Mass Effect 3Follow

Yeah, but the fourth is likely BW trolling the people who requested a 'shoot the god child' ending.



Because the entire game, from beginning to end, is supposed to be about choices and how they affect the outcome of a chain of events. The canonical ending to Mass Effect is that SpoilerShepard manages to stop the Reapers. Unless you try to shoot the god child. Everything else in the story depends on the player's choices. The player writes the story through his or her actions.

If you allow the reader of your story to dictate how it develops then you need to give the reader the ending he/she wants. I spent all my time in the games doing my best to get Spoilerthe happy ending, but it was all for naught. I don't care if the writer or developer wanted Spoilera cathartic sad ending. I wanted a happy ending. It's how my version of the story ends. If they're not willing to give me the ending I want then they shouldn't have allowed me to write the story in the first place.

That's why it's a sh*tty ending. Your previous choices, everything you wrote yourself about the story, none of it matters in the end. The writers want you to choose between three shades of the same ending. What's the point in giving us the ability to choose the direction of the story if it ends up in the same place anyway? If you create a story based on choices then those choices should matter in the end. And it's not like they didn't know how to do it. They did it in the second game. The second game can end with Spoilereveryone dying, everyone living and varying degrees of both in between, depending on the choices you make in the two first games. The third game has you choosing between three color-coded endings that end with Spoilera) Shepard dying or b) synthetic life dying. If you've played the games, you'll know why the latter one isn't a happy ending.

There's no doubt they ran out of time (and money) before they could finish this game. There are enough cases of blatant copy-paste from Google and poor Photoshop editing to prove that. And the ending is as far from an epic conclusion as you can get. I mean, the phrase "Still a better ending than Mass Effect 3" is a freakin' meme these days.

Edit: Damn spoilers. People ought to know how it all ended by now. And being slightly drunk makes it hard to hit the right keys.

Edited, Jul 1st 2012 2:24am by Mazra

Omega pretty much said my response. I understand being upset at the lack of different choices at the end. But that's a separate issue from the lack of a happy choice at the end.

You didn't write any part of the story. You picked from small set of options that were written by Bioware.

The "Destroy" ending is fairly happy. Shep's love interest hesitates putting the plaque on the wall of Dead in the Normandy, Normandy takes off from the planet it crashed on, & Shephard lives (minus synthetic parts)- leaving hope they could reunite. Pretty sure EDI & the Geth are dead, though. Well, my renegade Shep actually killed the Geth ahead of time, so they were dead before the choice. Heh.

The puppies & Rainbow ending would be synthesis: Shep sacrifices him/herself for peace throughout the universe. Even the Refusal ending now has a silver lining.

Control is still pretty bleak though.

What? NOW we skip spoilers? After I made that huge *** post with like a dozen spoilers tags all over the place?

I actually find Control to be the least bleak. Shepard "dies" but assumes direct control over the Reapers. If Cerberus could bring Shepard back to life after he/she decompressed in space and fell onto a planet, I'm guessing Reaper tech would allow him/her to create a clone and download him-/herself into it, like Harbinger did when it assumed direct control over the individual Collectors.

Shepard just dies in Synthesis. Sure, he saves the galaxy and synthetics and organics live happily ever after, but Shepard is gone. Disintegrated. Not coming back. Makes building a relationship with a crew member meaningless, unless you're looking for the depressing stuff (diff'rent strokes, etc.)

Destroy is the only ending where Shepard seemingly survives, but at the cost of all synthetic life, including the Geth and EDI. It would make Legion's sacrifice completely meaningless (not to mention the Quarians who died fighting the Geth) and would probably break Joker's heart, considering his relationship with EDI.

That's why I need a Mass Effect 4, or at least a DLC that ties all of this crap up. If the Destroy ending showed EDI and the Geth surviving (indicating that the god child was either wrong or bluffing), I'd have settled for that. In fact, the Destroy ending felt more satisfying before the extended endings, back when the whole indoctrination theory was happening.

Still would like a more in-depth conclusion to the series, though.

Well, I think the endings lacked gravitas. BioWare said my actions in the previous two games would have a big impact on the third, but in the end it comes down to whether you choose blue, green or red. Might as well have run with that from the beginning and I wouldn't have had to replay the first two games a bunch of times to get the outcome I wanted. Had I known from the beginning that it would all boil down to a) sacrifice, b) sacrifice, or c) blow **** up, I probably wouldn't have given the first two games much thought.

They promised choice, but choosing between three colors of the same ending wasn't what I--and a lot of other players--had in mind. If the writer felt that his artistic integrity was at stake and required a sad ending, they should have just done like Infinity Ward did with Call of Duty and made us follow a predetermined path. I mean, crap, ME3 even has one of those "just take me to the action" single player modes where the game picks the dialogue options for you. It's obvious that the priorities regarding ME3 shifted somewhere between ME2 and ME3 release.

The ending is half-assed, even in the extended version. No conclusion, so much ambiguity you'd think Nolan directed the damn thing, and none of your choices matter. Sure, if you were a good boy in ME1 and ME2, your crew will survive. Sound familiar? That's the ending to ME2. Bad photoshop for Tali's big reveal. Google copy-paste image for the final cutscene. Crappy sprites. An enormous focus on multiplayer... so much that it actually affects the outcome of the single player story through three games.

