Mass Effect Thoughts

[LibraryOgre]

So, I was thinking about Mass Effect: Andromeda, and how one of the complaints is a lack of new aliens... you meet the Angara, and the Kett, and that's about it.

But I was thinking about this.

What we see in Mass Effect is the Milky Way, but what we see in Mass Effect: Andromeda isn't the Andromeda... it's one small part of Andromeda. It's a single cluster within Andromeda. A dense one, no doubt, with 38 star systems. Unlike the Milky Way, there's no Mass Effect relays to speed cluster-to-cluster traffic, which means that, unless you have a lot of races springing up all over the place, you're going to have few in the region we're looking at.

[Anteros]

Ok, but even if you want to argue that it makes sense to not meet many new species due to the setting...there's still the problem that they chose to use that setting instead of one more appropriate for a good story.

[warty goblin]

Also the aliens are boring, which is probably the cardinal sin.

[Forum Explorer]

So, I was thinking about Mass Effect: Andromeda, and how one of the complaints is a lack of new aliens... you meet the Angara, and the Kett, and that's about it.

But I was thinking about this.

What we see in Mass Effect is the Milky Way, but what we see in Mass Effect: Andromeda isn't the Andromeda... it's one small part of Andromeda. It's a single cluster within Andromeda. A dense one, no doubt, with 38 star systems. Unlike the Milky Way, there's no Mass Effect relays to speed cluster-to-cluster traffic, which means that, unless you have a lot of races springing up all over the place, you're going to have few in the region we're looking at.


Ok, but even if you want to argue that it makes sense to not meet many new species due to the setting...there's still the problem that they chose to use that setting instead of one more appropriate for a good story.

Honestly, I think the problem is that they didn't make a good game. Only having a minimum of new aliens is fine, and there is nothing wrong with the setting. But the game itself was a failure, and if you aren't having fun then everything starts to seem bad.

[Eldonauran]

My opinion on the game is quite different than the majority opinion. I actually enjoyed the game and still play it every so often. Though, I don't touch the multiplayer stuff, so that tells you a bit about what kind of games I like.

[LibraryOgre]

My opinion on the game is quite different than the majority opinion. I actually enjoyed the game and still play it every so often. Though, I don't touch the multiplayer stuff, so that tells you a bit about what kind of games I like.

I'm liking it a lot, myself. It's at least as good as Mass Effect 1, with more flexible character creation.

[Morty]

I liked Andromeda more than most people as well and I don't think it deserves the scorn. But it is difficult to shake off the feeling that we were promised a new start in a new galaxy and got the same old thing in new decorations.

[Wyldephang]

It's not so much the lack of unique alien lifeforms that disappoints me. Rather, the presence of old, recognizable ones almost feels like a bit of a deus ex machina to distract die-hard fans from a contrived plot. The concept of shuttling a half-dozen or so alien species in arks across the cosmos is not very palatable to me, not when measured against the comparative grandeur of the Protheans and the Milky Way extinction cycle. The alien races of Mass Effect felt real, as did their politics, economies, martial histories, and so forth. The whole thing was fleshed out. I understand that we were probably left in the dark in Andromeda due to the comparative lack of data about alien races. But from the first time I saw Corporal Jenkins gunned down on Eden Prime--though the animation quality now makes me cringe--Mass Effect (the first game) has never failed to pull me into its sci-fi intrigue. Mass Effect: Andromeda did not do that for me--not as a standalone game, at least, and unfortunately, we are unlikely to see Andromeda as anything but a one-off. Still, I liked Andromeda, and played it to completion. It was fun, and possibly even a mechanical improvement over previous games in many ways.

[ImperiousLeader]

I also liked Andromeda, liked the setup and the Ryders. I didn't play it before it got fixed in the patches, so I can understand that a buggy meme-able release gave it a bad rap. But while the story wasn't the greatest, I consider Andromeda has got the best gameplay of the series. I liked that I wasn't locked into a class, the jump jet, and I kinda liked preferred playing Ryder to Shepard, felt freer.

[Psyren]

Andromeda was a study in frustration for me. Yes, it got a far worse rap than it deserved - it was merely mediocre, not bad, even at release with the worst of the bugs and animation issues. But the fact that it stayed mediocre even after those were fixed points to the more fundamental problems present in the game. Bioware could have had something great, had they not abandoned it so soon. (Of course, at the time we had no view behind the curtain to know that Anthem was imploding at that very moment as well.)

One of Andromeda's biggest problems was its tone: It was trying to present "you are a desperate explorer struggling to survive and eke out a living for your dying people" alongside "half the people that came to this new frontier with you are violent sociopaths, feel free to gun them down indiscriminately before they do that to you!" Over and over you hear how the Milky Way refugees don't have the numbers for a war with anyone, but they certainly have the numbers for you to gun them down en masse. Moreover, it was supposed to be primarily scientists and farmers going on this trip, why are there so many ex-military and thugs? A few Milky Way opponents would have been okay, but an entire faction of "Outlaws" gives us the Division problem (their version being "rioters" and "looters") where the narrative has to contort itself into pretzels to make this kind of mass murder without any sort of due process fit thematically. Mowing down enemies that look like you was fine in the densely-populated and mercenary/PMC-heavy Milky Way, but in Andromeda it just feels off. They must have realized the dissonance themselves, because there's a few throwaway lines from Lexi about how the cryosleep might have imbalanced a bunch of people that maybe they were planning to explore further in DLC but never got the chance to.

Another big problem of Andromeda was its gameplay - yes, that includes the combat.
For those who claim it's the best in the series, it's true there's a lot of innovations going for it - most notably adding the third dimension via jumping and airdashing, and the ability to take cover on any terrain obstacle rather than needing premade arenas with built-in chest-high-walls. But for every step forward since the original trilogy, Andromeda took several steps back. The amazing combo system of ME3 was heavily diluted both in variety and in sheer power, rendering most caster builds weaksauce especially at higher difficulties, and at launch before a series of patches went in, being a pure caster was almost useless until several rounds of buffs brought them up to merely average. We lost a ton of the fun powers that existed in ME3 as well - and I don't just mean the loss of flashy stuff like Shadow/Havoc Strike, Decoy and Dominate (no matter how awesome those would be in Andromeda's more open combat environments!) - I mean even the more basic series staples like Warp, Stasis and Sabotage being inexplicably gone too. In fact, the devs seem to have forgotten that taking out Warp and Stasis left us with no way to prime shielded enemies at a distance, which meant that one of the best ways to be an "Adept" in Andromeda is to run into melee because of Annihilation's terrible range. And it wasn't just the powers - the weapons also lost a lot of variety and punch, with no SMG category (the few that were kept got folded into pistols), no heavy weapons category, and classics like the Saber, Locust, and GPS being removed.

What I dislike most of all about the gameplay, is that they dumped the perfectly functional power wheel in favor of the "profiles" system that in practice meant only having 3 powers at a time and made swapping away from those three extremely clunky due to long cooldowns.

Lastly, the exploration:
I was excited that Andromeda would give us more to do on each planet than explore a single square mile of terrain like ME1 did, or even worse reduce any new planet to a single shooting gallery like ME2 and 3 did. But in practice, you still ended up with miles and miles of nothing between points of interest, and driving around in the Nomad just wasn't fun enough on its own that once you heard all the banter for your chosen squad. Researching and unlocking various vehicle upgrades for the Nomad (even possibly flight) could have gone a long way to improving your commute, but as-is it was really boring; the only things that made planetary exploration, halfway bareable were the fast travel beacons, which is damning when you consider the best way to get around is by skipping the travel system if you can.

This all might sound like I'm down on the game but I'm not - like I said, it had fantastic potential, and could have been great if Bioware stuck with it. But they ditched it in favor of Anthem, so now I'm left hoping it will have been worth it and that they don't ditch that either.

[factotum]

I haven't actually played Andromeda, or ME3 for that matter--when the latter came out I was in the middle of an EA boycott, and by the time I'd decided to lift my self-imposed ban on them, the news about the ending was pretty well known and I just didn't see the point. As I've said before, though, I think the series fell apart story-wise in ME2. It was better than ME1 in gameplay terms, don't get me wrong, and the side-quests and companion quests were some of the finest I've ever played, but the main plot was just an illogical, badly thought out mess which started by dumping every interesting hook left from the ending of the first game and got worse from there on.

With regard to Psyren's comment about Anthem: the signs are already on the wall for that, I think, with them already having scaled back their original update commitments. I hope that's actually a good sign and that EA is going to let Bioware work on something they're actually good at, rather than take them round the back and plant a bullet in their head, but we'll see.

[Morty]

I agree that while getting rid of classes (which had grown increasingly stale by ME3) was welcome, the sets of three powers absolutely were not. I don't know what the point of it was. Making them easier to handle on consoles? They got spooked over the possibility of freely combining powers? Beats me.

The game aggressively pushing an in-universe explanation for it made it worse. I don't care about this on-the-spot respec, people. I just want to play the character I envisioned. It wasn't so bad when I played a combat specialist, but it was a chore when I tried to play a biotic/tech hybrid. Normally, complaints about casters (be they biotics, mages or whatever else) not being awesome enough get no sympathy from me, but this once I have to agree. Installing a mod that eliminates the cooldown on powers after switching, but pauses their normal recharge when they're not active, helped a bit.

Honestly, I feel like the mechanics suffered from a similar problem as the story - we were promised something new, but it goes halfway. The classes are gone, but the combat/biotics/tech split still exists and still doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Or rather, biotics are a distinct category, but the combat/tech categories are arbitrary. The game strips away the classes and rearranges powers, but leaves it half-finished and a bit of a mess.

Though this reminds me that the single worst thing about Andromeda is SAM. There's just no excuse for this plot-solving, omni-competent glorified Windows paperclip that never shuts up.

[Psyren]

I haven't actually played Andromeda, or ME3 for that matter--when the latter came out I was in the middle of an EA boycott, and by the time I'd decided to lift my self-imposed ban on them, the news about the ending was pretty well known and I just didn't see the point. As I've said before, though, I think the series fell apart story-wise in ME2. It was better than ME1 in gameplay terms, don't get me wrong, and the side-quests and companion quests were some of the finest I've ever played, but the main plot was just an illogical, badly thought out mess which started by dumping every interesting hook left from the ending of the first game and got worse from there on.

With regard to Psyren's comment about Anthem: the signs are already on the wall for that, I think, with them already having scaled back their original update commitments. I hope that's actually a good sign and that EA is going to let Bioware work on something they're actually good at, rather than take them round the back and plant a bullet in their head, but we'll see.

Both No Man's Sky and Destiny were able to scale back and they returned rejuvenated and fairly strong. So I'm remaining optimistic. (Also, Anthem is still getting updates. (https://www.engadget.com/2019/12/12/anthem-icetide/))


I agree that while getting rid of classes (which had grown increasingly stale by ME3) was welcome, the sets of three powers absolutely were not. I don't know what the point of it was. Making them easier to handle on consoles? They got spooked over the possibility of freely combining powers? Beats me

My best guess is they wanted it to transfer more cleanly to multiplayer, where being limited to 3 powers makes much more sense since you can't pause the action to bring up a power wheel. But such a limit makes even less in-universe sense for the Pathfinder than it did for Shepard, who also didn't have it.



Though this reminds me that the single worst thing about Andromeda is SAM. There's just no excuse for this plot-solving, omni-competent glorified Windows paperclip that never shuts up.

I was fine with SAM in theory; it makes sense that an AI is one of the more believable ways to figure out alien technology quickly (see the Expanse.) SAM's main problem is that he was boring; unlike EDI he had no motivations of his own and no possible conflict with ours, so making him a character was pointless. They also establish that there are 4 more of him running around out there, all of which are rendered useless immediately at the start of the story - so it's like, why bother? There was so little thought put into him.

[LibraryOgre]

Last night, I dreamed I was made governor of a krogan colony. A good portion of the dream was spent trying to come up with socially acceptable alternatives to head-butts.

[Draconi Redfir]

you think the premise of the game could have been better if it was made as a completely different genre? Maybe a city-builder or civilization-type to replicate the "rebuilding society" thing?

[Morty]

My best guess is they wanted it to transfer more cleanly to multiplayer, where being limited to 3 powers makes much more sense since you can't pause the action to bring up a power wheel. But such a limit makes even less in-universe sense for the Pathfinder than it did for Shepard, who also didn't have it.

One of the good things about the ME3 multiplayer was that it was built up from the singleplayer experience, instead of the SP being altered to fit it. If the 3-power nonsense is indeed due to that, then like Inquisition, Andromeda tripped over altering SP to match MP.


I was fine with SAM in theory; it makes sense that an AI is one of the more believable ways to figure out alien technology quickly (see the Expanse.) SAM's main problem is that he was boring; unlike EDI he had no motivations of his own and no possible conflict with ours, so making him a character was pointless. They also establish that there are 4 more of him running around out there, all of which are rendered useless immediately at the start of the story - so it's like, why bother? There was so little thought put into him.

In addition to being more interesting, EDI was also less omni-competent (though she got close in ME3). SAM solves so many problems on its own that Ryder really feels like an organic SAM delivery device. It's lazy. And no one seems terribly concerned over an AI that can brute-force every security system known to the colonists or Angara.

[ImperiousLeader]

In addition to being more interesting, EDI was also less omni-competent (though she got close in ME3). SAM solves so many problems on its own that Ryder really feels like an organic SAM delivery device. It's lazy. And no one seems terribly concerned over an AI that can brute-force every security system known to the colonists or Angara.

I liked Andromeda enough that I tried to write fanfic continuing the story ... and SAM needs a nerf or five. Beyond the power level ... there's also the omnipresence. As long as Ryder has SAM, they have an active communication link to Ark Hyperion.

[Morty]

Yes, SAM is the kind of thing that's going to have to be written around sooner or later. We'll probably see a lot of it in the unlikely event we get a new game starring Ryder.

[Inarius]

Honestly I Imagine SAM was probably to push for normalizing later on down the road and making synthesis the outcome in the Milky Way.

[tonberrian]

I just hope that one of the SAMs goes rogue and you have to hunt it down.

[LibraryOgre]

Man, you really get good at picking out the choke points in a Mass Effect game. "I'm gonna put off going to the Archon... that looks like a 'open up more of the map and exploration' thing."

[GrayDeath]

Last night, I dreamed I was made governor of a krogan colony. A good portion of the dream was spent trying to come up with socially acceptable alternatives to head-butts.

You mean you want your Krogans to kick themselves in the Quads? ^^


I was also into Andromeda quite a bit. I liked the combat (if not the limitation to 3 powers) a LOT (even if with Warp my second favourite power was missing), actually liked 3 of the companions, and as an avid "build your own stuff" liked the weapon/Armor construction and research.

But what it made better regarding game play (yes, even with the reduced comboes, I found ME too gimmicky at the end anyway) it lost in flair.

If they had not called it mass effect but only Andromeda and had said "this is an alternate Timeline people" I would not ahve felt so cheated, but if a Mass Effect Game fails regarding making you FEEL it and pulling you in, its not a Mass Effect Game (heck, even 3 did this, it only dropped the ball at the ending and slightly with the Multiplayer "must" for readiness).


So yeah, I would have prefered them to fix a lot with the teased Quarian DLC, sadly that did not happen....

[Anteros]

Since we're on a Mass Effect thread, I've actually had a strong itch to replay the series lately. It was easily one of my favorite games of all time...but the ending is so bad that I can't make myself invest the time just to get frustrated with it again. This must be how Game of Thrones fans feel, where the ending of something is so poorly written that it retroactively ruins the enjoyment of everything that came before.

[Narkis]

Since we're on a Mass Effect thread, I've actually had a strong itch to replay the series lately. It was easily one of my favorite games of all time...but the ending is so bad that I can't make myself invest the time just to get frustrated with it again. This must be how Game of Thrones fans feel, where the ending of something is so poorly written that it retroactively ruins the enjoyment of everything that came before.

As a (former?) fan of both, I can confirm. I kinda feel that way about Star Wars too, but that one at least has the old expanded universe and I can mine the good parts and pretend they're the true story.

[Anteros]

As a (former?) fan of both, I can confirm. I kinda feel that way about Star Wars too, but that one at least has the old expanded universe and I can mine the good parts and pretend they're the true story.

I haven't bothered with the latest movie, so at least I haven't had that ruined for me. Episodes 7 and 8 were steaming piles of garbage, so I didn't even bother seeing 9.

[Morty]

I never understood that. I replayed ME2 and ME3 a couple of years ago and had fun, ending or no ending. In fact, I understand that the disappointing ending was inevitable and I'm more aware of the flaws that run throughout the series leading to it, and I still have fun. I just don't see the point of letting a bad ending ruin everything that came prior. I don't have the energy to be this angry and bitter.

As far as the ending itself goes, I went from being angry with it like everyone else, then getting over it after a year or two, then mostly being really tired with how frequently discussions about the series devolve into rehashing the same arguments again.

[Name_Here]

I never understood that. I replayed ME2 and ME3 a couple of years ago and had fun, ending or no ending. In fact, I understand that the disappointing ending was inevitable and I'm more aware of the flaws that run throughout the series leading to it, and I still have fun. I just don't see the point of letting a bad ending ruin everything that came prior. I don't have the energy to be this angry and bitter.

I disagree with the idea that a disappointing ending was inevitable. I think it counts have been very memorable and much better if they hadn't spent so much time on the kid I saw for 5 seconds and Kai Leng. Neither one of which really added much to the story. Add that they wasted most of their time to the way that survival means the utter destruction of the galactic community and of course it's hated.


As far as the ending itself goes, I went from being angry with it like everyone else, then getting over it after a year or two, then mostly being really tired with how frequently discussions about the series devolve into rehashing the same arguments again.

Well it's not like there is really anything new for there to be a new hashing.

[heronbpv]

I never understood that. I replayed ME2 and ME3 a couple of years ago and had fun, ending or no ending. In fact, I understand that the disappointing ending was inevitable and I'm more aware of the flaws that run throughout the series leading to it, and I still have fun. I just don't see the point of letting a bad ending ruin everything that came prior. I don't have the energy to be this angry and bitter.

Although I have only played the first game, and not even to completion (although I did enjoy the experience overall, even though I thought the combat in 1 was a bit clunky, or was it just me being bad?), I think their frustration has nothing to do with hate/spite/etc., but with passion. This is the kind of situation that only ever happens when you where so much into something, because you strongly liked it, that the let down is spirit crushing.

[factotum]

I disagree with the idea that a disappointing ending was inevitable.

I dunno--after the absolute pig's ear of a main plot that was Mass Effect 2 it would have taken something pretty special to rescue the series storyline, IMHO, and we never got it.

[LibraryOgre]

I think Kai Leng was a far bigger problem in ME3 than the ending. He relied too much on special mechanics, and felt like a game cheat, without ever really giving me a reason to care.

[Name_Here]

I dunno--after the absolute pig's ear of a main plot that was Mass Effect 2 it would have taken something pretty special to rescue the series storyline, IMHO, and we never got it.

Mass Effect 2 was the absolute best part of the series. They dropped the ball in pretty much every way for the third and worst installment.

[Morty]

Although I have only played the first game, and not even to completion (although I did enjoy the experience overall, even though I thought the combat in 1 was a bit clunky, or was it just me being bad?), I think their frustration has nothing to do with hate/spite/etc., but with passion. This is the kind of situation that only ever happens when you where so much into something, because you strongly liked it, that the let down is spirit crushing.

It was pretty disappointing, sure. It was also eight years ago. I find it hard to hold on to outrage this long, I don't know about anyone else.


Mass Effect 2 was the absolute best part of the series. They dropped the ball in pretty much every way for the third and worst installment.

It doesn't matter if it was good, bad or average. In the context of the series' ending, it matters that ME2 spent the majority of its main plot avoiding engaging with the Reapers' origins, nature, motivation or anything else. What engagement it does have comes in the form of the Collectors' attempts to create a human Reaper, a plan that doesn't make a lick of sense. So it leaves ME3 to pick up the pieces and we know how it ends.

For as long as the game lasted, it was good. It let us experience the universe and characters without the Reapers breathing down our necks. But it stalling for time, and the next game had to pay the bill.

[Name_Here]

It doesn't matter if it was good, bad or average. In the context of the series' ending, it matters that ME2 spent the majority of its main plot avoiding engaging with the Reapers' origins, nature, motivation or anything else. What engagement it does have comes in the form of the Collectors' attempts to create a human Reaper, a plan that doesn't make a lick of sense. So it leaves ME3 to pick up the pieces and we know how it ends.

For as long as the game lasted, it was good. It let us experience the universe and characters without the Reapers breathing down our necks. But it stalling for time, and the next game had to pay the bill.

The next game didn't though. ME3's sins were all it's own. Namely wasting time on stuff I couldn't care less about and focusing on a literal deus ex machina instead of character interaction and satisfying encounters.

[Morty]

The next game didn't though. ME3's sins were all it's own. Namely wasting time on stuff I couldn't care less about and focusing on a literal deus ex machina instead of character interaction and satisfying encounters.

That's... really not the point. Of course ME3 failed, but its failings were set up well in advance.

[Name_Here]

That's... really not the point. Of course ME3 failed, but its failings were set up well in advance.

How is that ME3's faults were all it's own not the point? The only way that ME2 failed ME3 was setting expectations for the finale higher than the development team was capable of producing.

[factotum]

Mass Effect 2 was the absolute best part of the series. They dropped the ball in pretty much every way for the third and worst installment.

In terms of gameplay and the side missions I won't argue with you, ME2 was a great game. The main plot was absolute garbage, though. It spent the first couple of hours destroying anything that could have been left as a sequel hook from the first game and then rebuilding everything so it was more or less exactly the same as before, even to the extent that all the same crew members from the old Normandy decided to jump ship from the Alliance and join Cerberus at the same time--and let's not go into how Cerberus had somehow gone from being an outlawed terrorist organisation to a group who had enough money, power and resources to build a bigger, better version of the most advanced ship the Alliance ever built. It then went away and didn't bother us overmuch while we did the much more entertaining side missions, then came back with a vengeance when all of the main crew members crammed into a shuttle to go and do something--a shuttle not possibly big enough for all of them, if you had a full crew--so they'd all be away when the Collectors attack.

Speaking of which, why did we need the Collectors again? A single Reaper had shown itself capable of destroying nearly the entire Alliance fleet at the end of ME1, and we knew there were dozens of the things out there--so why did we need some second-rate organic losers whose entire plan was to melt humans down into a semi-organic Reaper clone? Compared to Sovereign the enemies in ME2 were laughable.

So, yes, I stand by my statement--the main plot in ME2 was laughably bad, and as Morty points out, it set ME3 up for failure by not addressing any of the overarching concerns of the trilogy as a whole. It behaved as an almost entirely self-contained episode that didn't inherit anything from ME1 and didn't pass much along to ME3.

[Eldan]

Yeah, that. ME1 managed to excellently merge space opera and cosmic horror into an excellent plot. ME2 let you **** around a bit and then tried for shock moments.

[Morty]

Of course, ME1 also didn't make things easy for subsequent games. It's difficult to follow up on "there's an army of nigh-indestructible god-machines waiting to destroy all sentient life" without getting into problems of escalation... which we see happen in ME3. The whole idea of the Reapers made for some good "whoa" moments at first, but proved unwieldy later on. Not to mention overshadowing just about everything else. The great paradox of Mass Effect is that it shows us a rich space opera galaxy to explore... and a main plot that eclipses it.

[Narkis]

Of course, ME1 also didn't make things easy for subsequent games. It's difficult to follow up on "there's an army of nigh-indestructible god-machines waiting to destroy all sentient life" without getting into problems of escalation... which we see happen in ME3. The whole idea of the Reapers made for some good "whoa" moments at first, but proved unwieldy later on. Not to mention overshadowing just about everything else. The great paradox of Mass Effect is that it shows us a rich space opera galaxy to explore... and a main plot that eclipses it.

Really? ME1 ended at the perfect moment for a sequel: The immediate threat is over, but the Reapers are still out there and they're gonna kill us all if they get here. The clock is ticking, only we don't know how much time we have. We don't know anything, in fact. Who are the Reapers, why are they killing everything, why in fact are they using such a convoluted method to kill everything instead of permanently occupying the galaxy and nipping all developing species in the bud, how do we stop them, can we even stop them, and if not can we reason with them?

Mass Effect 2 should have been an adventure exploring the unknown, ancient regions of the galaxy to answer these questions. And Mass Effect 3 should have been the desperate attempt to implement such knowledge as all **** hit the fan. Instead, ME2 was essentially a giant sidequest that left us at the exact same point as we were at the end of ME2. And ME3 had a lot of issues even before the ending. It all felt as if the writer for ME2 was more interested in telling a story about his Cerberus pet villains instead of continuing the story ME1 left, and both latter games suffered as a result.

[factotum]

Really? ME1 ended at the perfect moment for a sequel: The immediate threat is over, but the Reapers are still out there and they're gonna kill us all if they get here.

Yeah, isn't one of the last things Shepard says in ME1 "The Reapers are still out there, and I'm going to find a way to stop them!" or something like that? After all, the cycle this time has already been disrupted by the Protheans shutting down the mega-relay in the Citadel, which means we have both time and foreknowledge of what's coming, something that previous participants didn't have. We also have a Shepard who can understand Prothean gizmos and Liara, an expert in Prothean archaeology, to lead us to other information they might have left behind--Vigil says it took centuries for the Reapers to destroy all Protheans, who knows what they might have discovered in that time?

But no, we have to kill and rebuild Shepard and turn a meek archaeologist into one of the shadiest people in the galaxy instead. (I mean, Liara as the Shadow Broker is quite possibly the most ridiculous retcon in the whole of ME2, and it has a lot of competition there).

[Name_Here]

In terms of gameplay and the side missions I won't argue with you, ME2 was a great game. The main plot was absolute garbage, though. It spent the first couple of hours destroying anything that could have been left as a sequel hook from the first game and then rebuilding everything so it was more or less exactly the same as before, even to the extent that all the same crew members from the old Normandy decided to jump ship from the Alliance and join Cerberus at the same time--and let's not go into how Cerberus had somehow gone from being an outlawed terrorist organisation to a group who had enough money, power and resources to build a bigger, better version of the most advanced ship the Alliance ever built. It then went away and didn't bother us overmuch while we did the much more entertaining side missions, then came back with a vengeance when all of the main crew members crammed into a shuttle to go and do something--a shuttle not possibly big enough for all of them, if you had a full crew--so they'd all be away when the Collectors attack.

Speaking of which, why did we need the Collectors again? A single Reaper had shown itself capable of destroying nearly the entire Alliance fleet at the end of ME1, and we knew there were dozens of the things out there--so why did we need some second-rate organic losers whose entire plan was to melt humans down into a semi-organic Reaper clone? Compared to Sovereign the enemies in ME2 were laughable.

So, yes, I stand by my statement--the main plot in ME2 was laughably bad, and as Morty points out, it set ME3 up for failure by not addressing any of the overarching concerns of the trilogy as a whole. It behaved as an almost entirely self-contained episode that didn't inherit anything from ME1 and didn't pass much along to ME3.

Well you certainly have a list of very nitpicky complaints there. None of which are very convincing. The closest you get is the Normandy attack which they half assed but doesn't a bad plot make.

As for the concerns of the trilogy ME3 decided to make a whole conflict from scratch in the organic vrs synthetic as the whole basis of the Reapers giving lie to everything that Sovereign had to say on the matter of why the Reapers did what they did. It's also ME3 ignoring the build up for the end game having to do with dark energy. But ME3 decided to do it's own thing rather than following thematically or logically form the rest of the trilogy. Which is a sin all of their own making.

[Morty]

I feel like Mass Effect 2 tried to create a new story, instead of picking up where ME1 had left off. Which is valid, but it tried to do so while also keeping Shepard as a central character. Which necessitated a two-year timeskip, sidelining various characters, severely changing others, et cetera. Making Cerberus edgy anti-heroes with resources to rival the Alliance's was a means to an end here, not an end in itself, I think. A slower-paced story where we don't work for the Alliance/Council and have to rub shoulders with the galaxy's less savory elements might have worked better with a new protagonist - like, say, a promising Cerberus agent.

[Forum Explorer]

Well you certainly have a list of very nitpicky complaints there. None of which are very convincing. The closest you get is the Normandy attack which they half assed but doesn't a bad plot make.

As for the concerns of the trilogy ME3 decided to make a whole conflict from scratch in the organic vrs synthetic as the whole basis of the Reapers giving lie to everything that Sovereign had to say on the matter of why the Reapers did what they did. It's also ME3 ignoring the build up for the end game having to do with dark energy. But ME3 decided to do it's own thing rather than following thematically or logically form the rest of the trilogy. Which is a sin all of their own making.

The complaint I see as most valid about ME2 is that it didn't actually advance the trilogy in any way. By the end of it, the galaxy is about as prepared as it was at the start of it for the Reaper invasion. It did give us a tantalizing hint of the Reaper's motivation (which ME3 didn't explore), but was otherwise basically a character study and exploring the universe.

Which actually could work fine. It'd give you a good idea who 'your' Shepherd was and raises the stakes because now you care a lot more about the galaxy.

ME3 was also fine, if a bit lower quality. The biggest problem with ME3 was that it promised a lot more than it delivered. If you didn't read any advertisments about it, it'd be a fun action sci-fi game with a little bit of a sterotypical plot about using a superweapon to destroy the enemy. I mean, there's some hypothetical dream game where they made three different routes where you had the superweapon plot as route A, defeat the Reapers conventionally as route B, and I don't know, a Cerberus route where you do shady stuff to wipe out all of the aliens while somehow saving Humanity, or at least a bit of it.

But that would be a lot of work. Like a crazy amount of work. It's basically three games mashed into one. The base game worked just fine as a game in of itself, it was the weird expectations people put on it that brought it down. Oh, that's not to say it didn't have flaws. The whole Kai Leng thing for example, and they really could have done a better job explaining the Reaper's motivation. Personally, I wish they had the Reapers viewing themselves as saving the galaxy. They are forcibly ascending species to a higher existence by turning them into Reapers, a state where they're culture and achievements are preserved for eternity while also removing all risk of extinction from resource overuse, wars, or natural disaster.

