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No amount of DLC can save this ending because no matter what gets tacked on or removed from it, the Reapers' entire motivation is a bullshit premise that makes zero sense.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:41
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Veotax posted:At the end of the game? Your choices don't mean a drat thing, but the game makes a ton of references to your choices in previous games through out. Yeah I can't imagine how lame ME3 must be like when you start a new game from scratch. With all the apearances, link-ins and crosstalk about half of the content would be missing or replaced by boring generic guys. How would they even replace Wrex or Legion in the main storyline  Plus you would be hosed because you get a crapton of bonus war asset points from the old chars, and if you made the "right" choices in ME1/2. So much that effective readyness maxes out in the late midgame without ever touching multiplayer, or grinding too many if the terrible scan&fetch sidequests. My only big gripe with ME3 so far is that Cerberus gets way overused as the omnipotent, all knowing enemy that's always a step ahead of you. How does a freaking secret extremist splintergroup have so many armies, bases and stuff, it's ridiculous. sauer kraut fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Mar 11, 2012 |
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Mar 11, 2012 00:42
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steakmancer posted:Where the hell do I find Morinth? Apparently, it's not possible to stop her from her being turned into a Banshee unfortunately. She turns into a Banshee regardless of your choices.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:43
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rainy day posted:I get the feeling that the ending was a result of them wanting to have things a certain way for some distant future game and the rear end in a top hat writer deciding he wanted to do something "deep." unfortunately trying to write a "deep" ending to a story doesn't work when a) it contradicts the tone already set by 3 20-30 hour games and b) your writing credentials consist of writing for jade empire and the mass effect series, and co-writing books about mass effect. This happens in just about every art form. It's the popular band that creates a weird concept album later on in their careers because none of their handlers have the nuts to tell them that it's a bad idea. Also, one big problem with any story that tries to make people care about something abstract like "the world" or "the galaxy" is that our brains are not wired to give a drat about stuff of that scale. It's not intelligible. People care about individual characters and not abstractions. That's why the Mordin death scene is so emotionally resonant. It makes a huge story involving entire species about the arc of characters that you've grown to care about. No one cares about abstractions like 'the krogans' or 'the salarians.' You understand those concepts in terms of memorable characters like Wrex and Mordin through their relationship to Shepherd. Exposition DXM star-child jars the player. The player has a connection to Anderson and TIM, so those scenes mean something. Once that scene ends, you're in goofy abstraction land. It's really too bad, because I loved the tone of what happens right after Shepherd gets lasered by the reaper.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:43
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AlternateAccount posted:No amount of DLC can save this ending because no matter what gets tacked on or removed from it, the Reapers' entire motivation is a bullshit premise that makes zero sense. True, but if they cut out the last 15 minutes, the entire conversation with the Star Child, or they could have Shepard push back and call the thing out on its bad logic.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:44
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Krataar posted:I thought this is what was implied if you romanced her and then talked to her in London right before the final mission. All ridiculousness about the ending afterwards aside I thought it was hinting that whatever happens she has Shepard's blue babies.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:45
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Charlie Mopps posted:Well, that would explain that scene. I was pretty confused by it. I got that scene without a romance.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:48
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Charlie Mopps posted:Well, that would explain that scene. I was pretty confused by it. All sheps get the mind meld space horizon thing don't they?  Liara, you sly dog!
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Mar 11, 2012 00:50
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Some of these people in multiplayer are mind boggling. When there is an objective there is only one at a time and the maps are smaller than Call of Duty maps, so why the hell do I find myself being overrun while everybody else is doing something on the opposite side of the map? Why would multiple level 10+ players think they are supposed to rush the enemy instead of waiting at the landing zone? Another one, I can't figure out if it's a MP bug, a lot of people will run up behind me and stop directly in front of me while I'm shooting at something. Why do they keep doing this?
