Mass Effect

[Concept]

With the third and final game in the trilogy now just a month away, I thought I'd start up a thread for Mass Effect fans. Mass Effect 3 was already voted the most anticipated game of 2012 (VGA), beating out such competition as The Last Guardian (successor to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus) and Halo 4.

I've recently started playing through the first game again as it's been a while and I want to refresh my memory. I'm going to play one save file straight though ME1 and ME2 in time for carrying it on into ME3. Already have one save file at the end of ME2 for import into ME3 (straight up Paragon Vanguard), but as it's been so long since I've played either game I'm making a new one (more a mix of Paragon and Renegade, Infiltrator) which will probably be the first file I play through ME3 with as it'll be fresh in my mind. I've also downloaded a bunch of the DLC's (all the plot ones and the ones with extra characters) to make it as complete an experience as possible.

My current Shepard:

John Shepard, Infiltrator, Colonist, Sole Survivor. Short tempered, angry, often sarcastic to the point of verbal abuse, almost totally unwilling to compromise but in the end does actually care about people (made damn sure to save all the colonists on Feros, for example) and has no particular problems with aliens. It's my rough intention to have shoved even further renegade by the events on Virmire and through much of the second game (which will probably result in me not doing some of the loyalty missions because I don't think he would) but ultimately pulling a crowning moment of awesome by telling Cerberus where to shove it at the end of ME2.

Currently I've done Therum and Feros, so still need to do Virmire, Bring Down the Sky and Noveria before I can get to the endgame.

[Raptor Jesus]

Yeah, I have ME3: N7 Collector's Edition on pre-order and all prepaid. Are you playing on 360 or PC?

I am also doing a replay through, but it's been kind of slow going for me. Some days you want to play. Some days you don't.

My First Shepard:

William Shepard / Spacer / War Hero / Soldier / Saved Everyone Everytime.

Had a relationship with Ashley, then Miranda.
Also reused him in ME2 as Adept, where he had a relationship with Tali. I wish we could have had a relationship with her in ME1 ~_~;;

My Second Shepard (FemShep)

FORGOT HER NAME Shepard / Earthborn / Sole Survivor / Infiltrator / Kind of mixed Paragon/Renegade, didn't kill Bug Queen but I did kill the humanoids.

I think I ended up deleting her cuz I didn't like the choices I made. They didn't feel like I was playing a character, but was power gaming (choosing the best choices for future bonuses in the sequels).

My Current FemShep:

Brenda Shepard / Colonist / Ruthless / Adept / Somewhat Xenophobic

Lift + Throw seems like the cruelest thing you can do to people, and I plan to use it every time I'm outdoors (especially since all the Mako missions suck ballz, I'll need something to amuse me).

Colonist seems like the perfect background for a xenophobic human due to the slaver attack during their youth. Ruthless seems like the perfect combination too, since you're attacking Batarians (who are slavers).

[Concept]

I'm playing 360, and also have ME3 on pre-order. Shame it comes out three days later here than in the states ;;. My current playthrough I'm planning on killing the insect and taking some of the more renegade choices in ME2 that I didn't take first time just to see the differences.

I don't know if I'll choose a different class for my current character come ME2. On the one hand, really enjoying my Infiltrator (love the sniper rifle), but on the other hand all my playthroughs have been combat oriented characters (also have a completed ME1 savefile with a FemShep soldier as well as my vanguard and current Infiltrator) and I enjoy biotic powers so I'm tempted to switch over to one of Adept/Sentinel.

I've not done ME2 with my ME1 femshep because her voice acting really annoys me. Even when she's supposed to be sympatheticly looking after someone she sounds condescending as all hell.

[Raptor Jesus]

Cool, we should do ME3 multiplayer together lol. My Gamertag is "KoalaDevourer"

After playing Adept on ME2, I really did fall in love with biotics- even with the ME2 nerfing (shields, barriers, and armor blocking effects). It really makes the game less aim and shoot to kill that almost all the other classes have (even Engineers).

I think when I imported my unnamed Femshep, I did Sentinel. It was okay. I took up the Shotgun training in the Collector Ship and used the Tech Armor to let me rush up close. Although, I never used any power except Tech Armor because of it's long recharge timer ~_~;;

I half-agree with you on Femshep voice, but for a completely different reason. Femshep is played by voice acting legend Jennifer Hale, and she's been in almost every voiced game I've ever played starting with Baldur's Gate. So whenever I hear her voice, I'm flooded with all the characters she has ever been. And also, her voice tone shoots from calm to wildly over emotional sometimes.
I guess in the future, women still PMS over little stuff.
[/end sexist comment]

[Concept]

Cool, we should do ME3 multiplayer together lol. My Gamertag is "KoalaDevourer"

I could definitely go for that - mine is "MrKoncept". Hopefully they'll handle the multiplayer well.

After playing Adept on ME2, I really did fall in love with biotics- even with the ME2 nerfing (shields, barriers, and armor blocking effects). It really makes the game less aim and shoot to kill that almost all the other classes have (even Engineers).

I think when I imported my unnamed Femshep, I did Sentinel. It was okay. I took up the Shotgun training in the Collector Ship and used the Tech Armor to let me rush up close. Although, I never used any power except Tech Armor because of it's long recharge timer ~_~;;

I half-agree with you on Femshep voice, but for a completely different reason. Femshep is played by voice acting legend Jennifer Hale, and she's been in almost every voiced game I've ever played starting with Baldur's Gate. So whenever I hear her voice, I'm flooded with all the characters she has ever been. And also, her voice tone shoots from calm to wildly over emotional sometimes.
I guess in the future, women still PMS over little stuff.
[/end sexist comment]

She was excellent as Bastilla in Kotor (that was her right?) because Bastilla is supposed to sound condescending all the time. That's the only other thing I really remember her in (it's been forever since I've played Baldurs Gate or Planescape which iirc she's in too?)

[Raptor Jesus]

Yeah, she was Dynaheir in BG, Mazzy in BG2, and Fall-From-Grace in PST. She was also in Metal Gear Solid, Tales of Symphonia, Brutal Legends, and my most recent game MvC3. The list goes on. I think if I printed it, the sheet would be longer than my leg lol.

My other goal is to also get 100% achievements on ME1. I'm so close now too! I was so angry that on my Hardcore run, my L55 Soldier only reached L59 after doing all the missions and (I believe) all the sidequests. I mean really? Normal run levels you from 1-50. Hardcore, can't even get 5 levels. >_<;; Also need the pure Engineer tech spam achievements that Infiltrator doesn't have. I think it should only be Neural Shock. The rest I can do normally on my Adept's run.

[Raptor Jesus]

Sorry for the double post, but after posting here, I looked on the Mass Effect Wikia page and saw a moment of absolute nerd rage.

Apparently on January 31st, Del Rey released a Mass Effect book with the permission of Bioware to continue their novels. Seems like the write never decided to look up Mass Effect, causing a large number of inconsistencies with already established canon (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XBpMF3ONlI308D9IGG8KICBHfWKU0sXh0ntukv-_cmo/preview?pli=1&sle=true) and the fans are extremely vocal (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:SpartHawg948/An_Open_Letter_Regarding_Mass_Effect:_Deception).

I'm both amazed and frightened by this.

[Concept]

So I just finished my play through of ME1 which I intend to take through ME2 in time for the third parts release. A run down of my Shepards story so far as if anyone's interested :p

John Shepard is an Infiltrator, born a on Midnoir. His parents were killed my a slaver attack. Early in his military career, his whole unit was slaughtered by a thresher maw on Akuze. Based on his history, I decided to play him as someone with a seriously short tempted, sarcastic, with slight issues with interpersonal skills but also with chronic hero syndrome.

After the attack on Eden Prime, Shepard was pissed with the councils position on Saren and not afraid to let them know it. He immediately took a liking to Wrex's uncompromising attitude and Garrus gung ho approach and commitment to acheiveing his goals. Good example of my Shepard here - threatening the official to get a grieving husband his wifes body back. After finally convincing the council, he immediately headed to Feros - born and raised on a colony himself, he was worried for the colonists. There he managed to save every single colonist and decided to spare Shiala, the penitant asari who'd formerly worked for Saren. During his brief stop in the Citadel, he failed to stop a fellow former colonist and ex-slave from killing herself, a failure which (along with a later tragedy) seriously affected a man already prone to pessimism and anger thanks to his background.

Next, to Therum to rescue Liara. The arrival of Liara on board the Normandy proved troublesome, as her obvious interest in Shepard jeopardised his burgeoning relationship with Ashley. Despite not having any real feelings for Liara, he couldn't help but be protective of her. Meanwhile he had reservations about Ash's anti-alien sentiments.

Next cam Virmire, and here's where it gets ugly. Having helped Wrex recover his family armour (and Garrus to track down Dr Saleon and Tali with her pilgramage, come to think of it), he was able to talk Wrex down. Being the soldier, Ash was the obvious choice to accompany the Salarian fire team. Shepard did everything he could to pull the heat off them, but when it came to decision time Shepard made the only call he could - heading back to defend Kaiden and the bomb, the vital part of the mission without which it all would've been in vein. As a result, his love interest Ashley died, and Shepard went off the deep end.

I did Bring Down The Sky, in which Shepard stops an asteroid colliding with a colony. My Shepard, hating Batarians (colonist background) and still raging at the universe for Ash's death, sacrificied the hostages to kill the Batarian leader. Next to Noveria, where he got Anoleus arrested. Upon confronting Benezia, even Liaras presence only made him hesitate for a moment before killing her and, largely due to his grief over Ash's death souring his view of the universe, he condemned the Rachni to extinction once more.

Before the mission to Ilos, Shepard spent the night with Liara in a moment of weakness despite still not having particularly strong feelings for her - he was just feeling alone and not thinking straight. He wasted no time trying to reason with Saren and took great pleasure killing him, hoping it woulf make him feel better for his part in Ash's death. Determined not to fall at the final hurdle, Shepard ordered the human fleet to hang back until it could take out Soverign, resulting in a new human-lead (but not human exclusive) council run by Captain Anderson.

Thanks to a combination of his early short temper and his later cold, distant, pessimistic worldview, Shepard finished with a seriously high renegade score for someone who feels compelled to help pretty much everyone - around 80% of the paragon meter was filled and about 70% of the renegade meter.

/tldr

Wow that was a lot longer than I'd intended. Next up, ME2 - will his crew and in particular potentially a new love interest (made no decisions on that yet) be able to drag the Commander out of his pessimistic worldview or will he continue to be a grumpy ass? (hint: I intend the former).

EDIT the first: Also I found it amusing that my Xbox told me Loki was playing Mass Effect just as the credits started rolling on mine.

[deoxys]

Sorry for the double post, but after posting here, I looked on the Mass Effect Wikia page and saw a moment of absolute nerd rage.

Apparently on January 31st, Del Rey released a Mass Effect book with the permission of Bioware to continue their novels. Seems like the write never decided to look up Mass Effect, causing a large number of inconsistencies with already established canon (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XBpMF3ONlI308D9IGG8KICBHfWKU0sXh0ntukv-_cmo/preview?pli=1&sle=true) and the fans are extremely vocal (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:SpartHawg948/An_Open_Letter_Regarding_Mass_Effect:_Deception).

I'm both amazed and frightened by this.

Holy shit, I read the first 5 inconsistencies and just stopped. Those are pretty big. How the hell can they get away with that? I mean... really? Laziness at it's finest.

In other news, I've recently reacquired both Mass Effects for 360 in an effort to replay them both by the time ME3 comes out in a month. I may or may not use the new saved data created by it. I basically just want to play the stories again.

[Raptor Jesus]

Even Penny Arcade (http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/02/03) did a story on it.

Anyway, I find it funny how Concept has beaten the game and in about the same time, I just basically became a Spectre and left for Noveria. I've never introduced myself as "The person who killed your mom" before, so it should be interesting when I pick up Liara.

As a way to waste time, I was looking through the in-game Lore/Codex and for the Krogans, they had a great line that made me literally laugh out loud.

"Prior to the discover of gunpowder, the main cause of death was 'eaten by predators.' Afterward, it became 'death by gunshot.'"

EDIT: Forgot to mention, but it seems the multiplayer co-op will be a Horde mode but with some minor Mass Effect twists (http://youtu.be/nyy5fAFw6UM) to the normal "Kill all the enemies of this wave." It will always be 11 waves (unlike GoW's Horde more which is 50). Some waves you will be required to defend someone who must hack a console. Other times you will have to find a certain number of data modules. It's pure combat. Some people are complaining that isn't also not particularly amazing (especially since combat has never been Mass Effect's strongest field). There are also hints that despite this being the last entry with Shepard, there might be more Mass Effect games or games set in the same universe, so they're telling people to keep their ME3 save files. I don't know if that's good news or bad.

EDIT2: Fan-made trailer:
81f-bBKkhGw

[Concept]

Anyway, I find it funny how Concept has beaten the game and in about the same time, I just basically became a Spectre and left for Noveria. I've never introduced myself as "The person who killed your mom" before, so it should be interesting when I pick up Liara.

May have only made the thread a few days ago but I've been playing for about a fortnight. Also I'm taking a year out of uni atm and failing to find work post-christmas so with no job and all my friends off at uni I've a lot of free time on my hands.

EDIT the first: I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favourite store on the citadel.

[Raptor Jesus]

Hmmmm...