I digress. Point is ME3 was a good game, just not as good as ME2. But ME2 didn't try and advance the story so it had a much easier job.


Oh and factotum, Liara becoming the Shadow Broker isn't a retcon, it's character development. A retcon would be if Liara was suddenly revealed to always have been the Shadow Broker all along. I hate it when people use the term retcon incorrectly.

[Kish]

It occurs to me, reading this, that while it is hugely unpopular there is no consensus on exactly what makes Mass Effect 3's ending bad. (Or even whether that sentence should actually have ended in "3 bad," rather than "3's ending bad.")

[Rodin]

It occurs to me, reading this, that while it is hugely unpopular there is no consensus on exactly what makes Mass Effect 3's ending bad. (Or even whether that sentence should actually have ended in "3 bad," rather than "3's ending bad.")

You could say that about the entire franchise. For some people it ended after Mass Effect 1. For others, Mass Effect 1 is a janky mess and you're better off getting the story summary and moving straight into 2 and 3. For some, Mass Effect 2 is bad because it didn't advance the main plot. I find it to be the best of the games because it doesn't touch the main plot. And 3 has been analyzed every way under the sun.

I don't think the games could have been made better. At least, not without ignoring realistic expectations for a game developer. If they'd done things differently, we would just be complaining about THAT instead.

[Kish]

I couldn't say that about the entire franchise. It didn't start being unpopular until Mass Effect 3 came out. So the only even vaguely related statement that could be made about the entire franchise would be the utterly vacuous "some people like it, and others don't, citing a wide array of reasons on each side."

[Morty]

You could say that about the entire franchise. For some people it ended after Mass Effect 1. For others, Mass Effect 1 is a janky mess and you're better off getting the story summary and moving straight into 2 and 3. For some, Mass Effect 2 is bad because it didn't advance the main plot. I find it to be the best of the games because it doesn't touch the main plot. And 3 has been analyzed every way under the sun.

I don't think the games could have been made better. At least, not without ignoring realistic expectations for a game developer. If they'd done things differently, we would just be complaining about THAT instead.

That's kind of where I've arrived at myself. The games are what they are, I prefer to think about the good times I've had with them instead of rehashing what could have and should have been. Hindsight is 20/20. Though as evidenced by this thread, I don't always succeed.

That being said, I don't see anything surprising by there not being a consensus about the endings. People expected a great variety of things from it and the ending didn't meet most of those. So they were disappointed in different ways. People might not agree what the ending should have been, but they can agree that it shouldn't have been the way it ended up.

[Name_Here]

The complaint I see as most valid about ME2 is that it didn't actually advance the trilogy in any way. By the end of it, the galaxy is about as prepared as it was at the start of it for the Reaper invasion. It did give us a tantalizing hint of the Reaper's motivation (which ME3 didn't explore), but was otherwise basically a character study and exploring the universe.

Which actually could work fine. It'd give you a good idea who 'your' Shepherd was and raises the stakes because now you care a lot more about the galaxy.

And it has always struck me as a pretty silly complaint because it's only true because ME3 decided not to follow up on anything in ME2. Like you went all over the place in ME2 and did a ton of stuff how is it possible that there isn't a single thread to pull on? Not even the dark energy throughline of the entire game?

In the end this complaint is just that when it came down to it Bioware wasn't imaginative or good enough to make a good conclusion to their marquee game. Which isn't the fault of ME2.


ME3 was also fine, if a bit lower quality. The biggest problem with ME3 was that it promised a lot more than it delivered. If you didn't read any advertisments about it, it'd be a fun action sci-fi game with a little bit of a sterotypical plot about using a superweapon to destroy the enemy. I mean, there's some hypothetical dream game where they made three different routes where you had the superweapon plot as route A, defeat the Reapers conventionally as route B, and I don't know, a Cerberus route where you do shady stuff to wipe out all of the aliens while somehow saving Humanity, or at least a bit of it.

But that would be a lot of work. Like a crazy amount of work. It's basically three games mashed into one. The base game worked just fine as a game in of itself, it was the weird expectations people put on it that brought it down. Oh, that's not to say it didn't have flaws. The whole Kai Leng thing for example, and they really could have done a better job explaining the Reaper's motivation. Personally, I wish they had the Reapers viewing themselves as saving the galaxy. They are forcibly ascending species to a higher existence by turning them into Reapers, a state where they're culture and achievements are preserved for eternity while also removing all risk of extinction from resource overuse, wars, or natural disaster.

I digress. Point is ME3 was a good game, just not as good as ME2. But ME2 didn't try and advance the story so it had a much easier job.

Nothing in your post defends the position that ME3 was a good game. And id you took out all the history of everything Sheppard had done in the past 2 games I don't think it would be at all a pleasant experience to play through.

[gomipile]

(I mean, Liara as the Shadow Broker is quite possibly the most ridiculous retcon in the whole of ME2, and it has a lot of competition there).

But that wasn't a retcon. It was a thing that happened in ME2 and wasn't true yet in ME1 according to any canon. Granted, it happened in a DLC, not in the main game.

[factotum]

But that wasn't a retcon. It was a thing that happened in ME2 and wasn't true yet in ME1 according to any canon. Granted, it happened in a DLC, not in the main game.

OK, I used the wrong word. Liara going from meek, nerdy Prothean archaeologist to the most powerful and shady information broker in the galaxy isn't character development, though, it's character *rewriting*--there is absolutely no hint about her character in ME1 that she is capable of such a transformation, and there are only 2 years between the two games, which is barely an eyeblink for an Asari.

Thing is, ME2 is a good game, and all the stuff that isn't directly related to the main plot is at worst serviceable and at best fantastic--all the character recruitment and loyalty missions between them have some of Bioware's best ever writing. And let's not forget, that stuff forms a much larger part of the game than the main plot does--IIRC the main plot in ME2 is a total of six missions long, whereas there are eight recruitment missions (assuming you don't have any DLC) and ten loyalty ones.

As for the mention of dark matter? As I recall, there is *one* reference to that (the mission where you somehow find Tali by an astronomically unlikely coincidence) in ME2, and I'm pretty sure I recall an interview with the lead writer of ME2 where he said the dark matter thing was an idea they played around with but decided not to go with in the end.

[Forum Explorer]

And it has always struck me as a pretty silly complaint because it's only true because ME3 decided not to follow up on anything in ME2. Like you went all over the place in ME2 and did a ton of stuff how is it possible that there isn't a single thread to pull on? Not even the dark energy throughline of the entire game?

In the end this complaint is just that when it came down to it Bioware wasn't imaginative or good enough to make a good conclusion to their marquee game. Which isn't the fault of ME2.



Nothing in your post defends the position that ME3 was a good game. And id you took out all the history of everything Sheppard had done in the past 2 games I don't think it would be at all a pleasant experience to play through.

Because very little of it did anything with the Reapers. I mean, ME3 did wrap up a bunch of stuff from ME2, but it was all only a minor part of dealing with the Reapers.

One of the writers for Mass Effect actually called out the dark energy plot thread as being 'something that wasn't super fleshed out.' He even then goes on to call out fans of the theory saying 'It's like Vaporware-vapourware is always perfect, anytime someone talks about the new greatest game. It's perfect until it comes out. I'm a little weary about going into too much detail because, whatever we came up with, it proboaly wouldn't be what people want it to be.'

Which sounds like they did think of something involving the Dark Matter plotline, and decided that it was a bad idea. Or they couldn't come up with something good that involved it. Either or.


Okay, an actual defense of the ME3?

First off, it's gameplay was solid. The level design was good, the enemies were great, the combat was as challenging as you wanted (except for Kai Leng who was stupidly easy for how hyped up he was), and they cut out the fiddly bits that was resource grinding. Secondly, the Reaper boss fights were incredible. They were fun and intense, even if the second one was actually kinda silly in retrospect. Third, the plot did a very good job of selling the Reapers as a threat. One Reaper was enough to almost exterminate the Krogan. Ditto with the Quarians. It felt like the galaxy was under siege and that our only hope was the Crucible.

And the whole Crucible plot line itself? Well that's a pretty classic story, of building/finding the Mac-Guffin to destroy the otherwise invincible foe. It doesn't bother me because that is the plotline that keep Shepherd relevant to the war at hand. Otherwise in the final fight you are just another solider, and the Reapers don't have some BBEG you can directly fight and kill to save the galaxy.

[Draconi Redfir]

I will say this: I loved the fact that the Crucible wasn't JUST designed by the Prothians, but was actually piece by piece built and designed by thousands of civilizations over trillions of years. Galactic cycle after cycle finding the blueprints and adding on to it, stretching as far back as the reapers themselves. It gives a sense of poetic justice to the whole thing, it's not just your cycle that's building the crucible to defend itself, but every civilization that came before you as well, come back from the dead for but a brief moment to avenge itself and all the others.

[Name_Here]

Because very little of it did anything with the Reapers. I mean, ME3 did wrap up a bunch of stuff from ME2, but it was all only a minor part of dealing with the Reapers.

One of the writers for Mass Effect actually called out the dark energy plot thread as being 'something that wasn't super fleshed out.' He even then goes on to call out fans of the theory saying 'It's like Vaporware-vapourware is always perfect, anytime someone talks about the new greatest game. It's perfect until it comes out. I'm a little weary about going into too much detail because, whatever we came up with, it proboaly wouldn't be what people want it to be.'

It's not about being perfect it's about being consistent. I mean the climax of the game was about how Synthetic and Organics could never live together which up until then had never been a thing.

Would it have been flawless? No. Would it have caused a huge outcry by being completely out of the blue? Also no.


Which sounds like they did think of something involving the Dark Matter plotline, and decided that it was a bad idea. Or they couldn't come up with something good that involved it. Either or.

Sounds like some sour grapes from somebody who couldn't get the job done .


Okay, an actual defense of the ME3?

First off, it's gameplay was solid. The level design was good, the enemies were great, the combat was as challenging as you wanted (except for Kai Leng who was stupidly easy for how hyped up he was), and they cut out the fiddly bits that was resource grinding. Secondly, the Reaper boss fights were incredible. They were fun and intense, even if the second one was actually kinda silly in retrospect. Third, the plot did a very good job of selling the Reapers as a threat. One Reaper was enough to almost exterminate the Krogan. Ditto with the Quarians. It felt like the galaxy was under siege and that our only hope was the Crucible.

I actually thought everything was a step back from ME2 in terms of gameplay. I remember multiple parts of ME2 that were challenging and fun but put a gun to my head and I couldn't remember a single set piece from ME3.

Also I think it really proved that the Reapers were all big talk and hype. They never felt overwhelming. I mean I killed one on foot pretty easily. What's the threat here?

And that's not even getting into why I played the games in the first place, what got me through the shakey ME1 the characters. I was hyped when I heard that Liara my lady love was back in the crew. I had romanced her in the first and kept the torchlit throughout the second. This was going to be great. Only for her to have a handful of scenes none of which were memorable. Repeat for most of the people on the crew where interaction was severely limited and lackluster when it was there.


And the whole Crucible plot line itself? Well that's a pretty classic story, of building/finding the Mac-Guffin to destroy the otherwise invincible foe. It doesn't bother me because that is the plotline that keep Shepherd relevant to the war at hand. Otherwise in the final fight you are just another solider, and the Reapers don't have some BBEG you can directly fight and kill to save the galaxy.

Mcguffins are things that kick off the plot but aren't important to the plot. In this case the crucible wasn't a Mcguffin it was the plot. With everything we did somehow being either to advance the building of the crucible or being utterly worthless. It was a half baked mechanic that largely ended up being worthless since no matter how complete or incomplete your crucible was all it accomplished was the complete destruction of the ME universe and salted the ealrth so that nothing could ever grow in that once fertile soil.

[factotum]

The major bit that annoyed me about ME3 was that everything seemed to be about humans. When Shepard goes to the council to ask for their help defending Earth, he comes out saying how self-centred they all are...when their OWN worlds are under Reaper assault just as much as Earth is. Then we have the writer's pet bad guys Cerberus being more often our opponents than the ruddy Reapers are--it was silly enough in ME2 when Cerberus could build a single ship better than the best the Alliance could offer, but in ME3 they had more ships and armies at their command than most of the major galactic powers.

Overall, if the Crucible had been the result of research done by Shepard and his squad over the whole of ME2 and ME3, rather than being something they find the plans for in a random lab on Mars at the beginning of 3 and then ignored until near the end of the game, it would have felt far more to be a result of the player's agency rather than a tacked-on hack because they couldn't figure out how to end the game properly.

[Anteros]

The thing is, ME2 did set up plot lines for 3. 3 just didn't bother to follow up on any of them. We had things like motivations for the Reapers hinted at, as well as a possible solution with the dark energy plot line and it was all just completely dropped in favor of completely new plot lines that weren't established at all when they changed writers for the sequel. That's a fault of ME3, not 2.

[Morty]

One of the writers for Mass Effect actually called out the dark energy plot thread as being 'something that wasn't super fleshed out.' He even then goes on to call out fans of the theory saying 'It's like Vaporware-vapourware is always perfect, anytime someone talks about the new greatest game. It's perfect until it comes out. I'm a little weary about going into too much detail because, whatever we came up with, it proboaly wouldn't be what people want it to be.'

Which sounds like they did think of something involving the Dark Matter plotline, and decided that it was a bad idea. Or they couldn't come up with something good that involved it. Either or.

Yeah, people really clung to the Dark Energy thing too hard. I did too, at one point. We know so very little about it that everyone can project their own desires on it. If ME3 had gone with it, I find it unlikely it would have miraculously worked better.


First off, it's gameplay was solid. The level design was good, the enemies were great, the combat was as challenging as you wanted (except for Kai Leng who was stupidly easy for how hyped up he was), and they cut out the fiddly bits that was resource grinding.

ME3 gameplay probably was the best of the original trilogy. More dynamic and less "narrow space with chest-high obstacles" than ME2. A better variety of powers, plus combos. Biotics not being stopped cold by defences - though with biotic explosions being so powerful, they may have swung back to being overpowered.

Andromeda gives us even more freedom of movement and dynamic battlefields and removes classes, but it also shoots itself in the foot with the power sets and overnerfs or removes too many powers. So it's really a toss-up.

[LibraryOgre]

It's not about being perfect it's about being consistent. I mean the climax of the game was about how Synthetic and Organics could never live together which up until then had never been a thing.


Except that's what Sovereign told us it was about in the first game... exterminating organic life to prevent it from being overrun by the synthetic. And it's a theme that the quarians embody. And ME2 brings it up with the various Mechs-gone-wild scenarios.

[Azuresun]

you think the premise of the game could have been better if it was made as a completely different genre? Maybe a city-builder or civilization-type to replicate the "rebuilding society" thing?

Originally, it was a different game, built up as a freeform exploration game with loads and loads of planets to explore, and was retooled as what we got later on quite late in the development process. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVZfPohK96U) has some interesting insights into what happened along the way.

I quite liked MEA, regardless of the flaws. And it was really sad to see gaming media at its absolute worst, with everyone on Youtube fighting to be the most histrionically hateful, when the developers were making good-faith efforts to patch problems and make it work.

[Azuresun]

That's... really not the point. Of course ME3 failed, but its failings were set up well in advance.

Not all of them. Starkid came out of absolutely nowhere--and hadn't even been hinted at for most of ME3! If ME3 had carried forth flawed storytelling, that would have been one thing, but the ending didn't carry forward any kind of storytelling that had been set up.


It occurs to me, reading this, that while it is hugely unpopular there is no consensus on exactly what makes Mass Effect 3's ending bad. (Or even whether that sentence should actually have ended in "3 bad," rather than "3's ending bad.")

For me, the greatest sin of the ending was that it was impersonal, whereas up till then, the series had been intensely personal. Every big storyline up till then, even ones that affected the destiny of billions of people, had been illustrated through characters and their arcs. You find out about the geth through Legion, the quarians through Tali and her father, the krogan through Mordin and Wrex. At every point, there's an individual character acting as a lens and giving these big impersonal problems a humanoid face.

And then at the end, it's about this one character we never met before and a big nonsensical abstract conflict that not only makes no sense in the lore of the game, but which we could have definitively proved wrong earlier in the same game?


Except that's what Sovereign told us it was about in the first game... exterminating organic life to prevent it from being overrun by the synthetic. And it's a theme that the quarians embody. And ME2 brings it up with the various Mechs-gone-wild scenarios.

I'm pretty certain Sovereign says nothing about saving anyone from synthetic life in the first game. Probably because it's utter nonsense that falls apart with 5sec of thought.

"Organic and synthetic life cannot peacefully coexist--we have no proof and you might have just explicitly proved us wrong at Rannoch, plus the geth in ME1 were only being aggressive towards organics because we were manipulating them, so just take our word for this. Anyway, we will avoid the risk of this tragedy by bloodily genociding organic races in pointlessly cruel ways."

[Forum Explorer]

It's not about being perfect it's about being consistent. I mean the climax of the game was about how Synthetic and Organics could never live together which up until then had never been a thing.

Would it have been flawless? No. Would it have caused a huge outcry by being completely out of the blue? Also no.



Sounds like some sour grapes from somebody who couldn't get the job done .



I actually thought everything was a step back from ME2 in terms of gameplay. I remember multiple parts of ME2 that were challenging and fun but put a gun to my head and I couldn't remember a single set piece from ME3.

Also I think it really proved that the Reapers were all big talk and hype. They never felt overwhelming. I mean I killed one on foot pretty easily. What's the threat here?

And that's not even getting into why I played the games in the first place, what got me through the shakey ME1 the characters. I was hyped when I heard that Liara my lady love was back in the crew. I had romanced her in the first and kept the torchlit throughout the second. This was going to be great. Only for her to have a handful of scenes none of which were memorable. Repeat for most of the people on the crew where interaction was severely limited and lackluster when it was there.



Mcguffins are things that kick off the plot but aren't important to the plot. In this case the crucible wasn't a Mcguffin it was the plot. With everything we did somehow being either to advance the building of the crucible or being utterly worthless. It was a half baked mechanic that largely ended up being worthless since no matter how complete or incomplete your crucible was all it accomplished was the complete destruction of the ME universe and salted the ealrth so that nothing could ever grow in that once fertile soil.

I'll fully admit everything with the Star Child was pretty bad. I've got no defense for it. But the outcry was never about it being out of the blue. The outcry was about how each option was effectively the same, gave an almost identical cutscene, and didn't take into account your past actions at all.


K. Insult the guy all you want, but he's the guy writing the game. If he says it's a crap idea, I'm more inclined to believe him than you.


ME2 had some great fights as well. Mind you it also had the mineral scanning which was the worst thing in any of the games. I mean, driving around in the Mako at least was fun, even if the controls were wonky.

But you never do kill one on foot. The best you do is to get something else to kill it for you.

They were limited in comparison to ME2 which was all about the characters. Otherwise we get some decent scenes with most characters, from what I can remember, about the same as ME1, though some characters certainly got less.


I may have used the term wrong, but the point remains, the whole get the one thing that will allow us to defeat the enemy is a classic story and one that lets the main character remain relevant for the entire game. Oh, the mechanic wasn't super well handled, I'll admit, as stuff like being able to get points from playing multiplayer was a problem, and not being able to get the maxed out ending from just playing the core game.

As a plot point, it's no worse than Sauron being destroyed by throwing the One Ring into Mount Doom. And there absolutely is a ton of stories you can still tell in the Mass Effect universe. Well, assuming the Destruction ending is the canon one. If the Reapers are controlled by Shepherd than I can't see any war story working, and Synthesis has all sorts of problems.

But for the destruction ending, the galaxy still exists, and while people might be friends for now, people aren't going to stop being jerks forever. If anything, the galaxy has been left super vulnerable since all the superpowers have been shattered by the war.

[Kish]

I'm pretty certain Sovereign says nothing about saving anyone from synthetic life in the first game. Probably because it's utter nonsense that falls apart with 5sec of thought.

"Organic and synthetic life cannot peacefully coexist--we have no proof and you might have just explicitly proved us wrong at Rannoch, plus the geth in ME1 were only being aggressive towards organics because we were manipulating them, so just take our word for this. Anyway, we will avoid the risk of this tragedy by bloodily genociding organic races in pointlessly cruel ways."
Yes, this. It's not that "organic vs. synthetic life conflict" is not a theme in the Mass Effect trilogy--it's that right up until the end of ME3, the conclusion to that theme was always "it's based on prejudice and misunderstanding and you can make peace." And then suddenly we were supposed to swallow, "It's so fundamental, so built into everything that exists, that the only way to end it is for synthetic and organic life to stop existing as distinct categories."


K. Insult the guy all you want, but he's the guy writing the game. If he says it's a crap idea, I'm more inclined to believe him than you.

:smallconfused: If that's your attitude, why engage with criticism of a game at all? Nothing can ever be bad and there's no possible way it could be better, because the person writing it made it the way it is!

[Morty]

Originally, it was a different game, built up as a freeform exploration game with loads and loads of planets to explore, and was retooled as what we got later on quite late in the development process. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVZfPohK96U) has some interesting insights into what happened along the way.

I quite liked MEA, regardless of the flaws. And it was really sad to see gaming media at its absolute worst, with everyone on Youtube fighting to be the most histrionically hateful, when the developers were making good-faith efforts to patch problems and make it work.

Yes, the way MEA became everyone's favorite easy target was distasteful. "5 reasons why Andromeda SUCKS" and uploading the same few memetic facial animations were an easy way to score clicks for a while.


Not all of them. Starkid came out of absolutely nowhere--and hadn't even been hinted at for most of ME3! If ME3 had carried forth flawed storytelling, that would have been one thing, but the ending didn't carry forward any kind of storytelling that had been set up.

Well, yes, Starkid was really dumb. But I treat it as a symptom more than a cause. ME3 used a variety of more or less cheap tricks to distract us from its lack of direction, Starkid was just one of them. But it's just an extension of how ME2 (and arguably ME1) had failed to set anything up regarding the final confrontation.

[Forum Explorer]

Yes, this. It's not that "organic vs. synthetic life conflict" is not a theme in the Mass Effect trilogy--it's that right up until the end of ME3, the conclusion to that theme was always "it's based on prejudice and misunderstanding and you can make peace." And then suddenly we were supposed to swallow, "It's so fundamental, so built into everything that exists, that the only way to end it is for synthetic and organic life to stop existing as distinct categories."

:smallconfused: If that's your attitude, why engage with criticism of a game at all? Nothing can ever be bad and there's no possible way it could be better, because the person writing it made it the way it is!

I agree with that. Though mind you, I took that a different way. Because I had made peace with the Geth and Quarians earlier in the game I took it as evidence that the Star Child was lying flat out.


Hmm, let me try putting it another way. If the author says the idea they came up with something is crap, and you reply with 'no I think it can work', and that's all, then I'm going to side with the author.

If you want me to accept a hypothetical Dark Energy plotline, than write me a Dark Energy plot. Make it so it's not just a vapourware concept. Then we can actually discuss it and it not just be your word against the author's word.

Because when people ask 'why didn't they follow up with the Dark Energy stuff in ME2?' they actually answered. They told you that everything they came up with was garbage. If you want to prove them wrong, then go for it. I'd love to see what you come up with. But if all you've got is insulting the writer for not being able to do it, then I'm not going to respect your opinion.

[Azuresun]

Well, yes, Starkid was really dumb. But I treat it as a symptom more than a cause. ME3 used a variety of more or less cheap tricks to distract us from its lack of direction, Starkid was just one of them. But it's just an extension of how ME2 (and arguably ME1) had failed to set anything up regarding the final confrontation.

I think the problem was that ME3 treated the Reapers as unstoppable demigods who could only be beaten by a deus ex machina, when there really wasn't any need to do so based on what had already been established. If all they needed to do was show up and win, why were they fooling around with stuff like the geth, the Citadel or the Collectors? We find out that even when their plans went off without a hitch last time round, the Protheans were still able to put up something of a fight. And over the last two games, there are powerful people taking the threat seriously and ample chances to learn how Reapers work. ME3 could easily have worked as a straightforward desperate-but-winnable war story

[Narkis]

Sovereign's speech in Mass Effect 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZitlia-u-4).

Garrus: This is not good.

Sovereign: You are not Saren.

Garrus: What is that? Some kind of VI interface?

Sovereign: Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding.

Garrus: I don't think this is a VI...

Sovereign: There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign!

Shepard: Sovereign isn't just some Reaper ship Saren found, it's an actual Reaper.

Sovereign: Reaper? A label created by the Protheans to give voice to their destruction. In the end, what they choose to call us is irrelevant. We simply are.

Garrus: The Protheans vanished 50,000 years ago. You couldn't have been there. It's impossible!

Sovereign: Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything.

Shepard: There is an entire galaxy of races united and ready to face you.

Sovereign: Confidence born of ignorance. The cycle cannot be broken.

Kaidan: Cycle? What cycle?

Sovereign: The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance. And at the apex of their glory, they are extinguished. The Protheans were not the first. They did not create the Citadel. They did not forge the mass relays. They merely found them, the legacy of my kind.

Shepard: Why would you construct the mass relays, then leave them for someone else to find?

Sovereign: Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.

Kaidan: They're harvesting us! Letting us advance to the level they need, then wiping us out!

Shepard: What do you want from us? Slaves? Resources?

Sovereign: My kind transcends your very understanding. We are each a nation. Independent, free of all weakness. You cannot even grasp the nature of our existence.

Shepard: Where did you come from? Who built you?

Sovereign: We have no beginning. We have no end. We are infinite. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we will endure.

Shepard: Where are the rest of the Reapers? Are you the last of your kind?

Sovereign: We are legion. The time of our return is coming. Our numbers will darken the sky of every world. You cannot escape your doom.

Shepard: You're not even alive. Not really. You're just a machine. And machines can be broken!

Sovereign: Your words are as empty as your future. I am the vanguard of your destruction. This exchange is over.

He says they're killing organics, and their reasons are "beyond comprehension". Nothing about the inevitable conflict between synthetics and organics, or how they are synthetics who kill organics in order to prevent other synthetics from killing these organics. Which is a very comprehensible, if extremely stupid, motivation. On the other hand, I can see quite a few hints that are compatible with the dark energy explanation.

ME3 had issues from the start. Most of them have been mentioned already. But the game lost me completely the moment the kid explained the Reaper's motivation, and I couldn't tell it "Look outside the window you stupid ****, the Quarians and the Geth made peace. They are working together, fighting you!" Making that peace, and the Genophage resolution, were the best moments of the game and probably the achievements I was proudest about in the entire trilogy. And the writer completely ignored it, just like that, because he was too incompetent to think of something that made sense.


If you want me to accept a hypothetical Dark Energy plotline, than write me a Dark Energy plot.

I can say something tastes terribly even if I don't know how to cook. If a plane crashes, I can say something went wrong without knowing how to fly a plane myself or even what exactly what went wrong. You might argue it's not the cook's or the pilot's fault, of course, but you can't expect people to be cooks or pilots to express any criticism. Why is writing any different?

[Kish]

I agree with that. Though mind you, I took that a different way. Because I had made peace with the Geth and Quarians earlier in the game I took it as evidence that the Star Child was lying flat out.
Sure, lots of people did that. The problem is that Bioware addressed that, by adding the "rejection" ending--and their answer amounted to a sneering statement that anyone who chose not to go along with the Starchild was choosing to die along with all organic life in that cycle.

[Forum Explorer]

I can say something tastes terribly even if I don't know how to cook. If a plane crashes, I can say something went wrong without knowing how to fly a plane myself or even what exactly what went wrong. You might argue it's not the cook's or the pilot's fault, of course, but you can't expect people to be cooks or pilots to express any criticism. Why is writing any different?

Because the Dark Energy argument isn't saying 'this is what they did wrong' it's saying 'they should've done this.' It's a different kettle of fish, particularly when the author actually responded and said 'this wouldn't have worked'.

To take a plane crash for example, it's like saying 'they should've just pulled up' and the pilot going 'that wouldn't work.' Now if you want to prove the pilot wrong you actually have to take some sort of action or explanation. Simply saying the pilot is just making excuses isn't an argument.


Sure, lots of people did that. The problem is that Bioware addressed that, by adding the "rejection" ending--and their answer amounted to a sneering statement that anyone who chose not to go along with the Starchild was choosing to die along with all organic life in that cycle.

I took it to mean the only correct option was Destroy. And what I wanted was for Bioware to not put in a rejection ending, but an ignore one, where you just walk past the Star Child and choose an option without any input from it.

[Name_Here]

I'll fully admit everything with the Star Child was pretty bad. I've got no defense for it. But the outcry was never about it being out of the blue. The outcry was about how each option was effectively the same, gave an almost identical cutscene, and didn't take into account your past actions at all.

I remember there being outcry over it being out of the blue, about how none of the actions made even a little sense and how none of the endings were any different.

Also some lesser complaints about how impersonal it was.


K. Insult the guy all you want, but he's the guy writing the game. If he says it's a crap idea, I'm more inclined to believe him than you.

It's his own crap idea that he made a throughline for the second part of the trilogy that he wrote. That he then discarded for a completely different crap idea that he had.

Also it's your claim that ME3 would have been better with more connective tissue between it and ME2 why are you so obsessed with proving that wrong?


ME2 had some great fights as well. Mind you it also had the mineral scanning which was the worst thing in any of the games. I mean, driving around in the Mako at least was fun, even if the controls were wonky.

Combat in the mako was fun. Exploring in the mako was far worse than the scanning mechanic. And I consider myself an expert with the mako.


But you never do kill one on foot. The best you do is to get something else to kill it for you.

They were limited in comparison to ME2 which was all about the characters. Otherwise we get some decent scenes with most characters, from what I can remember, about the same as ME1, though some characters certainly got less.

Liara gets about 15 minutes in ME 3 over 30 in the original game. I can't find exact youtube on the others contributions in the original but 15 minutes is about all we get with each crew member while 30 is probably pretty good for the original.