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Mar 11, 2012 00:50
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Jimbot posted:True, but if they cut out the last 15 minutes, the entire conversation with the Star Child, or they could have Shepard push back and call the thing out on its bad logic. Right, this is how an expansion to resolve the ending can work. Give Shepard the proper and correct response, allow him to reject star-child. Or simply have him never go up on that platform to meet him in the first place and something entirely different happens. True enough, the Reapers motivations would still be really lame, but so what? They are villains and they are wrong. Having the Reapers motivations be something we can disprove just makes Shepard even more right in resisting them. They still firmly believe they are correct and that if left unchecked synthetics will eventually consume and kill all organics everywhere, so they still must be resisted. Their motivation being weaker is not nearly as bad as what we DID get in the ending anyway, which STILL had that problem anyway.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:50
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Yaos posted:Some of these people in multiplayer are mind boggling. When there is an objective there is only one at a time and the maps are smaller than Call of Duty maps, so why the hell do I find myself being overrun while everybody else is doing something on the opposite side of the map? Why would multiple level 10+ players think they are supposed to rush the enemy instead of waiting at the landing zone? In some cases, the landing zone is an indefensible pit, and getting to the landing zone doesn't make it go faster. Also, it can force the enemies to spawn farther away so you don't get swamped as easily.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:51
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FINISHED! here's my thoughts: I Was really worried that the auto-dialogue and the smaller fraction of choice (split between just paragon/renegade) in conversations was going to kill the game for me. I was wrong. The auto-dialogue wasn't too terrible, it resulted in some much better character development and conversation pieces with your entire crew. The way the crew was handled and conversed with you on both the ship, the citadel and on missions was brilliant - there was so much more banter, so much more conversation and they actually felt like a team and I am compelled to play through the game again with different squad mates to see their reaction and conversations during missions - something I did not give a poo poo about in mass effect 2 in the slightest. Gays in space: as a gay man, having queer representation in mainstream media that I consume is actually an important thing to me. The way it was represented in this game was on-par with New Vegas for the most part, romances tend to counter this slightly but the fact that your Shepard can officially be gay now is a huge step in the right direction. Bravo etc. Kaidan - I romanced him, it felt like it fit in with my canon shep's narrative, kaidan didn't feel 'surprise gay' and it worked as a natural conclusion to the story that had developed over the two characters in the previous games. The horrifying romance scene did NOT fade to black as I thought it would, which is a win for equality and a loss for anyone who has to sit through it (robotic underwear wrestling). Still, pretty happy, I'm wondering what people like Count Choculitis think about Kaidan being open to male Shepards in the third game, does it retcon the character for you? Edi/Joker: No. that is all. callbacks: lots of them. Sure I know when I do a second playthrough on my renegade female shepard I'm going to see how transparent the process is but your first time through makes you really feel like you've shaped the story in a meaningful way. Every second conversation seems to reference events from 1 and 2, characters return (and not just in email form) and contribute important moments - it's pretty satisfying. The ending: Here's how I remember it. The Normandy lands on earth (after I picked destroy), everyone scans wreckage with omni-tools hoping to find shepard alive or at the very least, his body. Suddenly your love interest or liara hears a sound, looks up and Shepard crawls out of the rubble and starts limping towards them with a satisfied grin. The mass effect 1 ending comes full circle, starbuck turns into a pigeon and lee orders the fleet to fly into the Sun. Japanese dancing robot montage in Times Square. The end. ImpAtom posted:I will say that I liked the Kaiden romance "ended" (at least I got the cheevo for it) when Kaiden and Shepard went out to a bar together and talked, instead of the most important thing being THEY HAD SEX. Yeah, there's still a sex scene later on, but it isn't treated as the all-important defining romance thing.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:52
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Extra Smooth Balls posted:All sheps get the mind meld space horizon thing don't they? Yeah, you get that regardless of if you romanced her or not. Not really sure what that means, then.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:52
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Extra Smooth Balls posted:All sheps get the mind meld space horizon thing don't they? Oh come on now! The scene is not that hard to understand. Liara is NOT having mind babies with Shepard there. Even for a Liara romancer, they just make out. What that is, is a more in depth form of what Liara did to Shepard in ME1 when they shared the cipher. You are just getting a stronger visualization of it, as the player. Specifically, what she is doing is sharing her memories and experiences - her life and being - with Shepard. She only possibly has space babies with Shep if you romance her and then you know, the sex scenes. That mind meld is not a sex scene.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:53
