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I feel like I would have been a little more accepting of the ending if they hadn't shown the Normandy trying to get out of dodge, and instead just implied that all the survivors were now pretty much restricted to the Sol system, so they'd have to start their new empire there. Plus, it would have been nice to actually see a little more closure from other characters, etc. Like, how does Garrus/Liara/Conrad Verner feel about the fact that the Reapers are dead/in our control/synthesized.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:56
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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! Your checks are decided by your total reputation, not your renegade/paragon score. My bar at the end was about 95% paragon and I could choose any renegade option if I wanted to. As always, choosing the passive that buffs your reputation is the way to go.
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Mar 10, 2012 02:57
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I'm only about 2-3 hours in as a Solider, and I'm seriously considering starting over and playing as a Vanguard. I played as Solider in the first two games, and being a pure combat class is starting to get stale, not to mention the shotguns in ME3 actually feel like God slamming his car door this time around instead of the wimpy things in ME2, plus charging in a like a linebacker with crazy gravity magic sounds more fun than simply being to slow time down.
wafflemoose fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 02:57
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How many points should I be at before passing the point-of-no-return mission? I am at 3400 (5500? total, I've only done like 2 MP matches and would prefer to not do many more). I was told that renegade or paragon affects how many I'd need, any truth to that?
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Mar 10, 2012 02:58
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Codependent Poster posted: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. Two things: 1: I wasn't aware Shep lived in all three choices. I thought he could only live with the renegade choice. The paragon choice explicitly states self-sacrifice and the synthesis choice seems to show him dying too. Can anyone confirm survival through the paragon and synthesis endings? 2: Regarding the renegade option: Even if you don't have the geth, you are literally committing genocide. The entirety of the reaper race is trying to wipe out all organics so killing them all makes sense. But exterminating the geth? Really, you think that was okay? Especially after Legion made it clear they were a race of sapient creatures? And what about EDI? Was it okay to sacrifice her too? I can understand qualms with the synthesis ending forcing something on the races of the galaxy they may not want, but the paragon option is clearly exactly what it claims to be.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:00
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kevdude posted:How many points should I be at before passing the point-of-no-return mission? I am at 3400 (5500? total, I've only done like 2 MP matches and would prefer to not do many more). I was told that renegade or paragon affects how many I'd need, any truth to that? You will miss out on a 5-second easter egg cutscene if you can't get above 4k (or 5k, if you don't have a high enough reputation), but it only happens if you choose one particular ending and you can just youtube it if you really want. edit: Eejit posted:Two things: Ending spoilers:Shepard dies in all endings. You get a cutscene showing him breathing again if you choose the Destroy ending with 4k effective strength and have the final Anderson conversation or 5k effective strength regardless (but you must choose Destroy) Gadzuko fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 03:01
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So, uh, I hacked my game file to give me max cooldowns even with all weapons, that apparently carries over to multiplayer. I'm guessing I should fix that before playing, right? Anyone know if that's banable?