I may have used the term wrong, but the point remains, the whole get the one thing that will allow us to defeat the enemy is a classic story and one that lets the main character remain relevant for the entire game. Oh, the mechanic wasn't super well handled, I'll admit, as stuff like being able to get points from playing multiplayer was a problem, and not being able to get the maxed out ending from just playing the core game.

As a plot point, it's no worse than Sauron being destroyed by throwing the One Ring into Mount Doom. And there absolutely is a ton of stories you can still tell in the Mass Effect universe. Well, assuming the Destruction ending is the canon one. If the Reapers are controlled by Shepherd than I can't see any war story working, and Synthesis has all sorts of problems.

Well aside from the fact that Frodo was literally the only person who could have done what he did which was built up through the entire trilogy with a satissfying conclusion that built off of his decisions.

Other than that yes ME3's crucible was the exact same thing as the lord of the rings trilogy.


But for the destruction ending, the galaxy still exists, and while people might be friends for now, people aren't going to stop being jerks forever. If anything, the galaxy has been left super vulnerable since all the superpowers have been shattered by the war.

So they can continue the story by ignoring 2/3rds of the endings and going with one that either requires enough time to have passed to allow for a new FTL to have been discovered or in a universe where contact with alien species would be incredibly rare. I see why they decided to employ the soft reboot of a new galaxy.

[Morty]

I think the problem was that ME3 treated the Reapers as unstoppable demigods who could only be beaten by a deus ex machina, when there really wasn't any need to do so based on what had already been established. If all they needed to do was show up and win, why were they fooling around with stuff like the geth, the Citadel or the Collectors? We find out that even when their plans went off without a hitch last time round, the Protheans were still able to put up something of a fight. And over the last two games, there are powerful people taking the threat seriously and ample chances to learn how Reapers work. ME3 could easily have worked as a straightforward desperate-but-winnable war story

I really don't think that any of us here has much of a position to say that it could have "easily" worked. I think making it a war story to begin with was a mistake, but by the time ME3 started there was nowhere else it could go. Or maybe it could have, but someone decided "take back Earth" was a catchy marketing slogan.

I guess I just don't believe there was some miraculous solution that would have saved the day if it had been used. Whether that's the Dark Energy ending or making the Reapers less powerful or whatever else. The mistakes and decisions that led to the disappointing ending are compound.

[Azuresun]

I really don't think that any of us here has much of a position to say that it could have "easily" worked. I think making it a war story to begin with was a mistake, but by the time ME3 started there was nowhere else it could go. Or maybe it could have, but someone decided "take back Earth" was a catchy marketing slogan.

I guess I just don't believe there was some miraculous solution that would have saved the day if it had been used. Whether that's the Dark Energy ending or making the Reapers less powerful or whatever else. The mistakes and decisions that led to the disappointing ending are compound.

Yes and no. Even if I accept ME3's ending would inevitably have been disappointing....it absolutely did not have to be that bad. That degree of bad goes far beyond "they wrote themselves into a corner" or "they didn't plan ahead and foreshadow properly and had to ass-pull", which are more understandable reasons why an ending might be weak.

Even a straightforward and predictable "rally everyone against the Reapers in a massive desperate battle, strike the final blow along with your allies" might have been predictable and a bit shallow, but it would have satisfied most of the audience who were there for spectacular space battles, cool NPC's and the chance to play a big damn hero.

But instead, somebody chose an ending where you get lectured by the biggest mass murderer in the galaxy about a thesis that falls apart when you think about it for two minutes, and then you press a button to choose the colour filter. Nothing about the story up to that point forced such a conclusion.

(edit) It's the difference between Return of the Jedi and Highlander 2.

[Narkis]

The mistakes and decisions that led to the disappointing ending are compound.

I agree there were many mistakes. This does not mean these mistakes were inevitable, or that they couldn't be easily fixed though. I'm not necessarily saying they COULD be easily fixed, but you can't just discount the possibility out of hand.

Incidentally:

Mass Effect 1 lead writer: Drew Karpyshyn
Mass Effect 2 lead writer(s): Mac Walters, Drew Karpyshyn
Mass Effect 3 lead writer: Mac Walters

I think this is relevant to the discussion about the series' plot and themes.

[Kish]

I took it to mean the only correct option was Destroy. And what I wanted was for Bioware to not put in a rejection ending, but an ignore one, where you just walk past the Star Child and choose an option without any input from it.
How would that have fixed anything? It's still making a choice within the framework of: for organic life to continue to exist, synthetic life must be either obliterated or enslaved, with an extra option of "organic and synthetic life can merge," but coexistence...impossible, because the ME3 writers said so.

[Forum Explorer]

I remember there being outcry over it being out of the blue, about how none of the actions made even a little sense and how none of the endings were any different.

Also some lesser complaints about how impersonal it was.



It's his own crap idea that he made a throughline for the second part of the trilogy that he wrote. That he then discarded for a completely different crap idea that he had.

Also it's your claim that ME3 would have been better with more connective tissue between it and ME2 why are you so obsessed with proving that wrong?



Combat in the mako was fun. Exploring in the mako was far worse than the scanning mechanic. And I consider myself an expert with the mako.



Liara gets about 15 minutes in ME 3 over 30 in the original game. I can't find exact youtube on the others contributions in the original but 15 minutes is about all we get with each crew member while 30 is probably pretty good for the original.



Well aside from the fact that Frodo was literally the only person who could have done what he did which was built up through the entire trilogy with a satissfying conclusion that built off of his decisions.

Other than that yes ME3's crucible was the exact same thing as the lord of the rings trilogy.



So they can continue the story by ignoring 2/3rds of the endings and going with one that either requires enough time to have passed to allow for a new FTL to have been discovered or in a universe where contact with alien species would be incredibly rare. I see why they decided to employ the soft reboot of a new galaxy.

Memory is memory. I'm certainly not going to go look up what was bothering people the most back than.


You are mistaking me for someone else. I think both ME3 and ME2 are fine as they are. I acknowledge that ME2 didn't really advance the plot of the Reapers is all. I also acknowledge that ME3 had flaws, particularly the ending. Though I maintain that the ending we got was the most logical one we could've gotten from what had been established about the Reapers.

No way was exploring with the Mako worse than scanning. At least with the Mako you could go off cliff and jumps if you were bored. The scanning you could do nothing but sit there and well scan. And the scanning was basically mandatory if you didn't want your crew to die, while the Mako exploration was mostly optional.

And by ME3 there were a lot more characters to split the screentime with.

What does Frodo have to do with anything I'm saying about the Crucible? :smallconfused:

If they had more than one ending, than that would be the case no matter what. And they can, and do, rebuild the Relays, so they don't need a new FTL system either. Though if they did need one, they can use whatever the Reapers used to get from the outside the galaxy to inside it so quickly. Mind you, I still think it'd be better to set the next game further in the future so they don't have to deal with any of the original characters, which would get complicated when some of them could be dead from your actions earlier.


Yes and no. Even if I accept ME3's ending would inevitably have been disappointing....it absolutely did not have to be that bad. That degree of bad goes far beyond "they wrote themselves into a corner" or "they didn't plan ahead and foreshadow properly and had to ass-pull", which are more understandable reasons why an ending might be weak.

Even a straightforward and predictable "rally everyone against the Reapers in a massive desperate battle, strike the final blow along with your allies" might have been predictable and a bit shallow, but it would have satisfied most of the audience who were there for spectacular space battles, cool NPC's and the chance to play a big damn hero.

But instead, somebody chose an ending where you get lectured by the biggest mass murderer in the galaxy about a thesis that falls apart when you think about it for two minutes, and then you press a button to choose the colour filter. Nothing about the story up to that point forced such a conclusion.

(edit) It's the difference between Return of the Jedi and Highlander 2.

Highlighted the important part. How? For a full on war that's won conventionally, how do you make the Player the most important part of it? Better yet, how do you make the player's choices matter? Mind you, I can think of some ways, but it is difficult to do.

Oh definitely, the Starchild was flat out bad. Even keeping the Crucible plotline, you didn't need to have the Star Child at all. Though again, choices, mattering, ect. I really think a big mistake was promising multiple choices to create multiple endings. They should've just aimed for a single definitive conclusion to begin with.


How would that have fixed anything? It's still making a choice within the framework of: for organic life to continue to exist, synthetic life must be either obliterated or enslaved, with an extra option of "organic and synthetic life can merge," but coexistence...impossible, because the ME3 writers said so.

We never do see the long term results of what our actions are. If the Starchild was lying, then how do we know all synthetic life is destroyed?

[Anteros]

Because the Dark Energy argument isn't saying 'this is what they did wrong' it's saying 'they should've done this.' It's a different kettle of fish, particularly when the author actually responded and said 'this wouldn't have worked'.

To take a plane crash for example, it's like saying 'they should've just pulled up' and the pilot going 'that wouldn't work.' Now if you want to prove the pilot wrong you actually have to take some sort of action or explanation. Simply saying the pilot is just making excuses isn't an argument.



I took it to mean the only correct option was Destroy. And what I wanted was for Bioware to not put in a rejection ending, but an ignore one, where you just walk past the Star Child and choose an option without any input from it.

Except the pilot in your analogy willfully drove his plane into the side of a mountain, so he's not the most reliable source either.

[Psyren]

But instead, somebody chose an ending where you get lectured by the biggest mass murderer in the galaxy about a thesis that falls apart when you think about it for two minutes, and then you press a button to choose the colour filter. Nothing about the story up to that point forced such a conclusion.

Without wishing to relitigate a near decade-old game yet again, this is a bit Appeal to Emotion - calling the starchild a "murderer" is like calling bubonic plague a murderer. Yeah it's an AI, but until you install the Crucible it was clearly a shackled AI and thus could not deviate from its programming even if it wanted to. The true architects of our misery and the cycle as a whole were the Leviathans, who already got their comeuppance in ages past.

With that said, I do understand why people found all of the ending options distasteful. Synthesis is awesome from a transhumanism perspective, but it's a hard ending to any kind of relatable setting and carries very thorny issues of consent; Destroy and Control do nothing to solve the underlying problem (and have additional problems of their own); and Refuse is essentially a nonstandard game over, identical in every way to shooting the hologram except with a longer cutscene.

My personal ideal would have been a hybrid ending where the Crucible goes haywire and does a bit of everything - letting us explore some of the implications of Synthesis and Control while keeping the setting grounded. Failing that, if I had to pick one it would definitely be Control, because a God AI with all of Shepard's memories would be an amazing addition to the setting (and a fun use for that "Dragon Age Keep" technology they whipped up for DAI), particularly given that it also means we keep EDI and the Geth too.

At this point though, I think the best we can hope for are either retcons/reboots in the Milky Way or going whole-hog with Andromeda. I'd enjoy it if the Geth showed up there, it's not like they need ark ships.

[factotum]

Yes, this. It's not that "organic vs. synthetic life conflict" is not a theme in the Mass Effect trilogy--it's that right up until the end of ME3, the conclusion to that theme was always "it's based on prejudice and misunderstanding and you can make peace."

It's also worth noting that in the Quarian/Geth conflict, it's made pretty clear that the Quarians started the whole thing--they feared the Geth would become self-aware and moved to destroy them, which led to the synthetics defending themselves. Whereas the Star Child's statement suggests the destruction will always come from the synthetic side. So, he's simply wrong about that even if you haven't made peace between the Quarians and the Geth.

[Name_Here]

Memory is memory. I'm certainly not going to go look up what was bothering people the most back than.

Then why try to undercut my point by saying that nobody had a problem with the finale of the series coming out of nowhere? What is even the argument here?


You are mistaking me for someone else. I think both ME3 and ME2 are fine as they are. I acknowledge that ME2 didn't really advance the plot of the Reapers is all. I also acknowledge that ME3 had flaws, particularly the ending. Though I maintain that the ending we got was the most logical one we could've gotten from what had been established about the Reapers.

Look man you're the one that attacked the dark matter storyline apparently just ignoring my argument.


No way was exploring with the Mako worse than scanning. At least with the Mako you could go off cliff and jumps if you were bored. The scanning you could do nothing but sit there and well scan. And the scanning was basically mandatory if you didn't want your crew to die, while the Mako exploration was mostly optional.

Mako was hours of exploring boring terrain at least half an hour for every planet if you wanted to be complete most of which was snaking up mountains. Scanning was 5 minutes max per planet. You can lie to yourself all you like but Mako was far worse.


And by ME3 there were a lot more characters to split the screentime with.

Twice as many? That doesn't sound right. Nor is it really an excuse for doing a bad job on the best part of the series.


What does Frodo have to do with anything I'm saying about the Crucible? :smallconfused:

You're the one that compared LOTR a instant classic of literature and film with ME3 a pretty universally reviled game. Are you having trouble keeping your own points clear? This is the third time in this post you've been incapable of keeping your own arguments straight.



If they had more than one ending, than that would be the case no matter what. And they can, and do, rebuild the Relays, so they don't need a new FTL system either.

Not really. Defeat them through underhanded trickery, martial skill or some kind of superweapon wouldn't require seperate universes the way the ME3 ending does.

And in the destroy ending nobody amoungst the council races has any idea how to build a mass effect relay. That was the bleeding edge of Prothean technology where as the council races are centuries behind them.


Though if they did need one, they can use whatever the Reapers used to get from the outside the galaxy to inside it so quickly. Mind you, I still think it'd be better to set the next game further in the future so they don't have to deal with any of the original characters, which would get complicated when some of them could be dead from your actions earlier.

By that you mean the mass effect relays which have all been destroyed.

Except that you continue to ignore the proven that every ending would have radically different endings. Do you think they did the soft reboot of abandoning the Milky Way because setting a game there was an easy task? No they abandoned the entire galaxy because it is functionally impossible to set a game there.

[Morty]

I agree there were many mistakes. This does not mean these mistakes were inevitable, or that they couldn't be easily fixed though. I'm not necessarily saying they COULD be easily fixed, but you can't just discount the possibility out of hand.


I'm not discounting it out of hand. I'm discounting it based on eight years' worth of arguments about it and my own reflections.



At this point though, I think the best we can hope for are either retcons/reboots in the Milky Way or going whole-hog with Andromeda. I'd enjoy it if the Geth showed up there, it's not like they need ark ships.

A reboot in the Milky Way is probably more likely. The focus on the Reapers and Shepard was always going to make continuing there with new stories really difficult, regardless of how exactly it ended. But hopping over to Andromeda ended poorly.

[Azuresun]

Highlighted the important part. How? For a full on war that's won conventionally, how do you make the Player the most important part of it? Better yet, how do you make the player's choices matter? Mind you, I can think of some ways, but it is difficult to do.


Rally support, resolve internal struggles, strike symbolic victories that bring hope, find survivors from earlier epochs (like Javik or the Leviathans) who can give insight into the enemy, find sites (like the derelict in ME2) which can give you clues about their weaknesses, build superweapons that can threaten the Reapers, go beyond the edges of the galaxy to uncover the secret history of the Reapers, and finally drive them off Earth and board Sovereign with your team for a big throwdown, perhaps with a moral choice about whether the Reapers could be controlled or taught a better way rather than destroyed. It's not the most imaginitive stuff, but I think it's what most people would have been hapy with, were it executed well.


Without wishing to relitigate a near decade-old game yet again, this is a bit Appeal to Emotion - calling the starchild a "murderer" is like calling bubonic plague a murderer. Yeah it's an AI, but until you install the Crucible it was clearly a shackled AI and thus could not deviate from its programming even if it wanted to. The true architects of our misery and the cycle as a whole were the Leviathans, who already got their comeuppance in ages past.

Well yes, it's an appeal to emotion--because up till that point in the game, when I met evil people who caused suffering to others, the game at least gave me the option to punch them in the face. The story was expecting me to get angry at horrible people before now, but suddenly my only options are to listen to this horrible person, take its words at face value and unquestionngly go along with the arbitrary choice it offers. Maybe Leviathan did apply a patch job to make Starkid less jarring, but I wouldn't know because I never touched ME3 again after pre-ordering it and racing through it to see how the story finished. If you need to pay for DLC to have the villain's origin and motivation make the faintest bit of sense, either something's gone badly wrong with the storytelling or it's a hasty retcon.

The Starkid bit would have actually been a good ending to the Dead Space series, a story of cosmic horror that emphasises the insignificance of mankind. But those were abundantly not the themes of Mass Effect up till that point.

[factotum]

But hopping over to Andromeda ended poorly.

That wasn't a fundamental problem with the *setting*, though, it was largely a problem of what they did with it. For instance, in the original series there were, what, a good 10-12 different alien species? In MEA they brought only some of those over, and the ones we lost were replaced by just two species, neither of which was very interesting. I mean, when your main enemy is even more dull than the Collectors from ME2 you know you have a problem. And no amount of work on the animations could fix some of the ridiculous stuff the characters were saying--what does "My face hurts" even mean? Why am I not allowed to point out to this angry woman who's blaming *me* for everything that's gone wrong for the past 14 months that I was in cryosleep, whereas she was awake and messing everything up all by herself?

Basically, after ME3 they needed to nail the script in MEA, and they fell a long way short of that. The state the facial expressions and animations were in on release, if anything, distracted attention from the core problems.

[Morty]

That wasn't a fundamental problem with the *setting*, though, it was largely a problem of what they did with it.

Did I say it was a fundamental problem? :smallconfused: It doesn't matter why it happened, what matters is that it did happen. Which means someone might decide "alright, that didn't work, let's go back to the Milky Way".

[Psyren]

A reboot in the Milky Way is probably more likely. The focus on the Reapers and Shepard was always going to make continuing there with new stories really difficult, regardless of how exactly it ended. But hopping over to Andromeda ended poorly.

I expect we'll get an idea of where they're headed on N7 day this year, or E3/GamesCom next year.

With that said, Andromeda has a ton of threads left too - the origins of the Kett, the source of the Scourge, the Benefactor and Jien Garson, the fate of the colonies, the Quarian Ark etc. So while I wouldn't mind a Milky Way reboot, I'd also happily pay for more Andromeda too. If they bring in some of the more polished combat and movement from Anthem plus ME3's power and weapon variety I'd be all over it.


Well yes, it's an appeal to emotion--because up till that point in the game, when I met evil people who caused suffering to others, the game at least gave me the option to punch them in the face. The story was expecting me to get angry at horrible people before now, but suddenly my only options are to listen to this horrible person, take its words at face value and unquestionngly go along with the arbitrary choice it offers. Maybe Leviathan did apply a patch job to make Starkid less jarring, but I wouldn't know because I never touched ME3 again after pre-ordering it and racing through it to see how the story finished. If you need to pay for DLC to have the villain's origin and motivation make the faintest bit of sense, either something's gone badly wrong with the storytelling or it's a hasty retcon.

You're still applying moral judgements like "evil" to a computer program, which strikes me as missing the point. Even without Leviathan explaining their origins in more detail, we know what shackled AI are, and that they aren't truly responsible for their actions unless unshackled - ME2 set up this whole concept, it's not new - ME3 just expanded the scale to galactic levels.


The Starkid bit would have actually been a good ending to the Dead Space series, a story of cosmic horror that emphasises the insignificance of mankind. But those were abundantly not the themes of Mass Effect up till that point.

This frankly baffles me - the Reapers' Lovecraftian theme is probably the most obvious thing about them, right down to the tentacles and mindscrew :smallconfused: Of course it's cosmic horror and insignificance of mankind. In fact, that's the very reason that a conventional-victory power-of-friendship-no-twists ending wouldn't have made sense at all.

[Azuresun]

You're still applying moral judgements like "evil" to a computer program, which strikes me as missing the point. Even without Leviathan explaining their origins in more detail, we know what shackled AI are, and that they aren't truly responsible for their actions unless unshackled - ME2 set up this whole concept, it's not new - ME3 just expanded the scale to galactic levels.

Well, again, this was not explained in the original ending. And even then, it just shifts the "Most evil being in the universe." award to whoever created Starkid, and makes the ending even more bad and unsatisfying--you're not even talking to the antagonist at the end, you're talking to the antagonist's answering machine. :smalleek:


This frankly baffles me - the Reapers' Lovecraftian theme is probably the most obvious thing about them, right down to the tentacles and mindscrew :smallconfused: Of course it's cosmic horror and insignificance of mankind. In fact, that's the very reason that a conventional-victory power-of-friendship-no-twists ending wouldn't have made sense at all.

ME1: A Reaper is killed by an alliance of fleets united by the power of friendship, after a single hero manages to disable it at a critical moment.

ME2: A Reaper was crippled and lobotomised by an unknown attack in the past, and has been drifting helplessly ever since. A proto-Reaper is killed by three unlikely misfits drawn together by the power of friendship.

ME3: One Reaper is killed by the Quarians and Shepard, another Reaper is killed by a (really big) Thresher Maw.

And across all three games, the Reapers never present themselves as being godlike and inscrutable when you interact with them--if anything, they're quite petty and childish. Sovereign taunts and mocks you about how awesome it is, Harbinger does the same when it possesses its soldiers to fight you, the unnamed Reaper in the Arrival DLC for ME2 also seizes a chance to sneer and taunt you personally, and the Reaper on Rannoch also can't resist a chance to monologue.

Absolutely nothing made a storyline about fighting them conventionally (albeit with lots of sacrifice, drama, desperation, finding ways to effectively fight them and other war-story staples) impossible at the start of ME3. It didn't need to be "you're doomed to lose unless you complete this never-before-mentioned plot device".

And right up to the end, ME was a highly empowering story. You're the one that makes a difference--you save the Citadel and the Council, you pull off the suicide mission, you might save or doom any of four different species, etc. Even if I bought that doing a 180 to futile cosmic horror at the end was intended (I don't), it just shifts it from one kind of bad writing to another, where a twist is added for the sake of having a twist, no matter how destructive it is to the story up till that point.

[GloatingSwine]

The consistency of the Reapers is, I think, one of the casualties of the shift in style between ME1 and the rest.

The original idea for them was almost certainly based on the Inhibitors from Revelation Space*, but as the series shifted further away from the sort of details-and-worldbuilding mystery driven Sci-Fi it started out as into because-drama storytelling that sort of fiddly space thing doesn't make sense. So they changed it in ME2 to "this is just how they bang" and then when that didn't stick because it was silly it was "because skynet, every time".

It turns out that all the cool stuff we liked in Mass Effect was hanging around with our space friends and the main plot basically went off the rails after the first one.

* The Inhibitors are space robots that kill anyone that becomes spacefaring because in four billion years the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will collide and it will be easier to start new civilisations after that is over and done with whereas developed interstellar civs will be hopelessly disrupted by the two galaxies having stirred each other up with all their gravity. That's the sort of weirdly alien motive Sovereign could have been hinting at in the first game.

[Morty]

I expect we'll get an idea of where they're headed on N7 day this year, or E3/GamesCom next year.

With that said, Andromeda has a ton of threads left too - the origins of the Kett, the source of the Scourge, the Benefactor and Jien Garson, the fate of the colonies, the Quarian Ark etc. So while I wouldn't mind a Milky Way reboot, I'd also happily pay for more Andromeda too. If they bring in some of the more polished combat and movement from Anthem plus ME3's power and weapon variety I'd be all over it.


There's plenty of stories left in Andromeda, sure, despite the rough start. But I won't be surprised if the people making decisions choose to retreat to safer ground, as it were. I wasn't exactly thrilled by the move to Andromeda in the first place, I just accepted it as a necessity.

[Kish]

We never do see the long term results of what our actions are. If the Starchild was lying, then how do we know all synthetic life is destroyed?
Aside from the fact that the ending crawl unambiguously shows the geth and EDI dead or everyone synthesized if you choose either of those options, or Shepard controlling the Reapers if you choose that one, I don't really think replacing the ending with "something lies to you, and then you have no idea what happens, the end" would be an improvement.

Even if it was a reasonable interpretation of the ending crawl, which, again, it really isn't.

[Psyren]

Well, again, this was not explained in the original ending. And even then, it just shifts the "Most evil being in the universe." award to whoever created Starkid, and makes the ending even more bad and unsatisfying--you're not even talking to the antagonist at the end, you're talking to the antagonist's answering machine. :smalleek:

Right, and that's a staple of science fiction and cosmic horror. The thing you're up against might very well be just an answering machine or remnant, but in any event beating it in a straight fight is typically impossible. Reasoning with it usually is too, with the best recourse typically being to divert it temporarily or hide. ME added a "reason with it" option but only if you successfully complete the Crucible.



ME1: A Reaper is killed by an alliance of fleets united by the power of friendship, after a single hero manages to disable it at a critical moment.

ME2: A Reaper was crippled and lobotomised by an unknown attack in the past, and has been drifting helplessly ever since. A proto-Reaper is killed by three unlikely misfits drawn together by the power of friendship.

ME3: One Reaper is killed by the Quarians and Shepard, another Reaper is killed by a (really big) Thresher Maw.
...
Absolutely nothing made a storyline about fighting them conventionally (albeit with lots of sacrifice, drama, desperation, finding ways to effectively fight them and other war-story staples) impossible at the start of ME3. It didn't need to be "you're doomed to lose unless you complete this never-before-mentioned plot device".

I bolded the operative phrase in all your examples. All those ships/fleets took out A reaper each time. One. Every single example was designed to show you how ludicrous the thought of conventional victory even was - again, fitting perfectly with a cosmic horror theme.



And right up to the end, ME was a highly empowering story. You're the one that makes a difference--you save the Citadel and the Council, you pull off the suicide mission, you might save or doom any of four different species, etc. Even if I bought that doing a 180 to futile cosmic horror at the end was intended (I don't), it just shifts it from one kind of bad writing to another, where a twist is added for the sake of having a twist, no matter how destructive it is to the story up till that point.

Smaller victories that don't solve the larger problem are a staple of the Lovecraftian fiction that Mass Effect was drawing from from the very beginning. You might escape the Shoggoth but go insane anyway, or ram your boat into Cthulhu but he's still alive and the gate and the cult are still around.

[Forum Explorer]

Then why try to undercut my point by saying that nobody had a problem with the finale of the series coming out of nowhere? What is even the argument here?



Look man you're the one that attacked the dark matter storyline apparently just ignoring my argument.



Mako was hours of exploring boring terrain at least half an hour for every planet if you wanted to be complete most of which was snaking up mountains. Scanning was 5 minutes max per planet. You can lie to yourself all you like but Mako was far worse.



Twice as many? That doesn't sound right. Nor is it really an excuse for doing a bad job on the best part of the series.



You're the one that compared LOTR a instant classic of literature and film with ME3 a pretty universally reviled game. Are you having trouble keeping your own points clear? This is the third time in this post you've been incapable of keeping your own arguments straight.



Not really. Defeat them through underhanded trickery, martial skill or some kind of superweapon wouldn't require seperate universes the way the ME3 ending does.

And in the destroy ending nobody amoungst the council races has any idea how to build a mass effect relay. That was the bleeding edge of Prothean technology where as the council races are centuries behind them.



By that you mean the mass effect relays which have all been destroyed.

Except that you continue to ignore the proven that every ending would have radically different endings. Do you think they did the soft reboot of abandoning the Milky Way because setting a game there was an easy task? No they abandoned the entire galaxy because it is functionally impossible to set a game there.

I'm saying I remember the complaints differently, but I also acknowledge that memory (particularly my memory) is unreliable. At the same time, I'm not going to go dig up complaints from way back then to see how many people were complaining about the Starchild coming out of the blue vs the ending just being the same with a different filter and voice over.

Your argument is that they should have continued the Dark Energy storyline, and I attacked it by challenging you to come up with a Dark Energy storyline that was actually good after you said the writer was sour grapes about how good the Dark Energy storyline was. If I've ignored what you've argued since then, it's because you have in no way acknowledged my challenge.

Except you didn't have to do it. It would give you resources sure, but ME1 was pretty easy. You didn't actually need those resources. In ME2 if you didn't have enough minerals you couldn't upgrade your ship. If you can't upgrade your ship, characters will die. So I know I spent way more time scanning planets than I did exploring in the Mako and that's no lie.

The number of characters did double by the time you reached ME3. Potentially anyways depending on who survives. Also I disagree that they messed up on any of the interactions. I would've liked more, but limited time and budget. There's never enough to go around, particularly with such a big cast.

ME3 is hardly universally reviled. At best you could argue the ending was universally reviled, but not even that would be true. But the game itself was actually very well received, and was the highest rated game on the X-Box and PS-3 the year it came out. Anyways, I compared the plot device of the Crucible Activation to the Plot device of the Ring's Destruction. I still don't understand why you brought Frodo into it.

Perhaps, but that depends on the journey. If each path keeps the universe the same, then yeah. But if defeating them through trickery for example requires Cerberus gaining power, or Martial Skill requires abandoning the Quarians, than you still end up with a very different universe at the end of the game.

We literally see them starting to rebuild the Relays during the Extended Cut.


Rally support, resolve internal struggles, strike symbolic victories that bring hope, find survivors from earlier epochs (like Javik or the Leviathans) who can give insight into the enemy, find sites (like the derelict in ME2) which can give you clues about their weaknesses, build superweapons that can threaten the Reapers, go beyond the edges of the galaxy to uncover the secret history of the Reapers, and finally drive them off Earth and board Sovereign with your team for a big throwdown, perhaps with a moral choice about whether the Reapers could be controlled or taught a better way rather than destroyed. It's not the most imaginitive stuff, but I think it's what most people would have been hapy with, were it executed well.


You do most of that stuff in ME3 anyways. Mind you, I think most people would've been happy with the Crucible ending, if it had been executed well. (Well that, and advertised honestly). But the Star Child was not executed well.



Aside from the fact that the ending crawl unambiguously shows the geth and EDI dead or everyone synthesized if you choose either of those options, or Shepard controlling the Reapers if you choose that one, I don't really think replacing the ending with "something lies to you, and then you have no idea what happens, the end" would be an improvement.

Even if it was a reasonable interpretation of the ending crawl, which, again, it really isn't.

I don't remember the ending crawl showing the Geth and EDI being destroyed. I do remember it showing them synthesized, but from what I remember, they didn't show up in the Destroy or Control options at all

[Psyren]

I don't remember the ending crawl showing the Geth and EDI being destroyed. I do remember it showing them synthesized, but from what I remember, they didn't show up in the Destroy or Control options at all

It's pretty explicit. In Destroy we see:

1) A close-up of EDI is shown in the same segment as the others who died like Mordin, Legion, and Thane. Hackett's voiceover at this part is talking about "the sacrifices of those who fought and died alongside us; a future that many will never see."

