It was a fucking shitty rush-job with no heart and thought. It was a simplistic, primitive example of how to create a game with no aspirations for anything other than fulfilling the quarterly report of your parent company. In the course of a playthrough, it manages to include all of the following *basic* deficiencies:
- Broken quest log. Even freely available browser games do a better job.
- Recycled N7 missions, i.e. horde-modes multiplayer maps masquerading as singleplayer missions.
- Asspulls out of nowhere. The Crucible is somehow the solution to the Reaper problem? Really? That's the best you could do as a writer?
- Lazy writing: Cerberus are apparently no longer a paramilitary organisation, but have millions of personnel and are able to cover the entire galaxy wherever Space Jesus goes
- Even more lazy writing: In-your-face exposition, like having a newly introduced character referencing what happened in the earlier games. For example, James asks during the trip back to Eden Prime: "So, Shepard, this is the place where [lists all the things that happened in ME1] took place?" Shepard: "Yes, that is correct, James." I know Bioware wanted to be more inclusive towards people unfamiliar with the universe, but this is just lazy writing and it is entirely possible to convey that information in a believable and intelligent manner
- Fetch side-quests that *only* involved fucking planet scanning.
- Animations were even worse and unpolished. Many, many instances of buggy weapons or items or even switching up weapons between gameplay and cutscenes.
- Removing features that were in the previous two games
- Random turret sequences. A lot of times. One particular main campaign mission involves defending two points from enemy waves, followed by another turret sequence from the air. Yes, 3 turret sequences in one mission
- Holstering was removed, which goes to show that not once does the game *not* focus on shooting while you're in a mission. Your gun is always constantly pointing towards something, which speaks volumes about Bioware's design philosophy
- Fanservice én masse.
- Plot pacing was completely terrible. It's either rush to save Earth, unite the warring races versus getting a trinket from some planet for a random citizen
- Kai Leng was not properly established, so he just comes across as an extreme nuisance with a lot of plot armour
- The earlier established villain didn't even say a word in the entire game and has like a 2 minute cameo in the end. Apparently Harbinger's importance in ME2 was entirely worthless.
- A lot of internal logical inconsistencies
- Dialogue moments that used to be interactive with at least some sort of camera work is relegated to pushing a button and a wave-file playing. It screams that Bioware rushed the game by not having the usual dialogue presentation that they had in earlier games.
- The way to start sidequests revolves around walking by some strangers
- Linear, corridor-based level design
- Emphasis on shootbang, meaning a lot of shooting, intense action, explosions, etc. The game design never stops to let the atmosphere and setting breathe, but is instead focused on yelling at the player as much as possible, as if he/she suffers from ADHD
- Lame, shitty attempts at affecting the player's emotions. The introduction sequence at Earth with Vent Kid dying is probably the worst example of shitty writing that I've come across in the history gaming. I felt so offended that someone thought such a ridiculous attempt at creating empathy would be successful.
- The ending of ME2 was rendered completely irrelevant. Apparently blowing up a colony of Batarians wasn't such a big deal.
- Shitty, shitty writing. Examples like "We fight or we die!" are plenty.
- Meaningless war assets. They amount to being nothing more than a number-filled spreadsheet. A complete travesty.
- And this is not to talk about the monumental clusterfuck of an ending. I mean, you have to actually commit a tremendous amount of effort to do such a terrible fucking job.
All of the above seems pretty self-evident to me if you expect to be engaged and respected as a human being capable of rational and critical thought when experiencing different fictional media. Yet the following was somehow the judgement by "game critics":
http://www.abload.de/img/me3_metacriticd9pun.png[/IMG*]
Seriously, they must all be blind and/or incompetent to gloss over the many deficiencies of Mass Effect 3. But then again, it might all make sense: A game created by incompetent developers will be well-received by incompetent critics.[/QUOTE]
Thank you for this exhaustive post.
That's essentially my opinion as well.