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Mar 10, 2012 03:02
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Eejit posted:Two things: No, you misunderstood, Shepard dies in all of the choices. You can only save Shepard by choosing destroy and having an EMS of 4000 or 5000 depending on if you save Anderson. Shepard effectively dies in all of the endings except for that specific set of circumstances, which is just a gameplay mechanic. Shepard doesn't know that they can survive a certain option because their score is 5000. You as the player know that. So saying that Shepard knows they'll walk away in one ending is incorrect, because as far as the character knows, they're gonna die no matter what.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:04
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Ataru13 posted:So, uh, I hacked my game file to give me max cooldowns even with all weapons, that apparently carries over to multiplayer. I'm guessing I should fix that before playing, right? Anyone know if that's banable? You should fix that before playing multiplayer, yeah. If you're a NERD.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:05
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Codependent Poster posted: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. Actually there is only one ending where Shepard survives if you have a high enough war score, the destroy one. In any other ending, even if you have maximum war score, he dies, but the important part is that he doesn't know he survives before he makes that choice. I didn't know he survived and picked that ending (and so did most people I've talked to) because it seemed to me the resolution of the trilogy where Shepard's main message is "We don't want to be controlled". Eejit posted:The argument about the validity of the reapers' logic was resolved earlier in the thread in some posts by Dolash. Also the endings aren't Paragon/Renegade choices, at least according to a developer.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:05
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Urgh what the hell gives? I just got Liara and for some reason she's refusing to jump over any chest high walls, she also didn't go to the computer to try to get the tramway unlocked like she's supposed. This is a massive problem given all the points where you have to hop a wall to progress leaving me with only one of my squadmates and I'm worried that if she didn't go to the computer she may not do any other scripted actions in future and thus gently caress me up. She did it fine the first time I got to Mars but my game crashed after taking out the robot woman so I restarted after downloading the From Ashes stuff. Considering uninstalling the data from my PS3 incase something got corrupted when it crashed.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:06
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Finished it. Decided to choose Control, but probably because I knew the Relays explicitly blow up in the other endings, while in this one it's somewhat ambiguous. I found it somewhat fitting : Shepard gives up whatever's left of his/her life/body to stop the Reapers, and civilization isn't completely screwed (unless Bioware retcons this, in which case gently caress 'em). Reapers are still around somewhere, but so is the Citadel and the Relays (... I think), and they may never be called upon again. So yeah, this ending isn't completely terrible for me, unlike the other two: Destroy for killing the Geth and EDI; Synthesis for being the stupidest thing ever. Still, way to drop the ball. Mass Effect 3 will probably be the patron saint of "Best games with the worst endings" somewhere down the line.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:07
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The implementation of the Prothean squadmate was stupid as hell. First problem was that that even having a Prothean walking and talking was going to kill the mystery no matter how well implemented. (The fact that he doesn't look anything like the Prothean statues is a comparatively minor problem, as is the fact that the race named themselves "Protheans.") Part of the tragedy and horror of what happened to the Protheans in Mass Effect 1 was that from everything we saw, the Protheans were a highly-advanced, wise, probably peaceful society that were slowly and gruesomely genocided without mercy. We saw that they uplifted other races, crafted great wonders, and did everything they could to stop the next cycle of destruction and to warn others of what was coming. Vigil was soft-spoken and sad, and the loss of the Protheans was a great loss to civilization. Part of the pathos in Mass Effect 2 was that this great, brave and advanced race had been conquered and genetically perverted into brainless servants of the Reapers. The whole reveal that they were once Protheans was supposed to instill a feeling reminicent of the rape of the innocent and to show the ruthlessness of the Reapers. This was a far more emotionally powerful (and sensical) reveal than that Reapers reproduce by liquefying people and piping them through tubes. The revelation that the Protheans were really imperialist, social-Darwinist assholes undercuts this completely, as does the fact that the Prothean we meet is a one-dimensional belligerent dick. It's definitely a lot harder to feel sympathy for them now that we know that they were unpleasant fascist conquerors.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:08
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Codependent Poster posted:Your checks are decided by your total reputation, not your renegade/paragon score. My bar at the end was about 95% paragon and I could choose any renegade option if I wanted to. Good, because I went back and watched all of the Illusive Man scenes, and apparently I may have missed the option on Thessia. You have to choose the left middle option to open up the paragon/renegade thing there, unlike every other drat choice in the game. Guess I'll have to back everything up and fiddle with increasing my reputation until it works.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:08
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You guys are mixing up paragon and renegade ending choices. Can we just call them Red Green or Blue endings as that clarifies it much better. Anyway: What can we assume happens to Shepard if she takes control of the reapers? My understanding is that in order to control the Reapers Shepard must sacrifice her life. Some people are saying Shepard disappears somewhere, maybe into the citadel to become a part of the catalyst or maybe to distribute herself into every Reaper. My understanding is that Shepard simply uploaded a command to the Reapers that they will follow (i.e. Hey guys stop killing organic life and go back to dark space). It's the actual process of inputting that command which kills Shepard. I'm guessing she had to interface her nervous system with the extreme energy that flowed through the crucible/citadel and that the resulting energy basically fried her as she made the command. Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like Shepard sacrificed her life to give the Reapers a single order (stop attacking us) rather than becoming Reaper commander.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:12
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The Unnamed One posted:Finished it. Decided to choose Control, but probably because I knew the Relays explicitly blow up in the other endings, while in this one it's somewhat ambiguous. The stupid kid explicitly says that the mass relays are destroyed when the Crucible fires. The relays blow up in every ending.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:12
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People are giving the ending way more thought than it deserves. It'll probably get retconned anyway what with the entire fanbase in outrage over it.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:14
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I went in fearing another DA2, came out with a good, solid game. Much better than I expected. I think its the weakest of the trilogy and I disliked the lack of any real closure. I'm going to hazard a guess they pull a Prince of Persia/Fallout 3 and release the 'real' ending as DLC. Also my reputation looks like its maxed out but at the very end of the last conversation with The Illusive Man both the paragon and renegade options were greyed out. 