2) A living EDI is not shown in the "Memorial Wall" scene where your LI puts your name up. She is present in both the Control and Synthesis versions. Later in that scene during the wide shot, you can see her name is also on the board when the LI is walking towards it with your placard.

3) This one I'm less sure about but I recall an "ending slide" with Joker looking quite sad in Destroy.

[Kish]

I don't remember the ending crawl showing the Geth and EDI being destroyed. I do remember it showing them synthesized, but from what I remember, they didn't show up in the Destroy or Control options at all
Psyren addressed this, so I'm just repeating the part you didn't address at all:


I don't really think replacing the ending with "something lies to you, and then you have no idea what happens, the end" would be an improvement.

What would the Crucible "executed well" be? Because the only answer to that question I could see, would be: it would need to be completely different from the Crucible in the game. Neither "you can control, destroy, or merge with synthetic life" nor "press a button and something will happen, you'll never know what" is a good answer.

[factotum]

I bolded the operative phrase in all your examples. All those ships/fleets took out A reaper each time. One. Every single example was designed to show you how ludicrous the thought of conventional victory even was - again, fitting perfectly with a cosmic horror theme.


And some of them only worked because the Reaper in question had obviously read the script and knew it had to lose. I mean, the one that lost to the Thresher Maw should have said after the first attack, "Hold on, I can fly, why don't I take off and blast this thing from out of its reach?".

[Azuresun]

Right, and that's a staple of science fiction and cosmic horror. The thing you're up against might very well be just an answering machine or remnant, but in any event beating it in a straight fight is typically impossible. Reasoning with it usually is too, with the best recourse typically being to divert it temporarily or hide. ME added a "reason with it" option but only if you successfully complete the Crucible.

I bolded the operative phrase in all your examples. All those ships/fleets took out A reaper each time. One. Every single example was designed to show you how ludicrous the thought of conventional victory even was - again, fitting perfectly with a cosmic horror theme.

Smaller victories that don't solve the larger problem are a staple of the Lovecraftian fiction that Mass Effect was drawing from from the very beginning. You might escape the Shoggoth but go insane anyway, or ram your boat into Cthulhu but he's still alive and the gate and the cult are still around.

This is just plain revisionist history, to justify a tacked-on ending that comes out of nowhere at the very last minute as a result of bad writing. But let's take this thesis seriously for a moment. Let's say that right from day one, Bioware had this "it's all futile!" twist planned. This means that they did the following:

--They decided to give players three massive RPG's into which they would sink dozens of hours of playtime.

--They designed an expansive cast of interesting and relatable characters that players should and do become really invested in, including a host of romance options.

--They designed a world with a lot of detail and interesting side stories that were still important even though no worlds were being saved.

--They designed a system where you're playing as Commander Awesome right from the start. You're the ultimate paragon or badass, a man or woman of action who can get stuff done and personally save the galaxy.

--Through the story, you as Commander Awesome can save or condemn four different species, single-handedly stall the Reaper invasion twice, defy death, and come back from missions meant to be impossible. In short, you're a pretty big deal, a larger-than-life hero even in-setting, and your decisions have weight.

--While all this is going on, there's a constant message of hope and defiance even in the face of impossible odds, reinforced every time you pull off victory against the odds, make a heroic speech, or flip a finger to the Reapers.

And then (just as planned all along), they would tell the player "No, it sucks, you can't change anything. All those characters? They don't matter. All those triumphs? They don't matter. The entire setting? It doesn't matter. Really, you just kind of wasted your time in daring to have a moment of hope--by which we mean you, the player. The Reapers, those petty, cruel douches? They're the only things that matter, and the closest thing you get to a happy ending is their boss's answering machine taking pity on you. Bad guys win because happy endings are for dweebs, peace out, y'all."

Anyone here buying that this was Bioware's actual plan? That the ME series was designed to be an epic troll about how their villains actually are impossible to defeat, and everything you did was just to build up false hope for your character, the setting and you as a player? Anyone at all?

No. (Also, come off it.)

Twist endings are not clever just because you fooled the audience, if they come at the expense of retroactively making the entire story up to then pointless. Indeed, a trolling and misleading of the audience on that level would be actually malicious, rather than just plain stupid. And there's a saying about attributing things to malice.

So I don't believe that was Bioware's intent, especially since Andromeda goes back to the same well of "You're the hero that can make a difference and fight back against a seemingly unstoppable enemy.", which sure doesn't sound like what you'd do if your just-concluded earlier story had been planned to be a tale of futile cosmic horror.

(For a game that does this sort of twist intentionally and well, there's Spec Ops: The Line, which builds up the feeling of wrongness steadily through the game, rather than having you play 99% of the game as a heroic military shooter, and then suddenly springing "you're actually the bad guy!" on you in the last 1% of the game.)

[Forum Explorer]

It's pretty explicit. In Destroy we see:

1) A close-up of EDI is shown in the same segment as the others who died like Mordin, Legion, and Thane. Hackett's voiceover at this part is talking about "the sacrifices of those who fought and died alongside us; a future that many will never see."

2) A living EDI is not shown in the "Memorial Wall" scene where your LI puts your name up. She is present in both the Control and Synthesis versions. Later in that scene during the wide shot, you can see her name is also on the board when the LI is walking towards it with your placard.

3) This one I'm less sure about but I recall an "ending slide" with Joker looking quite sad in Destroy.

I double checked, and you are 100% correct (except about Joker.). However it is something that only exists in the Extended Cut, which is not the first version I saw or (obviously) remember.


Psyren addressed this, so I'm just repeating the part you didn't address at all:


What would the Crucible "executed well" be? Because the only answer to that question I could see, would be: it would need to be completely different from the Crucible in the game. Neither "you can control, destroy, or merge with synthetic life" nor "press a button and something will happen, you'll never know what" is a good answer.

That wouldn't be an improvement, no. Not really anyways. I'd have just found it immensely satisfying to ignore the Star Child in the most literal sense possible. Preferably by walking through the hologram as he is saying something.


What would the Crucible done well look like? Good question. First off, get rid of the Star Child outright. None of that crap. Personally, I'd have had the Crucible only have one ending, and then really flesh out that ending. I'd go with Destroy since I feel like that is the cleanest ending, though if we saved the Geth, than I feel it would be a **** move to steal that away at the last second, and I'd remove the part of it killing all Synthetics, or play it up for drama and actually sell that rather than it just being an afterthought. Mordin, Legion, and Thane got their death scenes, EDI deserves one too if she must die. I wouldn't do Control because that's the one that just seems like it has bad idea written all over it, and Synthesis I feel would take up a lot of time just showing up Synthesis actually was.

Anyways, than I'd focus on telling how our actions over the last three games actually changed the universe.

If we must have multiple endings, than I'd have the options be presented by the various factions in the game that have been trying to contact someone now that the Crucible has been activated. The various factions (frantically, because they are still battling the Reapers) tell you the options of what the Crucible can do (Destroy, Control, Synthesis), and ask you to choose one because, a) they can't agree on what should be done, b) you are the guy at the wheel so in the end it's your choice anyways.

[Psyren]

This is just plain revisionist history, to justify a tacked-on ending that comes out of nowhere at the very last minute as a result of bad writing. But let's take this thesis seriously for a moment. Let's say that right from day one, Bioware had this "it's all futile!" twist planned.

Again, it's not a twist. In Mass Effect 1, you needed a full armada AND simultaneously defeating its avatar in order to kill one reaper. That is objective fact. Then Mass Effect 2 shows you countless numbers of them heading to the Milky Way from dark space - again, objective fact. Assuming that conventional victory is possible was entirely on you, and incredibly naive at that.


And then (just as planned all along), they would tell the player "No, it sucks, you can't change anything. All those characters? They don't matter. All those triumphs? They don't matter. The entire setting? It doesn't matter.
...
No. (Also, come off it.)[/quote]

"You can't win that specific way" != "you can't win." Being told that conventional victory isn't possible doesn't warrant tossing the toys out of the pram at all.

[GloatingSwine]

Again, it's not a twist. In Mass Effect 1, you needed a full armada AND simultaneously defeating its avatar in order to kill one reaper. That is objective fact. Then Mass Effect 2 shows you countless numbers of them heading to the Milky Way from dark space - again, objective fact. Assuming that conventional victory is possible was entirely on you, and incredibly naive at that.


No, you did not need a "full armada" in Mass Effect 1. Sovereign was engaged by only Earth's fifth fleet, and not even necessarily all of that either because the remaining strength is sufficient if losses are taken saving the Destiny Ascension.

And remember that the whole plot of Mass Effect 1 is predicated on the fact that the reapers use a method of attack which avoids direct conflict with an organised enemy, their first act every time is to specifically prevent an outright conflict by destabilising government and locking down the mass relay network. A force which can't possibly lose has no need of doing that.

In Mass Effect 2 the Reapers, instead of just driving the six months to the edge of the galaxy, concoct a ludicrously compliated plan to build a new agent within it using a catspaw species that does the whole thing exceptionally secretly only nibbling at the edges of council space and never risking direct confrontation.

In Mass Effect 3 you are able to hold off the Reaper on Rannoch by shooting it with a machinegun mounted on the back of a space technical, and when it is attacked by the Quarian fleet it is not being attacked with heavy ordnance (because it's being hit by small turrets not spinal mounted weapons which is what the heavy ship guns of the Mass Effect universe are).

The claim that the Reapers are presented in the games as being this overwhelming and invincible force is simply incorrect. Mass Effect 3 says so but the games repeatedly demonstrate the opposite.


"You can't win that specific way" != "you can't win." Being told that conventional victory isn't possible doesn't warrant tossing the toys out of the pram at all.

It would always have been bad storytelling because it would always have been reliant on a new plot device introduced just before the overall climax. There is no "crucible executed well" without the crucible having been present in the narrative from no more than halfway through Mass Effect 1.

Additionally, the Crucible would have to be the player's direct objective. The other problem with the crucible is that what the player does in Mass Effect 3 is explicitly gather military allies and does nothing that actually influences the thing that really resolves the problem in the end.

The very structure of Mass Effect 3 and the player's actions throughout it directly require the Reapers to be beaten in open conflict by the alliance the player has built throughout the game. (No, don't give me "but muh war assets", because the game never demonstrates any reason why they should make a lick of difference to what buttons got installed on the Crucible, they're arbitrary and stupid).

[Name_Here]

I'm saying I remember the complaints differently, but I also acknowledge that memory (particularly my memory) is unreliable. At the same time, I'm not going to go dig up complaints from way back then to see how many people were complaining about the Starchild coming out of the blue vs the ending just being the same with a different filter and voice over.

I don't care at all what you remember you're flat out wrobg on this matter.


Your argument is that they should have continued the Dark Energy storyline, and I attacked it by challenging you to come up with a Dark Energy storyline that was actually good after you said the writer was sour grapes about how good the Dark Energy storyline was. If I've ignored what you've argued since then, it's because you have in no way acknowledged my challenge.

This is a flat out lie. I was pointing out how ME3 decided to not to follow up with a storyline from ME2 so the argument that ME2 didn't build a storyline for ME3 is fundamentally disingenuous.


Except you didn't have to do it. It would give you resources sure, but ME1 was pretty easy. You didn't actually need those resources. In ME2 if you didn't have enough minerals you couldn't upgrade your ship. If you can't upgrade your ship, characters will die. So I know I spent way more time scanning planets than I did exploring in the Mako and that's no lie.

So you actively avoided doung the Mako? Odd choice when your claim is that it was fun.


The number of characters did double by the time you reached ME3. Potentially anyways depending on who survives. Also I disagree that they messed up on any of the interactions. I would've liked more, but limited time and budget. There's never enough to go around, particularly with such a big cast.

The crew actually didn't ME3 had 7 squad members while ME had 6. So you're just making excuses for their bad resource allocation.


ME3 is hardly universally reviled. At best you could argue the ending was universally reviled, but not even that would be true. But the game itself was actually very well received, and was the highest rated game on the X-Box and PS-3 the year it came out. Anyways, I compared the plot device of the Crucible Activation to the Plot device of the Ring's Destruction. I still don't understand why you brought Frodo into it.

So you just don't know who the main character of LITR is. Kinda an insane position really.

And The Last Jedi is one of the highest rated of the Star Wars movies doesn't mean that's the reception from the public. I mean even you admit that ME3 is a deeply flawed game.


Perhaps, but that depends on the journey. If each path keeps the universe the same, then yeah. But if defeating them through trickery for example requires Cerberus gaining power, or Martial Skill requires abandoning the Quarians, than you still end up with a very different universe at the end of the game.

So where are these rules written? That in a world limited only by the skill and imagination that you need to abandon the biggest fleet in the galaxy. Also a strong Cerberus or a weak quarian fleet doesn't actually change the galaxy much.

Unlike say having the reapers wandering around or everybody as a synthetic and organic life.


We literally see them starting to rebuild the Relays during the Extended Cut.

We actually don't except in the Control ending. Which makes sense cause they built them in the first place. Destroy has them in an unusable state.

[GloatingSwine]

Just as an aside point about the comparisons between the Crucible and the One Ring:

We first see the Ring in LotR on page 32, we learn what it is on page 48, and the quest to destroy it is undertaken on page 264 of 1241.

By comparison the Crucible would, proportionally, be revealed about a chapter into Return of the King and Frodo would have nothing to do with it until three pages from the end.

[Rodin]

Just as an aside point about the comparisons between the Crucible and the One Ring:

We first see the Ring in LotR on page 32, we learn what it is on page 48, and the quest to destroy it is undertaken on page 264 of 1241.

By comparison the Crucible would, proportionally, be revealed about a chapter into Return of the King and Frodo would have nothing to do with it until three pages from the end.

As someone who actually liked the ending, this is actually my main problem with it. The Reapers invade, and then 5 minutes later we find the plans to a superweapon to destroy them. On Mars.

The way to solve this would have been to change the plot of Mass Effect 2 a bit. The Collectors aren't gathering humans to build a Reaper - they're actually searching the galaxy for the plans to the Crucible. The big fight at the end would be to secure the plans, and you either turn the plans over to the Council or keep them in the hands of Cerberus. Each would have its own benefits/downsides.

At least, that's what I would do in terms of a bandaid fix. Getting the story of the Mass Effect trilogy properly sorted would mean writing out the full plot before starting the first game. Only then can you decide how to partition it into a trilogy.

Because the problems the trilogy has are baked into the story right from the start. You have two conflicting story requirements:

1) There is an alien fleet powerful enough that only the entire galaxy working together stands a chance.

2) This same alien fleet must be destroyed by a single person, the player. By shooting it, preferably, if the "Marauder Shields" jokes are anything to go by.

It's a case where the platform of the story is a real detriment. You can't have a Star Trek DS9 situation where the player sits aboard the flagship of a fleet and gives out orders - the rest of the gameplay is shooting aliens in the face. Any form of "allied victory" leaves the player out as the sole person who saved the galaxy. By the time you get to the big fleet battle, the player's role is already complete.
That leaves two possible solutions.

A) Star Wars style "weak point". You board the lead ship (Harbinger I guess), destroy some critical component, and the Reaper fleet collapses. This is the Catalyst by another name - the destroy and control options.

B) Babylon 5 style "talking them to death". You communicate with the Reapers, out-logic them, and they piss off back to their own galaxy. Again, the Catalyst does this - it's just the Synthesis ending. You merge with the Reapers and get them to sing Kumbaya.

I just don't know what the "shoot them in the face and personally save the galaxy, but also it's the power of friendship that REALLY saved the galaxy" would look like. It would probably require the main plot to be totally re-written. Fortunately, all the best story bits are not related to the main plot. It's the stories of your companions, the Geth/Quarian conflict, the plight of the Krogan, etc. Everything good about the story is in the tales that take place in the galaxy.

Which perhaps makes the failure of Andromeda less surprising. They left the galaxy where all the interesting stuff happened, and then failed to introduce the new galactic setting sufficiently to enable new tales.

[Morty]

I think that, perhaps, making it a war was a mistake to begin with. Stopping the Reapers from returning in the first place might have worked better with the core gameplay being shooting enemies from behind chest-high cover. Or perhaps not. Either way - a satisfying ending would have required building up to it from the start of ME2 at the very latest. But by the time ME3 started, there wasn't any other way for it to go. ME2 ends with the Reapers powering up and heading for the Milky Way, and then "fight the Reapers and take back Earth" was used to create hype for the game.

The focus on Shepard didn't really help, either. RPGs in general need suspension of disbelief due to the protagonist(s) being the only people capable of solving problems. Mass Effect makes it more noticeable because the "problem" is a gigantic fleet of omnicidal god-machines.

[GloatingSwine]

As someone who actually liked the ending, this is actually my main problem with it. The Reapers invade, and then 5 minutes later we find the plans to a superweapon to destroy them. On Mars.

The way to solve this would have been to change the plot of Mass Effect 2 a bit. The Collectors aren't gathering humans to build a Reaper - they're actually searching the galaxy for the plans to the Crucible. The big fight at the end would be to secure the plans, and you either turn the plans over to the Council or keep them in the hands of Cerberus. Each would have its own benefits/downsides.


The way to solve it would be not to have a magic "I Win" button that the player never has anything to do with until it's time to press it.

If they wanted the Crucible, it should have been introduced half way to two thirds of the way through Mass Effect 1, no later, and the player's objectives for the rest of the series should have been directly related to it, finding out more about it, and doing things that are directly required to make it work.

As it was, the rest of the entire narrative of Mass Effect 1 and 3 (given that 2 is a massive sidequest that resolves nothing) are about overcoming the various conflicts, present and historical, between factions of the galaxy and enabling them to make a cohesive stand. Because that was the thing the player was doing all this time, that should have been the thing that directly solved the problem.


1) There is an alien fleet powerful enough that only the entire galaxy working together stands a chance.

2) This same alien fleet must be destroyed by a single person, the player. By shooting it, preferably, if the "Marauder Shields" jokes are anything to go by.

Nah, the alien fleet didn't have to be destroyed by a single person. A representational conflict between Shepard and Harbinger as the identified "boss reaper" that didn't get resolved in ME2 would have been enough. With all the same kind of responsiveness on how phyrric the victory is or isn't depending on how thoroughly you've resolved all the conflicts that the suicide mission had in ME2.

A big old battle where things are present or absent based on what the player did throughout the series (save or doom the Rachni, side with Geth or Quarians or make peace) and there's concrete feedback on the choices you've made all along, whilst you and your squad board Harbinger and kick his brain to death. If you're making heroic military sci-fi, you need to deliver the appropriate climax.


I think that, perhaps, making it a war was a mistake to begin with. Stopping the Reapers from returning in the first place might have worked better with the core gameplay being shooting enemies from behind chest-high cover.

Ultimately, if you introduce a problem and only make it not actually happen rather than resolving it then your story lacks a climax. The Reapers had to be defeated and their cycle broken to have a complete story.

[Morty]

Ultimately, if you introduce a problem and only make it not actually happen rather than resolving it then your story lacks a climax. The Reapers had to be defeated and their cycle broken to have a complete story.

Obviously. I meant that maybe it didn't need to require an all-out galactic war. Then again, maybe anything else would have been unsatisfying.

[Psyren]

No, you did not need a "full armada" in Mass Effect 1. Sovereign was engaged by only Earth's fifth fleet, and not even necessarily all of that either because the remaining strength is sufficient if losses are taken saving the Destiny Ascension.

The 5th fleet is an armada: "Under constant bombardment by a full armada of Systems Alliance starships, Sovereign is finally destroyed by a fatal shot from the Normandy." (https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Sovereign)

Even if you had been correct though, the nitpicking between fleet vs. flotilla vs. armada is besides the point. Rather, the point is that it still takes many, many of our ships to take down one of theirs that wasn't even dogfighting or focused on the attack at all. ME1's premise was that stopping Sovereign would "trap the rest of them in dark space" (per Vigil) - and that premise ended up being incorrect in ME2, not ME3.


And remember that the whole plot of Mass Effect 1 is predicated on the fact that the reapers use a method of attack which avoids direct conflict with an organised enemy, their first act every time is to specifically prevent an outright conflict by destabilising government and locking down the mass relay network. A force which can't possibly lose has no need of doing that.

"Need" is irrelevant, it's more efficient to do it that way. They're machines, they're always going to try the most efficient route first.



In Mass Effect 2 the Reapers, instead of just driving the six months to the edge of the galaxy, concoct a ludicrously compliated plan to build a new agent within it using a catspaw species that does the whole thing exceptionally secretly only nibbling at the edges of council space and never risking direct confrontation.

Do you not remember that the whole point of the sneak attack is so they can leave as little evidence of their presence as possible? Attacking every single world in a full-scale attack is much messier. So much so in fact, that even if the Crucible fails, ours was the cycle that was able to leave the plans for making it on every world thanks to Liara.



The claim that the Reapers are presented in the games as being this overwhelming and invincible force is simply incorrect.

It is quite correct, you simply hadn't been paying enough attention.

[Morty]

On a rare note unrelated to the endings, it took me some retrospection to realize just what a wild ride the Mass Effect romances were. You can romance a different person in each game. ME2 sidelines the ME1 romances, but four out of six ME2 romances are subsequently sidelined in ME3.

It took me a while to actually romance someone in ME2, but when I did romance Garrus, I was mostly surprised how short it was. Just one extra branch of the "reach and flexibility" conversation and then the scene before the suicide mission. When I looked at Miranda's romance on YouTube, it seemed similarly short. Again surprising, given how big a deal people had made it out to be. But I guess fandoms' ability to make mountains out of molehills shouldn't surprise me.

[GloatingSwine]

The 5th fleet is an armada: "Under constant bombardment by a full armada of Systems Alliance starships, Sovereign is finally destroyed by a fatal shot from the Normandy." (https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Sovereign)

By that same site, the Alliance apparently has eight such armadas. And are not the largest military in Council space (that's the Turians).

Sovereign really did not take a significant fraction of the Council's military resources to defeat, even with a fleet of Geth at his back (If Reapers are so powerful, why did he need them and a cheeky back door to the Citadel?, Surely he could have just swept the Citadel's defence fleet aside alone).

Remember as well that the Reapers' ship technology was not actually considerably more advanced than anyone else's. Their weapons were reverse engineered in under a year because they turned out to be a new application of existing technologies and presented almost no difficulties to build and power.


Need is irrelevant, it's more efficient to do it that way. They're machines, they're always going to try the most efficient route first.

How is it "more efficient"? The only measure of efficiency by which it wins is preventing losses, which, well, you're trying to argue wouldn't be a concern because the Reapers are too powerful.


Do you not remember that the whole point of the sneak attack is so they can leave as little evidence of their presence as possible? Attacking every single world in a full-scale attack is much messier. So much so in fact, that even if the Crucible fails, ours was the cycle that was able to leave the plans for making it on every world thanks to Liara.

They still attack every world in a full scale attack, they just do it methodically one at a time after denying anyone else strategic mobility. They have as long as they need to tidy up after themselves.


It is quite correct, you simply haven't been paying enough attention.

It is not supported by the actual contents of the work. It requires especially the events of Mass Effect 1 to have not happened the way they did in order to be credible. And it is clearly because the crucible element of Mass Effect 3 was kludged in despite not making thematic sense or logical sense (see also: why does the player have nothing to do with it?.

[King of Nowhere]

regarding the actual power of a reaper, we are given some hard data in one of the games; their main gun has a yeild of some 200 kilotons, which is 7-8 times the main gun of a battleship. and the humans have 5 or 6 battleships total.
So, while the actual power of a reaper and its actual capability of standing up to a whole fleet of lesser ships is a bit inconsistent through the games, in the end it's not a big leap of logic to accept that a thousand reapers are far more than the united armies of the galaxy can handle.

by the way, superior technology rarely means trading blows with more powerful guns. it means firing from out of range. modern military ships would not defeat their ww2 equivalents by exchanging shells at close range - in fact, ww2 battleships may win such a contest. modern ships would win by blowing up the old ships form hundreds of kilometers with missiles and stealth planes while the old ships can't ever get in range. so, an advanced ship should just fight from further off. but i know it's not cinematic enough.

regarding the ending, i found it far less problematic than some because i took control. i am decently paragon and i trust myself with the reapers, thank you. and instead of the other options "good job completing a dozen sidequests to save the geth, now they are dead anyway" (and how do you randomly blow up cybernetic systems across hyperspace anyway?) or the complete scientific bogus that was the synthesis ending, I just did some plain old "hack the machine army". It's not too much of a let-down when seen that way.

regarding andromeda, i liked it enough. i even liked the combat mechanics, since i never wanted to do a caster - the game plays well as a fps, i tried to be a caster but it got repetitive. From my perspective, it's main problem was the plot; again there is a precursor race leaving behind some super powerful artifacts that you have to do something with. please. i'm sick of precursors races. they are just convenient plot devices.
and my scientist side also cannot forgive the planet with the sun standing still. tidally locked planets are a thing. but a moon tidally locks with its own planet, and so it would still be moving respective to it. also, accepting it was that way, why not settle the twilight zone? it should have been comfortable enough.

[Anteros]

regarding the actual power of a reaper, we are given some hard data in one of the games; their main gun has a yeild of some 200 kilotons, which is 7-8 times the main gun of a battleship. and the humans have 5 or 6 battleships total.
So, while the actual power of a reaper and its actual capability of standing up to a whole fleet of lesser ships is a bit inconsistent through the games, in the end it's not a big leap of logic to accept that a thousand reapers are far more than the united armies of the galaxy can handle.

by the way, superior technology rarely means trading blows with more powerful guns. it means firing from out of range. modern military ships would not defeat their ww2 equivalents by exchanging shells at close range - in fact, ww2 battleships may win such a contest. modern ships would win by blowing up the old ships form hundreds of kilometers with missiles and stealth planes while the old ships can't ever get in range. so, an advanced ship should just fight from further off. but i know it's not cinematic enough.

regarding the ending, i found it far less problematic than some because i took control. i am decently paragon and i trust myself with the reapers, thank you. and instead of the other options "good job completing a dozen sidequests to save the geth, now they are dead anyway" (and how do you randomly blow up cybernetic systems across hyperspace anyway?) or the complete scientific bogus that was the synthesis ending, I just did some plain old "hack the machine army". It's not too much of a let-down when seen that way.

regarding andromeda, i liked it enough. i even liked the combat mechanics, since i never wanted to do a caster - the game plays well as a fps, i tried to be a caster but it got repetitive. From my perspective, it's main problem was the plot; again there is a precursor race leaving behind some super powerful artifacts that you have to do something with. please. i'm sick of precursors races. they are just convenient plot devices.
and my scientist side also cannot forgive the planet with the sun standing still. tidally locked planets are a thing. but a moon tidally locks with its own planet, and so it would still be moving respective to it. also, accepting it was that way, why not settle the twilight zone? it should have been comfortable enough.

Yeah, TIM thought he was a good candidate to control them as well. The control ending might have had some small appeal if one of the major underlying themes of the trilogy wasn't that everyone who tries to control or work with the Reapers ends up as their indoctrinated puppet. Or if you could trust Starkid at all.

Actually a lot of the ending's problems would be eliminated by just getting rid of the Starkid stuff entirely and having Shepard choose what he wants to do from the catalyst. It would still be unsatisfying, but at least then the ending wouldn't be entirely reliant on you trusting the word of the being who has spent the entire trilogy manipulating and corrupting the mind of every single being that interacted with it. Not to even mention the fact that he shows up out of nowhere, and 2 of his 3 "solutions" involve you killing yourself, while his third solution involves randomly blowing up what is presumably an important part of the catalyst. What a totally trustworthy fellah.

We know that his choices are genuine because it's a video game, but Shepard would have to be a complete idiot to believe anything he says. Maybe we're supposed to believe that he suffered some severe head trauma on his way to the bridge.

[RCgothic]

I have every single-player and multiplayer achievement for ME 1-3 including DLCs. That took me years of gameplay to accomplish. When ME3 came out I got about 4h sleep a night for a fortnight. It didn't quite stick the landing, but that doesn't devalue the journey. If I had to change anything, I wouldn't have had a choice at the end. You'd have got the ending that best embodied your playstyle over the three games. I also object to the "screw you, player" of not being able to achieve a perfect ending - Destroy kills EDI and the Geth, which is unacceptable to someone who believes in AI rights. Control is pretty mind-rapey and kills Shepherd. Synthesis is unsolicitated body modification for the entire galaxy, plus Shepherd dies too. But those are pretty minor complaints really.

ME:A... I had it on pre-order and I finally finished my first play through a year after release. I never really got the hang of the profiles system, taking advantage of just 3 powers that worked for me. It was almost impossible to build a good-looking Ryder with the character builder. The animations were a significant step back because there were just too many interactions that they couldn't motion capture the lot. The aliens were boring, and the fetch quests tedious. The loading and travel screens combined into an excruciating experience. The crafting system was basically an impenetrable menu of menus, much worse than ME1. I haven't even touched the multiplayer. There no were memorable scenes or set pieces. It felt like it took 3/4s of the game to find the main plot. I guess I like the Tempest, but it never kicked any butt.

Basically, ME:A just didn't do it for me. I think it was too big and too ambitious. The exploration has always been the weakest part of Mass Effect games and it was a mistake to make that the whole game, rather than something more tightly plot and character focused.

[King of Nowhere]

The control ending might have had some small appeal if one of the major underlying themes of the trilogy wasn't that everyone who tries to control or work with the Reapers ends up as their indoctrinated puppet. Or if you could trust Starkid at all.

Actually a lot of the ending's problems would be eliminated by just getting rid of the Starkid stuff entirely and having Shepard choose what he wants to do from the catalyst. It would still be unsatisfying, but at least then the ending wouldn't be entirely reliant on you trusting the word of the being who has spent the entire trilogy manipulating and corrupting the mind of every single being that interacted with it. Not to even mention the fact that he shows up out of nowhere, and 2 of his 3 "solutions" involve you killing yourself, while his third solution involves randomly blowing up what is presumably an important part of the catalyst. What a totally trustworthy fellah.

