FirmBizBws
Becomes baffled, curling up into a ball when confronted with three controller options.
The over exaggeration of how bad the ending was never ceases to amaze me
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RTTP: Mass Effect 3's three sins, and why all three are why we hate it.
- Thread starter Zaku
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God, it's almost like you have opinions which aren't "My fee-fees are hurt."
I'll be toxic, idiotic, and generic as hell while calling out bullshit.
But let's turn this thread about Mass Effect 3 into a SJW thread. That works.
I think people give the ending of Mass Effect 3 too much attention when talking about where it went wrong - probably because the ending is where it soured on them, after holding out hope through the rest of the game that they would ultimately be satisfied. Personally, I think that (while the ending could definitely have been greatly improved) it was mostly bad because they'd painted themselves into a corner where it was impossible to write an ending that wasn't disappointing and unsatisfying.
In my opinion, the real problem was with the game's premise. Starting from Mass Effect 1, there were basically two vastly different, but equally interesting interpretations of what the Reapers were and how they operated.
There was Sovereign's explanation - that the Reapers were essentially just Lovecraftian gods in deep space; an irresistable force who are so impossibly beyond the 'mortal' species of the galaxy that they can't be directly opposed, let alone defeated, and who have no emotional investment in any of their Reapings, because they don't need to.
And then there was Vigil's explanation - that the Reapers, while an immensely powerful, extremely advanced force, were by no means infallible gods, and achieved their goals through very understandable, very conventional methods, and that they merely had a nearly-foolproof plan, until the Protheans managed to gum it up.
The former explanation would lead to a third game where the Reapers were more akin to a galactic natural disaster: Nobody tries to fight a hurricane or a tsunami, because you can't - but there's still work to be done in trying to help people survive, and conflict in trying to find space and resources for displaced survivors. A Deus Ex Machina device like the Crucible would be necessary to ultimately stop them, but the boots-on-the-ground portion of the story wouldn't be about fighting Reapers directly.
The latter explanation would lead to a third game that is a straight up galactic war against the Reapers, with the races of the galaxy fighting them tooth and nail to avoid defeat, using conventional means, with both sides continually taking substantial losses. There would be no purpose in including something like the Crucible, because the fight would be won, in its entireity, by the galaxy banding together and just beating the Reapers in a fight.
And the problem is, Bioware tried to have it both ways. The Reapers attacked as though it were a ground war that they could actually lose, and the bulk of the game consisted of engaging them in direct combat, and ultimately winning every single skirmish. But the Reapers never lost an actual fight - the climaxes of the first and second acts of the game are that you fight, almost get destroyed by, and just barely eke out a win against, one of the small-fry, medium-sized Reapers that swarm the air like gnats - when the giant, Sovereign/Harbinger sized capital Reapers are still out there by the hundreds, almost entirely unengaged from the game. Your greatest victories hold about as much significance as farting into a hurricane, because your enemy is just that powerful and they're actively trying to fight you head-on.
I can't imagine how you could write an entire game that way, and then turn it into a proper, satisfying ending in the last 5, 10, or even 20%.
To me, it felt like Bioware was almost afraid that people wouldn't see the villains in the final game of their trilogy as a credible threat, unless they made sure that the Reapers were the most credible threat ever conceived, and in the process, not only laid it on so thick that it was difficult to take them seriously, but ended up turning the Reapers into a sort of loud, monotone note that limited a lot of the things they could have done writing-wise, and drowned out a lot of the parts that actually were genuinely good about the game's writing.
I think a lot of people went through a 'stages of grief' kind of thing when they realized that they didn't really like Mass Effect 3, myself included. By the time I was done thinking about it and digesting it, that's where I ended up.
In my opinion, the real problem was with the game's premise. Starting from Mass Effect 1, there were basically two vastly different, but equally interesting interpretations of what the Reapers were and how they operated.