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One thing a DLC that fixes the ending should do is make it possible to raise Galactic Readiness without playing multiplayer, especially if the outcome of the decent ending rides on your effective war assets. It would be really bullshit to say "Pay $10 for this DLC and also $10 for an online pass if you're on a used copy (plus Xbox Live Gold fees for 360 owners) if you want a proper resolution to the trilogy." besides, you'd have to pay for the DLC anyway, so they're still getting the $10 they would have got from an online pass.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:53
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doctor 7 posted:Yeah, it's utterly piss poor story telling. You often have this in TV shows where a main character is trying to save someone important to them for an episode. However this character has shown up for a whole 2 minutes so you couldn't care less about them. To me, the problem with the kid was that he completely overstayed his welcome. The character served a purpose during the opening sequence in Vancouver. When Sovereign attacked the citadel in ME1, we already kind of cared about the place because we'd been there repeatedly over the course of the game. When the reapers come to Earth in ME3, it doesn't have the same significance. Of course it's Earth, cradle of mankind and everything, but we don't know anyone there, and all we see of it are some bland, desolate set pieces that get blown up within minutes. So they throw a little boy in there to represent the struggling civilian populace of the planet and eventually drive home the point that poo poo just got real by killing him off. It's kind of hamfisted and I'd rather they'd done an extended prologue that involves some actual interaction with Earth citizens, but I can accept that they wanted a strong symbol for the connection between Shepard and Earth - especially considering that in two of the available backgrounds, she isn't even from there. Then they actually went overboard with it and turned the kid into a major plot point - a character that has like two lines of dialogue, was never in the series before and can't possibly have the same importance to me as a player that the writers pictured him having to Shepard. Hell, up until now, there weren't any children in ME at all. Meanwhile, far more important plot devices from the earlier games go completely ignored (dark energy springs to mind), and gaping plot holes aren't patched up (how did the reapers make it to the galaxy in the first place?).
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Mar 11, 2012 00:55
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Aristobulus posted:Right, this is how an expansion to resolve the ending can work. Give Shepard the proper and correct response, allow him to reject star-child. Or simply have him never go up on that platform to meet him in the first place and something entirely different happens. I've got a better idea for the ending Happens the same as it does but when Shepard heads up to talk to the Catalyst loving BOOM out of nowhere Harbinger bursts through the roof of the Crucible. See Harbinger is loving pissed Shepard has been dogging the Reapers since the beginning and is constantly loving with his plans. I saw Harbinger as getting more and more desperate with his attempts to take out Shepard and the fact that he lands and starts shooting Shepard with an anti-ship laser beam on Earth is a good indication of that. No way should Harbinger just give up when Shepard hits the beam. He knows where it goes and he knows what's up there. It would give the game that final boss moment it needs and that final confrontation of Shepard sticking it to the Reapers. Not only would it be a way to bypass the anti-climatic conversation with the Catalyst but would be loving satisfying to finally stick it to Harbinger. I dunno how Shepard would fight Harbinger on foot while wounded with nothing but a pistol but gently caress man Shepard is an unstoppable bad rear end.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:56
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Banjodark posted:FINISHED! I thought it was a great addition to the series and something definitely missed in the first two which kind of makes it feel out of place. In the first two games there were no gay people anywhere, except for unlocking stuff on PC from what I understand. I love how it was handled in ME3. Cortez was a great character, who drops the fact that he lost his husband in the war in a moderately casual conversation about loss (as casual as you can be about such a thing I suppose). I thought it was a good presentation of the future of humanity where being gay is completely and utterly acceptable. It just made me realize how much it was necessary in ME1 and ME2. Malrauxs Place posted:To me, the problem with the kid was that he completely overstayed his welcome. The character served a purpose during the opening sequence in Vancouver.
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Mar 11, 2012 00:58
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So, I'm doing Aria's mission on the Citadel and for some reason I can't do anything at the C-Sec office in the Commons. Have I done something wrong or did anyone else run into a bug here?