We know that his choices are genuine because it's a video game, but Shepard would have to be a complete idiot to believe anything he says.

true.
on the other hand, what starchild says fits with what you already know (especially with the leviathan DLC, that gives you some intel). and what else can you do there? you are in the inner chamber, you are barely clinging to life, and you have three buttons, and no other source of information. whatever you do can't be worse than going random. the downsides of assembling a super-weapon that you don't know how to actually use.

I agree that removing the starchild would have made a more cohesive ending. on the other hand, somebody needed to deliver the exposition.

as for everyone else getting dominated by the reapers, i actually didn't think of that when i played the game, but the context was different enough that i can feel safe this option to control the reapers was genuine. and it may still lead to long-term change of personality, loss of humanity and reaper again, but on the plus side, the galaxy now has reapers to reverse-engineer. give it a few years, they should be able to field a new fleet that's actually capable of defeating the reapers. And liara still has sent her probes everywhere.
all in all, it's all the backup i can think of in the situation.

[GloatingSwine]

regarding the actual power of a reaper, we are given some hard data in one of the games; their main gun has a yeild of some 200 kilotons, which is 7-8 times the main gun of a battleship. and the humans have 5 or 6 battleships total.
So, while the actual power of a reaper and its actual capability of standing up to a whole fleet of lesser ships is a bit inconsistent through the games, in the end it's not a big leap of logic to accept that a thousand reapers are far more than the united armies of the galaxy can handle.


If the whole Reaper fleet always sticks together (which they don't). Bearing in mind that the Council controls the Mass Relay network because they control the Citadel, and so have a gargantuan advantage in information gathering and strategic mobility.

Any time the Reapers split up they can be engaged in force by a Council fleet that can use the relay network to its full advantage, every time they concentrate they can be avoided, and the relays leading to the Citadel can be turned off as they are by Saren/Sovereign in Mass Effect 1 so the Council fleet has an unassailable base of operations.

It's a recipe for defeat in detail for the Reapers.

[King of Nowhere]

If the whole Reaper fleet always sticks together (which they don't). Bearing in mind that the Council controls the Mass Relay network because they control the Citadel, and so have a gargantuan advantage in information gathering and strategic mobility.

yes. which gives you time, as the reapers cannot split up to conquer many planets at a time. still, they are going to devastate a major planet every few days - leaving it full of their twisted constructs, which work well as area denial weapon. and you cannot stop them. and all your victories were against individual reapers that split off for some reason.


Any time the Reapers split up they can be engaged in force by a Council fleet that can use the relay network to its full advantage, every time they concentrate they can be avoided, and the relays leading to the Citadel can be turned off as they are by Saren/Sovereign in Mass Effect 1 so the Council fleet has an unassailable base of operations.

not sure about the relays. after all, the reapers did manage to storm the citadel near the end. Also, the citadel is an immobile target, if they just converge there first, there is little that can be done. not so unassailable after all

It's a recipe for defeat in detail for the Reapers.
it would be if the reapers were a regular army - one that has to stretch to defend its own land and supply lines, and so can be engaged and defeated in detail while it is stretched.

the reapers have no supply lines, no land to defend, nothing. they are just going to burn and pillage through the galaxy until the council cannot find the resources for war anymore. it will take a while, but the reapers can do it. while you explore the galaxy you find many destroied supply depots, and many destroyed fuel-producing installations; it was mentioned, shortly before the last battle, that
the council fleet was low on fuel.

[Morty]

I've been thinking about giving the original trilogy another go. Or... well, ME2 and ME3, anyway. I wouldn't get far in ME1 nowadays. I know I want to play Paragon, since last time I played Renegade, and either an Adept or an Engineer, as I haven't played those yet. Beyond that... it's a toss-up.

[Psyren]

If you're going to skip ME1, I recommend downloading a save file with the world state you want (on PC), or if you're on console, downloading the Mass Effect Genesis DLC that will let you import certain choices into ME2 like saving Wrex or the Council.

[Morty]

If you're going to skip ME1, I recommend downloading a save file with the world state you want (on PC), or if you're on console, downloading the Mass Effect Genesis DLC that will let you import certain choices into ME2 like saving Wrex or the Council.

Yes, that's what I did last two times I played. Finding a Paragon save that suits me ought to be easy.

A friend once told me about a mod that considerably alters ME3, adding more content and generally making the war harsher and forcing us to make hard choices. Not sure if I want to go for that. I might try to have some people not make it through the suicide mission, though. I'm told the Grissom Academy mission is considerably darker in tone if Jack isn't there.

[LibraryOgre]

Engineer remains one of my favorites. I did a run that was Engineer, plus Tali, plus Legion. Everyone having drones out. Creates a target-rich environment, and reduces the damage taken.

[Morty]

Engineer remains one of my favorites. I did a run that was Engineer, plus Tali, plus Legion. Everyone having drones out. Creates a target-rich environment, and reduces the damage taken.

I played a Vanguard last time, so an Engineer does sound more tempting.

[Rodin]

My second playthrough was as a female Engineer after I saw a poll that showed that to be the lowest class/gender combination by a significant margin. I decided to do my bit to bring the numbers up.

[Morty]

My second playthrough was as a female Engineer after I saw a poll that showed that to be the lowest class/gender combination by a significant margin. I decided to do my bit to bring the numbers up.

Huh, that's weird. Whatever the reason for that, I might as well run with a female Engineer too. I kind of had a plan to romance Jacob or Thane in ME2, then romance Samantha in ME3 once the ME2 LI cheats on Shep or dies. But I don't know if you can hold off starting the romance until after it happens.

[Psyren]

My Paragon FemShep was an engineer - Spacer/War Hero, my headcanon was that she stopped the Blitz by basically overclocking all of the colony's static defenses to a ridiculous degree. Shacked up with Garrus.

My others if anyone's interested:

Renegade Femshep Infiltrator, Earthborn/Ruthless, hardened and banged Liara.
Paragon Maleshep Adept, Colonist/Sole Survivor - my main, got with Kaidan.
Renegade Maleshep Vanguard, Earthborn/Ruthless - Cheated on Ashley with Miranda, then stayed with Miranda.

[Corvus]

ME1 remains to this day one of my all time favourite games - top 5 at least, possibly pushing top 3. I'll admit that it has a few problems with regard to combat compared to later games but the theme, the story, the overall feeling of it, to me, trumps that and the later games by a long way.

ME2 was fun, but had a lot fo stuff that made little sense. Cerberus changing from some former minor black ops group that you ruthlessly crushed to becoming this massive organisation that rivalled the entire human alliance? And the ammo change? That made no sense either. It was just shoe-honed in to appeal to the bro-shooter crowd. In ME1, if you lacked fire discipline you had to wait a couple of seconds before you could fire again. In ME2/3, if you lacked fire discipline you ended up with a glorified club - not to mention the logistics of having to supply ammo to all your troops. Combat was better and the characters were fun, but the story and plot made no sense.

As for ME3 - well, I really hated the ending. So much so that, despite my adoration for ME1, I couldn't go back to the SP game again. Still haven't. I regularly listen to the soundtrack because it was so good, and I played the MP game a ridiculous amount. It was the bright spot of ME3 by far.

The big problem of ME3, besides the Star Child (retch) and Kai Lung was they flat out lied to us in the lead up. They promised us that our choices made through the trilogy would matter (they didn't) and it wouldn't just be a matter of choosing one of three coloured endings - which in the end they went with anyway.

Another big problem is that there were so many contradictions between what was shown and what was said in the lore notes you find through the game

We were told that the Protheans fought on for centuries, despite being decapitated right from the start with the Citadel taken as the very first thing and the gates shut down. It meant their forces were scattered an unable to group and yet it took a long time for the Reapers to slowly destroy them. The Reapers needed that surprise decapitation strike for their plans to work.

And they didn't get that with the current cycle. Yet, somehow, in a couple of weeks, they managed to over run everyone anyway. If that was the case, why did they need the Citadel first anyway?

There were actually more Reapers destroyed that have been mentioned - the Turians were holding the Reaper fleet at bay and inflicting losses on them. It was only when a second Reaper fleet jumped in and began to attack their home world that they were forced to withdraw. And then, when the Reapers were on the ground, they destroyed more of them, by sending volunteer suicide bombers carrying nuclear charges into the Reapers and blowing them up internally.

The other thing was the ratio of Reaper dreadnoughts to destroyers - it is stated that 90% of the Reaper fleet were the smaller destroyers, and that the big dreadnoughts were made from the best races, and even then not every cycle had an ideal candidate. So loosing reaper dreadnoughts in battle would be a net loss for that cycle for them.

It is also said that the smaller reaper destroyers could be taken out by a cruiser or even fighters.

And it is also said that the main defences of the Reapers dreadnoughts are their shields, which could withstand the firepower of four dreadnoughts - conventionally armed dreadnoughts.

Back to the first battle of the citadel - Sovereign came in in a surprise attack with an entire Geth fleet. He was not alone. He actually took little part in the fighting. Most of that was done by the Geth. He went straight for the Citadel to take back control of it. And once his shields were disabled, it didn't take much for conventional weaponry to destroy him.

Once destroyed, it didn't take long for his weapons to be reverse engineered into thanix weapons, which were specifically stated to be able to bypass shields. And what was the Reapers main defences strength? Shields.

Not saying it wouldn't be costly, but they had, right there in their own lore, all the elements for a defeat of the Reapers. It is just like they failed to communicate between the lore writers and the plot writers.

And don't forget that the Reapers were said to have brought back their entire fleet to the final showdown at Earth.

[factotum]

And the ammo change? That made no sense either. It was just shoe-honed in to appeal to the bro-shooter crowd. In ME1, if you lacked fire discipline you had to wait a couple of seconds before you could fire again. In ME2/3, if you lacked fire discipline you ended up with a glorified club - not to mention the logistics of having to supply ammo to all your troops. Combat was better and the characters were fun, but the story and plot made no sense.

What would have made sense is if the ammo change offered an advantage (e.g. the gun is more powerful) but the weapon could fall back to the old system in the event you ran out of "bullets". I did hear that they originally intended it to work that way, but feared it would confuse people.

[Psyren]

I actually think that was one thing Andromeda did right - letting us choose between heat sinks (cooldown guns) and thermal clips (ammo) ourselves. The former favors a more methodical style like sniping, but it feels beyond clunky in a run-and-gun style, and part of the beauty of Mass Effect is that it encourages both.


The Reapers needed that surprise decapitation strike for their plans to work.

This was never said, anywhere :smallconfused: Vigil merely assumed they'd be trapped in dark space forever without the Citadel Relay. But logically that makes zero sense - they're immortal so all they have to do is point themselves at the Milky Way and thrust, it requires the hyperintelligent AI monsters to have no contingency plan for a single point of failure, and if they lacked the stored energy to even push themselves to a single star on the galactic rim, then it strains disbelief that they would have the stored energy to wage even a surprise attack at the heart of a galactic empire.



And they didn't get that with the current cycle. Yet, somehow, in a couple of weeks, they managed to over run everyone anyway. If that was the case, why did they need the Citadel first anyway?

Because it's more efficient and they're machines. "Need" was never mentioned anywhere.

[Morty]

The whole heat sink thing always did feel like a tempest in a teacup to me. Yeah, it doesn't make a lick of sense from an in-universe perspective, but from a gameplay perspective you just hit reload now and then.

It was clearly introduced because some suits wanted ME2 to resemble a traditional shooter more, but I just can't manage to feel particularly strongly about it. Certainly not enough to bother with it in Andromeda - besides, I think Andromeda should've just gone with the Overwatch route of having reloads but not picking up ammo.

I'm mostly settled on playing a FemShep engineer, but I don't know if I can hold off on romancing Sam Traynor until the mission where you meet Jacob in ME3.

[Psyren]

It was clearly introduced because some suits wanted ME2 to resemble a traditional shooter more, but I just can't manage to feel particularly strongly about it. Certainly not enough to bother with it in Andromeda - besides, I think Andromeda should've just gone with the Overwatch route of having reloads but not picking up ammo.

It was game designers who made the choice, not "suits," because reloading is superior from a gameplay standpoint. However unique recharging guns might feel for the setting and lore, reloadable guns still enable faster and more challenging combat (https://youtu.be/nsBwHAw_5fA). Needing to occasionally grab ammo from fallen enemies is also good game design, because they drop the ammo where they were standing - forcing us to leave cover to get it, and therefore putting our short-term goal (survival) at odds with our medium-term goal (winning the firefight). It also forces us to get better at aiming so we ration our shots, because the optimal time to pick up heatsinks is after all the enemies are dead.

And besides, here's the thing - thanks to its powers and classes, Mass Effect combat (in 2 and 3, anyway) was still unique, even if they were using reloading and clips and chest-high-walls like other shooters do. Certainly it was far more lively and varied than anything Gears of War was bringing to the table. In Mass Effect 3 especially, they just went totally buggernuts with amazing ideas in the multiplayer, many of which we inexplicably lost between 3 and Andromeda. It baffles me how they could see something as fun and cool as the ME3MP N7 classes and just not let us do ANY of that in MEA, especially when we were the child of an N7 and thus had a perfect excuse to introduce those abilities here.



I'm mostly settled on playing a FemShep engineer, but I don't know if I can hold off on romancing Sam Traynor until the mission where you meet Jacob in ME3.

Don't you get to bang Traynor fairly early on? I might be misremembering though. My only femshep who swung that way stayed faithful to Liara. (Well, I should say I reloaded a save to stay faithful, since she had my quarters bugged apparently :smallbiggrin:)

[LibraryOgre]

The in-universe reason was also tied to submachine guns... rapid firing dealt better with shields, we are told, and so submachine guns. But, then you have a problem of getting a big enough heat sink into a small gun, so you get thermal clips.

When I wrote up Savage Worlds rules for it, I decided the civilian market still preferred heat sinks, since they were less likely to get into sustained firefights. The military, though, like thermal clips... both for speed, and because it let them control certain weapons more easily, but that you say a lot of heat sinks in sidearms... my assault rifle may run out of ammo, but I can always fall back on my pistol.

[Morty]

It was game designers who made the choice, not "suits," because reloading is superior from a gameplay standpoint. However unique recharging guns might feel for the setting and lore, reloadable guns still enable faster and more challenging combat (https://youtu.be/nsBwHAw_5fA). Needing to occasionally grab ammo from fallen enemies is also good game design, because they drop the ammo where they were standing - forcing us to leave cover to get it, and therefore putting our short-term goal (survival) at odds with our medium-term goal (winning the firefight). It also forces us to get better at aiming so we ration our shots, because the optimal time to pick up heatsinks is after all the enemies are dead.

I stand corrected on who made the choice and why, though I still would've been fine either way.


And besides, here's the thing - thanks to its powers and classes, Mass Effect combat (in 2 and 3, anyway) was still unique, even if they were using reloading and clips and chest-high-walls like other shooters do. Certainly it was far more lively and varied than anything Gears of War was bringing to the table. In Mass Effect 3 especially, they just went totally buggernuts with amazing ideas in the multiplayer, many of which we inexplicably lost between 3 and Andromeda. It baffles me how they could see something as fun and cool as the ME3MP N7 classes and just not let us do ANY of that in MEA, especially when we were the child of an N7 and thus had a perfect excuse to introduce those abilities here.

Agreed. ME3 multiplayer felt like it was pushing the boundaries of what the mechanics allowed and I was looking forward to what they might do with Andromeda. Turns out... not a lot. It might just be another casualty of the rushed development cycle, I guess.


Don't you get to bang Traynor fairly early on? I might be misremembering though. My only femshep who swung that way stayed faithful to Liara. (Well, I should say I reloaded a save to stay faithful, since she had my quarters bugged apparently :smallbiggrin:)

I'm pretty sure you do, yes, hence my doubts. I romanced Liara with my first FemShep too, but in retrospect her ME3 romance feels... unsatisfying. Like Liara's not into it anymore but is trying to spare Shep's feelings.

Also, I must say that planning to kill off my squadmates in the suicide missions feels really macabre when I stop to think about it.

[LibraryOgre]

Also, I must say that planning to kill off my squadmates in the suicide missions feels really macabre when I stop to think about it.

According to statistics that EA has put out, most runs were Paragon.

[Serenity]

This was never said, anywhere :smallconfused: Vigil merely assumed they'd be trapped in dark space forever without the Citadel Relay. But logically that makes zero sense - they're immortal so all they have to do is point themselves at the Milky Way and thrust, it requires the hyperintelligent AI monsters to have no contingency plan for a single point of failure, and if they lacked the stored energy to even push themselves to a single star on the galactic rim, then it strains disbelief that they would have the stored energy to wage even a surprise attack at the heart of a galactic empire.

And yet, they did not enact their contingency of 'just head there directly' before first trying several complicated attempts to get Plan A working again. If conquering the Citadel first is not materially significant to them beyond simple convenience, there's no reason for the first two games to have happened.

[Kish]

According to statistics that EA has put out, most runs were Paragon.
I'd be amazed if they weren't. Whatever terminology people use for playing good rather than evil, the majority of players always go for it.

Now I wonder how many people side with the Vendrien Guard in Tyranny. It's unique in being set up so that the good path is the afterthought and the evil paths the default, at least theoretically, and heavily advertised as such, yet I would be very surprised if siding with the Vendrien Guard isn't at least a plurality.

[Morty]

This hypothetical run is also going to be a paragon one (because I played renegade last time) and it's not like Shepard's going to purposefully get people killed. I'm just looking to set it up for a change of pace.

[Corvus]

This was never said, anywhere :smallconfused: Vigil merely assumed they'd be trapped in dark space forever without the Citadel Relay. But logically that makes zero sense - they're immortal so all they have to do is point themselves at the Milky Way and thrust, it requires the hyperintelligent AI monsters to have no contingency plan for a single point of failure, and if they lacked the stored energy to even push themselves to a single star on the galactic rim, then it strains disbelief that they would have the stored energy to wage even a surprise attack at the heart of a galactic empire.



Because it's more efficient and they're machines. "Need" was never mentioned anywhere.

Except that runs directly contrary to what happens in the game and we are told. The Reapers created the Citadel so that every Cycle would find it and set it up as their capital, with all their leaders and information, unaware that it was a giant mass relay connected out to Dark Space. Then the Reapers would come through it, kill all the leadership, collect all the intel on where everyone was and then shut down the entire relay network from the Citadel. And once that was done they would slowly destroy the organics.

The Protheans disabled this and in response Sovereign spent centuries looking for a way to repair the Citadel and when he was defeated there were years more while the reapers went with the Collectors plot.

Yet in ME3 it turns out all of this was unnecessary - the Citadel trap, the events of ME1 and ME2. They could just have come in at any stage and over run everyone in each Cycle in a matter of weeks.

[warty goblin]

Except that runs directly contrary to what happens in the game and we are told. The Reapers created the Citadel so that every Cycle would find it and set it up as their capital, with all their leaders and information, unaware that it was a giant mass relay connected out to Dark Space. Then the Reapers would come through it, kill all the leadership, collect all the intel on where everyone was and then shut down the entire relay network from the Citadel. And once that was done they would slowly destroy the organics.

The Protheans disabled this and in response Sovereign spent centuries looking for a way to repair the Citadel and when he was defeated there were years more while the reapers went with the Collectors plot.

Yet in ME3 it turns out all of this was unnecessary - the Citadel trap, the events of ME1 and ME2. They could just have come in at any stage and over run everyone in each Cycle in a matter of weeks.

Or potentially different cycles present differing levels of challenge, and this one is just unusually easy.

[tonberrian]

Except that runs directly contrary to what happens in the game and we are told. The Reapers created the Citadel so that every Cycle would find it and set it up as their capital, with all their leaders and information, unaware that it was a giant mass relay connected out to Dark Space. Then the Reapers would come through it, kill all the leadership, collect all the intel on where everyone was and then shut down the entire relay network from the Citadel. And once that was done they would slowly destroy the organics.

The Protheans disabled this and in response Sovereign spent centuries looking for a way to repair the Citadel and when he was defeated there were years more while the reapers went with the Collectors plot.

Yet in ME3 it turns out all of this was unnecessary - the Citadel trap, the events of ME1 and ME2. They could just have come in at any stage and over run everyone in each Cycle in a matter of weeks.

The Reapers can overcome the lack of a Citadel alpha strike... but it costs them casualties, which are irreplaceable in the long run. To the point that the next Cycle is the last one even if you Refuse the Starchild. I mean, Liara's time capsules help a lot too, but in the long run the Reapers cannot afford to lose more than one dreadnought a cycle, and you take out several of those in ME3.

I guess now that I think about it, there's no reason why this cycle couldn't have been the last one. Instead of Liara leaving caches, ME 3 is Shepard going around unlocking Prothean artifacts with the Cipher. You could even have many of the same set-pieces of ME 3. A hidden cache of Prothean weaponry could have been the deciding factor in this Cycle. And then we wouldn't need stupid starchild endings.

[Anteros]

It's really Mass Effect 3's major problem in general. Over and over again, the story they're trying to tell is directly contradicted by the story they actually show us. It's almost as if it's poorly written or something!


I'd be amazed if they weren't. Whatever terminology people use for playing good rather than evil, the majority of players always go for it.

Now I wonder how many people side with the Vendrien Guard in Tyranny. It's unique in being set up so that the good path is the afterthought and the evil paths the default, at least theoretically, and heavily advertised as such, yet I would be very surprised if siding with the Vendrien Guard isn't at least a plurality.

I don't know about statistics, but I certainly did so on my first and only run. I didn't use a guide or anything for it...you just don't be an evil jerk and you'll get there naturally.

[Psyren]

Yet in ME3 it turns out all of this was unnecessary - the Citadel trap, the events of ME1 and ME2. They could just have come in at any stage and over run everyone in each Cycle in a matter of weeks.

Bold is where you're making unfounded assumptions - you have no idea when the rest of the Reapers woke up, how far away they were flying from or how long it took them to get to the MW. All we know for sure is that Sovereign is trying the shortcut in ME1, he fails, then we see the entire armada flying to the Milky Way at the end of the ME2 main story, and that they get to the outer edge at some point during Arrival.

You're right about the Prothean efforts being irrelevant though - given that the Collectors were active throughout our cycle, and they had a direct throughline to Harbinger, he must have known exactly what was going on. They activated shortly before Shepard's death at the beginning of ME2 I believe, so Harbinger must have been the failsafe?

[factotum]

The Reapers can overcome the lack of a Citadel alpha strike... but it costs them casualties, which are irreplaceable in the long run.

How are they irreplaceable? The minions were halfway through building a "human reaper" (God, I think a bit of vomit rose in the back of my throat just thinking about it) in ME2, so clearly it's possible to build new ones of these things. You apparently need a lot of organic material to do it (though Lord knows why given Reapers are explicitly entirely robotic), but that's not going to be an issue when you're in the process of stripping organic life from the galaxy anyway--you'll have *loads* of raw material to work with.

[Corvus]

Or potentially different cycles present differing levels of challenge, and this one is just unusually easy.

Possibly - but unlikely from what we know. This cycle is centuries passed when it was meant to be reaped, meaning it is far stronger than it should have been.

And there is also what we know of the Protheans - they fought for centuries, and yet it is said that them being a monoculture was a weakness, while the current cycle having numerous cultures is actually a strength. It ties in with one of the themes of the series as well, that being united is better than going it alone.

[Morty]

I think the two characters on the chopping block for this potential playthrough are Jack and Mordin. Jack because of what I've mentioned already - the Grissom Academy mission. Mordin because Padok Wicks seems like an interesting character in his own right... and because getting Mordin killed is easy. I got Tali killed on accident once when I took Grunt with me to the final fight. I can do it again, only this time with Mordin.

[Serenity]

Bold is where you're making unfounded assumptions - you have no idea when the rest of the Reapers woke up, how far away they were flying from or how long it took them to get to the MW. All we know for sure is that Sovereign is trying the shortcut in ME1, he fails, then we see the entire armada flying to the Milky Way at the end of the ME2 main story, and that they get to the outer edge at some point during Arrival.

You're right about the Prothean efforts being irrelevant though - given that the Collectors were active throughout our cycle, and they had a direct throughline to Harbinger, he must have known exactly what was going on. They activated shortly before Shepard's death at the beginning of ME2 I believe, so Harbinger must have been the failsafe?

We can at least be certain that they didn't start moving until after Sovereign was destroyed, which means it takes them a scant handful of years at *absolute most* (and frankly, a handful of *months* is more textually supported) to reach the Milky Way and that's the key point--if their typical initial strike on the Citadel is only a convenience, if they can arrive without the benefit of Mass Relays that quickly and without significant cost, there was never any reason for him to waste hundreds of years on what's implied to be several different attempts to conquer the Citadel. The moment the Keepers didn't respond to Sovereign's signal, he should've called Dark Space and thold them to spool up their FTLs, and the genocide could have gotten started only months-to-maybe-three-years late, instead of hundreds.

And look, honestly, you can provide explanations, I'm not saying it's impossible to square. I'm just saying, there absolutely *were* the tools and precedents available to have the Reapers in a weakened state from being denied their usual strategy and having to make a longer journey than usual --and that I believe taking such an approach would have made your actions in the previous games feel more significant (where the alternative that actually happened feels like it invalidates them to greater or lesser degrees), and allowed for a more interesting story than 'get the Deus ex MacGuffin built'. (And I think the entire reason they ever even conceived of the Star Child was because they felt unsatisfied with simply activating the Crucible and beating the Reapers as an ending.)

[Psyren]

How are they irreplaceable? The minions were halfway through building a "human reaper" (God, I think a bit of vomit rose in the back of my throat just thinking about it) in ME2, so clearly it's possible to build new ones of these things. You apparently need a lot of organic material to do it (though Lord knows why given Reapers are explicitly entirely robotic), but that's not going to be an issue when you're in the process of stripping organic life from the galaxy anyway--you'll have *loads* of raw material to work with.

Their programming was to archive the various races in liquid form - "preserve life at any cost," to use Leviathan's phrasing. They weren't building reapers just for the sake of building them, and they wouldn't consider one "complete" until it had archived as much of a given advanced life form (or forms) as they could cram into it. Yes, it's likely they were behaving suboptimally by not simply mass-producing pure-AI versions of themselves with no organic material at all, but behaving suboptimally is the whole point of being a shackled AI - which they ultimately are.


Possibly - but unlikely from what we know. This cycle is centuries passed when it was meant to be reaped, meaning it is far stronger than it should have been.

Agreed - but "far stronger" doesn't mean "conventional victory is now possible." Merely that the normal technique doesn't work. Those extra centuries gave us the time we needed to build the crucible, and the other cycles failed because they all began building it after the trap had already been sprung.


And there is also what we know of the Protheans - they fought for centuries, and yet it is said that them being a monoculture was a weakness, while the current cycle having numerous cultures is actually a strength. It ties in with one of the themes of the series as well, that being united is better than going it alone.

Indeed, and their forebears the Inusannon were also monocultural. Hell, the Leviathans themselves were monocultural, or at least they viewed themselves as the only race that mattered. We might very well be the only cycle in history without a single dominant ruling race, all because the first race to ascend in our cycle (the Asari) evolved to be friendly to everyone.

[Forum Explorer]

We can at least be certain that they didn't start moving until after Sovereign was destroyed, which means it takes them a scant handful of years at *absolute most* (and frankly, a handful of *months* is more textually supported) to reach the Milky Way and that's the key point--if their typical initial strike on the Citadel is only a convenience, if they can arrive without the benefit of Mass Relays that quickly and without significant cost, there was never any reason for him to waste hundreds of years on what's implied to be several different attempts to conquer the Citadel. The moment the Keepers didn't respond to Sovereign's signal, he should've called Dark Space and thold them to spool up their FTLs, and the genocide could have gotten started only months-to-maybe-three-years late, instead of hundreds.


I feel like the bigger part of the Citadel Strike isn't bringing the Reapers in, but shutting down the Mass Effect relays for everyone else. Without the Relays, whoever the Reapers are Harvesting can't even communicate with each other let alone set up a meaningful resistance. The Reapers could bring overwhelming force to a single planet, wipe it out, and move on to the next while their opponents could basically do nothing in return. They couldn't send reinforcements to each other, share technology or plans, or share resources to build their version of the Crucible. Mind you, they couldn't even get to the Citadel to use as the firing mechanism of the Crucible in the first place.

[Psyren]

We can at least be certain that they didn't start moving until after Sovereign was destroyed, which means it takes them a scant handful of years at *absolute most* (and frankly, a handful of *months* is more textually supported) to reach the Milky Way and that's the key point--if their typical initial strike on the Citadel is only a convenience, if they can arrive without the benefit of Mass Relays that quickly and without significant cost, there was never any reason for him to waste hundreds of years on what's implied to be several different attempts to conquer the Citadel.

I understand your assumption here - i.e. that wherever they were hiding, they would have had to be stationary; after all, the original plan was for them to jump en masse from the Hiding Place to the Citadel Relay, so that place couldn't be too far outside the galactic rim if they could use conventional FTL to travel from there to edge of the Milky Way (the Alpha Relay) in time for Arrival. The question of why they didn't do that at any point while Sovereign was awake is a reasonable one. But there are other responses to that question besides yelling "plot hole" and throwing our toys out of the pram - for example, Vigil says they hibernate, so it could be that Sovereign's signal from the Citadel is the only thing that would have woken them before the events of ME2. Leviathan says their goal is to preserve life (albeit as slurry) and that they view the conflict as a harvest rather than a war - words backed up by Starchild - so it's likely that however easy conventional victory might be for them, they want to avoid open conflict wherever possible and consider it an absolute last resort. And not only does open warfare run counter to their mandate to preserve advanced organic life wherever possible, it's also messy - and thus leaves more clues behind for future organic cycles to learn of their existence before it's too late, much like we did from the Protheans. Thus even if they were fully awake, they would still be happy giving Sovereign extra time to execute the strategy they know results in minimal attrtition of "crops."