There was Sovereign's explanation - that the Reapers were essentially just Lovecraftian gods in deep space; an irresistable force who are so impossibly beyond the 'mortal' species of the galaxy that they can't be directly opposed, let alone defeated, and who have no emotional investment in any of their Reapings, because they don't need to.
And then there was Vigil's explanation - that the Reapers, while an immensely powerful, extremely advanced force, were by no means infallible gods, and achieved their goals through very understandable, very conventional methods, and that they merely had a nearly-foolproof plan, until the Protheans managed to gum it up.
The former explanation would lead to a third game where the Reapers were more akin to a galactic natural disaster: Nobody tries to fight a hurricane or a tsunami, because you can't - but there's still work to be done in trying to help people survive, and conflict in trying to find space and resources for displaced survivors. A Deus Ex Machina device like the Crucible would be necessary to ultimately stop them, but the boots-on-the-ground portion of the story wouldn't be about fighting Reapers directly.
The latter explanation would lead to a third game that is a straight up galactic war against the Reapers, with the races of the galaxy fighting them tooth and nail to avoid defeat, using conventional means, with both sides continually taking substantial losses. There would be no purpose in including something like the Crucible, because the fight would be won, in its entireity, by the galaxy banding together and just beating the Reapers in a fight.
And the problem is, Bioware tried to have it both ways. The Reapers attacked as though it were a ground war that they could actually lose, and the bulk of the game consisted of engaging them in direct combat, and ultimately winning every single skirmish. But the Reapers never lost an actual fight - the climaxes of the first and second acts of the game are that you fight, almost get destroyed by, and just barely eke out a win against, one of the small-fry, medium-sized Reapers that swarm the air like gnats - when the giant, Sovereign/Harbinger sized capital Reapers are still out there by the hundreds, almost entirely unengaged from the game. Your greatest victories hold about as much significance as farting into a hurricane, because your enemy is just that powerful and they're actively trying to fight you head-on.
I can't imagine how you could write an entire game that way, and then turn it into a proper, satisfying ending in the last 5, 10, or even 20%.
To me, it felt like Bioware was almost afraid that people wouldn't see the villains in the final game of their trilogy as a credible threat, unless they made sure that the Reapers were the most credible threat ever conceived, and in the process, not only laid it on so thick that it was difficult to take them seriously, but ended up turning the Reapers into a sort of loud, monotone note that limited a lot of the things they could have done writing-wise, and drowned out a lot of the parts that actually were genuinely good about the game's writing.
I think a lot of people went through a 'stages of grief' kind of thing when they realized that they didn't really like Mass Effect 3, myself included. By the time I was done thinking about it and digesting it, that's where I ended up.
Dude, you can hate ME3 without being an ass.
You wanted to discuss this, you made a topic about it.
To hold a discussion with others, you need to be at least respectful.
This isnt how you discuss things with people. You sound like a petulant, spoiled child yelling at his mom that Lego is NOTHING like mega blocks, and heres why!
Delta Assault
Member
Well yeah, I don't like ME3, and uh...
*reads the rest of the thread*
...it's still bad, but it's not as awful as this Zaku guy.
*reads the rest of the thread*
...it's still bad, but it's not as awful as this Zaku guy.
I never gave credence to the idea that "recycling" and "preserving" a civilization in the form of a inter-stellar instrument of death was a better option than allowing the cycle to continue uninterrupted. It sounds like the type of idea I'd imagine an AI would come up with, because it's quite flawed from a human perspective. The game asks us to look past how silly it all is and I just can't. I didn't play the Leviathan DLC (I found it ridiculous that content so important to understanding the story was being offered at an additional price, also as an eff you to the devs I refused to buy an DLC after buying all the previous stuff), so maybe I missed something. Even for a video-game I found it all very,very lacking. To consider we went from the conversation with Sovereign on Virmire to the conversation with Star-kid...cataclysmic letdown.
ctrl-f 'Fallout'
Come on GAF, you fail me.
