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Fire Storm posted:I mean, the Normandy is the ultimate stealth ship, maybe Harbie didn't actually see it? I mean he turns to look at it as it leaves
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Apr 16, 2019 14:17
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The Reaper IFF they got in 2 makes them invisible to the Reapers unless the start giving off other signals that are blatantly not Reaper. It's the in-universe reason why they don't come after you on the galaxy map unless you start scanning.
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Apr 16, 2019 14:21
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You can't see it in the cutscenes, but the Normandy was actually wearing a wig and a fake beard.
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Apr 16, 2019 18:05
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SubponticatePoster posted:The best part is it's just going to get dumber. The BioWare forums, which is dead, was also really... divisive following the ending
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Apr 16, 2019 18:16
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SgtSteel91 posted:The BioWare forums, which is dead, was also really... divisive following the ending god, people were so pissed about it The ME3 endings drove a lot of people completely up the wall and looking back they're almost like a gamergate dress rehearsal
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Apr 16, 2019 18:31
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To be honest, I´m not sure what Bioware expected when you decide to cap off a trilogy with that kind of ending(s). There´s a lot to discuss after the LP but I can totally buy into the report that Casey Hudson apparently locked himself up with some of the writers in a room, writing the ending while huffing each others farts* in the last possible minute. *Instances of huffing collegial farts may or may not have happended.
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Apr 16, 2019 18:43
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It was just him and Mac Walters in that room, as I recall. None of the other writers had any input on the ending. They weren't even allowed to give feedback. And yeah, for them to go from "You make your own story, we just give you a world and the tools to experience that story" to "If you don't like the story we wrote, you're impugning upon our artistic integrity" over the course of 1.5 out of 3 games is just flabbergasting. To go from excited about making a world where thousands of stories could be told, to excited about destroying any possibility of telling more stories in that world - well, it's about as damning a statement on  as I can imagine. How far they have fallen.Casey Hudson was the real reaper, and Mac Winters was his Kei Lang.
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Apr 16, 2019 18:59
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ashpanash posted:And yeah, for them to go from "You make your own story, we just give you a world and the tools to experience that story" to "If you don't like the story we wrote, you're impugning upon our artistic integrity" over the course of 1.5 out of 3 games is just flabbergasting. To go from excited about making a world where thousands of stories could be told, to excited about destroying any possibility of telling more stories in that world - well, it's about as damning a statement on I've made this point before elsewhere but this is why I don't blame EA specifically for what happened with ME3, because if you're an EA exec looking to keep people coming back to Mass Effect spinoffs for a decade this would be like the worst possible way to do it in an alternate timeline where ME3 has a pretty standard "congratulations Shepard, you destroyed the Reapers, here is what the galaxy looks like based on Your Choices" ending, Mass Effect is probably a much larger cultural thing. There was a point where it was being talked about as the next Star Wars and even an ending that just barely stuck the landing probably leads to a much different ME4, a spinoff or two into different game genres, and maybe an actual ME film.
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Apr 16, 2019 19:20
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Seriously, even if the ending was going to wind up being the cliched one that they seemed to be signaling to in ME2 (“turns out the Mass Effect technology is actually killing the galaxy, the Reapers were just trying to keep civilizations from crossing the event horizon that we’re rapidly approaching”), that would still have had a better chance of at least going okay, instead of... What we’re about to get.
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Apr 16, 2019 19:59
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considering how large of an audience the series has/had, I think it would have been nice for them to attempt a climate-change plot, especially with how climate-change is being discussed these days. Sure it may have been as goofy and cliche as most of bioware's other stories but it would have been SOMETHING and it would have been a good way to bring attention to a problem that is real
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Apr 16, 2019 20:32
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Just don't destroy the world you built. That's all. Make the story as dumb as you want to, make it absurd or disappointing, fine. But don't destroy the world forever. That's it. That's all they had to do. But no, they jealously said "MINE!" and killed it.