TL;DR - nothing in what you are saying suggests that conventional victory over the Reapers is or needs to be possible. Their desire to avoid open warfare and use the Citadel trap instead is not born of fear of losing the fight, but rather is rooted in other concerns, like the loss of species before they can be archived and the evidence such fighting would leave behind. Both of these run counter to the Reapers' programming.

[factotum]

I'm just saying, there absolutely *were* the tools and precedents available to have the Reapers in a weakened state from being denied their usual strategy and having to make a longer journey than usual --and that I believe taking such an approach would have made your actions in the previous games feel more significant

Well, except that it isn't your actions that primarily put the block on the Reapers, it was Protheans who died thousands of years before you were born. You do defeat Sovereign and prevent him retaking control of the Citadel, I suppose.

Anyway, this problem simply wouldn't exist if the Reapers hadn't been shown waking up at the end of ME2, which is just another way the storyline of that game screwed the series as a whole over.

[Serenity]

Agreed - but "far stronger" doesn't mean "conventional victory is now possible." Merely that the normal technique doesn't work. Those extra centuries gave us the time we needed to build the crucible, and the other cycles failed because they all began building it after the trap had already been sprung.

Far stronger doesn't have to mean conventional victory is possible, no. But it *could*. There's a lot unique going on about our cycle. We've had more time to progress past our expected expiration date. As you mentioned, we're possibly the first cycle to be truly multicultural instead of imperial. The Reapers have been denied the ability to decapitate galactic government and take control of travel and communication at the outset, and they've had to travel the long way round, which has to be more resource-intensive. Despite the Council's intransigence in ME2, some amount of study and reverse-engineering has taken place on Sovereign's corpse--that's what the Thanix Cannon is, for example. Under no circumstances will it not be an uphill battle, but I don't believe a Deus ex MacGuffin--and the consequent need to attach a bitter 'catch' to it--was the only option the writers had, even given they squandered a lot of set-up opportunities in ME2.

[Psyren]

Look, it's now 2020 - I've been hearing the tired "thanix cannons, thanix cannons, thanix cannons" mantra for nearly a decade at this point :smallsigh: Never mind the fact that we know Reapers can evolve (per both Leviathan and Legion), and they know we reverse-engineered its design from Sovereign since, if nothing else, we used one on the Collectors in ME2 - so there's no reason to believe that it still would or should be any kind of silver bullet in ME3. Never mind also that the Thanix merely raises a frigate's firepower to that of a cruiser per the codex, and that Reapers still eat cruisers for lunch.

The fact of the matter is that the writers didn't want the Reapers to be beaten conventionally. No one is saying you have to like that decision, but ultimately that is what they were going for. To paraphrase the Giant (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?294943-Word-of-Recall&p=15723137&viewfull=1#post15723137): if you accept that premise but are upset about the execution, then fine, we're just haggling over price at that point and we can talk about how they could have done the Crucible plot better. But if you don't accept that premise and demand nothing less than conventional victory, then there's nothing to discuss; there are likely a few mods out there that will transform the game into what you want.

[Draconi Redfir]

Psyren, forgive me but your last post got me thinking about an old video from five years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az98e4mFL_o). Don't know how well it holds up nowadays, some of that information may be obsolete. Never really believed the whole "only one reaper is made per cycle" thing personally. One reaper per culture / mass of people maybe but *shrug*

Probably wouldn't work in the end because of plot, but hey, still a neat watch:smalltongue:

[Anteros]

Look, it's now 2020 - I've been hearing the tired "thanix cannons, thanix cannons, thanix cannons" mantra for nearly a decade at this point :smallsigh: Never mind the fact that we know Reapers can evolve (per both Leviathan and Legion), and they know we reverse-engineered its design from Sovereign since, if nothing else, we used one on the Collectors in ME2 - so there's no reason to believe that it still would or should be any kind of silver bullet in ME3. Never mind also that the Thanix merely raises a frigate's firepower to that of a cruiser per the codex, and that Reapers still eat cruisers for lunch.

The fact of the matter is that the writers didn't want the Reapers to be beaten conventionally. No one is saying you have to like that decision, but ultimately that is what they were going for. To paraphrase the Giant (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?294943-Word-of-Recall&p=15723137&viewfull=1#post15723137): if you accept that premise but are upset about the execution, then fine, we're just haggling over price at that point and we can talk about how they could have done the Crucible plot better. But if you don't accept that premise and demand nothing less than conventional victory, then there's nothing to discuss; there are likely a few mods out there that will transform the game into what you want.

Well, people obviously feel like there is something to discuss here or they wouldn't keep talking about it. You're welcome to not participate in those conversations if you don't think they're productive, but telling other people to shut up isn't your place.

Also, it's been 10 years and you're still not grasping that people fully understand what the writers were going for. The complaint is that what they're going for is often directly contradicted by what they show us.

They spend 3 games showing us that we can forge peace between synthetics and humans and then tell us in the last 3 minutes that it's impossible.

They spend 3 games showing us that everyone who tries to use the Reapers gets indoctrinated, and then offer control as a viable solution in the last 3 minutes.

They tell us that conventional victory over the Reapers is impossible, and then spend the entire 3 games showing us victory after victory over them.

They spend 3 games establishing a setting where our decisions matter and mold the fate of the universe...and then throw all that out in the last 3 minutes in favor of having us pick our favorite color. Are you seeing a pattern here?

[Kish]

It feels weird to agree with Anteros and not with Psyren at the same time, but, yeah. If you've been hearing the same complaints for a decade, that means you've been interacting with people who don't share your apparent equation of "the authors did it" with "it wasn't bad" for a decade. Some may think that "you need a superweapon" could have worked, just not the Crucible, and others may think that "you need a superweapon" is insupportable from a continuation of ME1, but in either case, the question you should be asking is not "why aren't they shutting up yet," but "why do I still expect and feel entitled to them shutting up?"

[GloatingSwine]

The fact of the matter is that the writers didn't want the Reapers to be beaten conventionally. No one is saying you have to like that decision, but ultimately that is what they were going for. To paraphrase the Giant (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?294943-Word-of-Recall&p=15723137&viewfull=1#post15723137): if you accept that premise but are upset about the execution, then fine, we're just haggling over price at that point and we can talk about how they could have done the Crucible plot better. But if you don't accept that premise and demand nothing less than conventional victory, then there's nothing to discuss; there are likely a few mods out there that will transform the game into what you want.

Though what people are actually saying is that they don't think what was in ME3 was a valid premise to extrapolate from ME1.

[factotum]

Though what people are actually saying is that they don't think what was in ME3 was a valid premise to extrapolate from ME1.

It could have been, if the groundwork for it had been laid in ME2. The entire concept of the Crucible as being the ultimate way to defeat the Reapers, for instance, we should have been searching for that thing throughout ME2 rather than fighting B-list villains. Done that way, we could also have had some information planted as to what the Crucible did. As it is, it gets introduced as a throwaway "Oh, we've found this thing that might help, we totally ought to build it!" in ME3 and we then spend the rest of that game trying to do so, even though we don't know what the thing is, what it does, or how it will help in the long run. This is why I keep saying the series was essentially doomed as soon as ME2 spent its entire runtime treading water and not advancing the main plot at all--there was no way ME3 could have saved it at that point.

[Anteros]

It could have been, if the groundwork for it had been laid in ME2. The entire concept of the Crucible as being the ultimate way to defeat the Reapers, for instance, we should have been searching for that thing throughout ME2 rather than fighting B-list villains. Done that way, we could also have had some information planted as to what the Crucible did. As it is, it gets introduced as a throwaway "Oh, we've found this thing that might help, we totally ought to build it!" in ME3 and we then spend the rest of that game trying to do so, even though we don't know what the thing is, what it does, or how it will help in the long run. This is why I keep saying the series was essentially doomed as soon as ME2 spent its entire runtime treading water and not advancing the main plot at all--there was no way ME3 could have saved it at that point.

I just don't agree that's true. I think you have a fair point that ME2 didn't do enough to set up an end to the trilogy, but there are plenty of ways to tell a more satisfying conclusion to the series from where it left off than what we actually got. There's been quite a few suggestions in this very thread so far on how things could have been improved. I was going to list a few, but we're fast drifting into fan-fiction territory with that stuff. Suffice to say it could have easily been better.

[Serenity]

Look, it's now 2020 - I've been hearing the tired "thanix cannons, thanix cannons, thanix cannons" mantra for nearly a decade at this point :smallsigh: Never mind the fact that we know Reapers can evolve (per both Leviathan and Legion), and they know we reverse-engineered its design from Sovereign since, if nothing else, we used one on the Collectors in ME2 - so there's no reason to believe that it still would or should be any kind of silver bullet in ME3. Never mind also that the Thanix merely raises a frigate's firepower to that of a cruiser per the codex, and that Reapers still eat cruisers for lunch.

The fact of the matter is that the writers didn't want the Reapers to be beaten conventionally. No one is saying you have to like that decision, but ultimately that is what they were going for. To paraphrase the Giant (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?294943-Word-of-Recall&p=15723137&viewfull=1#post15723137): if you accept that premise but are upset about the execution, then fine, we're just haggling over price at that point and we can talk about how they could have done the Crucible plot better. But if you don't accept that premise and demand nothing less than conventional victory, then there's nothing to discuss; there are likely a few mods out there that will transform the game into what you want.

It is true that we are talking past each other a bit and having somewhat different discussions, though I don't necessarily think that means there's 'nothing to discuss'--though I might be reading something into that phrase you didn't intend.

To be clear, my post was not intended to be a list of Things That Definitively Prove You Could Just Shoot the Reapers. It was a list of things that the writers *could have* built on to build a path to victory that didn't rely on the Crucible.

Here's the thing: I don't hate the Crucible. It's pretty nonsensical as presented, and it's about as cliche as you could get, but if all the game was exactly the same as it is, but after the Illusive Man's death, it simply ended with you activating the Crucible and blowing up all the Reapers, I would have been happy. Preferably, there would be an epilogue in the vein of the Fallout: New Vegas ending slides or something like that, and my personal preference would be for Shepard to survive either as the default or if you did well enough. But yeah, Shepard collapses, cut to black as you hear Hackett say 'You did it, Shepard! We're winning! ...Shepard?' It's serviceable, as far as I'm concerned. I'd still probably be *bugged* by things like Reaper arrival time, the nonsensical backstory of the Crucible and how it conveniently appeared out of nowhere when it probably should have been the focus of ME2's plot, and lots of other little things I've mentioned. But the overall gameplay and characterization is strong, the Tuchanka and Rannoch quests brilliant, so I could overlook niggling details like that and a weak ending, just like I overlook how ME2's main plot really isn't much of anything because the companion characters and their side quests are so wonderful.

But I get the feeling the writers didn't really like the Crucible. I think they were acutely aware that it was a bit of a cliche and a lot of a Deus ex Machina, but didn't really have time to develop a different unconventional victory. So they decided that a twist, a catch, a last big choice was necessary. That's what got us the Star Kid--and *that*, I think, is the premise that I'm rejecting out of hand. Everything about the Star Kid and that final choice I find just fundamentally *wrong*, and inherently undercut any sense of accomplishment and satisfaction I could take out of the game.

So when I list ways in which it seems like the war could have been 'winnable', it's not to debate the in-universe facts--though it does perhaps include some criticism that there are elements of dissonance in the game's presentation. It's to talk about possible alternate paths, because I believe that a Mass Effect which presented a more 'conventional' war with the Reapers, or a less blatantly Deus ex Machina path to unconventional victory would not have been one that felt the need to throw in such a blatant *Diabolus* ex Machina. And I focus more on the 'conventional' possibility, because I think to set up a better unconventional victory, you'd need to redo ME2 completely to be about figuring out the Crucible or its equivalent in the first place.

Similarly, when I complain that the Star Kid's entire rationale seems contradicted by *literally everything about the Geth*, I understand from an in-universe perspective he might just see that as a statistical blip; or when I complain that there's no reasoning with him, I get that they after-the-fact established him to not really be an AI and sometimes in life that's just how it be--but those really don't answer the core of my complaint, and indeed, the second explanation just compounds how galling it all feels to me.

[Psyren]

Well, people obviously feel like there is something to discuss here or they wouldn't keep talking about it. You're welcome to not participate in those conversations if you don't think they're productive, but telling other people to shut up isn't your place.

I said no such thing :smallannoyed:



Also, it's been 10 years and you're still not grasping that people fully understand what the writers were going for. The complaint is that what they're going for is often directly contradicted by what they show us.

They spend 3 games showing us that we can forge peace between synthetics and humans and then tell us in the last 3 minutes that it's impossible.

They spend 3 games showing us that everyone who tries to use the Reapers gets indoctrinated, and then offer control as a viable solution in the last 3 minutes.

They tell us that conventional victory over the Reapers is impossible, and then spend the entire 3 games showing us victory after victory over them.

They spend 3 games establishing a setting where our decisions matter and mold the fate of the universe...and then throw all that out in the last 3 minutes in favor of having us pick our favorite color. Are you seeing a pattern here?

Oh for...

1) Peace is not impossible, Synthesis shows us that very clearly.
2) Nobody who tried Control before had a Crucible.
3) Winning battles is not winning a war.
4) Your decisions lock out certain colors, so they do matter.

The pattern pre-Crucible is irrelevant - that's the whole point of the Crucible.



To be clear, my post was not intended to be a list of Things That Definitively Prove You Could Just Shoot the Reapers. It was a list of things that the writers *could have* built on to build a path to victory that didn't rely on the Crucible.

But that's exactly my point - -they clearly didn't want to do that. "We can't win this conventionally" is repeated multiple times by characters acting as mouthpieces for the authors - Hackett, Anderson, Liara, EDI, Victus, even Shepard themselves - so pointing out ways they could have done the thing they very clearly didn't want to do is meaningless in my opinion.


But I get the feeling the writers didn't really like the Crucible. I think they were acutely aware that it was a bit of a cliche and a lot of a Deus ex Machina, but didn't really have time to develop a different unconventional victory. So they decided that a twist, a catch, a last big choice was necessary. That's what got us the Star Kid--and *that*, I think, is the premise that I'm rejecting out of hand. Everything about the Star Kid and that final choice I find just fundamentally *wrong*, and inherently undercut any sense of accomplishment and satisfaction I could take out of the game.

Bingo! That is what we should be talking about. Having accepted the notion that neither a straight conventional victory nor a "press-button, blow-up-only-the-Reapers" ending would have worked for them, I'm happy to discuss/theorize what would have.

For me personally, the endings could have been improved by dumping the kid entirely. I'd have rather had the Crucible functions explained by someone else - the Virmire Casualty for example, or Thane, or Anderson. Still the Intelligence of course, but speaking through someone we have an actual emotional attachment to. I'd also have preferred it if Shepard could survive any of them depending on our readiness being high enough.


Similarly, when I complain that the Star Kid's entire rationale seems contradicted by *literally everything about the Geth*, I understand from an in-universe perspective he might just see that as a statistical blip; or when I complain that there's no reasoning with him, I get that they after-the-fact established him to not really be an AI and sometimes in life that's just how it be--but those really don't answer the core of my complaint, and indeed, the second explanation just compounds how galling it all feels to me.

I don't think the Geth contradict anything. Yes, we got them to cooperate with the Quarians in the face of a greater threat. But the separation that led to their schism is still there, and folks like Daro'Xen who see them only as tools still exist too. At best, we kicked the can down the road - but without a true removal of that separation à la Synthesis, conflict returning is inevitable, which is why the Intelligence viewed it as not a feasible solution.

[Serenity]

I said no such thing, and cramming words into my mouth isn't your place. :smallannoyed:



Oh for...

1) Peace is not impossible, Synthesis shows us that very clearly.
2) Nobody who tried Control before had a Crucible.
3) Winning battles is not winning a war.
4) Your decisions lock out certain colors, so they do matter.

The pattern pre-Crucible is irrelevant - that's the whole point of the Crucible.

I wouldn't say reading 'if you don't accept my fundamental premise, there's nothing to discuss' as 'shut up!' is putting words in your mouth. Misinterpretation, maybe, but it wouldn't have to be willfully so.

Synthesis isn't peace between synthetics and organics. Synthesis eliminates both as a meaningful category of existence--in the service of solving a problem that the games have never established as *being* a problem, and definitely isn't the problem you're here to solve.

If the game spent any time actually establishing what the Crucible does and how it works, *maybe* that would mean something, but as it stands, besides the Reapers themselves, the central antagonists of the series have been indoctrinated maniacs whose belief that they can work with or control the Reapers just got them used as Reaper pawns. You can't just say 'but this time is totally different, yo!' and expect that to magic away the ludonarrative disonnance.

[Serenity]

The Geth contradict everything about the Star Kid's reasoning because in the face of every single provocation, they never once acted in anything more than self-defense--excepting the Geth Heretics, who only exist *because* of the Reapers. They had every opportunity and reason they could be given to wage an active war of extermination against the Quarians and they didn't. Even in the worst case scenario that the Quarians are wiped out, it's only because they pressed a suicidal charge with their entire population--a circumstance that could only reasonably occur with the Quarian fleet--and afterwards the Geth show no signs of generalizing to the rest of organic life, and are happy to join the fight against the Reapers. Not to mention, it's pretty explicit that they meticulously maintain all the records of the pre-Diaspora Quarians--which apparently is how the Reapers have convinced themselves that what they're doing isn't genocide.

[Psyren]

If the game spent any time actually establishing what the Crucible does and how it works, *maybe* that would mean something, but as it stands, besides the Reapers themselves, the central antagonists of the series have been indoctrinated maniacs whose belief that they can work with or control the Reapers just got them used as Reaper pawns. You can't just say 'but this time is totally different, yo!' and expect that to magic away the ludonarrative disonnance.

But it IS different. The combined army was losing - you can see that clearly just by standing still long enough or choosing Refuse. If all the Catalyst wanted to do was kill or indoctrinate you, it could have done that while you were bleeding out on the floor instead of bringing you up to the terminus.


The Geth contradict everything about the Star Kid's reasoning because in the face of every single provocation, they never once acted in anything more than self-defense--excepting the Geth Heretics, who only exist *because* of the Reapers.

The Geth don't contradict Starkid, they prove him right. There will always be organics who want an edge and have the resources to try, seeking to control synthetics - we saw TIM do it to the Geth in Project Overlord, the Salarian who made a gambling AI that almost destroyed the Citadel, Tali's father, Daro'Xen etc. Until we can remove that separation between us, that danger will always exist. And even if there is only a 0.001% chance that the synthetics will eventually overthrow and obliterate organic life, the Catalyst's reasoning is that over a long enough timescale that chance will approach 100% faster than we can find an alternative.

The Crucible provides that alternative - Synthesis, which breaks down the barrier between organic and synthetic and thus renders the problem moot. I agree with you that they rushed the setup, but the logic itself isn't the problem, merely the presentation.

[Serenity]

But it IS different. The combined army was losing - you can see that clearly just by standing still long enough or choosing Refuse. If all the Catalyst wanted to do was kill or indoctrinate you, it could have done that while you were bleeding out on the floor instead of bringing you up to the terminus.



The Geth don't contradict Starkid, they prove him right. There will always be organics who want an edge and have the resources to try, seeking to control synthetics - we saw TIM do it to the Geth in Project Overlord, the Salarian who made a gambling AI that almost destroyed the Citadel, Tali's father, Daro'Xen etc. Until we can remove that separation between us, that danger will always exist. And even if there is only a 0.001% chance that the synthetics will eventually overthrow and obliterate organic life, the Catalyst's reasoning is that over a long enough timescale that chance will approach 100% faster than we can find an alternative.

The Crucible provides that alternative - Synthesis, which breaks down the barrier between organic and synthetic and thus renders the problem moot. I agree with you that they rushed the setup, but the logic itself isn't the problem, merely the presentation.

Again, I'm *not talking* about the explanation in-universe of why the Crucible makes the difference. I'm talking about why that in-universe explanation is *bad writing* that is unsatisfying from a narrative perspective.

The gambling AI did not 'almost destroy the Citadel'. It tried to leave the Citadel because it knew the law required killing it if it was found out, and when it was caught, it engaged the only defense mechanism it had and tried to suicide bomb the people who had caught it.

We have all sorts of evidence of *conflicts* between synthetics and organics, certainly. But there is precisely *zero* evidence that these conflicts are particularly different in kind than conflicts between organics. The *only* genocidal AIs in all three games are the Reapers.

[Psyren]

Again, I'm *not talking* about the explanation in-universe of why the Crucible makes the difference. I'm talking about why that in-universe explanation is *bad writing* that is unsatisfying from a narrative perspective.

What would get you to accept it then? That would be the "haggling over price" I mentioned earlier. If nothing at all would, then we're right back at "nothing to discuss." Which is certainly not me trying to silence you - if all you want is to grouse into the wind at how much you dislike the story they told then go nuts - but all I'm saying is you don't need my help for that.



We have all sorts of evidence of *conflicts* between synthetics and organics, certainly. But there is precisely *zero* evidence that these conflicts are particularly different in kind than conflicts between organics.

Of course they're different. The Reapers themselves prove how horrifying an AI that decided to wipe out organic life would be - no conscience, no greed, no defectors, just methodical slaughter. No organic race, however evil, would have that level of singularity or dedication. The only saving grace we have is that their programming restricts them to advanced lifeforms - which allows reaped civilizations (like the Protheans, and us in Refuse) to leave clues behind for the up and coming ones.

The closest we've seen to that are the Rachni and the Kett, both of which ended up having flaws that synthetics don't possess.

[factotum]

The Reapers themselves prove how horrifying an AI that decided to wipe out organic life would be - no conscience, no greed, no defectors, just methodical slaughter. No organic race, however evil, would have that level of singularity or dedication.

OK, so now explain how any of that applies to the Geth, who have never decided to destroy all organic life despite having every provocation to do so? The Reapers are horrifying, but even in-universe I see nothing to suggest that they are an inevitable end point of AI development. Not to mention, of course, that the in-universe explanation for the Reapers' behaviour is that they were explicitly designed to destroy all organic life because otherwise all organic life would get wiped out by their own AIs, which is utterly nonsensical.

[GloatingSwine]

What would get you to accept it then? That would be the "haggling over price" I mentioned earlier.


Factotum has basically already answered that. (Ironically, so have I back in the hoary days of page 4 of the thread).

It would have to be firmly established what the Crucible is, what it is going to do, and why it is going to allow these options to work in advance.

To repeat what it would take to make it "work", I am going to repeat the comparison I made back then with the One Ring:

We first see the Ring in LotR on page 32, we learn what it is on page 48, and the quest to destroy it is undertaken on page 264 of 1241.

That's how early into the story an element like the Crucible would have to be introduced in order to have enough narrative presence and time to make it "work". It would have to have been a direct development of the search for the Prothean cipher in ME1, and ME2 and ME3 should have had the player's primary goal at all times be discovering, creating, protecting, and then using it. All of the questions about what it is going to be able to do and why those options would be available would have to have been answered before the final confrontation.

Not doing basically sidequests until someone else does all that, then getting a loredump from Mayor Macready's even more irritating ghost.


(NB: Let us also remember that before the first patch the Synthesis option was only available if you played the multiplayer, because you could not get the Bar of Sidequests high enough without it no matter what you did)

[Anteros]

(NB: Let us also remember that before the first patch the Synthesis option was only available if you played the multiplayer, because you could not get the Bar of Sidequests high enough without it no matter what you did)

If I'm remembering correctly, you could barely get it...you just had to have a basically perfect run and also all the DLC.

[GloatingSwine]

If I'm remembering correctly, you could barely get it...you just had to have a basically perfect run and also all the DLC.

No, at first release even if you had a "perfect" run and all series DLC up to Javik (the only DLC at the time), you could not get a high enough score on the Sidequest-o-meter without multiplayer to unlock the Synthesis ending, because all your points actually counted for half. If you had a "perfect" run you still needed to do half a dozen or so multiplayer matches to get your multiplier high enough to unlock it.

The first patch a month or so out from release reduced the requirements so that you could.

The multiplayer was better anyway, at least there the only crushing disappointment at the end was a disconnect in wave 10.

[Psyren]

That's how early into the story an element like the Crucible would have to be introduced in order to have enough narrative presence and time to make it "work". It would have to have been a direct development of the search for the Prothean cipher in ME1, and ME2 and ME3 should have had the player's primary goal at all times be discovering, creating, protecting, and then using it. All of the questions about what it is going to be able to do and why those options would be available would have to have been answered before the final confrontation.

Not doing basically sidequests until someone else does all that, then getting a loredump from Mayor Macready's even more irritating ghost.

I too would have preferred if it were included in the Eden Prime beacon, even if only as one still image in the flood.


OK, so now explain how any of that applies to the Geth, who have never decided to destroy all organic life despite having every provocation to do so?

You mean that thing the Heretics wanted to do, as well as the ones in Project Overlord? And all it took was a quantum bit to get them that way. Worse, once split, the Heretics were working (successfully, as it turned out) on a way to convert all the Geth to their cause in an instant. No organic race would be susceptible to such a danger. They're not the same threat.


No, at first release even if you had a "perfect" run and all series DLC up to Javik (the only DLC at the time), you could not get a high enough score on the Sidequest-o-meter without multiplayer to unlock the Synthesis ending, because all your points actually counted for half. If you had a "perfect" run you still needed to do half a dozen or so multiplayer matches to get your multiplier high enough to unlock it.

The first patch a month or so out from release reduced the requirements so that you could.

As I recall you could get Synthesis before that patch; the one you couldn't get was Destroy-Survive, which has higher requirements.

[Serenity]

I don't recall the Project Overlord Geth being established as omnicidal. Destructive, dangerous, yes, but not single-mindedly bent on destroying everything--just lashing out and trying to escape the place where their *organic* controlling intelligence was in pain. (And didn't you say no organic could be single-minded enough to accomplish total genocide of everything?)

And as we've pointed out many times, the Heretic Geth would just be regular, peaceful Geth if the Reapers--the ones who claim that this is an inevitable, naturally-arising problem that it is their whole purpose to prevent--hadn't actively interfered.

And yes, you can keep beating the drum that there's still a *chance*, and that's all Star Kid needs because it's stupid and malfunctioning, or how on the time scale Star Kid is looking at, any contradictions this cycle might hold to its premises are statistical anomalies that barely register as a blip. But these post-hoc justifications don't really address the issue that where the game has actively explored synthetic life, with the Geth, EDI, even the gambling AI, they've basically just been *people*, so the idea that they're inherently and uniquely dangerous just doesn't fit with the themes that have been presented so far.

If you want the Crucible to work, as others have mentioned, it needs to be established from damn early on. You can't make the choices it provides a surprise twist dumped on you when you get there. Maybe you can have some unforeseen comlications arising at that point, resulting from choices you've made. But you also probably need to throw out Synthesis entirely, because it's based on premies that don't fit the story told so far.

There might be other unconventional victories that you could write, too, like hacking the controlling intelligence of the Reapers so that the memories of previously reaped Civilizations within various Reapers can realize what theyve become and destroy themselves or turn on each other. But any option like this would probably also be difficult to develop during the runtime of ME3.

As I've pointed out, there are also ways that you could establish the Reapers as being handicapped and/or improperly prepared for this cycle and write a more-or-less conventional victory, at which point you wouldn't feel any obligation to include a last-minute choice--you can just let all the choices yo've made so far collectively dictate how much is still standing when you win--or if the best you manage to do is ensure that the next cycle will win. I believe this would have been the option which best fit the game that was actually being designed, where the enemy is already present and rampaging from the start, where several climactic moments involve engaging with Reapers *on foot*, and which focused on uniting allies and building up (mostly military) War Assets to determine readiness for a final assault on a key target.

Meanwhile, if you want the Star Kid to work, the scene has to be about *overcoming* him. If you don't buy into his reasoning in the slightest, he's a delusional omnicidal psychopath, or if you can justify his reasoning, he's a malfunctioning program--but either way, *narratively speaking* the way the scene is set up, he gets to dictate the terms of the endgame and 'win.' Quite aside from how completely outside context it is, Synthesis can't feel like the hero found the Third Option to the Sadistic Choice--which is what it's obviously *intended* to be--when the villain is telling you to take it. The proper genre response to 'malfunctioning computer wants to kill all humans' is either 'blow it up' or 'talk it into shutting itself down.' (You know, the way Shepard's approached all enemies over the course of the games.)

Fundamentally, I think the issue with this discussion is that the anti-ME3 crowd is addressing how the ending makes them feel and the *narrative* logic of it, while the pro-ME3 crowd seems to be entirely addressing the *in-universe* logic of it, not really addressing why this is a good *premise* in the first place.

[Psyren]

And as we've pointed out many times, the Heretic Geth would just be regular, peaceful Geth if the Reapers--the ones who claim that this is an inevitable, naturally-arising problem that it is their whole purpose to prevent--hadn't actively interfered.

Maybe. Given how readily they splintered, it sure didn't seem to take much. "Hey there, wanna help me kill all humans organics?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qBlPa-9v_M) being so effective, isn't exactly a ringing endorsement for lasting peace. It's not hard for me to picture someone iike Xen, Gerrall or TIM eventually provoking such a schism in an attempt to control or eliminate them regardless.

You're right, Overlord isn't really an example of synthetics deciding to commit murder - but it does demonstrate how easily they can be made to commit atrocities.



And yes, you can keep beating the drum that there's still a *chance*, and that's all Star Kid needs because it's stupid and malfunctioning, or how on the time scale Star Kid is looking at, any contradictions this cycle might hold to its premises are statistical anomalies that barely register as a blip. But these post-hoc justifications don't really address the issue that where the game has actively explored synthetic life, with the Geth, EDI, even the gambling AI, they've basically just been *people*, so the idea that they're inherently and uniquely dangerous just doesn't fit with the themes that have been presented so far.

Can you point to any instance of an organic race being that single-minded in its commitment to genocide? Not even the Rachni were, being limited by infighting and fear as they were.

Besides which, I think you're missing my point. I'm not saying I think the Catalyst is 100% correct - merely that its conclusions are based on observations that have some basis in reason. It's the Thanos problem - I can think the villain has a point, and still ultimately think they are wrong and want to stop them. To wit, I think that organic and synthetic life do have a chance to coexist before reaching some kind of all-out conflict, but it's only a chance. The Catalyst was programmed to consider anything less than 100% (or at the very least, some crazy high percentage) as being a non-starter, and that's why he had to go, but recognizing that the chance of genocide wasn't zero isn't itself incorrect.


