toblix

Mass Effect 3

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Been playing a bunch of Mass Effect 3. Not near the end yet, but i've got about forty hours in on it. I'm being very completionist.

There's so many little things i want to say that i'm just going to bullet-point it. I'll be careful to avoid spoilers, outside of the most general details.

- First thing i want to do is make clear where i'm coming from, i didn't think Mass Effect 2 was the huge improvement over the first game that it's popularly held to be. It was enormously polished and well produced, but it was kind of stripped clean of all the weird and interesting stuff BioWare tried to do in that first game. The first game offered up a sometimes clunky and always incredibly strange and ambitious sci-fi RPG, and despite sometimes being tangled up in problematic design, it was a very interesting game. In contrast to that, i feel like Mass Effect 2 was stripped bare and ended up as little more than a third person shooter wrapped up in a really insanely ambitious narrative structure. I still really liked it, but i can't muster the same love for it.

- Currently, i feel Mass Effect 3 is somewhere in between,

but maybe i'll hate it when i get to that ending everybody is complaining furiously about.

(I'm amazed it hasn't been broadly spoiled, people are generally being pretty careful about Mass Effect 3 spoilers.)

- To just barely touch on the story, I find it kind of frustrating. (I didn't really care much for 2 either, to be clear.)

I'm quite disappointed that they intend to solve their difficult dilemma through the use of a magic doomsday weapon

, also disappointed that most of the game settles into the same pattern as 2. You're just running around performing errands to gather support for the end-game. I think the first game was the only one that had a genuinely interesting narrative.

- I do admire their dedication to delivering payoffs for virtually every character and storyline from the previous two games.

- I do not like that that you just keep randomly bumping into people, nobody is seeking anybody out. Every time you run into a character so the game can resolve a previous thread of story, it's treated as a chance encounter. EVERY SINGLE DAMN TIME. This really, really bothers me. There's a lot of dumb magic in this universe that you have to accept, but that bit of lazy writing is the one that irks me more than anything else.

- I alluded to this earlier, I think it's a better "game" than 2. It's more of an "RPG" again, there's more stuff going on, a deeper character sheet a lot of other small mechanics. They've definitely just taken the mechanics from 2, but they've fleshed them out to a degree that it doesn't feel just like a third-person shooter with a big emphasis on narrative.

- However, conversations don't have quite the branching insanity that was present in 2. So dialogues are on the whole a little bit more structured and rigid, but the things you'd want are still there, it's still Mass Effect.

- Hearing some non-spoilery stories about the states of various playthroughs for different people, it is REMARKABLE to me how much BioWare delivered on their promises regarding their save import scheme. There are people who are playing wildly, wildly different incarnations of this game, it's utterly mad.

- Speaking of which, my save import went fine, it didn't bug out like some people have reported. My male default-face Infiltrator Shep came over to 3 without a hitch, and i haven't seen any incongruous details pop up in my playthrough. I have really been totally surprised by all the small little things they're providing resolution to.

- If you totally fucked up your playthrough, it seems possible you could end up needing the MP to boost your war readiness stat to get a coveted best ending, but my game is well on track to maxing out that bar without having ever touched the MP. (Currently, i'm not even sure how much it matters, i've heard some people note that it actually doesn't really affect the end that much anyways.)

- Game is a little buggy, tons of odd quirks here and there, nothing gamebreaking. Mostly just makes it feel a little unpolished.

- The loss of the film grain just shines a light on how leathery everybody's face looks, i want the film grain back.

- So it's pretty good. It has some issues, but it's a fine game. Seeing the internet response had me really down on it when i started, but after the time i've spent on it, it's become quite evident that Mass Effect fans are fucking goddamned lunatics. Seriously, holy shit. What the hell is going on with all of that, this game is not that bad.

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- So it's pretty good. It has some issues, but it's a fine game. Seeing the internet response had me really down on it when i started, but after the time i've spent on it, it's become quite evident that Mass Effect fans are fucking goddamned lunatics. Seriously, holy shit. What the hell is going on with all of that, this game is not that bad.

My exact opinion before the ending.

