Mass Effect 3

[lobotomy42]

That was fast:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-22-mass-effect-3-extended-cut-dlc-release-date-announced

[youmeyou]

I'm not sure I want to slog through the ending chapter again! *youtubes

[Salacious Snake]

I'll probably play it out of morbid curiosity.

[elmuerte]

unless they also made those battles more fun I will probably pass

[Gwardinen]

Yeah, if it was just the Earth section I might go in for that but since you have to start from before the Cerberus Base mission, I don't think I can be bothered. YouTube for me too, I suppose.

[lobotomy42]

I will definitely be playing this. I have plenty of gripes with ME2 and ME3, but I'm too invested in the universe at this point to let that stop me.

[mikemariano]

John Walker really is useless.

I learned nothing about the new Mass Effect ending except that it he finds it enjoyable to imagine the crushed dreams of fanboys.

Thanks, John. You can go back to nitpicking Traveller's Tales games to death, then calling them excellent. Or nitpicking Telltale games to death, then calling them crimes against humanity.

[Forbin]

I played the new endings on Youtube.

Basically they tried to tie up plot holes that fans raised in a somewhat inelegant fashion. Like, a few seconds showing everyone fleeing earth and trying to justify why Joker would be trying to cut and run without Sheppard. And the relays only partially are destroyed, so people complaining about them destroying solar systems would feel better. And they tried to make the existing endings "happier" by implying that they might fix the galaxy. As an ending, it was superior to the original, but honestly it'd still be bad. The best thing they did, was add a new ending option, which was rejection. And that IMO, showed how to do a proper sad ending. I recommend not even watching the new red/green/blue endings, and just check out the rejection, it has a side bonus of having a much better voice actor at the end.

[elmuerte]

So, it's just a new cinematic? Then why do you have to replay from the Cerberus HQ attack?

[Laxan]

So, it's just a new cinematic? Then why do you have to replay from the Cerberus HQ attack?

When you finish the game, it brings you back to (and gives you a save of) before the Cerberus HQ mission so you can go back out and do side quests etc. They assume this will be the most recent save for the majority of people.

[elmuerte]

Oh, I had a safe right before you enter that beam-me-up-scotty thingy

[lobotomy42]

So, I finally finished my second character's playthrough and watched the gist of the extended DLC endings. Are people still talking about this?

Looking back, it's hard not to notice how all over the map this series is in terms of narrative. The three games are thematically very different, and don't seem to mesh well in terms of even some of the very basic plotting. As just one example: Cereberus starts as an obscure evil group, then suddenly they have the resources to compete with galactic governments and are cool enough for you to work with, and then they're evil servants of the Reapers. There's also the someone muddled motivations of the Reapers, the way certain "major" decisions in previous games (e.g., saving the Council, saving the Collector Base) turn out to have almost no consequences, while decisions in certain sidequests (Maelon's data) can suddenly become make-or-break in ME3. ME2 and ME3 both seem to suffer from being fan-fiction-esque extensions of ME1: they depend on the prior game's existence for the crux of their emotional impact, but they also ignore or rewrite huge chunks where it suits them. It never feels like I'm in the same universe from one game to the next.

That being said - I do like the "Extended Cut" endings. They drive home the differences between the choices in an effective way (which was completely missing from the original) and give them the bizarre, spiritual, sci-fi element that the conversation with "Starchild" seemed to be going for. The explanation of the reapers still comes out of left field, but at least the final choice comes down to something more than explosion color. And Starchild makes sense thematically, if not literally -- the synthetic/organic themes have existed to varying degrees since the beginning of ME, so the presented choices make as much sense as anything else.

I still maintain that ME1 is far and away the best of the series, though.

TL;DR - ME series has issues; I liked the extended cut

[youmeyou]

Fully agree. ME1 is really the pinnacle of the storytelling in the series. ME2 had great individual stories but it completely lacked the narrative arc of the first game, which started slow having you act more as a regular beat cop solving petty crimes and escalated to a galaxy wide fight to save the citadel. The 2nd and 3rd games are pretty much at 100% the entire time and a lot of the weird space opera denouements of the first game are lost. Not that they aren't enjoyable. But it's hard to ignore how all over the place the plot is just referencing your examples alone.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Man, I played the first 20 mins and I thought it was pretty nifty. But there are some irritating flaws in the Mass Effect universe.

In the first game, the Reapers were stuck in an alternate universe, hiding and waiting for 50,000 years, and I shut off their way of getting back.

How they're managing to escape from that universe has never been explained.

Now at the beginning of ME3 Shepard is revealed to have been stripped of all status... Including her SPECTRE status. There's no explanation for this, although Internet searches reveal it's due to her destruction of a Batarian colony... In a DLC mission for ME2! There's not even a recap or anything!