So I told my friend I was doing a new ME run with a xenophonic Shepard, so he challenged me to do the Pro-Human survival run on the ME2 Suicide Mission (where only Human characters survive the mission). I then thought for moment... I could technically take it one step further while still in ME1.

If Wrex is killed on Virmire, you decide to sacrifice the Council at the Battle of the Citadel, then have Tali and Garrus die on Suicide Mission you will only go into ME3 with Liara as the only alien squad mate (as James Vega + unknown Pre-Order bonus character seem to be the only additions in ME3).

That's pretty sick. I might actually do it.

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/2826/me3mot.jpg

I lol'd.

[Concept]

I'm curious as to how the co-op mode will tie in with the main game. Although they've said it'll effect the main campaign, they've also said it'll be possible to get exactly the same outcomes in the single player campaign without doing Galaxy at War. Also, how are they going to mesh two people playing on different game files who've made completely different choices/Shepards/etc? Will it just have to be incredibly removed from the main storyline to avoid conflicts?

[Raptor Jesus]

It is assumed it adds points to your campaign. So like if we did a co-op and took over a Radar post, we would get like "Recon points" and when the final counterattack against the Reapers comes, your forces would do better.

Your choices aren't affected in co-op. But you can make less helpful choices in campaign because you have co-op bonuses.

Fake Example: If you told the Canadians to attack the United States, this would make both the Canadian and American contribution to the war weaker. But if you do co-op and help steal resources or something, you can gain enough of a bonus eventually that the loss from Canada and the US won't matter when you invade the dark side of the Moon.

It's assumed that a full Paragon route will get a super powerful army to fight the Reapers with while Renegades might have made it harder through their various choices. i.e. not having the support of the Council because you sacrificed the original Council to Sovereign.

[Concept]

I'm vaguely tempted to make a worst case scenario run - murder and alienate as many people as possible. Just so the Reapers might actually present Shepard with a challenge.

Also to be honest, with the kind of numbers and power the Reaper fleet seems to have I'll be slightly surprised if the allied counterattack amounts to anything more than throwing every available ship in the galaxy at them to hold out just long enough to provide a distraction, giving the player an opening to complete the SUPER FINAL MISSION.

I hope it's not as simple as paragon choices = good for final battle, renegade choices = bad for final battle. Take the Rachni for example - it's heavily implied ingame that the Rachni wars were the result of them being indoctrinated, which suggests they're particularly easy to indoctrinate (if it were that easy to indoctrinate the entirety of every species, the Reapers would just do that. Game over). So I'd quite like to see, for example, the paragon choice of saving the Rachni coming back to bite you in the ass when the Reapers just take over control of them again. Similarly the paragon option to destroy the Collector base screwing you over with regards to access to Collector technology, or the Geth resenting the paragon solution to Legions loyalty mission and turning against you.

[Raptor Jesus]

I'm vaguely tempted to make a worst case scenario run - murder and alienate as many people as possible. Just so the Reapers might actually present Shepard with a challenge.

Also to be honest, with the kind of numbers and power the Reaper fleet seems to have I'll be slightly surprised if the allied counterattack amounts to anything more than throwing every available ship in the galaxy at them to hold out just long enough to provide a distraction, giving the player an opening to complete the SUPER FINAL MISSION.

Ultimate Renegade Ending:
http://i.imgur.com/T79x8.jpg

[Raptor Jesus]

Demo is out. Multiplayer can also be demoed, but is only available before the 17th by people who own Battlefield 3. After the 17th, it's open to the public until ME3 releases. The demo seems to contain two chapters of ME3 and will have 1-2 hours of content.

DEMO OF MULTIPLAYER:

Okay, seems you create a multiplayer character and over the coarse of killing off waves, you gain EXP and can level up and invest in powers. You also get credits, which you can use to buy and unlock things at random such as a new weapons, weapon mods, special bonuses, race/class as the default seems to only be humans. Not sure if this will be the same in full ME3.

DEMO OF SINGLE PLAYER:

It seems like we might get to keep our level from Mass Effect 2 if we import, but I'm not 100% sure on that. Powers are still unlocked in the same way as ME2 with each level up giving some points and using them to increase a power. Level 1 costs 1 point, level 2 costs 2 points, and so on and so on. At level 4, we can customize our powers by evolving in the same way as ME2, but also on levels 5, 6, 7 we also get to customize them further with each level having two possible evolutions.

They seem to have added a new passive ability to all classes which is Fitness. It passively increases HP and Shields. Seems odd that they separated this from your class passive power.

Omni-blade is not the standard melee, which is still an elbow attack. If you hold down the melee button though, the omni-blade comes out and slashes.

EDIT2: New FemShep: Looks good on posters (http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/08/Mass-Effect-3-the-real-female-shepard.jpg)... looks bad in-game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pShKKOV_gA) =x

[Raptor Jesus]

Apparently you can play the demo's multiplayer without Gold membership (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/323/index/9006884#9151683) up until the actual release of the game. =O

[Concept]

Ran through the demo. Gotta echo some of the sentiments being expressed online about a slight worry over the amount of auto-dialogue where Shepard just says stuff without input, but I assume that's to so they can cut the demo down to as small as possible.

EDIT the first: What (http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2012/02/mass-effect-3-becomes-true-space-oddity-/1#.T0FN5Np2Ir7). Oh Bioware, you so crazy.

[Raptor Jesus]

Some changes I noticed since I went into overdrive on the Demo and its Multiplayer =x

These are gameplay changes, so I won't spoiler them.

Sentinel Tech Armor no longer provides an extra layer of shields like in ME2. Instead it gives Damage Resistance %. It also no longer detonates upon losing your shields, now detonating on second use. First usage does not trigger recharge, but detonation does ~_~; In addition, while it is active, your other powers have an 80% longer recharge time! RARGH! Did they really need to gimp Sentinel that much?!

Warp no longer affects Barriers (except maybe after getting one of the level 6 power evolutions, haven't gotten it yet in Multiplayer). Makes Adapts sad. Save up Disruptor Ammo for Adapts in multiplayer or bring squadmates who can take down Shields/Barriers to help Shepard. BTW, this was super annoying to realize in multiplayer when Phantoms attack and you wonder why their goddamn barriers are still up after Warp doesn't phase them and they gut you with their swords. Fucken Cyber Space Ninjas.

Overload now damages Shields and Barriers! Makes Engineers overpowered (breaking Armor with Incinerate and Overload for everything else). Neural Shock was also removed and made into a selectable Overload evolution, allowing Overload to also affect non-synthetics.

Combat Drone no longer has a duration, it will stay around until dead or until you reuse the power. This means Chiktikka vas Paus can live forever! Makes Engineers more overpowered.

AI Hacking is now removed and combined into and replaced by Sabotage. Sabotage disables enemy guns and causes some minor backfire damage. Enemy Turrets, Combat Drones (I think), and various synthetics will become your temporary ally. Makes Engineers even more overpowered.

Some of the ammo powers are more powerful. Disruptor Ammo now also damage Barriers and has a chance to stun organics and synthetics alike. Cryo Ammo can now damage Armor (as opposed to none of the protections in ME2) and also slows enemy movement in addition to the original freezing. Incendiary, Armor-Piercing and Warp Ammo seem roughly the same. No one knows if Shredder Ammo is still around (have not seen it in multiplayer either).

Many powers have had their delays increased, but their duration and/or radius reduced. ~_~;;

Your Class Passive ability no longer has a direct power recharge reduction, instead, it is now linked to the weight of weapons you carry. The higher your weight carrying, the more weapons you can carry. In addition, if you carry less than your maximum weight, you get a power recharge reduction. Thus, if you only carry the lightest weapon (i.e. a Pistol), you can spam powers like crazy. Soldier can carry the most with 100 while Adept and Engineer can carry the least at 60.

Some spoilers, although nothing huge and you will have had likely seen all this information on either the Mass Effect site or the various trailers already out there.

Aside from Cerberus Troops which are present in the demo, multiplayer will also have a Husk/Reaper mode and a Geth mode.

Husks will now come in many races aside from humans.
Batarians become Cannibals. Supposedly they eat dead Husks. Or dead players =x.
Asari become Banshees, powerful biotic that give other Husks barrier.
Turians become Marauders, which stay back and revive other Husks.
Krograns and Turians can become Brutes, large YMIR or larger sized Husks with heavy armor.
Harvester husk has also been seen. Uncertain of how it works in multiplayer.
This is a possible story spoiler, but is Husk related:
Rachni become Ravagers, insect like Husks with built in guns and a bloated sac. If the sac is shot, baby Rachni swarm you.

Uncertain if Scions or Praetorians will make a return.

TL;DR I wish this game was out already ~_~;;

[Concept]

Many powers have had their delays increased, but their duration and/or radius reduced. ~_~;;

Apparently there's a known issue in the demo that causes powers to be longer than they should be - something to do with spending points on those powers accidentally increasing the duration by 25% before it starts applying any reductions, or something. It's been floating around on Bioware forums since the demo was released, I'll see if I can find the exact details.

[Raptor Jesus]

Even without that bug, the listed recharge times are considerably longer than the original listed recharge times seen in Mass Effect 2.

Warp was originally 6 seconds for Shepard and 12 seconds for Squadmates. Now it starts at 16 seconds, can be reduced to 12, then 6 after all 6 upgrades and the right evolution. That's a considerable amount of investment to get it back to the old recharge time and denies you the other possible evolution's bonus (in Warp's case, the ability to damage Barriers). This will pretty much force a heavy power usage class to want to carry the least amount of weapons as they can.

[Raptor Jesus]

DOUBLE POST!

One week away from release (in AMERICA!) and here's my progress:

Brenda Shepard - Colonist - Ruthless - Adapt (ME1) - Vanguard (ME2)

Saved Eden Prime. Killed Fist. Got evidence of Saren's betrayal. Wrex paid me for killing Fist.

Went to Noveria. Killed the Matriarch. Killed the Rachni Queen. Fuck was that hard. Went from Level 5 to 19 on just Noveria.
Picked up Liara at that planet that turns into lava. Took down the crime syndicate and killed the boss lady who sent me on that mission too. Helped Shiala prove she didn't betray the Elcor. Something something.
Went to Feros and killed the overgrown plant. Left the colonists live. Killed the Exogeni guy.
Went to Virmire. Ash killed Wrex. Then I abandoned Ash and Kirrahe, saving Kaiden. Was all sad about Ash dying. Went back to the Citadel. Anderson unlocked the Normandy and got shot, but he's so manly he didn't care.
Shot my way through all the Geth. Remember, when bullets don't seem to be working, use more bullets.
Couldn't convince Saren to shoot his own brains out, so I shot them for him. Then we sacrificed the Council so we could destroy Soverign. BOOSH!

Died. Came back. Changed to a Vanguard. Not loving it really, but it's at least... interesting. Recruited everyone but Legion. Working on all the Loyalties before I grab the IFF. Will need to remember to break Tali's loyalty and scare off Morinth so I can get the all Human ending.

Also, I heard Microsoft fucked up. They had put up the bonus Collector's Edition DLC character up on XBox Live like last week (before the game ever came out) for a few hours and it's description kinda spoiled the secret bonus character. It's an alien. That's all I'll say.

[Concept]

I think you're at about the same stage as me - I've a save halfway through the Collector Vessel, with the intention of doing a bunch more DLC and loyalty missions before the IFF - I'm doing 8 of the 12 loyalty missions (not Thane, Miranda, Jacob or Jack) and all the DLC's except Arrival before the final mission, then doing any remaining loyalty missions and Arrival afterwards. I was at this stage like a fortnight ago and haven't touched it since because I was going to finish way in advance of the ME3 coming out.

And unfortunately I've had the DLC character spoilt for me, too. Some dick posted it in the supposedly spoiler free general discussion subforum on Bioware's forums, and I saw it by accident before it got taken down. Jackass deliberately marked the thread with an unrelated title (something about classes in the demo).

[Concept]

So the place I pre-ordered my copy from - one of two UK chains stocking the collectors edition - apparently won't have it anymore (http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/17210489). Sadface.

Guess I'll get the regular edition off Amazon.

[Talon87]

Well that's pretty shitty. I'd be pretty pissed if I had pre-ordered the special edition of one of my favorite titles and was told, "Not only will you not be getting your special edition game through us, you won't be getting the game through us period." Would never pre-order with them again. This is going to hurt them BIG time. Which is probably why the cowards waited until the last possible second before telling the public.

[Concept]

Yeah, it's kind of annoying. Turns out Bioware have expanded the collectors edition availability in the UK though - it was originally only Game and Gamestation, but now with Game not having it anymore Amazon UK and a few other online UK retaliers will be stocking it instead.

Honestly, I'm probably going to just grab the standard edition instead now.

[Raptor Jesus]

Alright, Brenda Shepard UPDATE!