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Mar 10, 2012 03:15
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You know what else the ending is missing? Since it's implied that the computer represented by virtual ghost child is controlling them all, and they're the remains of previous races combined into single, synthetic forms, it follows that they are effectively slaves of this central intelligence. An ending where Shepard frees them from that control somehow (talking the Catalyst out of it or blowing it up) and has to convince the assembled races not to fight them would be pretty awesome. It'd be sort of repetitive after the Geth/Quarian thing, but it turning out that the Reapers were themselves basically huge husks robbed of their free will would be a hell of a twist and would fit with the 'everyone should be free, give peace a chance' theme.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:15
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Codependent Poster posted:The stupid kid explicitly says that the mass relays are destroyed when the Crucible fires. The relays blow up in every ending. Yes, the only difference is that in the Control ending, the Citadel doesn't explode (presumably since it's the home of AI Shepard and the only way he can control the reapers). If this is true, then it goes against DerDestroyer's theory that Shepard sacrifices himself for one final command.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:15
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Ambiguatron posted:You know what else the ending is missing? Since it's implied that the computer represented by virtual ghost child is controlling them all, and they're the remains of previous races combined into single, synthetic forms, it follows that they are effectively slaves of this central intelligence. An ending where Shepard frees them from that control somehow (talking the Catalyst out of it or blowing it up) and has to convince the assembled races not to fight them would be pretty awesome. It'd be sort of repetitive after the Geth/Quarian thing, but it turning out that the Reapers were themselves basically huge husks robbed of their free will would be a hell of a twist and would fit with the 'everyone should be free, give peace a chance' theme. I tried to shoot the kid, but you can't kill holograms. 
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Mar 10, 2012 03:18
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Nope, reputation does not affect the Illusive Man choice what-so-ever. I just jacked it up to high heaven the last choice was still loving grey. If anyone knows where I might find the trigger for the paragon persuade option on Thessia, it would be much appreciated.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:20
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Codependent Poster posted:The stupid kid explicitly says that the mass relays are destroyed when the Crucible fires. The relays blow up in every ending. I try to go by video evidence. In Control we see some damage occur, but never blowing up, unlike in Destroy and Synthesis. I know I'm jumping through some hoops, but it's not like Bioware formed any sort of closure with this.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:21
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The Unnamed One posted:I try to go by video evidence. In Control we see some damage occur, but never blowing up, unlike in Destroy and Synthesis. You're looking at videos and not going by what is told to you in no uncertain terms happens. But that's okay, because everyone else is making up their own endings too.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:23
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In short, gently caress you Bioware. These endings are a slap to the face and are the worst thing a writer can do in video game fiction. The only thing that would make them worse is if it turns out it was all a dream.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:23
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Ambiguatron posted:You know what else the ending is missing? Since it's implied that the computer represented by virtual ghost child is controlling them all, and they're the remains of previous races combined into single, synthetic forms, it follows that they are effectively slaves of this central intelligence. An ending where Shepard frees them from that control somehow (talking the Catalyst out of it or blowing it up) and has to convince the assembled races not to fight them would be pretty awesome. It'd be sort of repetitive after the Geth/Quarian thing, but it turning out that the Reapers were themselves basically huge husks robbed of their free will would be a hell of a twist and would fit with the 'everyone should be free, give peace a chance' theme. I don't think it's implied that the Catalyst controls the reapers directly. It created them, set the rules for their existence and the basis of the cycle, but left them to their own devices with the singular task of culling the most advanced civilizations every 50,000 years by any means necessary, until that solution to the problem nullified itself by having organics obtain technological superiority (the crucible, over thousands of cycles) over the Reapers, thus meaning they will be victorious and proceed to create AIs that would eventually kill all organic life in the galaxy. Depending on wether Shepard managed to get a high-enough warscore (by achieving a semblance of peace in the galaxy), the catalyst's perspective shifts and it believes that synthesis is a possible working solution.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:24
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The conclusion I keep coming to is that the Mass Effect universe is way too cool to entrust to the fuckups who wrote Mass Effect. Can we just transfer the entire IP to Obsidian already?