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Mar 11, 2012 00:58
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Anal Tributary posted:Yeah, you get that regardless of if you romanced her or not. Not really sure what that means, then. It means what she says it means, I found it really sweet.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:02
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Banjodark posted:Gays in space: That reminds me of one of my favorite jokes from the game, I'm surprised Bioware actually had the nards to do it: Vega: Hey, don't knock the Grizzly, man. That was a good tank. Cortez: Yeah, you like the grizzly bears don't you? Vega: Haha, yeah! ...Wait, what? I don't get it.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:03
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Mahuum Aqoha posted:That reminds me of one of my favorite jokes from the game, I'm surprised Bioware actually had the nards to do it: 
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Mar 11, 2012 01:04
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Banjodark posted:actually I'm going to ruin this one for you it's implied they have sex immediately after that dinner/bar conversation. You can talk to Kaidan later on the Normandy and he'll mention he was upset you didn't wake him up in the morning. I'll speak for me, but I have no problem with that. I mean, isn't that what most couples do? I don't think it's weird to imply people in a relationship have sex sometimes.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:05
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Shadowborn posted:So, I'm doing Aria's mission on the Citadel and for some reason I can't do anything at the C-Sec office in the Commons. Have I done something wrong or did anyone else run into a bug here? I got tripped up here, too. You have to go talk to Bailey first, even though the game points you directly to the Commons.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:05
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Marx posted:While the dream sequences and stuff are great if you never played the games before (e.g. didn't import), I have a hard time buying that my sociopathic/colonist/ruthless Shep starts giving a gently caress now after single handedly laying waste to half the galaxy before the Reapers got there. Beyond that, as you say, there's a gap here between Shepard as player avatar and independent character. Everything that was affecting for me about this game had to do with the choices that I had to make and the fondness that I had for the characters. In certain cases, showing Shepard reacting to things around her (going super renegade on Mordin, for instance) really worked, but for the most part showing the heavy burden of Shepard's choices on her psyche didn't, because even with her defined background she's still a really shallow character who serves as a vessel for the player. Showing what Shepard feels is in effect telling the player what he / she should be feeling, and that shouldn't be done. * e - dang this thread moves quickly Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Mar 11, 2012 |
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Mar 11, 2012 01:05
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randombattle posted:stuff Seriously how the hell did we go though this game without Harbinger ever saying a drat word to Shepard? The guy never shuts up thought 2, and then suddenly he's silent? We really could have used a final "gently caress YOU SHEPARRRRD" "No gently caress YOU!". After 3 games of them acting so superior, the how good would it feel to make a Reaper loose it's cool?
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Mar 11, 2012 01:06
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doctor 7 posted:I don't think this needs to be spoilered. I think Cortez came off waaaay too strong on the crazy at the beginning. I mean sitting in the hanger bay playing someone's dying message over and over and over is just way too disturbing. Once he mellowed out a bit I think it was alright but man the start there did not portray a conflicted man he was way closer to a borderline psychotic man one second away from flipping out and murdering everyone who should not be the one piloting everyone on vital missions. You would have thought Alliance command would be like "Uh no guys let's get Shepard an Alliance pilot that isn't borderline suicidal..." I could have understood the whole thing easily if he had JUST died like in the attack on Earth but he said he died during the collector raids like years ago. I just can't comprehend how the Alliance would keep a suicidal pilot as the main shuttle pilot to the most important ship in the fleet let alone keep him on duty when he's clearly disturbed.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:06
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Dear god, I just went through the first dream sequence. I hope it was just hamstrung by graphical limitations, cause drat was that cheesy.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:08
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Banjodark posted:FINISHED! Oh yay! The femShep Kaidan romance was also awesome, but I can't ever get enough Kaidan so of course I'll have to romance him again as a male Shepard, haha. I'm so glad you thought it was good, especially since they made you wait three games for it! I'm especially happy to hear that there's no fade to black. Did you also hear that Cortez is only romanceable by men and Traynor only by women? It's about time they had characters that were exclusively same-sex!And it doesn't retcon him at all for me. Shepard and Kaidan (or Ash) have always been close and had a special bond, so the fact that it evolves into romance is totally understandable for me. The best relationships start with friendships.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:10
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randombattle posted:I've got a better idea for the ending I like this idea a whole bunch. Actually, that might make for a better Reaper motivation. Crucible+Catalyst = some sort of omniscient synthetic AI that billions of years ago offered Reapers supremacy and stewardship of the galaxy. The Reapers, over millennia, became greedy and selfish with their bestowed power, and cull the advanced races of the galaxy so that no one can threaten their supremacy. They also disabled the AI on the citadel uhhh, somehow. The Catalyst allows you to re-activate the AI which then realizes the error of its ways when it sees that trillions have died at the hands of its favored children, but as it's about to destroy the Reapers as corrupt, OH gently caress HARBINGER. So you have to fight him off, somehow, and then activate the AI's ability to destroy the Reapers. Then the Paragon/Renegade decision is to allow humanity to accept the place of the Reapers, or destroy the AI and the Citadel. I don't know. I just want... anything... different. AlternateAccount fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Mar 11, 2012 |
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Mar 11, 2012 01:10
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Veotax posted:Hell, some ME2 squad members even remember the job you game them in the Suicide Mission. Tali: I hate vents. Shepard: You did fine in the vents on the Collector base. Tali: I got set on fire!