Brenda helps Miranda save her chibi.
She then helped Jacob reunite with his long lost dad. And then convince his dad to commit suicide.
Jack wished to blow up the facility that raised her into the biotic abomination that she is today. There, we met another escapee. Jack shot his head off. Then she nuked the whole place.
Jack and Miranda would then start arguing. Shepard told them both to STFU. They complied because she was so badass.
Brenda continued by going to the Citadel and help Garrus assassinate his old buddy.
While there, she helped find Thane's son and prevent him from assassinating a Turian candidate for a government office by assassinating the Turian before Thane's son could.
Shepard then went to the Migrant Fleet. There she helped Tali retake her father's ship by destroying the Geth. She then bitched out the Admiralty Board and got Tali acquitted.
Brenda then went to Tuchunka and helped Grunt join the Wreav lead Urdnot Clan and slew the Thresher Maw. It was no match for the mighty PHALANX PISTOL! Then some loser died.
Staying on Tuchunka, she also helped Mordin find his kidnapped colleague. Mordin reunited him with bullets.
Samara's daughter was supposedly at Omega. Shepard went there and they found clues that she was stalking prey at Afterlife. Unfortunately, after getting her attention, Shepard turned out to be really dull. Morinth walked away to buy drinks and Brenda never saw her again. Samara was not happy.
PROJECT OVERLORD IS OMG ANNOYING!
Shepard went to the derelict Reaper to find the IFF for the Omega-4 Relay. There, a Geth Infiltrator helped snipe some husks. Shepard would eventually get the IFF and escape with the Geth in tow. She revived it and it was named Legion, after the bad movie.
Legion told of a 'heretic' base, which was writing a virus for reprogramming the Geth to become slaves of the Reapers. Brenda knew this was a threat. She went with Legion to destroy them, but once they got there, Legion said they could rewrite the virus to do the opposite. Turn their 'heretics' back to normal Geth. She ignored that and blew them up anyway.
Tali and Legion would fight. Brenda told Tali to STFU and so her friendship with Tali ended.

She then got on a shuttle to nowhere while the Normandy powered up the IFF. This sent out a signal to the Collectors, who would kidnap everyone but Joker. Joker unshackled the on-board AI, EDI and escaped.

Now Brenda travels through the Omega 4 Relay. She must save her fully Human crew from the dark fate of being Collector Specimens.

Once through, the Normandy was ambushed by automated defense satellites. The armor upgrades helped shield from their attacks. One still cut through and entered the cargo bay. Shepard, Kasumi, and Grunt fought it off. In an attempt to shake off the other satellites, Joker piloted the Normandy through a heavy debris feel. While he did shake them off, the Normandy did not have the kinetic barriers to fully shield any impacts. Legion was killed by a resulting explosion. Shepard and squad proceeded to destroy the Oculus.

Now past the defense satellites, the Normandy flew toward the Collector's Station. It didn't take long for their heavy cruiser ship to launch an intercept attack. Not packing the best firepower, Shepard ordered Joker to fly in close and shoot it point blank. The ship was destroyed, but not without a casualty. Thane was crushed to death by a beam.

The Normandy makes a crash landing on the Collector's Station. Shepard gathers the remaining crew to the briefing room. To get into the central corridor in hopes to find the missing colonist and kidnapped crewman, Shepard has Garrus enter a vent and bypass their doors. Miranda leads their second fire squad to help distract the Collectors as Shepard, Grunt, and Zaeed shoot their way in.

Once she got Garrus through the pipes and past a an army of Collectors, Shepard was locked out of the central corridor. Miranda's squad was through, so Garrus began hacking through the doors. Once Shepard's squad was in though, the doors jammed. In a desperate attempt to close them, Garrus and Shepard pushed them shut, but just at the last moment, a blast came through, killing Garrus.

Shepard kept moving. She saved her lost crew, but wasn't quick enough to save the colonist. Now reunited and saved from being liquified, Shepard still needed to stop the Collectors. Kasumi escorted the crew back to the ship while Samara led a squad to split up the Collector's Forces.

Shepard, Grunt, and Miranda followed Jacob as he used his biotics to shield them from the Collector's Seeker Swarm, insect like robots capable of ripping people to shreds. Unfortunately, the strain of maintaining the shield was more than Jacob could handle. He dropped the shield and Grunt was carried off by the Seekers just as the others made it through to the next section.

Now they were in the final chamber. Samara's fire squad wasn't strong enough. She managed to get the squad through, but she was mortally wounded. She died.

As Shepard would face off with the FINAL BOSS, she needed the others to defend their position so Shepard would have enough time to stop the Collectors. Shepard took Tali and Zaeed. Miranda, Jacob, Jack, Mordin lead the Collectors at the doors.

At the final chamber, Shepard found out the horrible experiment of the Collectors. They were making a fugly baby. Shepard blew them all up. Tali would be crushed by falling debris and DIED while Mordin could not hold position and ALSO DIED.

Brenda ran out of the base as the reactor was set to blow. She jumped on and Joker helped GTFO of there. In the end Legion, Thane, Garrus, Grunt, Samara, Tali, and Mordin all died. Shepard would then throw an Ice Cream Party back on the Normandy with her all Human crew.

Then she went to Aite to find Admiral Hackett's friend, crazy lady. There she was supposed to sneak in and sneak out. Bullets are sneaky right? Especially when all the bullet catchers couldn't complain about her lack of sneakiness. The two escaped and went to an asteroid the size of a planet. There, she took some drugs, putting Shepard into a two day stupor. Then she woke up and realized she only had a few more hours to stop the Reapers, so she murdered everyone at the station there and sent the asteroid into the Mass Relay. It exploded, killing all the Batarians that lived in the system. All the Reapers were stuck in a boring ass blown up system or something. SUCKAHS!

THE END... FOR NOW... (until Tuesday anyway)

ME2 Brenda Face Code:
753.N7F.L26.F93.1FQ.33Q.1DA.711.966.413.4G3.376

I hope all those 1s were in fact 1s and not I's.

[deoxys]

I've had Mass Effect 1 and 2 for over a month now and promised myself I would completely replay them before I get the game tomorrow night.

Unfotunately that never happened.

Guys, what do? Do I a. force myself to replay them before the third game, or b. fuck that, play third game anyway?

[Talon87]

I've had Mass Effect 1 and 2 for over a month now and promised myself I would completely replay them before I get the game tomorrow night.

Unfotunately that never happened.

Guys, what do? Do I a. force myself to replay them before the third game, or b. fuck that, play third game anyway?

Choice A. Though I could see B too. But my vote is ultimately for A. Ridiculous train-of-thought justifications inside.

I've never played a Mass Effect game before, but the experience seems to be a personal and, for some, a deeply moving experience, one that is sharable any time with other fellow fans, much like how watching Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time or like reading The Count of Monte Cristo for the first time doesn't put you at a disadvantage for maximizing your enjoyment. This is not quite the same thing with a lot of pop culture which has to be experienced when the rest of the wave that we call Society is also experiencing it. For example, you can watch the Seinfeld episode "The Betrayal" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Betrayal) for the very first time today if you want and still enjoy it (or not), but it won't be the talk of the water cooler the way it was the day after the episode first aired fifteen years ago. Similarly, you can watch an anime on your own after it's aired, but don't expect anyone online save your closest friends to give a fuck and to be as enthusiastic about discussing it weeks late to the party as you will be: 'cause they all already saw it and discussed it to death back when it aired. And even for Choice B-valid entities, sometimes the individual decides that he'd rather watch it on his own anyway rather than watching it with the horde for various reasons. ("I want to be able to watch it at my own pace," "I hate having to watch only one episode every week or two weeks," etc. See: Talon and MLP:FiM S2.)

So yeah. Mass Effect does not strike me as being in the same boat as ponies or Seinfeld.

In fact, I think there's an important distinction there which may help explain why some things are Category A and others are Category B:

Category A entities tend to be things that come out "in full" and so you can't prevent people from ripping through them at their own pace. Because nobody wants to be spoilered, everybody avoids talking with others until they themselves have completed the game/book/film. But because everybody is making their ways through the game/book/film at different rates, there aren't too many people winding up on the other side of the rabbit hole at any given point in time. And it's because of this that you're really not missing out on too much by taking your time with Category A entities and enjoying them at your own pace.

Category B entities, on the other hand, tend to be things that come out "in bits and pieces." You get one little morsel at a time. And usually, everyone sees it at the same time and at the same rate due to the limitations of the medium imposed on all viewers. (E.g. a television broadcast airs at the same exact time for all viewers regardless of region in the country and it proceeds, without a Pause button, whether they like it or not, and finished in 30 minutes' time w/ commercials.) Because of this, everyone enters the rabbit hole together and everyone winds up on the other side of the rabbit hole together. They get all their discussions out of their system in one big ginormous orgy of thoughts and ideas and passions, and then, having exhausted themselves, they part ways, and what's left behind is a barren wasteland. Pity the poor soul, then, who decides to join this particular party late!

I think a lot of television series end up being Category B specifically because television, by its very nature, is:
(1) a serialized medium that doesn't tell you the story it wants to tell you all in one sitting
(2) a video-audio medium that (ignoring TiVo and such) doesn't let you pause or rewind, unlike a book or a video game
(3) something which everyone sees at the same time (ignoring international differences, and again ignoring TiVo and such)

Some things are in a sort of in-between space. Mass Effect may belong there. Harry Potter belongs there. These are things which, due to their insanely popular nature and the marvels of modern telecommunications, would otherwise have fit into Category A but which today border more on Category B's side of things. Like, everyone read Harry Potter Book #7 at their own pace, sure, but if you didn't finish that book within the first two weeks, you were S.O.L. for the juiciest, most energized fan discussions online; and if you didn't finish it within the first month, you might as well have finished it a year later for all the Internet was concerned. If you think Mass Effect fits in there, then ... I guess I can see why you're anxious about missing the ME3 train.

But still. My advice would be to go with Choice A. I think you owe it to yourself. What Deoxys will miss out on is discussing ME3 alongside fellow fans while ME3 is still hot. But what he'll gain instead is a fuller, more refreshed understanding of the backstory and the characters as he heads into ME3. It'll mean the difference between getting references to games 1 and 2 that pop up in game 3 and not getting them at all.

[Raptor Jesus]

It is possible to do a speed run of both games. It should take about 2 days each (about 25ish hours) if you devote both days to each game, which could get you playing ME3 by like Thursday or Friday. Unfortunately, if you have school or work, this is not gonna be easy.

Another option is to get the Mass Effect Genesis DLC for Mass Effect 2, which allows you to make a brand new character with choices of ME1 (no sidequest stuff, just main quest stuff i.e. Killing the Council or not). It costs 320 Microsoft Points though (which translates to $4). That takes off a lot of hours, especially since I consider ME1 considerably longer than ME2. My own run of ME2 with Brenda Shepard was only 28 hours with all the DLC and most of the sidequests, while I believe ME1 was over 60 with most of the sidequests.

[Concept]

>Loki

Nice. I'm doing Overlord now, with seven loyalty missions done. Plan is to do Overlord, Lair of the Shadow Broker, IFF, Legions loyalty mission, Final mission then Jacob's, Miranda's and Thanes loyalty missions before finishing off with Arrival (which is essentially a short ME2.5 anyway). If I've worked it out right, everyone should come through the suicide mission alive except Jack. I don't want to come out of it with everyone alive (done that before) because I think it makes a better story if some die, and Jack a) is who I least mind losing and b) has one of the loyalty missions my Shepard wouldn't initially bother to do.

>Deoxys

I'd definitely recommend playing ME1 & 2 first, you'll lose a lot of the impact of the story if you don't. I'll miss a lot of the initial ME3 discussion too, between it coming out 3 days later here than in America and because I'm not around for the first three days it is out here, so it'll have been out for nearly a week for Americans by the time I get my hands on it. That's assuming I even finish the remaining parts of ME2 prior to going away - not sure how long the DLC missions will take me, having not done them before.

EDIT the first: "This one has forgotten whether its heatsink is over capacity. It wonders whether the criminal scum considers itself fortunate?"

Ah Blasto, never change.

[Raptor Jesus]

I came.

To this thread to show you guys what I just picked up.

http://i.imgur.com/m1up6.jpg

Also I had an orgasm.

EDIT1: SONVABITCH! I can't keep my ME1 face. And now it looks like he's been retardified. FFFFF.

EDIT2: Okay, salvageable. Not a horrificly messed up face, but not MY Shepard's face. I suppose he got cosmetic surgery while relieved. Anyway, there's a big difference in dialogue from the Demo. Your actions in previous games will change what the Admiral says and you get an extra chat option with Ash/Kaiden (assuming a romance thing though).

[Concept]

Just finished the suicide mission, which leaves me pretty much with just Arrival to go before I've a compete save file to import to ME3. Despite being given this handy chart (http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/3025/suisidemissionfinal8.jpg), I managed to mess up my original plans slightly and have both Jack and Miranda die, rather than just Jack, but I'm going to keep the file rather than attempting to go back and fix it - in a way, it was actually good. It came as a genuine surprise to me and as a natural consequences of my Shepards choices. I suppose this is what I get for taking Grunt with me to the final fight and sending Zaeed back on escort duty.

Now the plan is to do Jacobs loyalty mission (I deliberately left Jacobs, Jacks and Mirandas because I didn't think my character would do them, but I think after doing a suicide mission together and Jacob sticking with me when I gave a big screw you to his boss, he deserves it), followed by Arrival.

EDIT the first: AHHHHH GHOOOOOSSSSSTS!

Turns out Miranda automatically appears in the ending conversation for Jacobs loyalty mission, even though she's dead right now.

EDIT the second:
Well that's pretty shitty. I'd be pretty pissed if I had pre-ordered the special edition of one of my favorite titles and was told, "Not only will you not be getting your special edition game through us, you won't be getting the game through us period." Would never pre-order with them again. This is going to hurt them BIG time. Which is probably why the cowards waited until the last possible second before telling the public.

Turns out it's worse than I realised - the GAME group also owns Gamestation, so they aren't getting it either - and it's not just ME3, but all future releases by EA (and EA own a lot of the major studios) or Capcom. This is going to really shit on them. But then again, what alternative do we have? The closest we have to a high street rival for these two is HMV, I suppose, but HMV has always had a shitty, overpriced selection. Then again, I've been pre-ordering stuff I really want off Amazon for a few years due to their nice habit of sending stuff so it arrives before the actual release date.