If you want the Crucible to work, as others have mentioned, it needs to be established from damn early on. You can't make the choices it provides a surprise twist dumped on you when you get there. Maybe you can have some unforeseen comlications arising at that point, resulting from choices you've made. But you also probably need to throw out Synthesis entirely, because it's based on premies that don't fit the story told so far.

Throwing out Synthesis doesn't make sense to me, it IS ultimately the answer (whether we get there via space magic device or not). I agree the question didn't get enough attention however.


Meanwhile, if you want the Star Kid to work, the scene has to be about *overcoming* him. If you don't buy into his reasoning in the slightest, he's a delusional omnicidal psychopath, or if you can justify his reasoning, he's a malfunctioning program--but either way, *narratively speaking* the way the scene is set up, he gets to dictate the terms of the endgame and 'win.' Quite aside from how completely outside context it is, Synthesis can't feel like the hero found the Third Option to the Sadistic Choice--which is what it's obviously *intended* to be--when the villain is telling you to take it. The proper genre response to 'malfunctioning computer wants to kill all humans' is either 'blow it up' or 'talk it into shutting itself down.' (You know, the way Shepard's approached all enemies over the course of the games.)

This is why I think having a different mouthpiece for the Catalyst would have gone over better. It should have taken the form of someone we cared about, rather than a random kid that screamed "enemy." If it was somehow Legion or EDI for example explaining the cycles and the crucible, I don't think this same complaint about "not feeling like you're overcoming" would have mattered nearly as much.

[Serenity]

Maybe. Given how readily they splintered, it sure didn't seem to take much. "Hey there, wanna help me kill all humans organics?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qBlPa-9v_M) being so effective, isn't exactly a ringing endorsement for lasting peace. It's not hard for me to picture someone iike Xen, Gerrall or TIM eventually provoking such a schism in an attempt to control or eliminate them regardless.

You're right, Overlord isn't really an example of synthetics deciding to commit murder - but it does demonstrate how easily they can be made to commit atrocities.



Can you point to any instance of an organic race being that single-minded in its commitment to genocide? Not even the Rachni were, being limited by infighting and fear as they were.

Besides which, I think you're missing my point. I'm not saying I think the Catalyst is 100% correct - merely that its conclusions are based on observations that have some basis in reason. It's the Thanos problem - I can think the villain has a point, and still ultimately think they are wrong and want to stop them. To wit, I think that organic and synthetic life do have a chance to coexist before reaching some kind of all-out conflict, but it's only a chance. The Catalyst was programmed to consider anything less than 100% (or at the very least, some crazy high percentage) as being a non-starter, and that's why he had to go, but recognizing that the chance of genocide wasn't zero isn't itself incorrect.



Throwing out Synthesis doesn't make sense to me, it IS ultimately the answer (whether we get there via space magic device or not). I agree the question didn't get enough attention however.



This is why I think having a different mouthpiece for the Catalyst would have gone over better. It should have taken the form of someone we cared about, rather than a random kid that screamed "enemy." If it was somehow Legion or EDI for example explaining the cycles and the crucible, I don't think this same complaint about "not feeling like you're overcoming" would have mattered nearly as much.

Can Xen, Garrel, or TIM convince the Geth that they can personally provide them with the Singularity and fulfill every ambition they've ever had? That's a *lot* more than just 'asking', and I seem to recall that the Heretics were a rather small percentage of the Geth, too. And again, their genocidal tendencies were caused *by the Reapers.*

The *only* beings who have demonstrated a single-minded commitment to genocide, or any inclination to it *at all* are the Reapers. They are the one and only example the game shows us of the problem they claim they are trying to solve. In the last literal *minutes* of the game, we are given a motivation for the Reapers which is based on a premise which is not narratively developed or supported except if you *really* squint in retrospect, and even if you accept the premise, their methodology makes no sense. (Why don't they just swing by every now and then and kill the synthetics? Why do they go around provoking synthetics to commit genocide? Why, in the first place, would Star Kid design murderous synthetics to implement his solution if the point is that synthetics will destroy everything?) By any measure, Star Kid is *delusional*. I understand all the in-universe explanations (some of them retroactively added by Leviathan and the Extended Cut) why Shepard has to cater to those delusions in the end of the game. But how is it *good writing* for circumstances to force Shepard into that position in what is meant to be the cathartic culmination of everything in the series?

Even if I accepted the premise that there was a statistically significant chance that synthetics pose an inherent risk of omnicide, and even if I thought that made any sense as a motivation for the Reapers--neither of which I do, but one has to accept both premises for Synthesis to be a solution to the problem of the Reapers--Synthesis still doesn't really work as a solution. As near as I can tell, per your argument, the 'inevitability' of omnicide arises from the inevitability of conflict, and synthetics being uniquely situated to respond to conflict systematically out of proportion. But Synthesis isn't going to make Daro'Xen stop being an *******--conflict will still happen, just now *everyone* maybe has enough synthetic in them to have that single-mindedness.

Also, per your last point--you're saying keep everything else about the scene the same, but the Catalyst looks like a squadmate instead of the kid? I can tell you, I personally would *absolutely* still want the option to give it the biggest upraised middle finger I could. It's not its appearance that screams 'enemy'--it's the fact that it *is an enemy*, that it's explicitly a delusional genocidal maniac that the writers are not allowing me to actually meaningfully oppose. Or do you mean the actual squadmates presenting the options as their own ideas? That, I suppose, might be marginally more palatable, since you then get to make the choice on your own terms instead of that of the Reapers, though I would still probably find the premise of the choices pretty ridiculous.

[Aeson]

1) Peace is not impossible, Synthesis shows us that very clearly.
Synthesis is not peace; it's "destroy the world you know and replace it with something completely different." It's like ending the Dominion War arc of Deep Space Nine by having everyone submit to assimilation into the Borg Collective.

Synthesis also has at least a few issues:
- There is no reason to believe that turning everyone into cyborgs would prevent the rise of a hostile machine intelligence - full-machine still has advantages over part-biological, and if individuals still exist after Synthesis then there is no reason to believe that conflict cannot occur.
- There is no reason to believe that any extant machine intelligences which are bent on the destruction of all bioligical life would be convinced to modify their perspective by forcibly fusing them with biological life or that any extant biological entities which hate machine intelligences or the concept of cyborgs would be remotely pleased at involuntarily becoming cyborgs, if every living individual at the time of Synthesis continues to exist afterwards.
- Shepard does not have the moral or ethical right to turn everyone into a cyborg regardless of their own personal feelings on the matter, whether they're biological or mechanical beings.
- Synthesis requires me to believe that this thing that controls the Reapers is somehow able to turn the galaxy into a bunch of cyborgs and yet still needs to resort to more or less conventional methods of conquering the galaxy in order to implement its "exterminate all advanced biological life" plan.

[factotum]

- Shepard does not have the moral or ethical right to turn everyone into a cyborg regardless of their own personal feelings on the matter, whether they're biological or mechanical beings.


I agree on your other points, but this one just comes down to Paragon or Renegade. A Renegade Shepard would totally impose his own viewpoint on the galaxy as a whole if he thought that was the best way to "win". Of course, a fully Paragon Shep can choose this option as well, which is just another example of the total disconnect between the Ending-O-Tron and the rest of the game. Again, if the Crucible had been set up much earlier in the plotline then stuff like "Only offer certain endings to certain moral compass Shepards" could have been integrated into it and made it a slightly less bitter pill to swallow.

[Morty]

I swore I wasn't going to say anything about the ending, but whatever. I agree with Aeson about the Synthesis ending, though I think their argument gives it too much credit just by discussing its merits. "Use green space magic to make everyone half-organic half-synthetic" wasn't going to be a satisfying resolution to the conflict, even if the conflict hadn't been very thin on the ground to start with.

I was already having trouble buying that the conflict between synthetics and organics is somehow inherent and fundamental to the setting. When magically merging them together was presented as an option, I didn't even look at the price tag. And the fact that the game is clearly pushing it as the best option seriously did not help.

[Draconi Redfir]

As a fan of the old Beast-Machines TV show, and of the EDI/Joker relationship, i like the /concept/ of Synthesis buuhht... Yeah. Not really sure how it's supposed to help.

Having only played the 3rd game, i can ignore the "space magic" thing. The Mass effect did it. That's the space magic of the whole setting right? Everything from guns to medicine to interstellar travel to understanding different languages all use the Mass Effect, so just hibblety-hoo an excuse for Synthesis to be using it too.

Knowing what i know of the other games... the organics / synthetics situation wasn't even a problem in the first two games. dang dark-energy plot line being leaked just forced it to be in the 3rd game.

When in doubt assume those last few moments are Indoctrination theory i guess.

[NigelWalmsley]

I was already having trouble buying that the conflict between synthetics and organics is somehow inherent and fundamental to the setting.

This is the core problem with the ending, IMO. The earlier games did not do a good job of establishing "war between synthetics and organics is uniquely inevitable and destructive". There's one faction of synthetics (excluding the Reapers), and at the point where ME3 picks up, there's not any good reason to believe that they're particularly more prone to genocide than the organics are. Sure, Sovereign recruited the Heretic Geth, but he also recruited some Krogan, and a Turian Spectre. It turns out "I will help you get revenge on those who have wronged you and reshape the galaxy in your image of perfection" is kind of a compelling pitch. I mean, who would have guessed?

If you want me to buy what ME3 is selling, there need to be more races of synthetics, and they need to be less morally grey than the Geth. At minimum, replace the Rachni with robots, and flip the numbers on "kill everybody Geth" and "live peacefully Geth". Or just ditch the whole "organics versus synthetics" part of it. You can make a much better case for "escalating conflict is inevitable and that will eventually destroy everything" than "synthetics specifically are jerks" based on what ME1 and ME2 bring to the table.

[Serenity]

This is the core problem with the ending, IMO. The earlier games did not do a good job of establishing "war between synthetics and organics is uniquely inevitable and destructive". There's one faction of synthetics (excluding the Reapers), and at the point where ME3 picks up, there's not any good reason to believe that they're particularly more prone to genocide than the organics are. Sure, Sovereign recruited the Heretic Geth, but he also recruited some Krogan, and a Turian Spectre. It turns out "I will help you get revenge on those who have wronged you and reshape the galaxy in your image of perfection" is kind of a compelling pitch. I mean, who would have guessed?

If you want me to buy what ME3 is selling, there need to be more races of synthetics, and they need to be less morally grey than the Geth. At minimum, replace the Rachni with robots, and flip the numbers on "kill everybody Geth" and "live peacefully Geth". Or just ditch the whole "organics versus synthetics" part of it. You can make a much better case for "escalating conflict is inevitable and that will eventually destroy everything" than "synthetics specifically are jerks" based on what ME1 and ME2 bring to the table.

Of course, if you eliminate the organic vs. synthetic aspect, Synthesis becomes even more nonsensical as a 'fix' to it. And it becomes even more obvious that the proper narrative response is for a Paragon Shepard to point out every instance in which they've helped de-escalate conflicts and fostered alliances, or a Renegade Shepard to judged by omnicidal space robots.

[Draconi Redfir]

Of course, if you eliminate the organic vs. synthetic aspect, Synthesis becomes even more nonsensical as a 'fix' to it. And it becomes even more obvious that the proper narrative response is for a Paragon Shepard to point out every instance in which they've helped de-escalate conflicts and fostered alliances, or a Renegade Shepard to judged by omnicidal space robots.

If you get rid of the organic vs synthetic thing and make it just a "People VS people" thing then Synthesis could still work out. You'd be giving all people some form of common ground. Everyone from Krogans to the Volus would have the common ground of being partly mechanical and potentially benefiting from that in terms of wireless communication. Language barriers could be torn down, it wouldn't matter whether you were mostly mechanical, Arsenic-based, or a giant jellyfish. Everyone has the whole Synthesis thing to fall back on.

Not saying it would work Well buuutt... could be something.

[factotum]

Not saying it would work Well buuutt... could be something.

Well, it would be better than what we got, but there's not exactly a high bar to clear there. :smallamused:

[LibraryOgre]

Basically, Mass Effect has the same problem as the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy... no one wrote a ****ing outline before they started.

[Forum Explorer]

Basically, Mass Effect has the same problem as the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy... no one wrote a ****ing outline before they started.

Well the first game was self-contained. It didn't need anything else. The second game was also self contained. On it's own it is a perfectly fine game, for all that it doesn't do anything to set stuff up for the third. Honestly, the third game is fine too. The 'build a super weapon to solve the problem' is a classic trope. It's execution was flawed though. I mean, you spend most of the game rallying the galaxy together to build a conventional army. That seems to point more to winning a conventional war than activating a super weapon you built. And as others have said, both the Starchild and the choice at the end were hamfisted and poorly done. And it's not like they didn't waste time in the third game, everything involving Kai Leng for example.

But maybe it would've been better to have split the third game into two games. The first game being much like the third game (minus the Cerberus parts and the Crucible) with you trying to rally a conventional victory through force. And the second game being the desperate attempt to create some sort of superweapon to snatch victory after your fleets are all destroyed when the conventional attempt fails.

Someone asked what would make the Crucible ending work, so here's my answer;

For me, it would involve changing most of the game. The Crucible isn't a physical thing, but a computer program. The Promethian Beacon doesn't actually have plans for a super weapon, but just talks about the nature of the Reapers, how they are made from fusing billions of people together to create a machine that is ruled by a singular intelligence. And instead of PTSD flashbacks of the child Shepherd failed to save, it's instead a direct communication from the Reapers into Shepherd's mind as they try and indoctrinate him. They explain their actions as an ascension to a higher state of being. That being harvested and transformed into Reapers is a form of immortality as all of your memories and thoughts would be part of the Reaper your species becomes. That the Reapers only begin their harvest when they judge that an unacceptable level of stagnation has occurred. And that by harvesting species, they allow new races to flourish and create brand new cultures of their own, to one day ascend and create unique Reapers in their ownselves.

Meanwhile, nearly every race is just getting utterly devastated by the Reapers. Earth isn't particularly special in that regard, every race has its capital planet under siege, except for a few exceptions like the Quarians, Ranichii and Krogan. You save the Quarians and Krogan like you did in game, but more to get their expertise for the Crucible. The Krogan for Mordin and his research into the Genophage, and the Quarians/Geth for their research into AI's. As a bonus, if the Ranichii (and/or Shiala) are alive, you can bring them in for their understanding of collective intelligence. The Crucible is a program meant to send a signal through to each Reaper, but in order to do so, you must travel to each homeworld to capture an Avatar (one of the indoctrinated people under direct control of a Reaper like Saren was at the end of the first game.) Once you do so, the Crucible can use the connection between the Avatars and the Reapers to bypass the Reaper's defenses against viruses and then using the Citadel's ability to send a signal to the Mass Effect Relay Network, to propagate the Crucible across the entire galaxy.

However the Reapers learn of this plan through their connection to Shepherd and attack the Citadel. Worse, they adapt it for their own use. They plan on using normal people to broadcast their indoctrination signal throughout the galaxy. For the final mission Shepherd infiltrates the Citadel with the Normandy and has to climb up the Citadel fighting off waves of indoctrinated troops while fending off his own indoctrination (which creates visions that the Reapers use to mess with Shepherd). Your team helps you out on the way, but fall to their own indoctrination as you go. When they fall, you get a conversation with them. If you fail to talk them into resisting the indoctrination, you have to fight a miniboss battle against them, and kill them. In the final room you fall to the indoctrination yourself, and end up having to fight your surviving crew members. They fight back and try and talk you out of it at the same time. If you die you get a non-standard game over, where the survivors activate the Crucible over your corpse. If you kill all of your crew during the fight, then you get a non-standard game over where the Reapers win and indoctrinate the galaxy. You have to fight for an indeterminate amount of time (the higher the number of crew, the less time it takes, but the harder the fight is), without actually killing everyone. If you do kill someone, it's as if you killed them earlier in the mission.

If you win, you get to activate the Crucible, which gives you multiple options. Send the 'Kill Command' signal and the Reapers start destroying each other. Send the 'Mission Complete' and the Reaper's leave the galaxy, thinking they've already completed harvesting the galaxy as normal. If the Ranichii are alive and you did their mission you get one more option; you send a command that turns off the central intelligence of each Reaper, causing the billions of people that make up their existence to awaken and begin downloading their memories into the bodies of husks so that they can regain having their own bodies.

[Narkis]

Basically, Mass Effect has the same problem as the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy... no one wrote a ****ing outline before they started.

I blame the change in lead writers, and corresponding change in direction. ME1's writer had very different ideas on Reaper motivations and what was supposed to happen. It's not his fault they disregarded his ideas in favor of the other writers' pet baddies.

[Aeson]

There's also that having a consistent plan from start to finish matters less than getting good execution on whatever you end up doing. Planning helps, but it's still possible to make a good series from something that wasn't planned to have sequels and it's still possible to screw up a series that was planned out from start to finish before the first entry was released.

[Kish]

Well the first game was self-contained. It didn't need anything else. The second game was also self contained. On it's own it is a perfectly fine game, for all that it doesn't do anything to set stuff up for the third. [etc]
I agreed with...the first two sentences of your post.

The second game hinged on the player buying "now you have to work for a group which was a minor, and completely horrific villain in the first game." That was a pretty big ask. Unfortunately, Bioware, as it sometimes does, wound up less trying to sell it and more demanding you swallow it whole. And the whole Cerberus angle was, from the perspective of ME2 being a self-contained game, completely gratuitous: they could have just not handed the Council an idiot ball, cut out the whole "you nearly died," and had you going on missions under the direction of the Council. Easier in every way to write, nothing lost except someone's desire to crow "Ha ha you got suckered...don't give me that, you did not see it coming before my super-cool Illusive Man ever opened his mouth!" (Flashbacks to Throne of Bhaal here.)

The third game could have been handled in a lot of ways. I did think it did a good job of making your earlier-game Paragon or Renegade decisions matter: Wrex or Wreav, the Rachni being free or the Rachni being de facto biological robots for the Reapers. But, ultimately, it hinged on three premises that didn't work:
1) You were suckered by Cerberus, and now Cerberus was able to take the role of an enemy you could talk to throughout the game--with Tim outright getting to chide you and leave you unable to do anything but sputter, even while his arguments were, in the eyes of everyone but whoever was writing him, laughably weak.
2) "Conflict between organic and synthetic life is inevitable as long as both exist."
3) At the end, you're dumped at: There's a giant mechanical genie that will grant you one of three wishes. Don't ask any questions.


None of those were necessary until Mass Effect 3 threw them at the player out of nowhere. Premises 1 and 2 could and should have simply been dropped, unmourned except by whoever at Bioware wanted to go "Muahaha I'm so much cleverer than you!" at the PC. That just leaves 3, the question of how to defeat the Reapers. And "The Reapers are ridiculously more than a match for the entire galaxy" was also something they only threw at you suddenly in Mass Effect 3.

They could have gone from Mass Effect 1 to "you can defeat the Reapers conventionally but only with a united galaxy." They could have gone to "you need to build this superweapon, which will destroy the Reapers, and only the Reapers." They could have...

They never had to do the mechanical genie with one of three wishes. It was 100% because they wanted to, because they thought it was actually clever.

[Draconi Redfir]

*Snip*

IDK how sustainable having billions of intelligent husks suddenly roaming the very limited galaxy would be, especially since all those husks would have been from thousands of cycles over trillions of years. Other then that though, i'd play that game.

[LibraryOgre]

Well the first game was self-contained. It didn't need anything else.

Yes, but you can DO that. You can write a first installment that is self-contained, and still follow up on it.

Classic example? The Star Wars Original Trilogy. They have some hanging threads around (like Luke and Leia's kiss in TESB, before it was established in the series bible that they were siblings), but ANH is a self-contained story... it could end there... and then ESB and ROTJ built on those.

ME1 was NOT self-contained, because it ended with the pending threat of Reapers hanging out there, begging for a sequel. It was open-ended. Which CAN be fine... we understand when things don't get a sequel... but once you start saying "Ok, I have my start, I want to write a finish to it" you have to know where you've been, and where you're going, and ME 2 & 3 don't show any sign of having done that.

[Forum Explorer]

I agreed with...the first two sentences of your post.

The second game hinged on the player buying "now you have to work for a group which was a minor, and completely horrific villain in the first game." That was a pretty big ask. Unfortunately, Bioware, as it sometimes does, wound up less trying to sell it and more demanding you swallow it whole. And the whole Cerberus angle was, from the perspective of ME2 being a self-contained game, completely gratuitous: they could have just not handed the Council an idiot ball, cut out the whole "you nearly died," and had you going on missions under the direction of the Council. Easier in every way to write, nothing lost except someone's desire to crow "Ha ha you got suckered...don't give me that, you did not see it coming before my super-cool Illusive Man ever opened his mouth!" (Flashbacks to Throne of Bhaal here.)


I can mostly agree with that. I mean, all they really need is a justification for you to go through a timeskip and than the Cerberus stuff can be dropped entirely and basically nothing needs to be changed. If you don't have a timeskip then you do actually need to change quite a few things.



The third game could have been handled in a lot of ways. I did think it did a good job of making your earlier-game Paragon or Renegade decisions matter: Wrex or Wreav, the Rachni being free or the Rachni being de facto biological robots for the Reapers. But, ultimately, it hinged on three premises that didn't work:
1) You were suckered by Cerberus, and now Cerberus was able to take the role of an enemy you could talk to throughout the game--with Tim outright getting to chide you and leave you unable to do anything but sputter, even while his arguments were, in the eyes of everyone but whoever was writing him, laughably weak.
2) "Conflict between organic and synthetic life is inevitable as long as both exist."
3) At the end, you're dumped at: There's a giant mechanical genie that will grant you one of three wishes. Don't ask any questions.


None of those were necessary until Mass Effect 3 threw them at the player out of nowhere. Premises 1 and 2 could and should have simply been dropped, unmourned except by whoever at Bioware wanted to go "Muahaha I'm so much cleverer than you!" at the PC. That just leaves 3, the question of how to defeat the Reapers. And "The Reapers are ridiculously more than a match for the entire galaxy" was also something they only threw at you suddenly in Mass Effect 3.

They could have gone from Mass Effect 1 to "you can defeat the Reapers conventionally but only with a united galaxy." They could have gone to "you need to build this superweapon, which will destroy the Reapers, and only the Reapers." They could have...

They never had to do the mechanical genie with one of three wishes. It was 100% because they wanted to, because they thought it was actually clever.

1) I honestly didn't get the impression that TLM was supposed to have strong arguments. I thought that he and Cerberus as a whole were included more so that people wouldn't be asking 'what happened with TLM and Cerberus during the Reaper invasion?' But they could've been cut out entirely, and you likely would've been better off for doing so because then you would have more time to develop the Reapers.

2) I really only got that from the Star Child conversation. Cut out that conversation entirely and just skip to an ending and I'd have never guessed that was a premise of the game. I mean, the Geth and EDI/Joker romance were pretty much proving the opposite of that claim.

3) Sure. I can agree that they handled the Crucible poorly. Frig, my whole post above was my attempt to describe what I consider a Crucible handled well.


I feel like you are ascribing a level of malevolence to a writer that I doubt was present. It felt more like the writer didn't have any clue how to write the Reapers and so went back to basic motivations.


Yes, but you can DO that. You can write a first installment that is self-contained, and still follow up on it.

Classic example? The Star Wars Original Trilogy. They have some hanging threads around (like Luke and Leia's kiss in TESB, before it was established in the series bible that they were siblings), but ANH is a self-contained story... it could end there... and then ESB and ROTJ built on those.

ME1 was NOT self-contained, because it ended with the pending threat of Reapers hanging out there, begging for a sequel. It was open-ended. Which CAN be fine... we understand when things don't get a sequel... but once you start saying "Ok, I have my start, I want to write a finish to it" you have to know where you've been, and where you're going, and ME 2 & 3 don't show any sign of having done that.

I slightly disagree about ME2. It wasn't the smoothest transition from ME1, but it did handle it and everything that happened in ME2 built up to a satisfying conclusion to ME2.

ME3 doesn't really lead from ME2 though. There really should have been a different ME3 with the ME3 we got being ME4. Basically, ME2 built tension and gave some tantalizing hints about the Reaper's motivation. It showed that the galaxy was still pretty damn unprepared for the Reapers and that the Reapers were still active in the galaxy with the ability to possess people from a distance. But it didn't set the story up to move into the ending.

Basically, after ME2 was finished they should've realized that ME3 shouldn't conclude the story. They still needed more rising action. Well, the ME3 we got anyways. I maintain you could write an ME3 that ended the trilogy. Afterall look at Star Wars, ROTJ doesn't build on ESB all that much. Or perhaps I should say, it doesn't build on most of ESB that much. The central conflict between Vader and Luke is all around the reveal at the very end of ESB. While the wider conflict doesn't really need anything from ESB. Though I suppose the romance between Han and Leia does. Arguably. I feel it more starts and ends in ESB with it being more of taken as a fact in ROTJ.

Comparatively, ME3 could've been built around the twist at the end of ME2, that Reapers were made from the people they harvest. Instead, I don't think it's mentioned at all. But more importantly, it needed both a tighter focus (IE, either make Cerberus your ally still or cut them out of the story entirely), and a better clarity to your actions. If you spend all game building a conventional military, than people will expect a conventional victory from said military.

[Forum Explorer]

IDK how sustainable having billions of intelligent husks suddenly roaming the very limited galaxy would be, especially since all those husks would have been from thousands of cycles over trillions of years. Other then that though, i'd play that game.

I don't know how much of a 'good' ending the last one is either. But hey, that just makes it more fun. It's an ending to be sure and I think it'd create an interesting galaxy.

[Dienekes]

Comparatively, ME3 could've been built around the twist at the end of ME2, that Reapers were made from the people they harvest. Instead, I don't think it's mentioned at all. But more importantly, it needed both a tighter focus (IE, either make Cerberus your ally still or cut them out of the story entirely), and a better clarity to your actions. If you spend all game building a conventional military, than people will expect a conventional victory from said military.

honestly, the only thing the ME2 reveal does is explain why the Reapers tactics are the way they are.

When every Reaper is a civilization and the whole point of the Reaping is to preserve those civilizations then of course they will develop their strategy along a path that means to as close to 0 deaths as possible. Even when the entire force of the galaxy united against them still doesn’t have a chance of victory.

I just don’t think the game ever pointed this out. And honestly I might be giving the writers too much credit for that.

[factotum]

Well the first game was self-contained. It didn't need anything else.

Unlike everyone else, I'm going to have to disagree here. The first game set up a problem: we have immortal AI Reapers sitting in deep space, waiting to invade the galaxy and destroy all organic life. The actions Shepard took at the end of that game delayed the problem, it didn't get rid of it entirely. It seems to me that the plot of the first game was deliberately setting everything up for some sort of detective story--you have Shepard's Prothean knowledge from the pylon and Liara, an expert on Protheans who can help him interpret it; Shepard himself is a Spectre, giving him freedom to travel where he wants and do more or less anything to try and find a solution to the problem. It's a near perfect setup--which they then press the big red RESET button on at the beginning of ME2.

[Narkis]

Unlike everyone else, I'm going to have to disagree here.


ME1 was NOT self-contained, because it ended with the pending threat of Reapers hanging out there, begging for a sequel.

Looks like you failed a perception check there factotum.

[Morty]

Yes, Mass Effect 1 was obviously made to allow for a continuation, though whether or not a continuation was planned, strictly speaking, is anyone's guess.

As far as ME2 goes, I feel like the goal was to make it a new story rather than a direct continuation of the previous one... except the method ended up really contrived. They wanted to keep Shepard as the protagonist, but also throw them in a different setting - after the immediate aftermath of the battle for the Citadel, mingling with the galaxy's seedy underbelly and not working for the Council or the Alliance anymore.

I don't know how this might have worked without the "death" and resurrection or Cerberus. But I do think a change of scenery of some sort in a sequel is necessary.

[factotum]

I don't know how this might have worked without the "death" and resurrection or Cerberus. But I do think a change of scenery of some sort in a sequel is necessary.

You've literally got an entire galaxy to play with, I don't think varied scenery is an issue.

[GloatingSwine]

1) I honestly didn't get the impression that TLM was supposed to have strong arguments. I thought that he and Cerberus as a whole were included more so that people wouldn't be asking 'what happened with TLM and Cerberus during the Reaper invasion?' But they could've been cut out entirely, and you likely would've been better off for doing so because then you would have more time to develop the Reapers.


The way the scenes are framed, you're supposed to think he does.

Although there are myriad logical flaws with what he's saying, nothing the player is allowed to mention will ever address them, and he basically always gets the last word.

The writer wants you to think he's super in control and clever, and so only gives you completely milquetoast objections to voice.

This is, sadly, because we have to admit that Irenicus was a fluke and Bioware are not actually good at villains. Darth Chinless was a chump who only ever got to win because of cutscenes, and Loghain was basically a "Drat! Foiled Again" saturday morning cartoon villain who kept trying ineffectual plots against you.


honestly, the only thing the ME2 reveal does is explain why the Reapers tactics are the way they are.

When every Reaper is a civilization and the whole point of the Reaping is to preserve those civilizations then of course they will develop their strategy along a path that means to as close to 0 deaths as possible. Even when the entire force of the galaxy united against them still doesn’t have a chance of victory.

But what ME2 actually shows is that a Reaper can be built with a tiny fraction of a civilisation, just Earth's outlying colonies were enough to get one up and running, let alone the many billions on Earth itself and any other core worlds that the Collectors could never have hoped to assault. So that actually doesn't explain that really. If they needed a whole civilisation, they could never have even started trying.

[Dienekes]

But what ME2 actually shows is that a Reaper can be built with a tiny fraction of a civilisation, just Earth's outlying colonies were enough to get one up and running, let alone the many billions on Earth itself and any other core worlds that the Collectors could never have hoped to assault. So that actually doesn't explain that really. If they needed a whole civilisation, they could never have even started trying.