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Apr 16, 2019 20:55
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Aces High posted:considering how large of an audience the series has/had, I think it would have been nice for them to attempt a climate-change plot, especially with how climate-change is being discussed these days. (The whole dark matter making stars burn faster or whatever)
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Apr 16, 2019 23:07
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that's what I mean, they should've stuck with that one
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Apr 16, 2019 23:14
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Aces High posted:that's what I mean, they should've stuck with that one  From a pure writing standpoint they painted themselves into a corner. You see a real difference between DA and ME - DA2 aside they know where they're going with it. The overarching plot is already decided on and every new game furthers that. With ME they made a game that turned out to be a hit and then had to pull everything that followed out of their asses. As much as we love ME2 it doesn't do anything as far as the story goes and the complaints about how it does fuckall for plot progression are spot on. It's a jerkoff of "wouldn't this be cool?" and it is, but it's an aside. The dark matter stuff is crappy writing because it contradicted their own canon laid out by Sovereign in the first game. So you destroy civilizations because they get too advanced and by using mass effect fields are screwing things up? That poo poo you invented? Everything fell apart when they started trying to explain why Reapers gon' reap. If dark matter created by mass relays screws things up, instead of murdering everyone how about stopping by and saying "these things are useful sure, but there are consequences. How about we all work together to figure this out?" Maybe one of those destroyed civilizations would have come up with a solution in 60 thousand years but oops, you killed them. The terribly inept Quarians figured out something was going on. And while Leviathan is a decent DLC they went and contradicted their own canon again by attributing the creation of the Reapers not to solve a problem with dark energy, but because the race that created them were angry their toys kept getting taken away. There are some great story lines in ME, but the overall writing is really, really awful when you take it apart. It's just poo poo thrown at a wall and keeping random bits that stuck. Like nobody involved ever took a freshman-level creative writing course.
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Apr 17, 2019 00:55
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The best thing they could've done is said 'Oh look the Reapers are defeated and stranded in dark space because you beat Sovereign, maybe they'll be a threat in the future when we need another sequel 4-6 games down the line' and then just gotten on to making 2 and 3 about other problems.
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Apr 17, 2019 01:09
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Kurieg posted:Well, the original ending you could tell was rushed for time and incomplete. I looked at it and could go "Well at least it's an ending, i'm not happy with it but I'm sure if they had time they'd fix the issues." the key here is the EC was also almost certainly rushed and incomplete, so like I said, I judge them similarly. Trust me, i get your point - I just don't think EC harms the whole ending situation despite agreeing that it's kind of ... uh, questionable? Let's go with questionable, about the Normandy arriving like that. Citadel is a lot more plausible as "okay let's take the time to get it right, the DLC" to me. Psion fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Apr 17, 2019 |
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Apr 17, 2019 02:55
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SubponticatePoster posted:With ME they made a game that turned out to be a hit and then had to pull everything that followed out of their asses. But no, let's kill and immediately resurrect Shepard, blow everything up and gently caress around with Cerberus and a bunch of bugmen in the Terminus Systems because humans have gone missing. 
DMorbid fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Apr 17, 2019 |
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Apr 17, 2019 03:10
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FoolyCharged posted:In all honesty, shep stopping the giant, all in raid for the future of the universe to evac the squad, complete with pausing for tearful goodbyes opens way more plot holes than ambiguous "they didn't make it" and died or got injured. All sentient life in the galaxy is depending on Shepherd getting to the beam., instead she stops to have her ship come down from space to evac her friends. That's not heroic, that's stupidity.
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Apr 17, 2019 17:11
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Psion posted:the key here is the EC was also almost certainly rushed and incomplete, so like I said, I judge them similarly. Trust me, i get your point - I just don't think EC harms the whole ending situation despite agreeing that it's kind of ... uh, questionable? Let's go with questionable, about the Normandy arriving like that.
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Apr 17, 2019 20:42
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Shamus and Subponicate both brought it up, but a huge part of the problem is that ME3 tries to do a lot of the things that are normally relegated to the middle part of a trilogy - because ME2 basically doesn't advance the main story/theme of the series at all. As much as the character centric stuff in that game is wonderful, the main plot of ME2 is basically a side story. And the shame of it is that it wouldn't have taken a ton of effort to bridge all of the games together, but Bioware just didn't really bother even with the resources they had. In retrospect, i've come to kinda wish ME2 was about the Leviathans more than anything else. It's really annoying that you meet the creators of the Reapers in what's essentially locked away in a DLC - it really deserved its own game, I think. It also helps that the missions that were a part of that DLC feel a lot more like Mass Effect 1 than anything else. So a game that's based around unraveling the mysteries of the Leviathans and the Reapers probably would've been more optimal then what ended up happening, especially since, if it'd been done well, it could've tied into a prospective 3rd story much better and you wouldn't have had to gently caress around with the idiocy of Shepard dying and then you having to work for an evil cartoon organization for a whole game. Or something. I dunno. Replaying the trilogy a couple times myself sort of made me realize that, for all of ME1's faults, I kinda miss the patient, careful worldbuilding and sense of exploration that game cultivated, even if the execution of those things was hit or miss at times.