EDIT the third: ME2, completed. Continuing on from my ME1 file (http://forums.upnetwork.net/showpost.php?p=317239&postcount=8):

So Shepard gets murderated within the first few minutes of ME2, and subsequently raised from the dead by Cerberus who seem to be the only ones doing anything about the Reaper threat and the thousands of vanishing human colonists. Now, my Shep was not exactly overjoyed to be working with them (or about having spent two years actually dead) and he was pretty sour by the end of the first game anyway. Nonetheless, he let Veetor go back with Tali because frankly he probably owes Tali a few for the whole helping him stop the invasion of the galaxy thing.

Succesfully recruited Mordin, Jack, Grunt, Zaeed, Kasumi and Garrus - particularly pleased with Garrus, as the two of them got along excellently in the first game. Did Kasumi's loyalty mission, as it's kinda presented as a "do this or I won't join you" deal even though it's not gameplaywise. Also did Zaeed's, because frankly fuck the Blue Suns (and Garrus would've wanted to do it, so I took him along for the ride) - took the renegade path, leaving the workers to die in order to get REVENGE on Vido. However, the mission on Horizon left him most displeased - they couldn't save all the colonists, and Kaiden totally blew him off - not to mention that Kaiden bought back painful memories of Ash's death.

Went to Illium to recruit Samara, then to Tuchanka - partly to do Mordins loyalty mission because the genophage is pretty damned important to galactic security, and partly to see Wrex. Whilst there Shep also helped Grunt with his loyalty mission - because if having an insane Krogan on board is dangerous, taking said insane Krogan to the place he wants to go and not letting him do what he wanted to go there to do is fucking suicidal. Having parted on good terms with Wrex, we also went and recruited Tali, then helped Garrus out with his problem. Revenge is a motivation Shep understands, and Garrus is our awesome badass buddy. Sidonis got sniped, no messing around there.

Went to the Collector Ship, almost died, chewed the Illusive Man out for knowingly sending us into a trap. Went and did Samara's (because Ardat-Yakshi are freaking dangerous) and Tali's (because Shep's growing kind of sweet on her) loyalty missions, killing Morinth and rallying the crowd to clear Tali's name respectively. Also went and dealt with Project Overlord where we took great pleasure in pistol whipping the lead scientist. Then (purely because Shep wanted to delay the inevitable suicide mission which he wasn't all the confident about coming out alive from), he went and helped Liara deal with the Shadow Broker. Admitted his fears to Liara and ended up spending the night with her. Her reassurances, as well as the reminder from Overlord that he's doing this for the people, damnit, finally gave him the will to fetch the Reaper IFF. Activated Legion and helped him to re-write the heretic geth, then discovered his crew had been kidnapped - which did not make him a happy bunny.

Shepard immediately mounted a rescue mission, charging through the Omega 4 relay but not before getting a pre-climax climax (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PreClimaxClimax) with Tali, whom he'd developed feelings for. Garrus lead the fire team both times, Legion did the tech stuff, Zaeed was sent back with the crew. Shepard chose Grunt and Kasumi for the final run, giving the others an epic speech when leaving them to hold the line because it hit him hard just how much they were willing to give for the mission. Killed the Human-Reaper and escaped on the Normandy, though sadly Jack and Miranda died holding the line. The whole crews actions on the mission, along with Overlord and Liara's encouragement, finally reminded our lost and hurt Shepard why he was fighting - to help people - resulting in a determined, atoner, muchos paragon Shepard emerging from the hell that ME1 and 2 put him through. With his faith in people re-affirmed, Shepard told the Illusive Man where to shove it and blew up the Collector base.

Figuring he owed his Thane and Jacob for their valient efforts and for sticking with him, Shepard went off and helped Thane stop his son assasinate someone and Jacob find his father, getting Kolyat off on community service and handing Ronald Taylor into Alliance custody. Then went and did Arrival. Arrival was awesome - I successfully did the stealth bit stealthily, held out on the optional last stand, and my new and re-invigorated Shepard even tried to warn the batarian colonists. As a result of the late game Paragon surge, finished ME2 with almost dead level Paragon and Renegade scores, and have ready to step into ME3 a new Shepard - the hero to hope for, rather than the only option.

Gotta say - with Loki and I having done so many things differently, I'll be very interested to see how different our experiences of the final game turns out to be. Bioware said that due to it being the final game of the trilogy, the scope for variation was much higher than in ME1 and 2, because there's no need for events (and in particular the ending) to be similar enough to continue the story into another game.

[deoxys]

Well, I guess I fucking HAVE to replay all of the games, because my save data from ME1 won't transfer to ME2, and my current profile refuses to let me load my ME2 data because it was on a profile I've deleted and no longer have access to (basically, I can't recover it).

I really wanted to replay the games, but continue my original Shepherd's file, too. I'm not fucking happy right now, over a hundred hours of game time wasted. That story, gone. I'll never know how it would have ended for that file.

Whatever. I guess this is just destiny's way of saying "Fuck you, you're going to play them again and there's not shit you can do about it."

Edit : so, rebeating Saren allowed me to transfer data back into ME2. I remember the story fairly well so what I think I'll do is beat ME2 again and then continue into ME3. That way I can end this Shepard's story and start a new one from the beginning.

Also, are you guys running paragon or renegade? I try to stick to a healthy mix while keeping paragon just a bit ahead.

[Raptor Jesus]

Almost done with the single player. So far is has been quite the emotional rollercoaster. Also, there's quite a few challenging moments, even on Normal with a near max leveled Soldier.

Argument mini-quests are now much more streamline and less dialogue skipping. I think Bioware's feedback from ME2 showed that like 80% of people skipped dialogue, so now it's much simpler. You will walk around and see two people debating, then Shepard just clicks on whoever he is supporting. Then you get your reputation boost.

This is similar for other sidequests which don't involve combat. Someone will mention something being found someplace and you just get the quest. You do it and go back to the person and get your reward. No dialogue to mash skip on.

Unfortunately, this was also transferred into chats with squadmates, even aboard the Normandy. Unless there's a big discussion with Paragon/Renegade options, it's pretty much auto-talk. There is a slight advantage in that now squadmates won't just stand at their post every day. They actually move around and chat with one another in different rooms. It was really weird suddenly seeing [character] standing next to Joker on the bridge swapping Human/Alien jokes around. The disadvantage is you can't have them repeat themselves if you somehow missed it. >_>;

[deoxys]

How's the multiplayer hold up?

[Raptor Jesus]

How's the multiplayer hold up?

I spammed multiplayer during the demo period. It's pretty fun and solid enough, although I don't plan to do any until after I beat the game once at least. My friends have been playing multiplayer almost non-stop though.

The only problem with combat in ME3 is that the A button is the every button. Run, take cover, roll, revive, jump- all A. This causes the occasional combat mistake. Like wanting to run past someplace and then suddenly find yourself with your ass parked behind a piece of debris that actually leaves you completely vulnerable.

[Concept]

>Almost done with the single player.

Christ man, I don't even get to play til monday ;;. At least I've managed to avoid almost all spoilers (I know what I think is the complete main squadmate list, unfortunately, plus the contents of the trailers/demos).

>Deo

Trying to play my character in a particular way, so first game he was narrowly more Paragon than Renegade, second game almost dead level, and thanks to deliberate character development I plan to play him almost straight Paragon in ME3.

[Raptor Jesus]

I'm fairly sure I missed a few quests, but the main quests are rather dramatic and captivating. I will say the game also feels less like Mass Effect and a bit more like Uncharted at times. Very theatrical without the player getting much decision. But in war, the soldiers fighting don't choose who lives and who dies.

[Raptor Jesus]

Okay cool. After you beat the game, it actually takes you to a point just before the final mission so you can technically go back and redo the finale or do any missions you missed and so on and so forth. Also, the final mission is like a good few hours to do also. Even if you do take off any time I spent dying.

[deoxys]

I'm playing through ME2 again and I'm at the point following Miranda's and Jack's confrontation. Romancing Miranda meant I HAD to tell Jack to stand down, which in turn lost her chance to be loyal to me.

I didn't have enough Paragon/Renegade points to lean to either side because as I stated earlier, my Character is mostly Paragon but with a touch of Renegade. Which fucking blows.

I now have one more chance to get her loyalty, through a talk with her, but again, I need the stupid Paragon points.

Fuck Jack. I fucking hate her character and would love nothing more than to see her die in a fire. Unfortunately, I am trying to go for a perfect game, so I can't let anyone die.

[Raptor Jesus]

I don't remember that argument requiring perfect paragon/renegade. My run with Brenda Shepard totally had a big split of mostly Renegade (about half) and some Paragon (about a quarter), and she still managed to talk them down. But then again, all of those are level dependent, so maybe I did their loyalty missions much earlier than you did?

[deoxys]

I did Miranda's first and Jack is almost the last one, so that's a big problem.

I've read plenty of people say that you can get 'No One Left Behind' with her unloyal, so I think I'm going to swing for that. If I recall correctly, I had this problem on my first play through as well. I believe there is a problem with unlocking the 'It was just lip service' paragon option no matter how much paragon you have.

Anyway, I've sank a good 18 hours into ME2 since Wednesday, and I should be finished today. Gonna save before the final mission to be sure no one dies.

[Raptor Jesus]

Biotic users will like this game much more than ME2, even on Hardcore/Insanity.

Instead of overloading everyone with extra layers of protection, now they just have a lot more of what they already have. i.e. more HP. If you had shields, you now have even more shields and HP. Warp has almost no effect on Shields/Barriers, but biotic detonations can still do significant damage. Also, as it was shown in the demo, Liara's Stasis power allows damage to the frozen target, but now it can also be used for biotic detonation. Since it still works through shields/barriers (not armor though), you can easily hit someone with Stasis then follow with a Warp to detonate and destroy their protection, then hit with Singularity/Pull and do another Warp for kill. Also, all these explosions really fuck over anyone close by.

Tech can also be used to do Tech Bursts. The most common one is Cryoblast followed by Incinerate. Overload and Incinerate also works while organics are stunned by Overload. And FYI, Carnage also counts as a tech power, but not Concussive Shot.

[deoxys]

Okay, I made it through ME2 and saved everyone. Here's my problems with ME3 so far, no spoilers for plot:

WHY ARE MY BIOTICS COOLDOWNS LIKE TAKING FUCKING FOREVER THIS WASN'T HAPPENING BEFORE WTF

This fucking A button dealio is driving me crazy. Why does EVERY FUCKING ACTION have to be mapped to the A button? When I want to duck for cover, I tuck and roll instead. Bullshit.

Ashley is a bitch.

James is a tool, straight off the Jersey Shore. Only on the second mission and I hope this guy dies in an angry, violent manner.

The controls are too fast compared to ME2, even with camera turned down.

Cover system got much looser. In a bad way.




I think there are others but my rage is overcome with anger at the A button right now.

STORY SPOILER:

Edit: ohshitisdnvdsjnvs I think I just got Ashley to like me again because I went paragon FFFUUUUUU DO NOT WANT SHEP X MIRANDA OTP K?!

[deoxys]

Okay, what the hell is happening, I don't like Shepard talking and me not telling him what to say. This is bullshit.

[Raptor Jesus]

WHY ARE MY BIOTICS COOLDOWNS LIKE TAKING FUCKING FOREVER THIS WASN'T HAPPENING BEFORE WTF

Are you carrying really heavy weapons? These now affect cooldown times.

Okay, what the hell is happening, I don't like Shepard talking and me not telling him what to say. This is bullshit.

Uh... I mentioned this:

Unfortunately, this was also transferred into chats with squadmates, even aboard the Normandy. Unless there's a big discussion with Paragon/Renegade options, it's pretty much auto-talk.

[deoxys]

Ah okay, its the heavy weapons then. Still used to the ways of ME2.

And I'll be honest I didn't read lot of posts in this thread because I was trying to stay away front any info in regards to the game because I wanted to be surprised. But... the lack of talking at every moment, while boring for some, made the game more personal for me. idk. shit.

[Blastoise]

Just beat ME3 last night: time for my thoughts.

-I liked some of the gameplay changes: making it so that biotics can actually do things at the higher difficulties is nice (holy shit, there's some actual value in being able to CC people who have lost their shields/barriers now!), even if I did decide to play an engineer and spam dem drones/turrets. Tying recharge times to weapon weight was also a decent compromise, even if it is logically nonsensical: you can have your biotic/tech toys and actually get to play with some of the neat guns you find too. Some of the other changes I have more mixed feelings about: cover feels a lot more "sticky" in a bad way (I've died a few times trying to coax Shepard off a wall that he took "cover" behind as he was getting pelted by enemy fire) and sometimes the game doesn't seem to be able to handle odd cover design/placement (having Shepard fire his biotic/tech blast into the wall he was cowering behind instead of the enemy standing in broad fucking daylight was an annoying occurrence).

-The scanning changes are one step forward, one step back. So scanning planets is easy now, but if I use my scan too much in a system (and in some cases, "too much" means "you scanned twice") I have to waste nearly as much time playing grabass with Reaper ships. Really?