Why a SPECTRE would have their status revoked for something like that is beyond me. It's precisely the type of thing they were created for.

And it was never really explained how everyone in the universe decided that Sovereign probably wasn't anything out of the ordinary. How could all of that debris have been ignored?

It seems the more you pay attention to the universe in Mass Effect, the less it makes sense. Why did they bother going into such incredible detail if they were just going to change things?

Really I can't think of a reason why someone couldn't just jump into ME3 and forget the first two games. The entire story of the previous two games is summed up in three lines of text at the beginning. Hmmm!

[Brannigan]

alot of the major plot threads that aren't reaper related actually are dealt with a bit, that's easily the more interesting part of me3

[Forbin]

I don't think they were in an alternate universe, just outside the milky way galaxy. It sounds like they were summoned back, and at the end of ME2 it's implied that the main fleet is almost in our galaxy.

[Orv]

It seems the more you pay attention to the universe in Mass Effect, the less it makes sense. Why did they bother going into such incredible detail if they were just going to change things?

Really I can't think of a reason why someone couldn't just jump into ME3 and forget the first two games. The entire story of the previous two games is summed up in three lines of text at the beginning. Hmmm!

I fuckin' told you.

[Lu]

I don't think they were in an alternate universe, just outside the milky way galaxy. It sounds like they were summoned back, and at the end of ME2 it's implied that the main fleet is almost in our galaxy.

Indeed. After destroying Sovereign and the Collector base, it turned out that Shepard's worst enemy had been this all along. It would've been a bit of a technological oversight for the most advanced cybernetic organisms in the galaxy otherwise.

[youmeyou]

It's kind of like the Empire rebuilding the death star or a boss in Final Fantasy turning into a bigger boss upon death. It's an easy way to prologue tension and challenge. Not necessarily a plausible or interesting way though.

[Brannigan]

Indeed. After destroying Sovereign and the Collector base, it turned out that Shepard's worst enemy had been this all along. It would've been a bit of a technological oversight for the most advanced cybernetic organisms in the galaxy otherwise.

Oh god please let mass effect 4 be about a giant rooster alarm clock that's floating in space

[ThunderPeel2001]

I don't think they were in an alternate universe, just outside the milky way galaxy. It sounds like they were summoned back, and at the end of ME2 it's implied that the main fleet is almost in our galaxy.

No, in ME it says that they wait in some sort of "low power" mode for 50,000 years in Dark Space (or something like that). I think it's the Citadel that allows them to come back from there, but Shepard shuts down their passage back, effectively trapping them there.

It really is quite annoying how they change the rules and retcon everything between the games. That article that points out how Cerberus were actually a terrorist group responsible for killing a ton of humans, including Shapard's entire squad on Akuze, in the first game, are suddenly changed into a human-loving (racist) group in the second is right on the nose.

I just don't understand why they clobbered me in the face with all their sci-fi gubbins in the first game if they were just going to change it. (Even the life cycle of the Asaris has been changed now.)

This is why you don't explain everything. You should leave areas of doubt so that you can change them to suit your story.

I mean what's the point of having all those Codex entries if you're only going to notice inconsistencies if you read them?

[Lu]

No, in ME it says that they wait in some sort of "low power" mode for 50,000 years in Dark Space (or something like that).

Dark space is the space in between galaxies.

The Cerberus thing is quite right, though. Total bullshit.

The whole big evil thing that Bioware is fond of doing is almost always the least interesting thing about their games, to me. In Dragon Age 2, it kind of felt refreshing to not have to save the world. Shame they felt the need to push that game out the door as quickly as possible.

[Orv]

No, in ME it says that they wait in some sort of "low power" mode for 50,000 years in Dark Space (or something like that). I think it's the Citadel that allows them to come back from there, but Shepard shuts down their passage back, effectively trapping them there.

It really is quite annoying how they change the rules and retcon everything between the games. That article that points out how Cerberus were actually a terrorist group responsible for killing a ton of humans, including Shapard's entire squad on Akuze, in the first game, are suddenly changed into a human-loving (racist) group in the second is right on the nose.

I just don't understand why they clobbered me in the face with all their sci-fi gubbins in the first game if they were just going to change it. (Even the life cycle of the Asaris has been changed now.)

This is why you don't explain everything. You should leave areas of doubt so that you can change them to suit your story.

I mean what's the point of having all those Codex entries if you're only going to notice inconsistencies if you read them?

I told you! I told you and no-one agreed! That is my biggest gripe with the Mass Effect series, outside a few notably shit missions. They have what could be an incredible universe that they twist with every sequel to fit the blockbuster they want to make not the choices you made.

I am angry about Mass Effect, rargh.

[brkl]

Your error was reading stuff.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Your error was reading stuff.

My error was paying attention. It's like HEROES all over again.