Now I am one of the lunatics. :getmecoat

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I keep hearing that! The ending can't be that bad, is it really that bad? It can't be, right? I seriously can't believe that ten minutes at the end of the game will turn my opinion around on it that completely.

I'm still amazed it isn't being spoiled all over the place, i need to finish the game before people cease to be careful about it.

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Oh no Sno, the ending is one of the biggest "fuck you" endings gaming or cinema has ever produced.

People are still overreacting.

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They are for sure, but it's pretty understandable.

For me it's the entire last mission + ending that ruined my experience.

Spoiler? Better safe than sorry.

WHY MAKE ME DO ALL THAT SHIT THAT IS SO BLATANTLY POINTLESS AND PAINFULLY SLOW ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

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- The loss of the film grain just shines a light on how leathery everybody's face looks, i want the film grain back.

Dear god, yes, agree! I feel like I am the only person in the world who thinks the graphics in the first game actually look better in most cases than in the second two.

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Dear god, yes, agree! I feel like I am the only person in the world who thinks the graphics in the first game actually look better in most cases than in the second two.

Yes, you are. I'm playing through 1 now and there's a lot of ugly in that game. I actually disabled the film grain in 1 because it made it look even worse. I liked the grain in 2, however.

Edited by Brannigan

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So they're changing the ending to this! (Maybe.) I'm not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, I don't really feel like a bunch of people whining on the internet are necessarily right. On the other hand, I don't really buy the "artistic integrity" argument - art gets changed, edited, altered all the time, and certainly the two previous Mass Effect titles were supplemented with DLC. It's hard to make the case that adding these after the fact doesn't alter the game's artistic merit nearly as much as adding some "post ending" content. I guess it'll all depend on what they do with it.

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Yeah, I'm similarly conflicted. I think they really should have stuck to their guns. If this results in more paid-for DLC... well, I'll be pretty cynical.

Not that I expect DLC of any reasonable quality to be available free, mind you. It just becomes difficult to know how they address the ending without creating DLC and that leaves the question open of when such DLC would really have been conceived... All very weird, really.

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The statement I read sounded way more like there's going to be DLC (as there always would have been) and that it may tie up some of the things people may have complained about as regards the ending (note: I don't know what these things are as I've avoided the discussion entirely until I can finish the game myself) rather than being totally separate as it may have originally been intended to be.

I would be very surprised if any DLC was released that actually changed the ending of the game, and there was even a line in the statement about protecting the integrity of the story as it stands.

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After playing Mass Effect 3 for a couple of hours, I gave up and saw the endings on Youtube.

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I hope they just add a scene where Shepherd wakes up pouring with sweat and only after a moment realizes that it has all been a bad dream.

Note: I have actually not finished Mass Effect 3 yet, so this may well be the current ending.

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So will the current ending still be there if I am to buy and play the game in a couple of months? I'd like to see what all the fuss is about, and if they change the ending before I get around to playing it, it would kind of suck. Like, a lot.

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So will the current ending still be there if I am to buy and play the game in a couple of months? I'd like to see what all the fuss is about, and if they change the ending before I get around to playing it, it would kind of suck. Like, a lot.

A) It sounds very much like whatever they add will be an appendix to, rather than a replacement for, the ending that is currently in place.

B) I don't think anyone is going to be adding content to the discs. So as long you don't download any updates, it should still be available.

C) Even if the above were not true, the current ending is so notorious at this point that it will live on in YouTube for infinity.

So, I wouldn't worry about it.

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B) I don't think anyone is going to be adding content to the discs. So as long you don't download any updates, it should still be available.

Discs? What? You're on Idle Thumbs and don't buy all your games on PC? What I'm worried about is that by the time I get around to playing the game and downloading it from Origin, the version I'm downloading from EA will have some new happy ending shit bolted on, rather than at least letting me see what the fuss was about and giving me the choice.

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Discs? What? You're on Idle Thumbs and don't buy all your games on PC?

Yes, yes. But I still buy physical copies.

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C) Even if the above were not true, the current ending is so notorious at this point that it will live on in YouTube for infinity.

I wouldn't count on this. EA has shown it is capable of putting a lot of pressure on other companies, even the likes of Google, when something needs to be swept under the rug. For example, practically all evidence of the highly controversial alternative ending of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 seems to have been erased already.