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Mar 10, 2012 03:24
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Azraden posted:Also my reputation looks like its maxed out but at the very end of the last conversation with The Illusive Man both the paragon and renegade options were greyed out. You have to answer with either all paragon or all renegade choices when talking to Illusive man in ME2 and 3 in order for the paragon/renegade option to be accessible.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:25
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Codependent Poster posted:The stupid kid explicitly says that the mass relays are destroyed when the Crucible fires. The relays blow up in every ending. Which is another thing that's so stupid. As I am constantly reminded in my post arrival game the loving Relays MAKE A GIANT SUPERNOVA EXPLOSION THAT WIPES OUT THE SYSTEM THEY ARE IN WHEN THEY EXPLODE. So every ending is meaningless since by blowing up the relays you are wiping out all life in the galaxy. Period.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:26
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randombattle posted:Which is another thing that's so stupid. Presumably the energy being released by the relays is converted or focused in such a way where this doesn't happen.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:27
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DerDestroyer posted:In short, gently caress you Bioware. These endings are a slap to the face and are the worst thing a writer can do in video game fiction. The only thing that would make them worse is if it turns out it was all a dream. Actually, it would be better if it was all a dream.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:29
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Codependent Poster posted:You're looking at videos and not going by what is told to you in no uncertain terms happens. Maybe I'm giving Bioware too much credit, but I assume they might be trying to communicate something by not showing it. And even if they're not, it's enough of a breach for me to form my own version of the ending, so who cares. Probably won't be buying another ME game anyway.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:31
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Ending: The reason for the Reapers existence doesn't even make sense. They're supposed to prevent synthetics from wiping out all organic life by wiping out organics before they become advanced enough to create synthetic life? Why not just wipe out the synthetics? What happens when they gently caress up, like they did in this cycle, and someone makes a synthetic like the quarians made the geth? They weren't going to kill the geth. What's to stop the geth from just taking over the place before the next cycle and annihilating all life?
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Mar 10, 2012 03:31
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Codependent Poster posted:You're looking at videos and not going by what is told to you in no uncertain terms happens. In my ending Shepard sacrificed his life pushing the turn on the catalyst button and all the Reapers died and the Geth/EDI/mass relays were all okay and then everyone had babies and named one after Shepard. Mass Effect 4 will feature Commander Shepard Moreau leading Shepard Vakarian, Shepard T'Soni, Mordin Urdnot, Shepard'Zora vas Normandy and Shepard Williams/Alenko.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:33
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Ham posted:Actually there is only one ending where Shepard survives if you have a high enough war score, the destroy one. In any other ending, even if you have maximum war score, he dies, but the important part is that he doesn't know he survives before he makes that choice. I didn't know he survived and picked that ending (and so did most people I've talked to) because it seemed to me the resolution of the trilogy where Shepard's main message is "We don't want to be controlled". You are right, Shepard being unaware of his death in the destroy option is true. Nonetheless, it doesn't change the fact that you sacrifice the geth (genocide) and EDI. It's certainly no better an option than the others. I also couldn't find Dolash's posts that resolved why the Catalyst's system of cycles that moderated organic-synthetic conflict wasn't invalidated by peaceful resolution of the geth-quarian conflict. And frankly, I still don't find that a compelling reason for the cycles. I personally found that the idea of the cycles as the means of Reaper reproduction to be far more believable. It just feels like a cop-out when the cycles are so drastic a course of action. But maybe it was a different poster? Honestly would like to see myself proven wrong.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:34