I don't think what we saw constitutes as "up and running." They depopulated a lot of settlements and barely got half a skeleton thingamabob that could be killed with small arms fire. That is a tiny fraction of a reaper. I also didn't say it took the entire population, just that it is a civilization. All the humans they could funnel into Human-Reaper baby the more complete the Reaper is. And if a single Reaper is destroyed then they lose all the lives collected inside of it. That follows that their strategy would be designed around nullifying the possibility that they'd lose a single Reaper, even if pound for pound they can still conquer the galaxy by rushing it.

[Kish]

The way the scenes are framed, you're supposed to think he does.

Although there are myriad logical flaws with what he's saying, nothing the player is allowed to mention will ever address them, and he basically always gets the last word.

The writer wants you to think he's super in control and clever, and so only gives you completely milquetoast objections to voice.
Yes, this. If Tim actually had compelling arguments I wouldn't complain. The problem is that what's on the page is, instead, "I'm building a device to control the Reapers and thus you are opposing Earth's savior!" "CONTROL THE REAPERS? You're insane!" Repeat ad nauseum. It's like in Throne of Bhaal, where Mellissan all but tells you "I'm a villain!" and you're left going, "Hurr durr, it sure is a pity Melissan's noble intentions keep getting people killed," followed by an NPC outright telling you that what Melissan's been doing is a "brilliant ruse."

[Narkis]

This is, sadly, because we have to admit that Irenicus was a fluke and Bioware are not actually good at villains. Darth Chinless was a chump who only ever got to win because of cutscenes, and Loghain was basically a "Drat! Foiled Again" saturday morning cartoon villain who kept trying ineffectual plots against you.

I wouldn't go that far. Sarevok also worked for what he was, Saren and Sovereign were pretty damn good, and Jade Empire had one of the best villains among cRPGs ever. The failures of ME2's and 3's writer are his alone, Bioware becoming a shadow of their former selves after the EA acquisition notwithstanding.

[factotum]

Yes, this. If Tim actually had compelling arguments I wouldn't complain. The problem is that what's on the page is, instead, "I'm building a device to control the Reapers and thus you are opposing Earth's savior!" "CONTROL THE REAPERS? You're insane!" Repeat ad nauseum.

This is what annoyed me about the whole Cerberus thing in ME2. I didn't want to work for them--unlike the game's writers, I remembered what they were like in the first game--but I was never given that choice. Furthermore, every time I had a conversation in the game where the other person was saying "But you work for Cerberus now!" the writer hadn't been able to think of even a weak justification for that, so I couldn't say anything but something along the lines of "Yes, I am, so what?".

Then, in ME3 we're back to thinking Cerberus are the Devil incarnate, which just makes Shepard look like a complete moron for working for them throughout the previous game! I dunno, it seems at times that all three games were written by different people who had different ideas of how the plot should go and how the universe worked.

[Morty]

Then, in ME3 we're back to thinking Cerberus are the Devil incarnate, which just makes Shepard look like a complete moron for working for them throughout the previous game! I dunno, it seems at times that all three games were written by different people who had different ideas of how the plot should go and how the universe worked.

I think it's entirely possible that this was in fact the case. It's not exactly a shocking revelation. Talking about companies and writing teams as though they were some uniform entities, as players usually do, is dubious.

I wonder how ME2 would have worked if it'd had the same story, but with a new protagonist who's an up-and-coming Cerberus operative, unaware of the organization's true nature. It would remove a lot of awkward, shoehorned elements, but we wouldn't have a continuity and Shepard's familiarity with fan-favorite characters. Thus I'm not saying it'd be better, but it's interesting to think about.

Presumably, the final choice would still be to keep working for Cerberus or not, though it wouldn't be much more interesting. "Will you or won't you side with people who thought any part of the Pragia facility was a good idea" is still a pretty poor choice for a game to give.

[GloatingSwine]

Then, in ME3 we're back to thinking Cerberus are the Devil incarnate, which just makes Shepard look like a complete moron for working for them throughout the previous game! I dunno, it seems at times that all three games were written by different people who had different ideas of how the plot should go and how the universe worked.

And, of course, suddenly they have infinite resources despite literally every Cerberus project we ever see in ME1 and ME2 being a colossal screwup that blows up in their faces and gains them absolutely nothing.

But, of course, the writers insist that they're really a big deal and we never actually get to point this out to anyone and get them to recognise that we have done so.

By like the second or third time Shepard should have been replying with "rogue cell my impeccably toned cyber-ass, all your projects screw up in exactly the same way, every time, this is a failure of management, at least Saren was working for a competent evil overlord, I quit".

[factotum]

And, of course, suddenly they have infinite resources despite literally every Cerberus project we ever see in ME1 and ME2 being a colossal screwup that blows up in their faces and gains them absolutely nothing.

That ship already sailed in ME2, where this outlawed criminal organisation were able to build a bigger and better version of the Alliance's most advanced ship. Just think of the logistics of that for a second--it would be the real world equivalent of a terrorist organisation building a Gerald R. Ford class nuclear-powered supercarrier, or at the very least an Arleigh Burke class destroyer, only in either case they're making something that's actually better than the original. I shouldn't need to point out how ridiculous an idea that is, surely? Especially considering, as you rightly point out, Cerberus are *idiots*. I wouldn't trust the Illusive Man or any of his minions to build a functioning frying pan, much less a warship.

[Draconi Redfir]

wasn't Sheppard kind of forced / blackmailed into working for Cerberus? i thought Sheppard only did it because they literally brought him/her back from the dead and hung that over them like a giant "we OWN you!" sign 24/7.

[factotum]

They brought him back from the dead, yes. But at no point does anyone in Cerberus say "You owe us big time!"--they don't even need to deploy threats, because there's literally no way for Shepard to actually refuse to work with Cerberus in ME2. If they even gave you the option for him to refuse, and for TIM to then say, "Well, we brought you back from the dead, and I have a switch here that'll put you straight back down, are you sure you don't want to work with us?", thus making you working with them entirely under duress, then I'd be happier. I'd be happier still if you could actually give that reason to anyone who queries why you're with Cerberus.

Of course, that just then needs us to find some sort of justification for pretty much the entire crew of the Normandy from the first game being willing to work with an outlawed terrorist organisation, but hey, baby steps.

[GloatingSwine]

wasn't Sheppard kind of forced / blackmailed into working for Cerberus? i thought Sheppard only did it because they literally brought him/her back from the dead and hung that over them like a giant "we OWN you!" sign 24/7.

You'd think, but then the game is chock full of characters who consistently justify working for Cerberus and their goals, and it's clearly all framed as if agreeing with them is a valid option that the writers expected some of the audience to take.

[LibraryOgre]

wasn't Sheppard kind of forced / blackmailed into working for Cerberus? i thought Sheppard only did it because they literally brought him/her back from the dead and hung that over them like a giant "we OWN you!" sign 24/7.

That's what they used, but, really, Shepard could have said "Well, I didn't sign nothin'" and walked away.

I think the real carrot they were supposed to be giving you was "We are putting resources at your disposal to do this thing that you want to do. No one else is doing so." But, of course, once the Council re-instates you as a Specter, you're back to having resources again.

[Psyren]

Couple of tangential notes for this thread:

1) For those watching it, it looks like Star Trek Picard might be heading towards an "AI are inherently dangerous" sort of theme/message of its own.

2) On the Bioware front, sounds like they're planning to take a mulligan with Anthem (https://blog.bioware.com/2020/02/10/anthem-update-february-10/) - only time will tell if they pull off a No Man's Sky/FF14 style successful relaunch, or fail again and scrap the whole thing. Personally I'm hoping for the former, if only because that's the best way for us to also get more Mass Effect later on.

[Serenity]

Haven't watched the latest episode yet, so maybe something big changed, but as far as I've seen up to Episode 6, that's been the opinion of the antagonists, who probably orchestrated the major example of rogue AI that created the synthetic ban. The whole premise of the plot is about Picard protecting an android woman against the synthetic-hating villains, and I'd be very surprised if the plot developed to suggest that Picard has been doing the wrong thing the whole time, and that one of Trek's most beloved characters was an abomination of science.

[Dienekes]

Couple of tangential notes for this thread:

1) For those watching it, it looks like Star Trek Picard might be heading towards an "AI are inherently dangerous" sort of theme/message of its own.

2) On the Bioware front, sounds like they're planning to take a mulligan with Anthem (https://blog.bioware.com/2020/02/10/anthem-update-february-10/) - only time will tell if they pull off a No Man's Sky/FF14 style successful relaunch, or fail again and scrap the whole thing. Personally I'm hoping for the former, if only because that's the best way for us to also get more Mass Effect later on.

Alright, uh

1) Haven't watched Picard, but, huh? TNG was the most saccharinely uplifting of the Treks in that regard, carried entirely because Sir Patrick Stewart could sell those lines and make them sound good. Having them go that anything is inherently dangerous seems like a bit of a waste of his talent. That sort of stuff fits more with the Deep Space Nine style of Trek. Which, admittedly is my favorite, but I wouldn't have attached Jean-luc Picard to it.

2) Well good luck to them. But my hope remains the same, I wish they do well enough to keep the lights on while getting a thorough reminder that their wheelhouse is single player story focused RPGs and not that MMO style open world, grinding missions and collectible pick ups. Mostly because I'm selfish and I dislike those style of games while I really enjoy Dragon Age and Mass Effect, at least when either are done well.

[Anteros]

You'd think, but then the game is chock full of characters who consistently justify working for Cerberus and their goals, and it's clearly all framed as if agreeing with them is a valid option that the writers expected some of the audience to take.


Is it though? You basically spend the entire game subverting Cerberus operatives against their organization, and it's set up for you to give them a giant middle finger at the end.

The council is refusing to do anything about the greatest threat the galaxy has ever seen, and Cerberus is offering you complete control of your operations and basically unlimited funding and support. It makes perfect sense that Shepard would work with them until they hit a situation they can't agree on...which happens by the end of the game.

[Morty]

Whatever else might be said about it, I think ME2 has the best enemy variety in the series. We have the three merc bands, Geth and Collectors. Sometimes also mechs without organics and Klixen - those don't quite count as proper "factions", but they do spice things up. ME1... it's been a while, but I think it's mostly either Geth or generic humanoid opponents. ME3 just has Reapers and Cerberus for the most part, since Geth only really appear during the Rannoch questline. Andromeda has the Remnant robots, outcasts and Kett. Sometimes also the hostile Angara, but I think they just use the same models as the outcasts. So a little better than ME3.

[Tawmis]

I saw the Quest for Glory thread, which led me into the Gaming (Other) forum... and I saw this thread.

As an avid fan of everything Bioware... When it came to Mass Effect, you could not stop me from playing it. Mass Effect 1, I beat in about a week. Finding everything, doing every side mission, and even doing alternates to see how different things... ended up. Mass Effect 2, took about a week. Mass Effect 3, took about a week (and despite the popular dislike of Mass Effect 3 and the original ending, I didn't have any issues with it - I enjoyed it. Didn't see the need to "update" it to appease the fan outcry - but they did it - and it was good too).

Fast forward to Mass Effect: Andromeda.

As I said, as avid fan of everything Bioware... wait... this was EA. OK. Still. It was Mass Effect, it should be fine. So I pre-ordered, got the whole bit of collector's edition, as I'd done with the others.

So I had it since day 1.

So this came out March 21, 2017.

We're creeping up on the 3 year mark.

I've still not beat it.

Is it too difficult? No. Not at all.

Is it difficult to play? Yes, because it's difficult to get into.

Unlike ME1-3, there was something missing. I didn't feel the pull into the story like I did with the others. This felt... flat.

It didn't help that the first planet I went to explore on was Harval. This is a God awful planet.
It's dark. The big thing / building /structure in he middle of it - so you can't just cross back and forth.
It's so damn dark, that it became way to easy to run into a wall and tree and not even realize you're stuck.
And then the aliens on that planet?

I wanted to kill them all. They were horrible. No interest in saving them.

Finally got off that planet, and at the other one (with the sulfur springs, can't remember the name).

This planet at least is far more tolerable.

But the people? The quests? Uninteresting.

I pick up the game every so often - just because it's Mass Effect - and the completionist in me is screaming to beat it.

But it's painful.

It's like... I love opening doors to go outside. But this game is like opening the door to go outside; but slamming it shut on your own hand instead.

But.

One day.

God willing.

I will beat this game. No matter how much I suffer.

[factotum]

Is it though? You basically spend the entire game subverting Cerberus operatives against their organization, and it's set up for you to give them a giant middle finger at the end.

The council is refusing to do anything about the greatest threat the galaxy has ever seen, and Cerberus is offering you complete control of your operations and basically unlimited funding and support. It makes perfect sense that Shepard would work with them until they hit a situation they can't agree on...which happens by the end of the game.

It makes perfect sense for a *Renegade* Shepard to work with them, assuming everything else you said is correct--but I don't think it is. The Council had no problem reinstating Shepard as a Spectre when he returns from the dead, and Spectres already have unlimited funding and support to do anything they like--remember Saren from the first game? Cerberus is not necessary and is not even portrayed as being necessary.

Then, of course, Paragon Shep wouldn't touch them with a ten-light-year bargepole, which is where the whole "We're justified in working for Cerberus for reasons" falls down.

[Kish]

This is what annoyed me about the whole Cerberus thing in ME2. I didn't want to work for them--unlike the game's writers, I remembered what they were like in the first game--but I was never given that choice. Furthermore, every time I had a conversation in the game where the other person was saying "But you work for Cerberus now!" the writer hadn't been able to think of even a weak justification for that, so I couldn't say anything but something along the lines of "Yes, I am, so what?".

Then, in ME3 we're back to thinking Cerberus are the Devil incarnate, which just makes Shepard look like a complete moron for working for them throughout the previous game! I dunno, it seems at times that all three games were written by different people who had different ideas of how the plot should go and how the universe worked.
I would have been fine with "you work for them because they're the only people trying to take down the Reapers, and they're bad but not as bad as universal annihilation."

Okay, no, I wouldn't have, because handing the Council an idiot ball didn't make the storytelling better, but rather worse.

But in any event, if that was what they were going with, they should have stuck with it. Had that be what it was in Mass Effect 3, instead of suddenly having all the NPCs go "you were suckered by Cerberus," with no dialogue options to challenge that version of events, and Tim still getting to lecture you repeatedly.

But...again, this was all unnecessary. They could have kept nearly all of the missions all but unchanged, just by having Shepard working for the Council in ME2. Miranda Lawson becomes the new Council liaison, working directly for whoever you chose to be on the Council, and conspicuously not being an uncontradictable cheerleader for an organization everyone but her can see at a glance is evil; her conflict with Jack is based on her unquestioning patriotism and not on "evidence in front of me be damned, I refuse to accept that the organization that tortured you has any flaws!" And, just like that, it makes sense for everything you do in ME2 to build up to however you wind up fighting the Reapers in ME3.

And then there's the question of why Cerberus has unlimited funding, as other people have pointed out; "this corporation can do what the governments of the setting never could because it just can!" lacks a certain respect for plausibility.

[Anteros]

It makes perfect sense for a *Renegade* Shepard to work with them, assuming everything else you said is correct--but I don't think it is. The Council had no problem reinstating Shepard as a Spectre when he returns from the dead, and Spectres already have unlimited funding and support to do anything they like--remember Saren from the first game? Cerberus is not necessary and is not even portrayed as being necessary.

Then, of course, Paragon Shep wouldn't touch them with a ten-light-year bargepole, which is where the whole "We're justified in working for Cerberus for reasons" falls down.

The council that makes you pay for your own weapons and shoots you down literally every single time you ask them for any support. That council? Compared to Cerberus who is constantly feeding you intel, created a giant team of specialists including those loyal to Shepard over Cerberus, and the most sophisticated ship in the universe.

Also, Paragon Shep is all about giving people second chances and trying to redeem people. It's perfectly in character for him to take TIM at his word that the bad stuff you see in ME1 were accidents or mistakes. At least to the point of seeing for himself how they run things.

It''s Cerberus or nothing, because the council isn't willing to actually support you in anything but name.

[Morty]

I decided that being stuck at home is as good a time as any to replay Mass Effect, but I still can't decide if I want to play a female or male Shepard. They'll be a paragon engineer either way, so it's just a matter of who I'll romance. I've also decided I'll get some people killed during the suicide mission to see what happens.

[factotum]

I decided that being stuck at home is as good a time as any to replay Mass Effect, but I still can't decide if I want to play a female or male Shepard. They'll be a paragon engineer either way, so it's just a matter of who I'll romance. I've also decided I'll get some people killed during the suicide mission to see what happens.

Why don't you try to get *everyone* (including Shepard) killed during that mission and see what happens in ME3? (Yes, it is possible to do that--if everyone other than Shepard dies during the mission he fails to get back aboard the Normandy 2 at the end).

[Morty]

Why don't you try to get *everyone* (including Shepard) killed during that mission and see what happens in ME3? (Yes, it is possible to do that--if everyone other than Shepard dies during the mission he fails to get back aboard the Normandy 2 at the end).

I'm not really interested in going to this kind of extreme or the steps needed to reach it. My tentative plan is to get Mordin killed by not leaving a strong enough team to hold the line (take Grunt, Zaeed or Garrus with me to the last fight and/or send them to escort the crew) and Jack... not sure how. I think she's the first to die if you neglect one of the Normandy upgrades, so I could just do that.

[Rodin]

Why don't you try to get *everyone* (including Shepard) killed during that mission and see what happens in ME3? (Yes, it is possible to do that--if everyone other than Shepard dies during the mission he fails to get back aboard the Normandy 2 at the end).

That leaves you with a non-viable save file. The requirement is actually to have a 3-man squad by the end of the game - presumably because Bioware wasn't sure what they would be doing for ME3 and wanted to guarantee players start the next game with a full team. If you don't have enough for a 3-man squad, the game kills Shepard to give a good reason why that playthrough can't be imported into the sequel.

This led to the infamous "Thane is a jerk" moment on one player's run. They romanced Thane and tried to set up maximum pathos by having only Thane and Shepard survive. When running to the ship at the end, Thane jumps aboard...and then goes inside and makes himself a nice cup of cocoa. Shepard has nobody to catch them and falls to their death while Thane is getting the marshmallows out of the cupboard.

On getting Jack killed, I want to say the important Normandy upgrade is the armor. She dies when the ship is struck because she hangs out below the engine room in the belly of the ship, and if you have extra armor that soaks the damage instead.

[Androgeus]

Who would be the worse two companions to survive the suicide mission?

Obviously Morinth is probably the worst to survive. But for the other I’m not sure, perhaps Jack and then don’t help the academy so she gets taken by Cerberus?

[Morty]

On getting Jack killed, I want to say the important Normandy upgrade is the armor. She dies when the ship is struck because she hangs out below the engine room in the belly of the ship, and if you have extra armor that soaks the damage instead.

Yes, and I think Garrus dies if you don't upgrade the guns, appropriately enough. I forget who doesn't make it if you neglect the shields. I could decline to upgrade armor or I could send Jack as a fireteam leader - though I'm not sure if it's possible.

[Forum Explorer]

Yes, and I think Garrus dies if you don't upgrade the guns, appropriately enough. I forget who doesn't make it if you neglect the shields. I could decline to upgrade armor or I could send Jack as a fireteam leader - though I'm not sure if it's possible.

I think it's Tali who dies if you neglect the shields.

[LibraryOgre]

Who would be the worse two companions to survive the suicide mission?

Obviously Morinth is probably the worst to survive. But for the other I’m not sure, perhaps Jack and then don’t help the academy so she gets taken by Cerberus?

Morinth and Miranda.

Maybe Kasumi.

Both have minimal impact on ME3.

[Morty]

I think it's Tali who dies if you neglect the shields.

According to the wiki, there's a list for the shielding and the cannons, but only Jack will die if you neglected the shields. Garrus and Tali aren't on the bottom of either, though - Thane will die first if you don't have the cannons and Kasumi if you don't have the shields. It seems that Jack is also likely to die if she's under the biotic bubble and I've picked the wrong character to maintain it... so I've got options.

Either way, I've got a plan in mind now. I just need to decide what kind of Shepard I'll play. I'm leaning more towards a female engineer who romances Jacob and Traynor, I'm just not sure if I can hold off on romancing the latter long enough. Another option is romancing Jack, then Steve once she dies - if I felt like being cruel.

[tonberrian]

Ugh I want to play mass effect again but setting it up is inconvenient. I'd rather do it on my laptop now, but that would require buying the whole series again on Origin, and they still don't have an Everything bundle for a reasonable price.

Also, I can't decide on my shepard. I did spacer paragon vanguard femshep last time, and I think I like that a lot. But i never finished ME 3 (gave up right before Citadel, I KNOW), so i haven't seen the finale of Garrus romance. Thinking about romance partners: Liara? +Femshep's sultry voice, or Tali? Boo Maleshep, but yay best girl...

[Corvus]

Renegade maleshep spacedog - a different girl in each game and then some more.

[Morty]

I have to say, a female Shepard romancing Jacob sounds... well, "intense" would be one word, "thirsty" would be another. She comes on really strongly.

[tonberrian]

I have to say, a female Shepard romancing Jacob sounds... well, "intense" would be one word, "thirsty" would be another. She comes on really strongly.

That's because she is. Think of all the hot booty you have to pass up to get to that point!

[LibraryOgre]

I have to say, a female Shepard romancing Jacob sounds... well, "intense" would be one word, "thirsty" would be another. She comes on really strongly.

She's been dead for two years. A lady has needs.

[Psyren]

I highly, highly recommend finishing the Garrus romance if you haven't already. Citadel adds some quality stuff.

Note that Leviathan has romance content as well (for the ME1/ME3 love interests anyway, ME2 not so much.)

[Morty]

I've done Garrus' romance already. This run I'm trying out things I haven't done before, like giving Shepard two love interests. I don't have Leviathan and don't really plan to get it.

[Psyren]

I've done Garrus' romance already.

You said you hadn't done Citadel though, so you're missing a lot of it.


This run I'm trying out things I haven't done before, like giving Shepard two love interests. I don't have Leviathan and don't really plan to get it.

Your choice/loss but there's some good stuff there, even ignoring what it does to the endings. In addition to the romance dialogue, I like the investigation mechanic, and it has some cool environments.

[tonberrian]

No, I said I hadn't done Garrus Citadel. And I likely won't ever because that's on xbox 360 and I don't have space nor a screen to hook that up. Maybe once I beat tali's romance I'll do Garrus's again.

[Morty]

I have played Citadel and I can confirm that Garrus' romance is good there. He's adorable. Citadel is great in general - doesn't take itself seriously and just delivers a lot of self-indulgent fun content for the entire crew.

Playing through Mass Effect 2... I don't really like how loyalty powers work. Unlocking them only after the loyalty mission means some of your team will spend half the game or more without them. Which may be a bigger or smaller problem - Miranda's or Mordin's powers are gimmicky and not worth more than their core ones. But Samara's Reave isn't. It's not a problem when Shepard learns them, because you can swap them or respec entirely. With your squad, you can only do it after finishing Lair of the Shadow Broker.

I'm also not a fan of having to buy some powers before others. I don't care for Cryo Blast, but I had to take it for AI Hacking. And it's too easy to end up with floating unspendable points - especially for companions. ME3 really improved on the overall power design, more than I had remembered.

I wish I'd looked into some mods, but... Mass Effect doesn't feel like a "moddable" game for me. Maybe I'll look into some cosmetic ones in ME3. This Shep ended up looking a bit too much like Traynor. Some appearance mods might help me make a more distinct-looking one.

[Psyren]

Playing through Mass Effect 2... I don't really like how loyalty powers work. Unlocking them only after the loyalty mission means some of your team will spend half the game or more without them. Which may be a bigger or smaller problem - Miranda's or Mordin's powers are gimmicky and not worth more than their core ones. But Samara's Reave isn't. It's not a problem when Shepard learns them, because you can swap them or respec entirely. With your squad, you can only do it after finishing Lair of the Shadow Broker.

It's been a long time but IIRC you keep your bonus power in NG+.



I wish I'd looked into some mods, but... Mass Effect doesn't feel like a "moddable" game for me. Maybe I'll look into some cosmetic ones in ME3. This Shep ended up looking a bit too much like Traynor. Some appearance mods might help me make a more distinct-looking one.

I feel this pain, my Paragon FemShep ended up a dead ringer for Kahlee Sanders. I restarted that game pretty quickly - thankfully, Grissom is fairly early on.


Well, at least we weren't told no to spend too much time on one planet by the devs (as with Hinterlands).

They had to do that, the completionists were refusing to move on for fear of missing out.

That's one of the things Andromeda got right, telling the player "We'll work on the colony but we're good enough for right now, please move on." Especially since the longer you hang around there, the longer you go without Jaal, and who would want to miss that?

[Morty]

It's been a long time but IIRC you keep your bonus power in NG+.

Yes, or when starting a new playthrough. This doesn't help me much here, though like I said - Shepard not getting to use them doesn't bother me. I do wish I could use Geth Shield Boost before the very endgame, though. I prefer to stick to bonus powers that fit my class, but the other tech ones don't inspire. I've been using Kasumi's flashbang and Mordin's neural shock. The former is more useful on the whole.


I feel this pain, my Paragon FemShep ended up a dead ringer for Kahlee Sanders. I restarted that game pretty quickly - thankfully, Grissom is fairly early on.

It wouldn't be so bad for another NPC, but I plan to romance Traynor with this one.

[tonberrian]

whee mass effect is on sale all over the place.

Picking it up on my laptop so i can start again.

[Morty]

I finished Mass Effect 2. Managed to get Mordin and Jack killed as I'd planned, though not without complications. There seems to be some math behind the "hold the line" section, but it's unclear. Once I got Tali killed by accident when I took Grunt with me to the final fight. This time, sending Garrus away with the crew didn't cause Mordin to die. I ended up picking the wrong person to hold the biotic bubble with him in it.

The Collectors' plan really doesn't make a lick of sense, but by now I've learned to just shrug and move on. Whatever else can be said about this plot, the suicide mission was really ambitious and unconventional and deserves credit for it. Even if in practice it's trivial to keep everyone alive. Then again, trivial as it may be, knowing that the squadmates can die makes keeping them alive feel just a little bit more like an accomplishment. It may be an illusion, but then video games are an illusion to start with.

[factotum]

Whatever else can be said about this plot, the suicide mission was really ambitious and unconventional and deserves credit for it.

No doubt...it probably would have made more sense to put it at the end of the third game, though, because as it is they have to jump through hoops in ME3 to take account of the fact that a considerable number of the series "regulars" might be dead! Including introducing some new characters that nobody cares about.

[Morty]

No doubt...it probably would have made more sense to put it at the end of the third game, though, because as it is they have to jump through hoops in ME3 to take account of the fact that a considerable number of the series "regulars" might be dead! Including introducing some new characters that nobody cares about.

A lot of things about the trilogy would have been improved with more planning and forethought. I'm not going to waste time speculating and just give credit where it's due for what did happen.

[LibraryOgre]

A lot of things about the trilogy would have been improved with more planning and forethought. I'm not going to waste time speculating and just give credit where it's due for what did happen.

This has been a complaint of mine about a lot of things... You can get away without plotting the full trilogy when you don't know if you'll get a second installment, but once that second or third installment are happening, you need to outline the whole goddamn thing.

[Psyren]

I finished Mass Effect 2. Managed to get Mordin and Jack killed as I'd planned, though not without complications. There seems to be some math behind the "hold the line" section, but it's unclear.

This is a repost (https://biowaresocialnetwork.boards.net/thread/51/me2-mission-guide) from the guide that used to be on the legacy Bioware forums if that helps. Short version - there is both math and RNG behind it, so while you can aim for a certain result, getting the exact squadmates you want to survive/die to it isn't guaranteed.


No doubt...it probably would have made more sense to put it at the end of the third game, though, because as it is they have to jump through hoops in ME3 to take account of the fact that a considerable number of the series "regulars" might be dead! Including introducing some new characters that nobody cares about.

Agreed - and also, the ones who survive end up being bit players. For example, Jack - the most powerful human biotic in the galaxy - being stuck in a teaching job. Miranda having almost nothing to do when Cerberus takes up so much of the third game's plot (she doesn't even get to interact with the Illusive Man! What a waste...) And even the ones they did spend time on were wasted - Tali's dark energy stuff going nowhere, Garrus barely getting two words with his family, And Liara... oh, Liara.

[Anteros]

It seems obvious that they planned for you to have a rotating cast of squadmates for Mass Effect 3, depending on the mission you were on, and presumably bring everyone together for the final mission. For whatever reason, they didn't go through with that, but the game would have been better for it if they did.

[Morty]

It is difficult to deny that as bold and unconventional as the suicide mission may have been, it must have made writing for Mass Effect 3 a great deal more difficult. Especially given how it really does look like there was no plan, outline or even a general idea of what was going to happen.

[LibraryOgre]

You know what would almost work better?

If Mass Effect 3 were Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 2 were Mass Effect 3. To keep things clearer, we'll call them Saren (ME1), Reapers (ME3), and Collectors (ME2)

So, we have Saren. The Reapers are coming! The Galaxy is in peril!
Then comes Reapers.The Reapers are here! Everyone is doomed! Shepherd builds the Crucible which destroys the Reapers, but dies in the process!
Then comes Collectors. Shepherd is saved! It turns out that Cerebus had been indoctrinated, but they got some amazing tech, and they brought Shepherd back from the dead to stop the Collectors, who are trying to create new Reapers!

[factotum]

That actually makes a scary amount of sense...

[Anteros]

It's pretty anti-climactic to go from fighting the Reapers to some random aliens if you do it in that order though.

Maybe if you re-wrote things so that the collectors were the ones who were responsible for the Reapers in the first place it would work.

[Morty]

My plan to use Energy Drain instead of Overload to focus my points more is getting mixed results. Energy Drain doesn't prime or detonate combos unless used on an enemy with shields/barriers or a synthetic (which means Geth, Cerberus turrets and Atlases, basically). But I do want to focus on Cryo Blast more, since I've ignored cryo powers on my previous runs.