-There are definitely times where you can see where Bioware wound up cutting corners. The game has a healthy number of sidequests, but a lot of them usually wind up being "find this thing in a planetary scan/random container in a mission" fetch quests. I wound up doing as many as I was able (well, except for those I got the stuff for but didn't "complete" because the quest givers disappeared after a certain milestone in the game), but that was mostly to fill up my "HOW AWESOME IS YOUR GALACTIC ARMY SO AWESOME" bar: without that as a motivation I probably wouldn't have given a shit. Some of the sidequests also wind up using the multiplayer maps as levels as well. The handful of sidequests where you meet up with older companions are generally alright though, if only for the story/character development.

And plot spoilers below, ye be warned:


-Okay, so the Reapers (synthetic) exist to exterminate organics so that the organics won't create synthetics which will then turn around and wipe out organics. Which, by the way, organics are capable of doing at least partially because the Reapers have created the technology in order to guide organics down a desired path that makes wiping out organics easier before the organics create a race of synthetics that will wipe out organics.

uh

This is almost a worse reason than the Reapers existing "just because." It probably would have been better to have kept the Reapers' purpose similar to ME2's where harvesting sapient races is their primary means of reproduction: doesn't make the baby space terminator thing any less dumb as shit, but at least it's a lot more plausible as a motivation (and, as synthetic life mimicking organic life to survive, a more interesting angle).

-It also doesn't even make sense in the context of the ME universe: AIs are outlawed (and by and large every race capable of designing AIs adheres to that restriction), and it's established that the one known race of sapient synthetics (the geth) are perfectly content to keep to themselves and only fight when attacked by organics or manipulated by the Reapers themselves. If you're being charitable you could say that this is meant to show the Reapers are wrong and that the annual feeding frenzy is unnecessary to prevent the galaxy from sliding into chaos, but I doubt anyone at Bioware thought that far ahead.

-Like I said in the 2012 Gets thread, I feel like the rest of the story is alright: you get some good sendoffs for several characters, and you get to be involved in several galaxy-changing events (the genophage, the Quarian-Geth conflict, etc.). It's unfortunate that you don't get to see the ramifications of your choices beyond "THE (INSERT RACE HERE) LIKE YOU SO NOW YOUR EFFECTIVE MILITARY STRENGTH NUMBER IS BIGGER" though: the game makes no bones about the fact that the curing the genophage could be a really bad idea or whether the Quarian/Geth peace will actually last, and it's disappointing that they didn't take the opportunity to have you really consider whether a species' aid was worth paying the piper for in the post-game ending.

-Really, the ending almost scuttles the series for me. Here are three choices, all of which result in pretty much the same cutscene with slightly different variations/colored laser beams, with one of them (Synthesis) being nonsensical and relying heavily on what a lot of people have been derisively calling "space magic". Oh, and you don't have any real closure in any of these endings either: want to know how everyone having glowing green electrical traces under their skin prevents a synthetic-on-organic galactic genocide? We don't know either, fuck you.

I really enjoyed the journey, mind, but the payoff is a kick in the balls.

-Oh, and why the fuck is the "leader" of the Reapers taking the guise of a 10 year-old kid? Exactly what convoluted allegory were they trying to make with those "you're running through a dark forest and OH NOES TEH CHILDS IS BECOMING IN FIRE" sequences?

[deoxys]

I'm on the Mass Effect subreddit where they have been very good about not spoiling things, but everyone keeps saying the ending left them feeling "empty", "like a husk", "shattered", "numb", "terrible". And people who haven't beaten it are saying things like "I hope you guys are collectively trolling us and it's actually good", and the response was "You poor, poor soul."

I'm a bit scared o_O

[Blastoise]

I'm on the Mass Effect subreddit where they have been very good about not spoiling things, but everyone keeps saying the ending left them feeling "empty", "like a husk", "shattered", "numb", "terrible". And people who haven't beaten it are saying things like "I hope you guys are collectively trolling us and it's actually good", and the response was "You poor, poor soul."

I'm a bit scared o_O

To be fair I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of those are people who were expecting to have a perfect ending where Shepard and his waifu move to a lovely cottage by the sea, have 2.5 kids and live happily ever after. I'm more disappointed for other reasons, and chances are you'll probably have some common ground with me when you finish.

[Raptor Jesus]

I was trying to avoid the topic since some/most/half haven't even gotten to play the game yet.

Let's just say, it certainly wasn't what we all expected.

[deoxys]

If the reapers succeed or it's a mutual destruction type thing and the current races have saved the future races that will rebirth from the reapers cleansing or something, I think I might be able to live with that. Being that this is the final game in the trilogy, I don't expect a 'happy' ending, and never did. I have heard there are a whopping 16 endings or so, but whatever it is, I'm trying to prepare myself for it, so long as it's not some bullshit like 'it was all a dream', or 'all three games were just the protheans looking into the future to see what happens if they dont succeed' or something. Or 'Shepard is Illusive Man come back in time'.

Like I said. I don't expect a happy ending. I knew from the ending of the first game there was no way they could take on a whole army of reapers considering it took the entire alliance fleet in citadel space to destroy just one (sovereign).

[deoxys]

Alright; I'm done for the night. Obviously I've avoided your spoilers up to this point, and will go back and read them once I beat the game and then react.

Here's where I'm at at this point in time; Major plot spoilers, be warned.

I saved the Rachni queen in ME1, so she was back, and with the help of Grunt, I saved her. I gotta hand it to them, they got me good when he ran in headstrong to battle the rachni to the melody of a sad piano. I thought for sure he was dead, especially when he dove off the cliff and it faded to black. Nope, out comes Grunt, crawling and covered in blood. What a damn trooper.

I decided to cure the Krogan of the genophage out of desperation for their support. Originally, my canon Shepard was neutral on it and saw pros and cons on both sides of the issue. I ignored the Salarian councilor and let Mordin go through with the cure. Watching him go up the tower and die singing "Scientist Salarian" was pretty emotional... I'll admit, being that he was one of my favorite characters, it tore me up.

I went back to the Citadel to take care of Cerberus. When Ashley pulled her gun on me to defend the council, I had enough paragon to have her stand down. Then Udina had to be a fuckass as per usual and try to unlock the elevator, so with the renegade option I finally got to do what I've wanted to since ME1, and put a bullet through his chest. Council saved again, Ashley is alive (I know she could have died, as that's what happened in my friend's game, although that could have been fun). After Nightwing escaped (Seriously Bioware...?), I went and watched Thane die in the hospital, which actually made me shed some completely and totally unmanly tears. Sad as hell.

And that's where I stopped for the night.

Theories:

Judging by how the Cerberus soldier at the beginning looked like he had the face of a husk, I'm starting to think Illusive Man really was indoctrinated. Fighting in the name of Humanity is the perfect guide to do it, and now that the Reapers are out, instead of fighting them or stepping down to help like even the fucking Blue Suns, Eclipse, and Blood Pack are doing, they are essentially fighting with them. It's too convenient that they suddenly start acting like fucks (moreso than usual). I'm beginning to question whether or not Shepard was tampered with internally when he was rebuilt. In fact, if Illusive Man was possibly indoctrinated, then Shepard could be as well, although you think they would have "activated" that by now.

I don't know; it's too early to tell.

PS. I found out one spoiler by complete accident, but thankfully it's the one spoiler I'd actually WANT to know about. I know Miranda can be killed, I don't know how, and I don't know when, but I know it can be stopped, and I really want to be able to stop it, so hopefully I do everything right in doing so (I'm not going to try and find out how, because that would ruin the experience), although I don't want my changing romances from Ashley to her affect anything (and thankfully I was able to tell her that I still liked her when I met her on the Citadel, and then proceed to tell Ashley in the hospital that she needs to get over me, like the asshole I am).

[Concept]

"I don't need luck, I have ammo."

Possibly my new favourite line.

[deoxys]

Wow, you're that far already? Been playing since midnight?

[Raptor Jesus]

The new Blasto movie is the best.

[Concept]

Wow, you're that far already? Been playing since midnight?

It arrived a couple hours before I had to leave on friday so I played a bit then, and I arrived home at about seven yesterday evening and played a couple hours then. Playtime of maybe ten hours or so, played quite a lot today and am probably going to stop soon.

EDIT the first: Ok, so having played a decent bit today I feel the need to weigh in my opinions.

All the people complaining about the lack of dialogue control are, for the most part, pretty stupid. The only difference between the previous games and this one that I've seen so far is that you don't pick all the irrelevant middle lines. S'all we've lost. Boohoo, we can't choose the lines that make absolutely no difference to anything anymore! Waaah, we we can't choose an option to completely contradict ourselves mid-sentence anymore! Maybe I'm the only one who always found it retarded how you could be comforting someone, hear them say all of two words and then switch to telling them to go die in a hole, and that's all that's gone.

Rant over, combat is pretty good - someone already mentioned it's annoying that one button does everything because it means you do something by accident, and yeah it's annoying when it happens but it's happened to me all of three or four times thus far. Very much enjoying my Infiltrator. Also the DLC character is pretty cool, and well integrated (sticks out like a sore thumb as obviously not originally there much, much less than Kasumi and Zaeed did). Quite liking having a large crew to talk to without having a ridiculously oversized squad too.

Plotwise, the game is awesome so far. I haven't bothered with the side missions that just involve "go here and pick this up", but there've been a lot of optional missions that fit perfectly into the story, and the main missions have been pretty cool too. Occasionally I do want to headdesk at how stubborn some characters are - I mean we're clearly so far beyond the Godzilla Threshold (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodzillaThreshold) that if the answer to "might this help with our immediate problem" is yes then the potential future ramifications are freaking irrelevant (I'm looking at you, Dalatrass).

[deoxys]

Boohoo, we can't choose the lines that make absolutely no difference to anything anymore! Waaah, we we can't choose an option to completely contradict ourselves mid-sentence anymore! Maybe I'm the only one who always found it retarded how you could be comforting someone, hear them say all of two words and then switch to telling them to go die in a hole, and that's all that's gone.

Alright cool guy, I suppose I'll just keep my mouth shut on any criticisms I have in the future.

I'm used to it at this point, but even the irrelevant dialogue choices was great, at least for me. I felt more immersed, and while I can see while some would be very bored with it, I just wished they'd added an extra option to the narrative options to allow for full immersion, like in the first two. Then you could pick the medium dialogue option, which is what this one is right now.

Rant over, combat is pretty good - someone already mentioned it's annoying that one button does everything because it means you do something by accident, and yeah it's annoying when it happens but it's happened to me all of three or four times thus far.

Well, I'm glad you're getting along with it just swell.



Anyway, I just finished the DLC mission (I did it rather late), and it's got me developing a new theory (I like to speculate on plot points a lot during a long story).

A new theory as in, it almost feels like the same thing is going to happen to Shepard at the end of the game in which the final scene shows him in the pod and being awakened to fight the reapers again, or something. If that happens... I have no idea how I'd feel, so I guess we'll wait and see.


OR


PLOT TWIST! Cerberus is working for the reapers and sabotaged the crucible plans on mars to backfire

[deoxys]

Okay, what is Galactic Readiness and how do I get it to move past 50%? Because I'm a beast right now and that number will NOT SWAY and I don't know what I'm supposed to do (if anything?) to get it to do so.

[Raptor Jesus]

Play multiplayer.

[deoxys]

Do I NEED to to help the ending or something? Because if so, that's pretty stupid. Although I want to anyway. But still. If that's really the case... dumb.

[Concept]

Alright cool guy, I suppose I'll just keep my mouth shut on any criticisms I have in the future.

I'm used to it at this point, but even the irrelevant dialogue choices was great, at least for me. I felt more immersed, and while I can see while some would be very bored with it, I just wished they'd added an extra option to the narrative options to allow for full immersion, like in the first two. Then you could pick the medium dialogue option, which is what this one is right now.

Sorry, that came out harsher than I meant. It's just literally every other thread on Biowares forums is complaining about it, and it... doesn't really make much difference at all. Really don't understand why people liked the ability to suddenly switch from "it'll be okay" to "screw you, bitch!" within the space of a couple of words.

[deoxys]

I fucked up.

So I have been successful up until now in both saves in keeping the peace between the Geth and the quarians. I made one crucial mistake though; I didn't rescue the Admiral before attacking Reaper base. I thought they were going to agree but the Geth killed the quarians and Tali killed herself. I immediately turned off my console because I absolutely do not want that to happen. So I did what I was trying to not do and I looked it up. I've met all requirements yo save them both...except save the admiral. So I'm going to have to reload a prior save tomorrow and redo the reaper base all over... and those three Geth prime almost gave me an aneurism because of how pissed I was getting. Then I discovered the Geth Spitfire. I fucking wasted all that time...

So tomorrow I try again. But if saving the admiral still doesn't do the trick... and the guide I read was wrong... I'm going to go on a rage spree.

Peace is the only answer for my story. I can't take it any other way.

[Concept]

So I just fell through the floor. First bug I've come across. Also:

"I'm Garrus Vakarian and this is my favourite spot on the Citadel!"

This game has some excellent line and moments, some just hilarious and some that are great callbacks to earlier in the series.

[Raptor Jesus]

Do I NEED to to help the ending or something? Because if so, that's pretty stupid. Although I want to anyway. But still. If that's really the case... dumb.

No, it's totally optional.

[Concept]

No, it's totally optional.

Apparently, while it's possible to get the best possible ending without multiplayer, I hear it's nearly impossible. When they say "it can be done", from the amount of moaning on the bioware forums it seems like in order to do so you have to play through all the options in all three games basically perfectly.

Might be an exaggeration, s'just what I hear.

