Quote Originally Posted by Trazoi View Post
I did think it was questionable to introduce it right at the very beginning though. I was expecting that was because there would be a whole bunch of twists and turns about the Crucible throughout the story, but they didn't do that until the very end. Which is silly - I'm sure everyone was thinking "what does the Crucible do?" the first time they heard about it. There's a whole bunch of problems with the beginning that more people would be nitpicking if it wasn't a) right at the beginning so everyone has forgotten about it and b) overshadows by the huge glaring issues with the ending.
I actually liked the way the Crucible was handled. Getting updates about it's construction was a nice reminder that this war wasn't being won by Shepard alone. It also let them incorporate things besides soldiers into the War Effort, and really helped drive home the idea that you were united the entire Galaxy, not just the armies.

They could also have gone the route of just having you build an army big enough to beat the Reapers conventionally, but I can understand why they didn't want to. For story purposes, The Reapers work best as an overwhelming force that you're racing to stop. If the hope of conventional victory is there, then the threat is somewhat diminished, and it makes Shepard's Quest slightly less Relevant. Right now they had three goals: Assemble a Coalition, Build the Crucible, and Find the Catalyst. Shepard can help with the first two, and complete the third on his/her own, so it worked well.

I mean, I can think of other ways to do it that hits the same buttons, with engineers building more ships for the fleet, archaeologists researching Prothean records of the last Reaper invasion, and Shepard trying to find out about some weapon that can disrupt Reaper shields, giving the fleets a chance, but let's not re-write the whole game.
I've got to get around to DX:Human Revolution. It's in a pile under Bioshock 2 and Fallout: New Vegas. I had to move Mass Effect 3 to the top because the internet wouldn't shut up about it. In retrospect they did me a favour spoiling that the ending would be disappointing.
Put Bioshock 2 on the bottom, I was thoroughly underwhelmed, to the point where I didn't really feel anything when my save file got corrupted. Fallout New Vegas and DX:HR are both great though.