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Mar 11, 2012 01:13
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Did anyone else think the DLC mission kind of sucked compared to the DLC missions from 2? I enjoyed the character but the mission was short and not that memorable. Hopefully we get some longer dlc missions that are more like the ones in 2 at some point. (How long did those missions come out after 2's release?)
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Mar 11, 2012 01:13
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Stupid quarians. I hate them. Here I am saving them from the geth and killing the reaper on their planet, but no.. they can't listen to me and stop shooting the geth in the loving face. Well, if the geth don't turn on me, their fleet was obviously better. Stupid quarians. I loved you, Tali, but your people were loving retarded. Also, quarians were going to get themselves killed anyways. I just sucks that Tali had to follow them. I was just about to get Shepard laid. Oh well, Ashley and Liara seem to want him pretty badly at this point too.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:14
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Aside from the Shadow Broker DLC the ME2 DLC were all about on par with the launch DLC.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:15
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Malrauxs Place posted:To me, the problem with the kid was that he completely overstayed his welcome. The character served a purpose during the opening sequence in Vancouver. When Sovereign attacked the citadel in ME1, we already kind of cared about the place because we'd been there repeatedly over the course of the game. When the reapers come to Earth in ME3, it doesn't have the same significance. Of course it's Earth, cradle of mankind and everything, but we don't know anyone there, and all we see of it are some bland, desolate set pieces that get blown up within minutes. I'd have to disagree. The kid was never okay. I literally burst out laughing when he said "everyone's dy-ing!" awkwardly and then vanished into the air duct. The tutorial level as a whole was loving awful. I just told myself "I'm sure it will get back to actually being mass effect once they get through this dumb marketing bullshit level" and I was right. until the end
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Mar 11, 2012 01:15
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I don't know, I didn't think the kid was too out of place or hamfisted. Sometimes people in severely stressful situations (combat in particular) get set off by the most random things. I have a cousin who participated in one of the first major ground offenses in Iraq, and the entire time he was there he had no problem killing (his words) "fuckin' Hajis" but later in his career he got asked to shoot a sick dog near their base and he couldn't do it.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:15
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So what was the cancelled original dark matter ending about exactly?
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Mar 11, 2012 01:20
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I've only seen one dream sequence so far, but I understand the child represents the sheer enormity of Shepard's task by standing in for every person he cannot help. Earlier in his career the faceless and helpless numbered in the thousands at best, but now they number in the billions. And so he's haunted, and his mind gives them the face of the first victim he watched die. How that plays towards the end I don't know yet.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:22
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another problem with the kid: his arms below the elbow are way too long so they look like loving noodles when hes running around in the dream sequence
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Mar 11, 2012 01:23
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:So what was the cancelled original dark matter ending about exactly? The mass effect tech was causing bad things in the universe and the Reapers were trying to find out why. they harvested civilizations to try and gain new perspectives on the problem or something like that. Essentially the Reapers had a good purpose, but didn't bother explaining anything.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:25
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