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Apr 18, 2019 01:12
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Durandal1707 posted:Or something. I dunno. Replaying the trilogy a couple times myself sort of made me realize that, for all of ME1's faults, I kinda miss the patient, careful worldbuilding and sense of exploration that game cultivated, even if the execution of those things was hit or miss at times. Mass Effect 1 is the game I've completed the most out of all four. I found 2 so tedious to play I ended up only carrying over 2 of my characters from my ME1 playthroughs. For reference: 1-6 times 2-2 times 3-3.5 times (game glitched and reset the counter for kills trophy) Andromeda- 3 times
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Apr 18, 2019 10:46
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Kurieg posted:Even if you didn't mind the standard endings, the Extended Cut came out and made everything worse somehow. It explained some things that people had questions about, but also opened up way more questions. Yeah. "We need to destroy the Reapers so that races can establish their own destiny!" was the most logical progression but instead you got in trouble for 'How dare you not forcibly institute a transhuman utopia.'
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Apr 19, 2019 14:58
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Dawgstar posted:Yeah. "We need to destroy the Reapers so that races can establish their own destiny!" was the most logical progression but instead you got in trouble for 'How dare you not forcibly institute a transhuman utopia.' Synthesis is especially gross because it's *the Reapers allowing you to live because you're finally homogeneous enough to ensure zero conflict*
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Apr 19, 2019 18:57
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Pattonesque posted:Synthesis is especially gross because it's *the Reapers allowing you to live because you're finally homogeneous enough to ensure zero conflict* "Oh hey, you're enough percentage of my perfect immortal race that I don't feel like genociding you now!"
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Apr 19, 2019 19:15
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The Bold Kobold posted:"Oh hey, you're enough percentage of my perfect immortal race that I don't feel like genociding you now!" “Also even though any individual Reaper has a body count in the trillions, we’re just going to stick around and hang out with you now that you’re no longer genetically impure. That’s what you wanted, right? To live in peace with ‘The Reapers’? BTW this is the best ending”
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Apr 19, 2019 20:46
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gently caress it, I doubt I’m ever gonna pick Andromeda back up again after only putting a few hours into it back when it launched: Did any of ME3’s endings get canonized by it?
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Apr 19, 2019 20:50
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Nope!
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Apr 19, 2019 20:52
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Pattonesque posted:“Also even though any individual Reaper has a body count in the trillions, we’re just going to stick around and hang out with you now that you’re no longer genetically impure. That’s what you wanted, right? To live in peace with ‘The Reapers’? BTW this is the best ending” Not to mention, wasn't this Saren's whole plan? The antagonist from the first game was right the whole time, and you made him kill himself for it.
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Apr 19, 2019 20:54
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Regalingualius posted:gently caress it, I doubt I’m ever gonna pick Andromeda back up again after only putting a few hours into it back when it launched: Did any of ME3’s endings get canonized by it?
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Apr 19, 2019 21:09
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Regalingualius posted:gently caress it, I doubt I’m ever gonna pick Andromeda back up again after only putting a few hours into it back when it launched: Did any of ME3’s endings get canonized by it? The entire point of ME:A being set in the Andromeda galaxy was so that Bioware wouldn't have to account for ME3 at all. Seriously. The original plan was to do a Mass Effect prequel series based on the First Contact War but fans didn't want that, so they had to find a setting that wasn't affected by ME3's endings. Bioware wanted an ending for the trilogy that would be so large and all-encompassing that it basically locked the Milky Way galaxy, and that's what they got. Frankly they should've made the canon ending one where the Reapers win. That way we could've gotten a new Mass Effect trilogy with the Yahg as the dominant species. I think we can all agree that that would've been awesome. grack fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Apr 19, 2019 |
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Apr 19, 2019 22:20
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No you see, carbon and silicon just can't ever get along, despite the three game long subplot you came here after resolving and also the pilot making out with his ship probably right now. Just can't be done. They really should have kept the space global warming plot.