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So I borrowed it from a friend (which is probably illegal) and I finished it a few hours ago. I haven't quite made up my mind yet, but it was more interesting than I thought it was gonna be. So, ending spoilers ahead, and possibly slight incoherence due to tiredness.

On the one hand, I don't think that the ending invalidated the choices I've made in the past games at all. It just made the ending that much more affecting to me. It was still my story, I still feel like I owned the journey, so to speak. Now see, I want to believe that on the whole, the story represents something more than meets the eye; something more than just pulp sci-fi, but part of me fears that they just ran out of time.

Like I said, I have no problem with it that the final choice is basically a tabula rasa. Two things are the same and they're 2 things I actually really like: Shepard dies, the Mass Relays get destroyed. The loss of the relays bummed me out a lot. All of a sudden that entire universe seemed like a much lonelier place, but at the same time the after credits bit also made me feel hopeful. That out there in space, well... we are not alone. I did feel a little tingle when the kid went "Tell me another story about the Shepard". It was a bittersweet moment.

So if they are going to change the ending via DLC, then isn't that Bioware admitting that they did mess up the ending, that they didn't get to make the ending they wanted to make? If this is how it was supposed to end, then honestly, stick to your guns and fuck the fans.

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So if they are going to change the ending via DLC, then isn't that Bioware admitting that they did mess up the ending, that they didn't get to make the ending they wanted to make? If this is how it was supposed to end, then honestly, stick to your guns and fuck the fans.

Yeah, Dave Grossman said something similar. I totally agree.

“My brain now insists on traveling back to 1991, when my comrades and I released Monkey Island 2. That game had a fairly bizarre ending, for which I personally bear some responsibility, and about which a significant portion of the audience expressed displeasure. During development there was a lot of discussion over whether the ending was a good idea, and I have to say that in retrospect it’s not my favorite, but I was into it at the time. If we made that game today it would be easy to revise the ending after release—but I still wouldn’t. We had our reasons for including it, and I wouldn’t change it, never have wanted to, and I suspect Ron and Tim would both say the same. Frankly, a great game with a contentious or unpopular ending is not necessarily a bad thing.

But I’m also moved to consider The Curse of Monkey Island, made by my friends Larry and Jonathan a few (okay, six) years later. Here again there were complaints about the ending, in this case because it was absurdly short. I happen to know that they had planned a much more elaborate end, but ran out of budget (a good example of how reality sometimes prevents you from doing the best thing). I’m pretty sure that, given the chance, they would revise that—but not just because the audience raised its voice, because it would be a genuine improvement on their vision for the game.

And in the end, I think that’s where I land: Listening to the audience is important, but it’s when you agree with them that you should make changes. If you’re going to revise stuff, by all means go ahead, but be sure you’re doing it because you want to, not because you think you should.”

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Yeah, Dave Grossman said something similar. I totally agree.

Some interesting people say some interesting things in this PC Gamer-piece.

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I expected to smugly brush off the Internet response and not give a damn about the game's ending, but holy shit, it really is dumb. It's super dumb.

I thought the story in Mass Effect 2 was poor, but I held out hope that the payoff in 3 would make everything ok. Unfortunately, it doesn't. It still has effective moments throughout, and for someone who is somewhat invested in the characters, it is absolutely worth playing through to see them. The broad arc is awful, but the incidental stuff is still good.

It seems like the people in charge of the franchise don't understand why people like the first game so much. The best drama comes from the characters, not from the threat of the explodotrons from beyond space, nor from half-baked philosophical rumination on the relationship between organic and synthetic life and all that other claptrap.

The end of the game leans pretty hard on elements of the fiction which haven't been properly developed. It tries to cash in a bunch of gravity that hasn't been earned. It's weird.

[ending spoiler]

Also, fucking ghost baby, what the hell is up with that. Utter nonsense.

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actually.. I think the best part of ME1 was exploring the strange and unknown worlds in search of what was going to destroy the world.

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Hey look, unequivocal proof that people are fucking retarded.

KmK6q.jpg

Delicious, delicious harassment.

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