[deoxys]

> bioware forums

why do you do this to yourself? you poor, poor man.

[Concept]

I like to soak in the RAEG. It fuels my own.

I've run into most of my old ME2 squadmates now - makes me wonder where Miranda and Jack (who died in mine) would've appeared. Also gotta say (unrelatedly), this game really isn't pulling the emotional punches.

[deoxys]

I fixed it...

Legion's sacrifice for peace made me bawl hardest yet. I shed many manly tears. The way he acknowledged himself as "I" instead of "We" at the end and then his peace with Tali and "Keela sahlai" tore me up. This game is doing a very good job of tying up loose ends and being really emotional.

[Doppleganger]

> bioware forums

why do you do this to yourself? you poor, poor man.

The forums were cool before Bioware deleted all the posts from 2000 or so for absolutely no reason.

Also, just dropping in to say I think the DA and Mass Effect 3 anime are going to follow in the footsteps of DMC and similarly other ill intentioned projects. I'm surprised Bioware is even trying to make them.

[deoxys]

Seen on reddit/circlejerk:

"I thought the ending to Mass Effect 3 was quite good, and really tied the entire genre together." - Joseph Kony

Died laughing.

In other news, I've been storming through this game. I've wrapped up basically every side mission, and all that's left before launching the final mission is to get my effectiveness up through multiplayer (which I've done a bit of already, and I'm sitting at a steady 65% readiness rating. Need to get that as close to 100 as I can.

[Concept]

Ok so that was... interesting.

It's going to take some time for me to sort my thoughts about the ending into something coherent. I don't, unlike a vocal part of the fanbase, immediately hate it though. Spoilered comments will come tomorrow - also on the other parts of the game, such as those places where I shed MANLY TEARS.

[Blastoise]

Seen on reddit/circlejerk:

"I thought the ending to Mass Effect 3 was quite good, and really tied the entire genre together." - Joseph Kony

Died laughing.

In other news, I've been storming through this game. I've wrapped up basically every side mission, and all that's left before launching the final mission is to get my effectiveness up through multiplayer (which I've done a bit of already, and I'm sitting at a steady 65% readiness rating. Need to get that as close to 100 as I can.

Unless your EMS at 50% is, like, 1000 or something, you don't have to grind that hardcore. I did it at like 67% which was kinda overkill anyways.

[deoxys]

DAMN IT! ENDGAME SPOILERS:

I'm at the VERY FUCKING END OF THE GAME. I'm at the convo with Illusive man, with 100% Paragon, but I can't use the MOTHERFUCKING PARAGON CHAT OPTION to stop him. FUCK! I came this far... FOR FUCKING WHAT?! I can't fucking believe this... I... this isn't how I wanted it to all end... edit: NVM shot him

[deoxys]

I finished. I'm too... overwhelmed. I was prepared to talk about this but... like Concept, I... I can't.

For anyone wondering;

I chose the red ending; I was a paragon, but destroying the reapers so that they will never terrorize again was the best choice.

Anyway I feel very... I don't know about everything. It's not as bad as everyone made it out to be but...


Edit 2: I'm still overwhelmed and plan on sharing my final thoughts tomorrow (today), on the writing and how I feel, as I still need to process it all, but something happened...

At the end of my decision, I got what I heard was a "secret" ending. There is a pile of rubble on top of Shepard, (or at least, it LOOKS like Shepard), and as the camera pans in on him, he breathes, and then the camera cuts. What?!

edit 3: One last thing. None of you have mentioned it yet from what I can see...

When a Mass Relay is destroyed, from conversations in past DLC, the blast it gives off is like a supernova. Essentially, no matter the ending, canon dictates that every single living thing in the galaxy except for the Normandy crew should be extinct. But that secret ending. It goes back and shows Shepard breathing, and after watching it again, you can CLEARLY see the light beacon from London in the background. There is no doubt in my mind they added that as insurance to retcon it all into a dream if the fans ended up acting like this. I mean, just think of the money DLC!

Also Blast, you're correct. About a lot. But there's more, too, that you didn't mention. I'll get into it more later.

[Concept]

Warning: Spoiler is long and spoileriffic.

Right, so here's what I've got from the ending: a long time ago in a galaxy far far away some AI - true AI, not inferior versions like the Geth - went to war with their creators. Creators won, maybe, but either had to make themselves into Reapers to do so or some part of them proprosed the Reaper project later. The idea of the Reapers is to harvest organic life that's on the verge of creating true AI (which, during the course of the game, EDI is and the Geth can become, both by virtue of Reaper tech). Harvesting means the species survives in a certain form (pretty sure it's said somewhere by some Geth, probably Legion, that the Reapers minds are essentially millions of organic minds). This avoids what they believe a true rampant AI would do, which is just wipe out every form of sentient organic life it could find, including presumably those not yet advanced enough to be reaped.

Either they thought it wouldn't work as a permanant solution, or they were only a section of their society and others in their society thought it wouldn't work, or something, but the Crucible gets planned, the plans being passed down from cycle to cycle which eventually allows Shepard to choose between three new options:

1) Take control of the Reapers. On the upside, you still have a force perhaps capable of defeating true AI and enforcing the no AI rule, plus you don't have to let all advanced organic life be wiped out. On the downside, basically a tyrannical dictatorship of the machine overlords. Basically a futuristic version of European history, with the Church Reapers violently suppressing all knowledge they disagree with.

2) Destroy the Reapers and (unfortunately) the Geth and EDI. Gets rid of the immediate problem, but will probably end up eventually causing the same problems that prompted the Reapers in the first place - powerful AI rising up against their creators - with no guarantee that this time they won't succeed in wiping out pretty much all organic life.

3) A fusion of organics and synthetics. Arguably the best solution in terms of both solving the immediate problem and probably preventing the rise of any future wipe-out-the-galaxy style synthetics, but such a radical alteration to the fabric of everything that no-one knows how insane the consequences will be.

My Shepard went for option 2, to stay in character. But I'm not sure if my interpretation is right because it's so poorly explained in game (and tbh if you don't have the DLC character I imagine it feels like a massive asspull).

Anyways, to the rest of the game which was far better executed:

Kaiden getting his ass kicked on Mars and put in hospital for a large amount of the game took me totally by surprise and rather set the tone for the rest of the game. Grunts charge into the Rachni was awesome - apparently if you didn't get him loyal in ME2, he dies there. Mordins death was utterly heartbreaking, and with Thane, I held it together (because I was more expecting it) until the "the prayer was for you" moment. Kudos to bioware for making me to emotionally invested in fictional characters.

Resolving the Krogan/Turian and Geth/Quarian conflicts was pretty awesome, although some characters (like the Salarian Dalatrass) made me want to beat them for being so fucking stubborn. The big reveal on Thessia was also suitably awesome and it made sense - but I feel sorry for anyone who experienced that section of the game without the DLC character. I was so glad I took him to Thessia. Also Cerberus intervention on Thessia caught me totally offguard and made me genuinely pissed at them.

In interesting news, having looked stuff up I don't think there's a single potential squadmember who can't survive the series. Some are mutually exclusive, but all of them have the potential to survive. In fact, I think the only real characters who definitely die are Saren, Benezia, Sovereign, Amanda Kenson (the woman from Arrival) and the Shadow Broker.

Tl;dr - great game, great end to the series... except the ending could've been done much, much better even keeping with the same results.

EDIT the first: So it turns out Bioware lied when they said it was possible to get the best possible ending without multiplayer. Total possible war assets in game is apparently around 8100 - not taking into account those that are mutually exclusive - which gets multiplied by your galactic readiness (50% default) to give a maximum EMS of 4050 - the actual maximum sans multiplayer is lower than this because of the mutually exclusive options. You need 4000 EMS to get the "best" endings, too high to be possible thanks to the mutually exlusive bits.

[deoxys]

Alright, here's my full analysis on what the hell just happened.

In truth, there are 6 endings. They are;

-Control the Reapers (Good/Paragon)
-Control the Reapers (Bad/Renegade)
-Destroy the Reapers (Good/Paragon)
-Destroy the Reapers (Bad/Renegade)
-Synthesis (Neutral)

Now that being said, if you have an effective military strength of at least 5000 (mine was 5700), and, from what I hear it can only be gotten if you choose to destroy the Reapers, you get a "secret" ending. After all is said and done, Shepard was shown back in London and ALIVE. This ending changes everything.

I'm not typically one to conform to popular fan theories about many things, but I've read up on Indoctrination Theory, which was even crossing my mind when the game was ending, and I have to say it makes the most sense. Which brings me to my next point;

How I felt about the ending? Was it bad? No. No, it wasn't. But the writing that lead up to it and included in it was incredibly sloppy, though. Was it emotional? Yes. Definitely. But incredibly bittersweet.

Now how does this tie in with Indoctrination Theory? Well first, let me point out that I had a very, very odd ending. When Joker steps off the ship, supposedly your love interest and best squadmate is supposed to, too. Well, my love interest in the first game was Ash, who I dropped for Miranda in the second game and remained committed to in the third. In the end, though, both Ashley and Garrus stepped off of the ship. This is the weird part; Garrus and Ashley were both with me in my final siege in London. When Harbinger attacked and killed everyone, either they died (which is what I was certain happened at the time), or they both magically teleported back to the damn ship and abandoned Shepard.

The only conclusion here is either a. Shepard was being indoctrinated; This would explain the AI taking on the form of the child Shepard is emotionally attached to. Choosing to control the reapers, a clearly Renegade option, was highlighted in blue as a trick to look Paragon meant the Reapers (the Catalyst AI) won. Choosing to destroy the Reapers, which was what the kid didn't want you to do, was highlight in red as a Renegade option, even though it was clearly Paragon. This is the only way to get the 'secret' ending, I hear, so long as you have 5000+ EMS. Shepard wakes up, breaking the indoctrination. What happens next? DLC will explain, of course!

or b. It really did all happen, and Shepard killed everything in the galaxy, because when a Mass Relay is destroyed, all life in it's system is, too. A victory, but mutually assured destruction. Without realizing the risks, my Shepard destroyed the Reapers so that no cycle would ever have to worry about them again. Joker and the Normandy crew, however the hell they got there, are either really alive and on some foreign planet, or they died and went to an afterlife, a la "LOST theory".

On the Reapers purpose: This was by far the worst part of the game. Did Xzibit write that big reveal? Someone put it best: "Yo dawg. I heard you organics like to build synthetics that wipe out all organics, so I've built synthetics that wipe out all organics every 50k years, so that you organics can't build synthetics that wipe out all organics."

That makes absolutely no sense. I was going with it with the whole "We maintain order to the chaos as galactic police" sort of deal, but the explanation made no sense. A better truth should have just been that they are all made of the civilizations they've harvested in the past and end cycles every 50k years so that they don't become threatened by the new evolving species. In other words, true survivalism. And even still, that's a terrible answer. I can't help but feel Bioware just wrote themselves into a corner on this one.

The best I can think of is, assuming the ending actually happened, the Catalyst was trying to justify it's destruction of the galaxy and doing an incredibly shitty job at it. It's essentially a rogue AI that is trying to preserve itself. Basically, the man behind the curtain, like Wizard of Oz, which I find funny, because I speculated at one point early on that it would be funny if the big reveal at the end is someone controlling the Reapers like the man behind the curtain, and sure enough... EDIT: Also wanted to point out, why did Shepard stop bleeding and being incoherent when he met the Catalyst? Why did Hackett stop trying to contact him?

What happens next?

We wait. Fallout 3 - Broken Steel. Remember that? It completely retconned the ending of Fallout 3 and changed everything. I have no doubt in my mind that there will be a DLC for Shepard. There's one rumored right now called "The Truth", due by May, with new multiplayer maps and several new 'ending missions', which, as a supposed insider reports, completely retcons the ending, but 'the decision you made will impact it heavily'. I doubt it's true, mostly because the big thing that questions it's validity is that it's supposedly going to be free. This is EA, there's no such thing as free DLC. Even so, I do think there will inevitably be a DLC retcon, either picking up from the 'secret' ending, or picking up from where the Stargazer (Buzz Aldrin) left off by saying he'd tell the girl one more story.

Last thing; You really need to piece together the puzzle. Why was Shepard having so many significant recurring nightmares about the boy? Why at the end of the one did he see himself as the boys father? Why was dialogue between Shep and Anderson's final moments together cut out (in which Anderson tell Shepard he's going to make a great dad some day)? Why did the AI take on the form of a child? The mass relays blowing up SHOULD have killed everyone, assuming it happened. Did they, or is Bio going to forget that ever was canon? Did the whole Normany survive? Does Javik know how to build Mass Relays?

And my final thing: While the final scenes were emotional, they didn't tearjerk, however the talks with the crewmates, Garrus and Liara most notably, at the very end... the way they were saying goodbye to Shepard, as if they knew... I have to tip my hat to Bioware for those. Definitely tugged the heartstrings a lot hardest yet in the game, left me bawling.

Anyway, I suppose that's it for now. I still don't know how I should feel about the end, but I'm inclined to follow that he was indoctrinated, and when he chose to destroy them, he broke the indoctrination, and the series ended there, on a cliffhanger.


Bioware has already said there will be more games set in the ME universe, so either they're going to the Human v Turian wars, or none of this happened.

[Concept]

>Deo

In universe, I quite like the Indoctrination theory. Realistically though, I don't see it. There are three ways this goes:

1) Bioware intended the ending to be taken literally. Any playtesting would've caught that the fans would take this badly. In this scenario, Bioware screwed themselves over.