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Apr 19, 2019 22:20
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Octatonic posted:No you see, carbon and silicon just can't ever get along, despite the three game long subplot you came here after resolving and also the pilot making out with his ship probably right now. Just can't be done.
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Apr 19, 2019 22:41
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Fire Storm posted:WAIT. I GOT IT. Joker and EDI are the new Adam and Eve! The reapers are trying to kill them because CARBON AND SILICON CANNOT GET ALONG drat IT, and Shepard needs to keep them alive! "EDI, why do you have a functional womb?" "The Illusive man..." "Nope. Nope. I don't need to know any more."
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Apr 19, 2019 23:01
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Fire Storm posted:WAIT. I GOT IT. Joker and EDI are the new Adam and Eve! The reapers are trying to kill them because CARBON AND SILICON CANNOT GET ALONG drat IT, and Shepard needs to keep them alive! See this is why you choose Destroy
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Apr 19, 2019 23:08
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Kurieg posted:"EDI, why do you have a functional womb?" SHEPARD COMMANDER. THIS UNIT IS FULLY FUNCTIONAL AND PROGRAMMED WITH MANY TECHNIQUES. And Mordin did something to make Legion biologically functional?
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Apr 19, 2019 23:37
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Fire Storm posted:SHEPARD COMMANDER. THIS UNIT IS FULLY FUNCTIONAL AND PROGRAMMED WITH MANY TECHNIQUES. I want you to know that this reference is very much appreciated.
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Apr 22, 2019 11:43
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Kissing our Butts goodbye Well, we did it. We made it to the end of the trilogy, at least as far as official canon goes. We wake up an indeterminate time after taking Harbinger's laser to the face and manage to v e r y s l o w l y stagger our way to the beam. Onboard the Citadel it's a chunky salsa of corpses. Anderson also made it up and we separately make it to the control panel where we can open the arms. But then TIM shows up looking rather  and somehow now has the power to indoctrinate us so we shoot Anderson. Then it's a repeat of the final standoff with Saren. If you didn't take all those side options at every point in the game then you have to fight him. But we did and so he blows his reaperized head off. Then we pres butan and wait. The scene between Shep and Anderson is very good. If you're a ManShep then he tells you that you would have been a good father. Then Anderson takes a little nap and we try to as well but get rudely interrupted by Hackett. The macguffin isn't working right. Then we pass out and take an elevator to The Ends Are Bad.As if I didn't have reason enough to hate that loving kid he's now the avatar of the AI for the Reapers. The Catalyst takes the form of a child and acts like one. This might've had some emotional impact if they had your squadmate that died on Virmire instead but we get a kid we saw for 10 seconds before getting blown up. Starkid is a terrible hamfisted attempt to make an emotional connection and we've been forced to suffer his presence since the first dream sequence. We're given the choice to destroy, control, or make soup. Synthesis is so gross and un-thought out that other than doing it once to see what happened I never choose it. We came to the Citadel to chew bubblegum and kick rear end and being out of gum we take the latter option. Bye bye Starkid you insufferable little gently caress. Then there's a big ol' explosion and cosmic farts kill everything Reaper and if we were to take SK's word for it, everything with a microchip in it. Which clearly isn't the case. Joker apparently got drunk and crash landed on some planet with two moons. How this is related to anything I have no loving idea. Why? Did every other ship in that fleet also crash land? Where did they go?  And at the end because we had a good war score we get to see Shep ain't dead after all, though being stranded in zero atmo under several tons of debris would probably do the trick eventually. ROLL CREDITS. The little cutscene at the end would be cuter if it wasn't voiced by that same loving kid, and they didn't just rescale an adult model for him. Like, look at how goddamn tiny his head is. I guess in the far future microcephaly is a constant threat. It was cool of them to get Buzz Aldrin, though you can tell he isn't a VA. Also the end splash changed, originally it was "Thanks for playing to the end, go buy DLC!" which didn't really soothe any ruffled feathers after the last 20 minutes of poo poo you were forced to endure. If you didn't play ME3 when it was released it's kind of hard to understand how much poo poo got flung regarding the ending(s). I mean, it sucks. 