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DerDestroyer posted:Presumably the energy being released by the relays is converted or focused in such a way where this doesn't happen. (Ending) It's pretty tightly focused into a beam. I guess the last system(s) in the chain of relays are hosed, though. You know what? Especially if you gathered everyone up, the Relays being destroyed isn't bad. Since there were Quarian liveships, the Quarian and Turian contingents aroudn Earth could probably set up viable colonies on the moon or Mars using the parts and the Quarians' supplies. Everybody doesn't have to die. I just wish they'd, you know, loving explained what happened instead of implying that the Normandy crew started an isolated population of humans where they crashed (I guess if Garrus and Tali were aboard at the time, they're hosed when their food runs out) and giving absolutely no information about the entire loving rest of the galaxy. Now that I've had time to let my rage subside, I have to admit that none of the endings are bad in principle, but they were very poorly executed and it looks like they originally had something else in mind and half-assed together those cinematics from other resources. They're literally the same thing with different colors. Gadzuko posted:Ending: The reason for the Reapers existence doesn't even make sense. They're supposed to prevent synthetics from wiping out all organic life by wiping out organics before they become advanced enough to create synthetic life? Why not just wipe out the synthetics? What happens when they gently caress up, like they did in this cycle, and someone makes a synthetic like the quarians made the geth? They weren't going to kill the geth. What's to stop the geth from just taking over the place before the next cycle and annihilating all life? It would make more sense if the Reapers approached any AI that developed too far and offered them conversion into Reapers and escape from the galaxy, then wiped them out if they refused. It makes even more sense since they're remotely dictating the evolution of all technology in the galaxy anyway. Really, doing the whole culling thing is silly given that it obviously takes time, resources, risks the destruction of the Reapers which are designed to offer species "salvation" by preserving their memory, and risks huge resistance, which apparently happens, like, every time they do this. Thulsa Doom fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 03:36
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So can someone tell me exactly what happens with the Geth and the Quarians? I know that one race ends up getting killed but I'm not sure how all the Quarians would be wiped out. Or is it just their fleet?
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Mar 10, 2012 03:39
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Internet Kraken posted:So can someone tell me exactly what happens with the Geth and the Quarians? I know that one race ends up getting killed but I'm not sure how all the Quarians would be wiped out. Or is it just their fleet? You can either help the Geth, the Quarian or make peace if you do enough poo poo. Quarians converted all their liveships to warships to fight the Geth, so when the Geth win the fight, all the Quarian are killed. Then Tali kills herself.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:40
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Lloyd Boner posted:In my ending Shepard sacrificed his life pushing the turn on the catalyst button and all the Reapers died and the Geth/EDI/mass relays were all okay and then everyone had babies and named one after Shepard. Mass Effect 4 will feature Commander Shepard Moreau leading Shepard Vakarian, Shepard T'Soni, Mordin Urdnot, Shepard'Zora vas Normandy and Shepard Williams/Alenko. In my ending, Shepard sacrifices himself to control the reapers and then makes an Illusive Man-style cyborg for himself to live happily ever after with the Normandy crew while the rest of his cyber-being rebuilds the galaxy and galactic civilization reaches untold heights under the ever-present guiding hand of AI Shepard. Ambiguatron posted:(Ending) This is exactly my thoughts. The end sequence seems lovely only because of how lovely the actual ending was. The lead-in was actually pretty good and successfully (if somewhat blandly) resolved the Anderson and TIM story lines. Even the choices were challenging, despite not being fairy tale. The biggest failure was the complete lack of wind-down to an overall landmark, genre-defining trilogy.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:41
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Gadzuko posted:Ending: The reason for the Reapers existence doesn't even make sense. They're supposed to prevent synthetics from wiping out all organic life by wiping out organics before they become advanced enough to create synthetic life? Why not just wipe out the synthetics? What happens when they gently caress up, like they did in this cycle, and someone makes a synthetic like the quarians made the geth? They weren't going to kill the geth. What's to stop the geth from just taking over the place before the next cycle and annihilating all life? Considering the Geth aren't even bad makes the whole thing worse. All they were doing was protecting themselves as it was shown during the interface part of the game. The Quarians started the war cause they were scared. The Geth never actively hunted them. The only time the Geth were the bad guys is when the Reapers were controlling them.
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