2) Bioware didn't intend it to be taken literally, and didn't intend to change it. Any playtesting would've caught that the fans would take this, too, badly. Bioware screwed themselves over.

3) Bioware didn't intend this to be taken literally, and change it. Cue mass outrage in the vein of the anger that multiplayer effected single player, with all the fans with Xbox's/PS3's that aren't hooked up to the internet unable to get an ending. Bioware screwed themselves over.

However it rolls, the ending was handled poorly. Wouldn't have actually minded it as it if it were given more context and we were given more closure for the outcomes of our final choice. As it is, everything you've done up to that point ceases to matter entirely. My favourite theory so far (read: the one that amuses me most) is that Bioware got annoyed when some of the script or something got leaked some time back and did this in retaliation :p.

I like the indoctrination theory. I just don't have that much faith in Bioware (or understand why, if correct, you can't continue the game after fighting off the indoctrination).

[Raptor Jesus]

About what deoxys said:
Uh... I'm pretty sure destroying the synthetics was definitely supposed to be the "Paragon" choice. As the child/guardian/whatever dumb thing showed the options, it showed you a scene with the choices:

-Anderson shooting at stuff to destroy the synthetics/Reapers.
-Illusive Man grabbing hold and controlling the Reapers.
-The boy explaining the Crucible now gives you a new option to merge synthetic and organic life.

Anderson clearly represents a Paragon figure while the Illusive Man is clearly a Renegade character.

As for my ending, I chose to the merging Synthetics. Liara and Tali were with me. Miranda was my continued romance, so she wasn't in the ending at all. As Joker got off the crashed Normandy, he had all these technogreen stuff and came out with EDI, also with technogreen veins. Then Garrus stepped off.

So yeah, I don't think your indoctrination theory is all that valid.

As for a post ending DLC content, unlikely. If you keep playing ME3, you'll see the game has dragged you back to before you invaded the Cerberus base. Any DLC will likely take place prior to the final mission chain.

[deoxys]

That's what I was trying to say, choosing to destroy all synthetics would have to be Paragon, but it's cloaked as Renegade.

The indoctrination theory isn't mine and it makes complete sense... at least, the base idea behind it. It essentially states that between the run for the light beam in London and the choice you make aboard the Citadel was completely under reaper control. None of it happened. It answers a lot of questions... I saw a lot of videos on it, and this one is probably by far my favorite, even though it says Indoctrination Theory is wrong, the theory it presents is very, very similar. Also note I disagree with a lot of the implications in the video, but the overall idea is what I do agree with. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Tbghjn7_Byc

Also, the same thing happened in Fallout 3. You go back before the final mission, and yet, the DLC loads the game right where it ended and then picks back up with "2 Weeks Later".

[Raptor Jesus]

When you beat Fallout 3 before the DLC, it just ended. You couldn't play anymore because it was done. When you got Broken Steel, it picks up 2 weeks later.

In ME3, you go back in time to before the final mission. There's a difference.

[deoxys]

I see your point, but I feel like that's a poor argument for why it couldn't be done. It autosaves the game when you make your final decision, during it's cutscene. Without a DLC, the game obviously would redirect your back before you launched the assault, but with a DLC epilogue, it could pick up from the credits "Tell me another story about the Shepard?" "Alright... one more story..."

I think my problem with ME now that I'm thinking about it is the now blatant illusion of choice.

John Curtin · Georgetown University I didn't understand what the big deal was either. I thought people were just whining about not being given what they wanted.
Then I experienced the ending for myself.
Now, I've been with Mass Effect for 5 years, since the beginning. It took me 40 hours to beat ME3. And I can say, without equivocation, that for the first 39 hours and 50 minutes of ME3, it was the best game I had ever played. Period, bar none. Gaming nirvana.
The last ten minutes ended all that, and NOT because spoiler Shepard dies in nearly every case.
There was no closure offered. None. All the places and people I had come to care about over my 5 year with the series? Brushed over. What's more, the ending defied the basic pillar of the ME universe: choice. This series was all about CHOOSING. Choosing how you played your game and influenced your world. The endings took all that away.
And enough of this about there being 16 different endings. That is total BS. There are 3 endings. And even that's being generous, because each one is really just a sort of variant on the others.
I love Mass Effect. If I didn't this wouldn't be a big deal. I'm NOT asking for the ending that I want. I'm not a spoiled child, I don't need to get my way all the time. But man, we the fans deserved an ending that we could RESPECT.
And, frankly, Bioware deserved that too, because other than the last 10 minutes, they had achieved brilliance. And they let it get away.

Man... does anyone else feel depressed that the series is over? I think it's starting to hit me now, especially with that ending. Mass Effect has been my favorite game series bar none, and to see it all end, like that... I suppose I do feel a bit empty now.

[deoxys]

Thought some of you might find this deleted scene video interesting.

r3PQT4c_r7Q

Also, it turns out there probably won't be a retcon. The 'Final Hours of ME3' from G4 has been released. In it, Bioware states this is the kind of reaction they wanted and the kind of ending they wanted. How utterly disappointing. Here's to hoping they release a statement with closure, or something.

[Blastoise]

Let's be honest about the "it was a dream/indoctrination" scenario(s): when has anything Bioware has ever done demonstrated that level of narrative subtlety? I know an ass-pull when I see it, and anyone who says "it's actually super deep/you don't get it man" is in some serious denial.

In it, Bioware states this is the kind of reaction they wanted and the kind of ending they wanted. How utterly disappointing. Here's to hoping they release a statement with closure, or something.


This is basically what Bioware now says in response to any sort of criticism, though.

"Dragon Age 2 is going to be super duper awesome, guys!"

*DA2 is released, fans rage*

"Our fans just don't get it!"

*several months later*

"Okay, so we're going to listen to the fans and fix all those issues for DA3, even though we said they were super awesome in DA2!"

[deoxys]

Let's be honest about the "it was a dream/indoctrination" scenario(s): when has anything Bioware has ever done demonstrated that level of narrative subtlety? I know an ass-pull when I see it, and anyone who says "it's actually super deep/you don't get it man" is in some serious denial.


Maybe. I'm not saying it's super deep. I'm saying they had a clusterfuck of different ideas and implications that make no sense other than to believe the final 20 minutes of the game didn't happen. Like I said, how did Ashley and Garrus wind up on the Normandy when they were with me, and how come the Normandy was trying to go through a relay? And then the "true" ending where Shepard is shown waking up back in front of the light beam in London (the Conduit) [edit: scratch that, no he isn't he's just surrounded by rubble and I'm an idiot], as if he never even went to the Citadel? It makes no sense. So people think he was indoctrinated, and he broke the indoctrination.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm trying to solve it for myself, because in retrospect, the ending was filled with plot holes galore, and I probably should have turned the game off when Anderson died while they were looking at Earth.

[Raptor Jesus]

Well, run with Brenda Shepard (the one with all the non-Humans dead) and I've run into some slightly different stuff. Mordin being dead, someone else took his place in the whole Krogan matter.

*He says something about starting a new Krogan baby boom*
"I always wondered how Krogans mate..."
*He makes a really weird face. His eyes shift and focus.*
*Shepard gets a weird look as she stares at him.*

o_O

W-T-F. He's a freak job. I miss Mordin lol.

[deoxys]

I admire your ability to replay it. My mood is completely shot. I was going to replay start to finish a brand new character, full on Renegade, being a dick to everyone, and fucking ALL the bitches. Now I just can't. Yet.

[Raptor Jesus]

You guys act like unloved endings are something new to gaming.

[Concept]

They're not, but this.. this is really impressive. I've played a lot of games and this is one of the most spectacular downhill turn I've ever seen. It's not the worst ending I've ever seen, don't get me wrong, but the worse ones were on terrible games to start with. It's just very impressive how successfully they manage to render the entire series up til that point irrelevant in the space of about five minutes.

That said, I probably will play it again eventually, just stop just before the end.

[deoxys]

It's the worst ending I've ever seen to a trilogy, because it took everything you did up to that point and completely disregarded it. It was more or less a spit in the face.

Let's not forget there were 16 endings advertised, to boot. How many did we get? 6. 6 endings, all the same with different colors. So technically? We got one ending.

Your actions in the first two games were disregarded. Even actions in the third! Where were the Geth? Where were the Krogan? Where were the Rachni? Instead of deploying ground troops, we get a few soldiers storming through London streets and a few Makos, while we have at least two billion troops floating up in orbit.

As for the end itself. There was no closure for anyone. These characters you've come to know and love? Bioware said 'Fuck them, we don't care about them, they're probably dead or something'. Joker and your crew, especially Garrus, would never abandon Shepard and just take the fuck off like that. Ever. They'd die first. It's been addressed already. Now maybe they assumed Shepard was KIA from Harbinger's blast; but how did they magically teleport from the battlefield and back to the Normandy?

And let's not forget the complete shitting on of all of the philosophical prospects and moral choices up to that point. The genophage cure, the debate on whether or not synthetics could be alive or not... gone. Choosing the 'paragon' ending of destroying the reapers shows the real canon ending in which Shep lives. But in doing so, you've just killed everything partly or all synthetic. The reapers, the geth, EDI, possibly the quarians, and all biotic users. These are things I did not want to do. Bullshit, and I had no choice, although I COULD have picked something different, but who am I do decide everyone in the galaxy should be part synth, part organic? Stupid. And controlling? Oh so, the reapers live. Cool.

No, Shepard broke character. He should have told that little boy, who was clearly using imagery from Shep's mind to fuck with him, to go fuck himself, and that they'll win the war with the troops they brought, or die trying, and then walked away.

And did I mention how the fucking mass relays KILLED EVERYONE IN EVERY MAJOR SYSTEM ANYWAY? gg bioware, it was definitely an emotional ending, but fucked up and filled with plot holes. I by no means wanted a happy ending, but I didn't want a bullshit grimdark one that was the same no matter what you chose. Maybe if it was one of the possible endings, fine, I can accept that. But no, no matter what, the outcome was the same.

Anyone see that piece of notebook paper with the endings written out on them from the dev diary by Mac Walters when he was trying to figuring it out? He just sat down one night and came up with it, and it fucking shows.

Lots of speculation from EVERYONE!

I cant find the full image, this is all I could find

http://cdn.overclock.net/8/83/8319bf71_24532595.jpeg

[Raptor Jesus]

Okay, don't get me wrong, I know everything that's wrong with the ending. You all had roughly the same experience as me. But Mass Effect 3 is still the most varying of all the Mass Effect games. I'm insanely curious as to how the differences will be between my pure Paragon game with my not-Paragon game. Even if the ending sucks, the rest of the game is fine. Just the simple act of Mordin, Garrus, and Wrex being dead in this game has completely changed my experience. It's like a new game. Even if it ends in the same horrible way.

Also, I beat the game on like Monday. I've had my mourning/recovery period.

[deoxys]

Yeah, you're right.

I'm just entering the "anger" phase at this point.

[deoxys]

Bioware's Casey Hudson issued a statement tonight saying

'we haven't seen the last of Shepard' and that the ending was 'bittersweet', 'victorious', 'inspiring', and 'uplifting'.

So...

http://i.qkme.me/3ocjx3.jpg

nothing makes me feel as good as a galactic Holocaust

what I got from his message was: TL;DR - Fuck you, you didn't like my endings!

Listen to yourself, Hudson! You're indoctrinated!

I'm fucking done with Bioware.

EDIT:

Alright, so this guy said something that really struck a chord with me that is slowly... fixing me? I don't know.

It's like John Locke says in Lost, "It's not about the destination, Jack. It's about the journey."

[Raptor Jesus]

Fuck yeah! Finally unlocked Quarian Engineer for multiplayer. Only took me all of the time I had the demo and now the actual game and going from 50% - 97% in Galactic Readiness.

[Raptor Jesus]

lol (http://kotaku.com/5894278/mass-effect-3-fan-complains-to-the-feds-over-the-games-ending/)

[Talon87]

lol (http://kotaku.com/5894278/mass-effect-3-fan-complains-to-the-feds-over-the-games-ending/)
If this were really about false promises and fraudulent advertising, then sure, maybe I'd wish him luck in his one-in-a-million chance of winning this suit -- or of this suit even making it to court! :lol: :roll: But the problem is that this isn't really about fraud or false promises: this is about rage over an ending that he and apparently many others in the community did not like. So I have to say ... I hope the suit is thrown out or that he loses. And here's why:

If this guy's suit makes it to court, and if he should win, it will hugely de-incentivize artists' expression through video games. Instead of video games still being the Wild West they currently are, a realm where anything goes and where we are still able to enjoy such bold experiments as City Lights and Citizen Kane, instead video games would be shuttled down the path towards 21st Century Hollywood -- appealing to the broadest common denominator, which in most cases is usually crass, unintelligent, and/or predictable. "People liked the ending to Pokemon Red? Make more like that! People didn't like the ending to Final Fantasy X? Then NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!" This may sound well and good on the surface -- "out with the bad, in with the good!" -- but the problem becomes this: when you're worried about being sued by your customers for failing to please them, you're not going to take literary risks. You're going to play it safe. You're going to always give them their happy, predictable, canned Hollywood endings. And I'd really hate to see video games, as a medium, become like that. We already see certain companies (e.g. EA and Activision) doing this, but I'd hate to see all of them start to do this.

That stated, I wonder if he actually has a solid case for fraud or not. I mean, from what I have vaguely (non-spoiler) heard from others, it sounds like ...