2 dudes locked themselves in a room and pooped out an ending. There are a couple of good parts but otherwise it's total garbage. Whatever you spent 3 games doing doesn't matter in the loving slightest. I mentioned in the OP that a week before the game was released, Casey Hudson had the balls to say in an interview that it wasn't just going to be one of a couple possible endings but that all your choices made over the course of the series would make your ending special and unique. Yeah, no. You get RGB choices. Destroy probably makes the most sense, though intellectually (if such a term can be used in this case) I find Control the most intriguing. Pre-EC it didn't make a loving difference, really, as you got the colored cutscene and then it went to credits. That was it. The EC added the voiceovers and does at least reflect some of your decisions. It will show things like if you cured the genophage or not, the Quarian/Geth situation, basically the galaxy as you left it. Control is narrated by Shepard, and depending on whether you were a paragon or renegade the flavor changes. A good Shep talks about rebuilding and watching over people, a renegade basically becomes cuttlefish Hitler. Synthesis, the idiot fucker ending originally ended with Joker's hat being sentient. Now EDI gives the recap and gets Pinocchio'd. Entire encyclopedias have been written about the endings and why they're lovely. Starkid tries to talk you out of Destroy by telling you all your robit friends will die, but then in the same breath goes on to say that nothing will be lost and everything can be fixed. EDI appears on the deathboard because originally she would get out of the ship with Joker even if you picked Destroy. Also like petulant children, Walters and Hudson made it so if you wait too long to do anything (the "I won't choose the poo poo you're offering" dialogue option) you get a game over. You also get a game over (well everyone dies, same thing) if you shoot Starkid which is what most people wanted to do after the first playthrough. The EC also caused some stupidity like the Normandy landing in front of Harbie to pick up your teammates. Now hardcore BW fans are all nuts and Hudson and Walters got death threats, which is absolutely loving bonkers. Hudson actually quit after the fiasco and went to work for (I think) Respawn. But he's back now and notably staying under the radar. Walters kept trucking along and got dragged into working on Andromeda after it became a disaster, but he's also kept a low profile. If maybe they'd ran their ideas past other people, if maybe they weren't so up their own asses, we might've gotten an ending that was if not happy, at least satisfying. Instead we all got to gurgle down a fecal smoothie tinted with primary colors. I actually kind of had to gird my loins to do this episode, as it's really hard to do anything other than devolve into yelling different variations of gently caress YOU EAT poo poo. I kind of did this anyway. Now, we're not quite done. We still have the Citadel DLC to do which is how Shepard's story really ends.
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Apr 25, 2019 01:38
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The whole ending stretch of ME3 and especially everything after the beam is the most obviously rushed bullshit I have seen in a game since the Malachor V section in Knights of the Old Republic II. Nothing makes any sense, and it's painfully clear the team was just scrambling to get something out of the door. BioWare Magic(tm), everybody!
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Apr 25, 2019 02:00
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I think the most galling part of all this is you're just supposed to accept everything the little poo poo (who is, by his own admission, the avatar of your enemies) says as inevitable and true. I'm always astonished they even felt they 'wrote into a corner' with the Reapers being 'too powerful'. Idiots! You are writing a fictional world. The Reapers don't exist in some vacuum where they have an objective measure of power that can't be beaten or whatever. And moreover, the entire flow of the series to that date was 'Oh no, this amazing thing would be impossible!' '*Shepard Right Hooks It*" "SHEPARD DID IT AGAIN!?" over and over. Then you just hit this wall and nope, gotta listen to starkid and his pulled of the rear end 'main conflict'. After this ending was done, I pretty much never played an ME game single player again. It kind of broke the spell. I still think 1's overall plot was great and its ending was really satisfying, but 2 onward was kind of wrecked for me. Played the poo poo out of MP, though, MP was fun as hell.
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Apr 25, 2019 02:27
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SgtSteel91 posted:The BioWare forums, which is dead, was also really... divisive following the ending Now that the final part of the LP is out, man... were the Bioware forums terrible around the time of the endings Just a miserable echo chamber people calling each other genocide fetishists, luddites, fascists, and other colorful names because they someone prefered the red, blue, or green ending and thought the other two were horrible Honestly, I think I got so invested into the series that with that ending and visiting those forums afterwards got me into a bad headspace for daring to like the Red ending
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Apr 25, 2019 02:49
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