A simple and well designed epilogue with key choices given satisfying conclusions is a perfectly effective method of respecting player choice without devoting excessive dev resources to content creation.
Similarly, when it comes to choices that necessitate in-game playable space, quests, or speech, small vignettes that again, focus on key choices and are given, if not satisfying conclusions, at least respect is sufficient.
Neither were done.
edit: Tying major story to DLC was also a giant fuck you, that one chaps my ass, all other issues aside
Fully agreed.
Yeah, SE pulled something worse with FF12-2 having the real ending as DLC.
No I do agree, the conversation felt a tad off compared to other examples earlier in game. But that was kind of a minor thing to me, like you said gutting the Reapers was more of an issue to me. Bioware felt like they needed to explain the Reaper's Origins and motives, which until that point were only hinted at with dialogue Vigil and Harbinger. Bioware wrote themselves into a corner, making the Reapers so menacing that really most explanations would not live up to. See Noodle Incident on Tv Tropes, it is sorta what I'm getting at.It's interesting to hear from someone that legit enjoyed the ending. The way the conversation with the star-child is handled is so un-Shepard to me. The more I think about it, the more I remember how much I hated it. I loved the prospect of the Reapers being some unstoppable race of Space Cthulhus. Instead we got...
...and Shepard's just like "so I just have to press one of these buttons? Oh ok thanks".
The logic of the Reapers and StarChild didn't bother me, they are trying to preserve what organics they can from potential extensions from threats like what the Geth could become. In the StarChild's eyes the death from each harvest was worth preserving a fraction of each species in Reaper form. I know it seems kinda absurd, but it is sorta a does the end justify the means/crapshoot AI trope, which I was fine with, it fit nicely into the games semantics/themes about fatality and cycles.
If it was up to me, the perfect ending would have had a revamped final two levels and the starchild's role would be handed over to the Illusive Man, who is already indoctrinated at this point. He can further elaborate on the Reaper's possible/unknowable motives before there is some sort of boss fight where Harbinger can assume direct control. After all that is done, Vendetta, the Prothean VI should have guided Shepard in firing the Crucible and then leave the original endings untouched.
The Artisan
Member
It wasn't an overexaggeration. That ending was really really really bad.
Winterfang
Banned
You are no supposed to, that's why you have 4 choices. Control the reapers to stop the cycle by having the. Oversee the universe and taking an active role into stopping conflict.
Destroy the reapers (will destroy the reaper cycle, but somewhere in the future synthetics will always rise up against organics and wipe entire species, maybe even new reapers rise again, maybe it takes 500,000 years, maybe 25 million but it will happen again)
Synthesis which will merge all synthetic and organic life, giving them better understanding of each other, stopping the cycle but also stop evolution itself. A pause button if you will.
Or just take it in the ass and let the next cycle figure it out.
As for the choices don't mattering. I have like 20 difference saves with different outcomes based on the things I've done through the series. In some Wreav is poised to be a tyrant and become the biggest threat after the reapers, in others he is kept in check by eve, in another Geth and Quarians are cooperating, pretty much ending the current cycle by the fact, sometimes my crew looks entirely different because sole guys died in ME2. The thing is that most of the actions, had their consequences through the game instead of being displayed all if them at the ending.
My biggest problem with the original ending, was my crew pretty much bailing on my, including Garrus and my SO? No way Garrus will leave me to die on Earth.
I understand the options provided. I do not agree with taking the AI, who's logic is responsible for this huge mess, at it's word when it explains to me that these are the options that I have.
As far as our choices go, most anything that mattered in ME3 was resolved in ME3. There's little impact in what you've done throughout the series with the exception of characters not being there because they're dead. This is a small gripe for me as I pretty much expected that they wouldn't take the time to make sure that all of our different choices mattered, and meshed with what was going on in the final chapter. The lack of importance placed on the Rachni Queen choice was the only one that disappointed me.
And yes, it was highly uncharacteristic of your team to just leave you like that.
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