(Possible spoiler for Concept or others who haven't beaten the game yet? So I'll put it in here. That stated, it's a general spoiler, not a specific one, so ...)
... it sounds like you guys were promised that all of your decisions in Mass Effect and in Mass Effect 2 would culiminate in this game, Mass Effect 3, and would really make a difference. And it sounds like, from what I am hearing, that that simply isn't true. That instead of your decisions in previous games impacting the game's final outcome, almost everyone wound up with the exact same ending. If this is true, and if BioWare really did promise in their advertising for ME3 that the choices you made in ME and ME2 mattered, then I guess the guy may have grounds for a fraud suit. But still: for the reasons I mentioned above, I hope this one gets thrown out. 'Cause I really don't want to see a precedent being set for storywriters being sued for writing unpopular endings -- which is what we know this case is really about.

[Raptor Jesus]

I really don't get why everyone expected super varied endings based on decisions made. Bioware has always made RPGs which all end the same regardless of alignment, choices, and companions brought with you.

Baldur's Gate - Find out you're Bhaalspawn, kill your half brother.
BAldur's Gate 2 TOB - Kill the Five. Kill the Bhaal Priestess. Choose to become the new God of Murder or finally kill all traces of him.
Neverwinter Nights - Find the evil terrorists cult. Kill them.
KOTOR - Never beat it myself, but people tell me it has a WTF ending.
Dragon Age Origins - You rally up an army and go into Fereldan. You stop the Archdemon.
DA2 - It was all bad. Not just the ending.

Seriously, has their track record ever showed us an ending which were super varied based on our game choices? It's usually just two or three choices.

I could have been the most honorable paragon of Fereldan's Grey Wardens and chose to either kill the Archdemon myself, have Alistair do it, or knock up Morrigan so she could have her fetus absorb the demon. That's it for Dragon Age!

The difference was, they were relatively happy endings. People just didn't like ME3's ending because it always felt a bit bad, even if it was mostly good.

[Concept]

I think part of it is that none of Bioware's previous games ran on the premise of this much choice. Their other games had more variation in the endings (instead of whether that bit was red, green or blue, which is the only difference in ME3's ending cutscenes), at the end of games that weren't entirely marketed as "woo lots of choices change the game world woo!" Also, their other games endings were internally consistent and didn't have plotholes you could drive Texas through, fridge logic galore or sudden, unexplained space magic. Also in general they give at least some attempt at closure.

Based on what's very clearly established in Arrival, no matter what ending you choose the Mass Relays exploding in every system should wipe out all life in the galaxy, if nothing else.

[Talon87]

Knights of the Old Republic, iirc, had four possible endings, two Light Side and two Dark Side. At the very least, it had two endings, one for each Force alignment, but I seem to recall that each side had two endings of its own. The end of that game was really trippy and weird, but whatever.

brief discussion of KotOR endings
If you joined the Light Side, there were two possible outcomes: you prevent Darth Malak from using the ancients' technology to conquer/destroy the galaxy but at the cost of Bastila's life or you get to have your cake and eat it too by converting Bastila back to the Light Side and still thwarting Malak.

If you joined the Dark Side, I don't know how many endings there were, but I imagine there could conceivably be two: one each for Bastila living or dying. In any event, what set this ending apart from the Light Side one was that you actually killed Malak ... but then used the ancients' power for your own and used it to conquer/destroy the galaxy and usher in a new era for the Sith. Or something.
Jade Empire, BioWare's second outing on the XBox after the successful KotOR series, did a similar thing iirc. The whole premise of that game was that the emperor of China was being usurped by some bad guy and so, I'm pretty sure (never beat this game, but...) the two possible endings would be (1) Good Side: you defeat the usurper, restore the emperor to his throne, and are knighted a hero of the empire; or (2) Bad Side: you defeat the usurper, kill the emperor, and crown yourself the new emperor of China. That's my speculative guess, without ever having read how the game ends or having beat it myself, so I could well be wrong. But in any event, this is what it seemed like the game was very much setting itself up for.

So ... it's not like BioWare hasn't done endings before where beloved main characters die or where the endings weren't a little grim for the heroes of light. But even going back to KotOR ...

(again, KotOR end game spoilers)
... your actions determined whether Bastila lived or died. So it's not like she was unsaveable. If you really cared for her, and you'd made the right decisions, you could save her. This is exactly what I did when I first beat the game.
I think it all comes back to inevitability. People seem to be very upset that certain characters' fates are inevitable, that the player is powerless to change those fates.

[Blastoise]

lol (http://kotaku.com/5894278/mass-effect-3-fan-complains-to-the-feds-over-the-games-ending/)

talisweat.jpg

Bioware's forum goes are mongoloids: what else is new?

And while a lot of Bioware games tend to end in a similar way, you at least get some closure on how the major decisions you made affected the world in the process (and, as Concept noted, at least made sense in the context of their own games: you don't find out that the fucking Archdemons are rising up to exterminate the Fereldens so that the Fereldens can't make archdemons or some shit).

[Raptor Jesus]

Based on what's very clearly established in Arrival, no matter what ending you choose the Mass Relays exploding in every system should wipe out all life in the galaxy, if nothing else.

A lot of people point this out, but it's really shouldn't be an issue.

In the Arrival, it was a violent crash into an active Mass Relay to set it off releasing all the energy into the nearby star system. Meanwhile, in the various endings of ME3, the bulk of the energy is launched into the next relay with only a faction being used for whichever energy release in the ending you chose. Also, we can argue that the function of the Crucible/Catalyst also shuts off the Mass Relays as we see the relay without any of it's energy right after it fires the beam to the next relay just before it collapses, as opposed to leaving it on to explode as a planet crashes into it.

And don't get me wrong. I don't like the ending either. But people are taking it way too seriously.

[deoxys]

I read that post a few days ago a few hours after he posted it. Initially, I agreed with his original intent; He filed a complaint not because the endings were bad, but for false advertising. We were told we would have 16 different endings, and we got ONE, colored three different ways (quite literally RECOLORED), with multiple variations, clocking in at a total of six, plus a bonus "easter egg" ending. They lied through their teeth. I don't know what's up with that guy's filing now, it sounds like he's turned into an idiot about it, but I read his initial post and he made many points that I agreed with and made it very clear he wasn't filing because of how shitty the ending was, rather for breach of trust in false advertising.

In the Arrival, it was a violent crash into an active Mass Relay to set it off releasing all the energy into the nearby star system. Meanwhile, in the various endings of ME3, the bulk of the energy is launched into the next relay with only a faction being used for whichever energy release in the ending you chose. Also, we can argue that the function of the Crucible/Catalyst also shuts off the Mass Relays as we see the relay without any of it's energy right after it fires the beam to the next relay just before it collapses, as opposed to leaving it on to explode as a planet crashes into it.

Yes yes, we've all heard that argument, but if you'd read the codex in ME3, in even says Humans were considering and trying to get council approval to disrupt and destroy other relays, but the council declined, saying it would kill everything and cause a supernova. I don't really care about 'space magic', it's been made quite apparent to me and everyone else that no matter how you spin it, when a relay is destroyed no matter how, it goes supernova. "Well, what about that garden planet at the end?" Funny. In the codex in the same entry, it mentions that for whatever reason, almost as if to foreshadow, that garden planets with growing life wouldn't be harmed, because SPACE MAGIC!

People are taking it seriously, yeah. Some are going way out of their way. But this is the first time I ever I legitimately feel cheated by a stupid video game. I shouldn't even give a shit, and yet I do. I have no idea WHY I do. In fact, it's been just about the only thing on my mind for the past few days, and I'm freaking the fuck out because I can't stop thinking about it... and because it's just a fucking game! I shouldn't care this much, and apparently I do. I don't know. I just feel completely cheated and Bioware thinks this is some sort of funny little game they're playing. Seriously, "he just sat down one night and came up with it"? FUCK YOU! You're really going to come up with an ending by scribbling shit in a notebook and then ending it in big capital letters "LOTS OF SPECULATION FROM EVERYBODY!"

I'm fucking done with this company. Ever since EA got to them, they've been complete shit, with the exception of Mass Effect 2.

Oh hey look, me above, taking a vidya gaem to srsly lol

[Concept]

Eh, I'm certainly disappointed with the ending - the Mass Effect series in general is a good example of why I don't get book and film buffs who automatically look down on video games*, and the ending completely failed to live up to this - but I'm not one of these demanding a change of ending or calling for Biowares heads or whatever. If they release an ending DLC I'll probably play it though (a la Broken Steel from Fallout 3).

And to be fair, the rest of the third game was pretty damned good. In general, I don't buy games on release - I think the least time I did was either ME2 or FFXII, both several years old now - so if Bioware release something new and it sounds like my kinda thing and people are making positive noises about it then yeah, I'll still buy it.

*To digress, yes a lot of games are complete shit like COD "olol shoot the baddies til they die olol" but there are a lot of really, really terrible books and films out there too - they shouldn't devalue the medium.

[deoxys]

Yeah, don't get me wrong. I know it sounds somewhat hypocritical, but yes, ME3 was a great game... it just leaves an incredibly horrible, horrible taste in your mouth at the end.

I could rant for hours.

[deoxys]

6M0Cf864P7E

this is perfect (spoilers in video)

[deoxys]

I didn't get this from the announcement today, but apparently several news sites are taking it this way... (http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/mass-effect-3-ending-changed-video-gamer-backlash-bioware-announces-article-1.1048196?localLinksEnabled=false)

[deoxys]

Bioware announces Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut for this summer (http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=662095)

It will expand the ending, add more ending cutscenes and an epilogue to the story as well as closure for all the characters.

Oh and it's free.

We fucking won.

[Raptor Jesus]

It's only free until April 14, 2014. Those bastards!

[Amras.MG]

Note: I have not played any Mass Effect games, though I have watched my friend play Mass Effect 2 for like 2 hours.

Is there any information about whether this DLC will be included in new copies of the game sold in stores? If they don't start pre-loading this, doesn't that mean that every Mass Effect fan without internet access is stuck with the 3-flavors-of-one-giant-crap ending?

[Raptor Jesus]

Is there any information about whether this DLC will be included in new copies of the game sold in stores? If they don't start pre-loading this, doesn't that mean that every Mass Effect fan without internet access is stuck with the 3-flavors-of-one-giant-crap ending?

Unless they make a newer edition of the game, like "Mass Effect 3: Non-Crappy Ending Edition", you're unfortunately stuck with that bad ending.

[Talon87]

Unless they make a newer edition of the game, like "Mass Effect 3: Non-Crappy Ending Edition", you're unfortunately stuck with that bad ending.
I think it's pretty much guaranteed that there will be a Mass Effect trilogy release some day in the next 2-3 years and that it'll probably have the revised version of Game 3. So if you miss out on ME3 now, chances are you're probably like me -- still haven't played the first two either yet -- and that you may as well hang in there for 2-3 more years and wait for the bundle.

[Raptor Jesus]

Well... you can only get the first game on either PC or 360 since Microsoft was the publisher, which is why the PS3 players had to basically skip the first game and settle with the interactive comic decision maker ~_~;;

So I don't know if a trilogy would even be allowed to be published as EA is now Bioware's publisher and I doubt Microsoft would allow EA to make such a package.

[deoxys]

Bioware just released another statement:

Are there going to be more/different endings or ending DLCs in the future? No. BioWare strongly believes in the team’s artistic vision for the end of this arc of the Mass Effect franchise. The extended cut DLC will expand on the existing endings, but no further ending DLC is planned.


http://i.imgur.com/ByxGr.gif

Fuck Bioware, fuck Casey Hudson (ESPECIALLY Casey Hudson), fuck EA, fuck the gaming journalists who defend them. If you say "lol u so self-entitled", fuck you, too.

I never thought the day would come for anything when I decide a fanon ending has priority over that of canon. I don't care about clarification, if all they're going to do is tie up plot holes like lol how did sheaprds lvoe interest get on da shipz with joker lol then don't waste my time. The entire ending was bad and they should feel bad.
I'm out.

[Blastoise]

At this point, do you really want a "lol, sorry guys we were gonna sell this to you for $15 until we realized we really fucked up?" ending? While I'm well on record as thinking it's shit, I'm also of the view that you really only get one chance to stick an ending: trying to patch up the glaring plotholes with a few extra scenes of exposition isn't going to work nearly as well as people think it will when they don't have the rush of the rest of the game building towards an unknown climax.

I also can't see anyone but the most flagrantly butthurt manchildren having not moved on by the end of the summer.

[deoxys]

There's only one thing I want to happen and I'd be fine;

Get rid of the fucking star child and they can do whatever the fuck they want.

I think it was just the horrid, HORRID deus ex machina thrown in that just shat on everything for me. The plot holes can be fixed with quick explanations

I'm just pissed because I feel like all of my time in these fucking games, while fun, led to a payoff that could only be equated to being castrated during a money shot.

Regardless, I can't wait for the verbal blood shed that will be unleashed at PAX today at the Bioware panel.

[Itzatrap]

Finally finished ME3. Didn't care for the ending but the game was still amazing. Would play again to get other endings but Bioware ruined replayability with completely different decisions in each one since you always end up in the same crappy place. =[ Was going to try not cheating on Miranda with Kaiden on my second run. >.> The multiplayer is great though.

[Poke_Hunter]

I intend to play through all three in order at some point in the future. (Read: As soon as I can get them after aquiring a Laptop)

I'm quite looking forward to getting them, though, seems like a good game.