Yeah, it's pretty clear what their priority was. Multiplayer is where the money is.

I blame EA.

Well, this is disheartening. ME3 sounds like DA2, but with multi-player to make up for its craptastic ending "choices."

At least I'm enjoying the hell out of ME2 right now. Totally romancing Tali

I think the problem is that they say "your choices will have an impact on the game" and people assume they mean the END of the game. People lived or died based on my decisions through the games, and most had repercussions on the world. Sure a lot of it was in "good job" or "you screwed up" emails, but there ya go. The color of button is just one more choice after a long string of them.

Hell hath no fury like nerdrage.

The internet is stupid in many different ways, but it does provide quantitative empirical evidence that something wasn't to the liking of a lot of people. Maybe it's the vocal minority, I don't know, but when something bad about your product becomes a meme, you're doing something wrong.

Spoilers incoming from all three games.

Like I said earlier, I get that the writers went for a downbeat ending, but they put so many downbeat missions in the game with sacrificial endings that the last sacrifice by Shepard completely lacked gravitas.

Just to name a few...

• Mordin sacrifices himself to cure the genophage.
• Kirrahe/Thane sacrifices himself to save the council member.
• Salarian commando sacrifices himself to stop a terrorist.
• Turian leader's son sacrifices himself to disarm the bomb.

By the time you get to where Shepard sacrifices himself to save the galaxy, his sacrifice just seems obvious. I was expecting every mission I went on in ME3 to include the death of some character I liked. Where ME2 and ME1 had you choose which characters lived, ME3 has you choose which characters die. I just don't like that.

That said, I think I've raged enough on this matter now. I've chosen the Control ending as my "happy" ending because it's the only ending where no one dies. Shepard's physical body dies, but his consciousness is still alive. And he's like a space god. Win.

Edited, Jul 3rd 2012 10:06pm by Mazra

It's all about the costs and the people who pay them. Mordin sacrifices himself to correct an action he willingly made but now sees as a mistake. Thane is a repentant assassin at the end of his life, seeing sacrificing it for anyone as a positive trade. Kirrahe kinda comes out of nowhere, I admit. The leader's son is trying to make up for his *****-up and poor leadership.

The whole series has been emphasizing that you can't win without paying for it. Virmire, saving the Council, various points in 2 (though aside from the ending decision with TIM I don't think any choices were "two bad ones," making it the most positive of the three games, there was still fallout). The various sacrifices in 3 are all about facing death on your own terms, because the alternative is too terrible to consider. There's no perfect ending to aim for, no set of flags that leaves everyone sitting around drinking a beer. If they let Shepard live unscathed in an ending it would devalue every other choice (look at everyone insisting that the ending with half a second of twitching was the "good" one and complaining at the # of points needed to get it). You can pick from a bunch of bad options, you can spit in the god-child's eye, but you're choosing your death any way you slice it.

I just don't understand how people could expect a perfect ending.

Anyone still playing the mulitplayer? I don't play often, but I drop in every so often. Played a decent bit this weekend, trying to get a new class option (which didn't really pan out--I mostly got updrades to what I already had, or combos I didn't care for. Like Vorcha... anything).

I still haven't actually beaten ME3 because I have so much distracting me nowadays, and the Steam sale didn't help. :P I'm determined to finish it by the end of August though.

Queue was still instant for me. No time spent searching or all. I was playing Bronze, because I tend to go so long between matches that I forget how to play. The fact that I'm typically either shaking from too much coffee, or boozing it up, when I play doesn't help either.

I really want to try out some of the new Earth options, they seem pretty awesome.

The N7 Soldier (Can turn into a turret), Adept (pairs well with a Justicar), Engineer (2 grenade abilities and a grenade dispenser, be prepared to have teammates humping you), Infiltrator (teleport behind guys and sword them in the head), and Sentinel ("Hi, I'm a wall! Why don't you and me get to know each other better while my allies lob grenades into the crowd of ya trying to kill me?") are all very nice, though they take some getting used to. I'm not impressed by the N7 Vanguard, who does everything the Infiltrator does but without cloaking.

New Maps:
London -- the bottom area's a kill box and the sniper top part's got no ammo crates. Painful.
Vancouver -- It's a map akin to the ruined building roofs at the start of the SP game. Not bad.
Rio -- Very pretty (the Cristo Redentor is visible off in the distance to one side) but very painful if done wrong. People camp the middle and it leaves you vulnerable to every sniper on the map. Head for the storage crates on the far end or hole up on the near end.

New mission:
Escort -- Activate a drone, then escort it to the destination. More folks in the bubble the faster it moves, and all escorts aren't the same length, meaning this can either be cake or painful. It'll often wander away from cover, so do what you can to clear the area and protect your ***.

New Difficulty:
Platinum -- Wave 1-3 have the foes you picked. 4-6 mix in another group, and 7-10 has everything trying to kill you. You would think that means a mix of Banshees, Primes and Atlases, but I find the mix is more 3/4 Banshees and 1/4 Primes. It's painful. Rewards about 140K for a full completion.

Edited, Jul 31st 2012 5:13pm by selebrin