with the reapers was antithesis to one of Shepard's potentially expressed beliefs that the war wasn't worth winning without honor or at the expense of billions of lives. And all it really does is win him his own life. Sorry, but I feel it was a pretty monstrous choice.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:51
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Dominic White posted:For the record, I managed to get high enough EMS to get that particular ending option without touching multiplayer at all. Your mistake here, concerning the ending, is you're assuming Shepard has the geth, and you think Shepard is walking out unharmed. Shepard is going to die in all of the endings (the only way to save Shepard is completely unrelated to the plot and a gameplay mechanic) so that doesn't matter. But frankly, the endings are so bad and poorly implemented that it's not worth arguing them because each of them is full of plot holes and you don't know what exactly happens with each choice anyway.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:53
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AlternateAccount posted:
Haha. Don't expect that.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:53
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BLOWTAKKKS posted:Why DO you get renegade points for buying the marines drinks? I remember doing that and I didn't understand what was wrong about that. There's an interrupt where you do some salute that's basically "Kill Everyone" and it gives you renegade points. If you don't do it then James says "Huh, thought you would have known that one"
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